LUCRETIUS.--PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS.
It is in keeping with the isolated and independent position which
Lucretius occupies in literature, that so little is known of his life.
The two kinds of information available for literary biography,--that
afforded by the author himself, and that derived from contemporaries,
or from later writers who had access to contemporary testimony,--almost
entirely fail us in his case. The form of poetry adopted by him
prevented his speaking of himself and telling his own history, as
Catullus, Horace, Ovid, etc., have done in their lyrical, elegiac, and
familiar writings. His work appears to have been first published after
his death: nor is there any reason to believe that he attracted the
attention of the world in his lifetime. To judge from the silence of
his contemporaries, and from the attitude of mind indicated in his
poem, the words 'moriens natusque fefellit' might almost be written as
his epitaph. Had he been prominent in the social or literary circles
of Rome during the years in which he was engaged on the composition of
his poem, some traces of him must have been found in the correspondence
of Cicero or in the poems of Catullus, which bring the personal life
of those years so close to modern readers. It is thus impossible to
ascertain on what original authority the sole traditional account of
him preserved in the Chronicle of Jerome was based. That account, like
similar notices of other Roman writers, came to Jerome in all
probability from the lost work of Suetonius, 'de viris illustribus.'
But as to the channels through which it passed to Suetonius, we have
no information.
The well-known statement of Jerome is to this effect,--'The poet
Lucretius was born in the year 94 B.C. He became mad from the
administration of a love-philtre, and after composing, in his lucid
intervals, several books which were afterwards corrected by Cicero, he
died by his own hand in his forty-fourth year.' The date of his death
would thus be 50 B.C. But this date is contradicted by the statement
of Donatus in his life of Virgil, that Lucretius died (he says nothing
of his supposed suicide) on the day on which Virgil assumed the 'toga
virilis,' viz. October 15, 55 B.C. And this date derives confirmation
from the fact that the first notice of the poem appears in a letter
of Cicero to his brother, written in the beginning of 54 B.C. As the
condition in which the poem has reached us confirms the statement that
it was left by the author in an unfinished state, it must have been
given to the world by some other hand after the poet's death; and, as
Mr. Munro observes, we should expect to find that it first attracted
notice some three or four months after that event. We must accordingly
conclude that here, as in many other cases, Jerome has been careless
in his dates, and that Lucretius was either born some years before 94
B.C., or that he died before his forty-fourth year. His most recent
Editors, accordingly, assign his birth to the end of the year 99 B.C.
or the beginning of 98 B.C. He would thus be some seven or eight
years younger than Cicero, three or four years younger than Julius
Caesar[1], about the same age as Memmius to whom the poem is
dedicated, and from about twelve to fifteen years older than Catullus
and the younger poets of that generation[2].
But is this story of the poet's liability to fits of derangement, of
the cause assigned for these, of his suicide, and of the correction of
his poem by Cicero, to be accepted as a meagre and, perhaps, distorted
account of certain facts in his history transmitted through some
trustworthy channels, or is it to be rejected as an idle fiction which
may have assumed shape before the time of Suetonius, and been accepted
by him on no other evidence than that of a vague tradition? Though no
certain answer can be given to this question, yet some reasons may be
assigned for according a hesitating acceptance to the main outlines of
the story, or at least for not rejecting it as a transparent fiction.
It may indeed be urged that if this strange and tragical history had
been known to the Augustan poets, who, in greater or less degree,
acknowledge the spell exercised upon them by the genius of Lucretius,
some sympathetic allusion to it would probably have been found in
their writings, such as that in Ovid to the early death of Catullus
and Calvus. It would seem remarkable that in the only personal
reference which Virgil, who had studied his poem profoundly, seems to
make to his predecessor, he characterises him merely as 'fortunate in
his triumph over supernatural terrors.' But, not to press an argument
based on the silence of those who lived near the poet's time, and who,
from their recognition of his genius might have been expected to
be interested in his fate, the sensational character of the story
justifies some suspicion of its authenticity. The mysterious efficacy
attributed to a love-philtre is more in accordance with vulgar
credulity than with experience. The supposition that the poem, or
any considerable portion of it, was written in the lucid intervals of
derangement seems hardly consistent with the evidence of the supreme
control of reason through all its processes of thought. The impression
both of impiety and melancholy which the poem was likely to produce
on ordinary minds, especially after the religious reaction of the
Augustan age, might easily have suggested this tale of madness and
suicide as a natural consequence of, or fitting retribution for, such
absolute separation from the common hopes and fears of mankind[3].
Yet indications in the poem itself have been pointed out which might
incline us to accept the story rather as a meagre tradition of some
tragic circumstances in the poet's history, than as the idle invention
of an uncritical age. The unrelieved intensity of thought and
feeling, by which more almost than any other work of literature it is
characterised, seems indicative of an overstrain of power, which
may well have caused the loss or eclipse of what to the poet was the
sustaining light and joy of his life[4]. Under such a calamity
it would have been quite in accordance with the principles of his
philosophy to seek refuge in self-destruction, and to imitate an
example which he notes in the case of another speculative thinker, on
becoming conscious of failing intellectual power[5]. But this general
sense of overstrained tension of thought and feeling is, as was first
pointed out by his English Editor, much intensified by references in
the poem (as at i. 32; iv. 33, etc.), to the horror produced on
the mind by apparitions seen in dreams and waking visions[6]. 'The
emphatic repetition,' says Mr. Munro, 'of these horrid visions seen
in sickness might seem to confirm what is related of the poet being
subject to fits of delirium or disordering sickness of some sort.' He
further shows by quotation from Suetonius' 'Life of Caligula,' that
such mental conditions were attributed to the administration of
a love-philtre. The coincidence in these recorded cases may imply
nothing more than the credulity of Suetonius, or of the authorities
whom he followed: but it is conceivable that Lucretius may have
himself attributed what was either a disorder of his own constitution,
or the result of a prolonged overstrain of mind, to the effects of
some powerful drug taken by him in ignorance[7].
Thus, while the statement of Jerome admits neither of verification nor
refutation, it may be admitted that there are indications in the poem
of a great tension of mind, of an extreme vividness of sensibility, of
an indifference to life, and, in the later books, of some failure
in the power of organising his materials, which incline us rather to
accept the story as a meagre and distorted record of tragical events
in the poet's life, than as a literary myth which took shape out of
the feelings excited by the poem in a later age. Yet this qualified
acquiescence in the tradition does not involve the belief that
any considerable portion of the poem was written 'per intervalla
insaniae,' or that the disorder from which the poet suffered was
actually the effect of a love-philtre.
The statement involved in the words 'quos Cicero emendavit,' has also
been the subject of much criticism. No one can read the poem without
recognising the truth of the conclusion established by Lachmann, and
accepted by the most competent Editors of the poem since his time,
that the work must have been left by the author in an unfinished state
and given to the world by some friend or some person to whom the task
of editing it had been entrusted. But there is some difficulty in
accepting the statement that this editor was Cicero. His silence on
the subject of his editorial labours, when contrasted with the frank
communicativeness of his Epistles in regard to anything which for the
time interested him, and the slight esteem with which he regarded the
philosophy which is embodied in the poem, justify some hesitation in
accepting the authority of Jerome on this point also. He only once
mentions the poem in a letter to his brother Quintus[8], and in
passages of his philosophical works in which he seems to allude to it
he expresses himself slightingly and somewhat contemptuously[9]. In
the disparaging references to the Latin writers on Greek philosophy
before the appearance of his own Tusculan Questions and Academics, he
makes no exception in favour of Lucretius. The words in his letter
to his brother Quintus are these, 'Lucretii poemata, ut scribis, ita
sunt, multis luminibus ingenii, multae tamen artis: sed cum veneris,
virum te putabo, si Sallustii Empedoclea legeris, hominem non putabo.'
Professor Tyrrell in his 'Correspondence of Cicero,' remarks on this
passage (vol. II. page 106): 'The criticism of Quintus, with which
Cicero expresses his accord, was that Lucretius had not only much of
the _genius_ of Ennius and Attius, but also much of the _art_ of the
poets of the new school, among them even Catullus, who are fashioning
themselves on the model of the Alexandrine poets, especially
Callimachus and Euphorion of Chalcis. This new school Cicero refers
to as the [Greek: neoteroi] (Att. VII. 2. 1) and as _hi cantores
Euphorionis_ (Tusc. III. 45). Their _ars_ seemed to Cicero almost
incompatible with the _ingenium_ of the old school. This criticism on
Lucretius is not only quite just from Cicero's point of view, but it
is most pointed. Yet the editors from Victorius to Klotz will not let
Cicero say what he thought. They insert a _non_ either before _multis_
or before _multae_, and thus deny him either _ingenium_ or _ars_. The
point of the judgment is that Lucretius shows the genius of the old
school and (what might seem to be incompatible with it) the art of
the new[10].' Thus if his notice of the poem is slight, it is not
deficient in appreciation. Mr. Munro succeeds in explaining Cicero's
silence on the subject in his other correspondence. It is in his
Letters to his oldest and most intimate correspondent, the Epicurean
Atticus, that we should expect to find notices of his editorial
labours. It was a task on which Atticus might have given most valuable
help from his large employment of educated slaves in the copying of
manuscripts. Cicero's silence on the subject in the Letters to Atticus
is fully explained by the fact that they were both in Rome during
the greater part of the time between the death of Lucretius and the
publication of his poem. Again, Cicero's strong opposition to the
Epicurean doctrines was not incompatible with the closest
friendship with many who professed them; and this opposition was not
conspicuously declared till some years after this time. Lucretius
would have sympathised with Cicero's political attitude, as he appears
to commend Memmius for adopting a similar attitude in his Praetorship,
and he must have known that Cicero was the man of widest literary
culture then living. There is thus no great difficulty in supposing
that the work of even so uncompromising a partisan as Lucretius should
have been placed, either by his own request or by the wish of his
friends, in the hands of one who was not attracted to it either by
strong poetical or philosophical sympathy. The energetic kindliness
of Cicero's nature, and his active interest in literature, would have
prompted him not to decline the service if he were asked to render it.
Thus, although on this point too our judgment may well be suspended,
we may think with pleasure of the good-will and kindly offices of the
most humane and energetic among Roman writers, as exercised in behalf
of Lucretius after his untimely death.
This is all the direct external evidence available for the personal
history of Lucretius. It is remarkable, when compared with the
information given in his other notices, that the record of Jerome does
not even mention the poet's birth-place. This may be explained on the
supposition either that the authorities followed by Jerome knew very
little about him, or that, if he were born at Rome, there would not be
the same motive for giving prominence to the place of his birth, as
in the case of poets and men of letters who brought honour to the less
famous districts of Italy. While Lucretius applies the word _patria_
to the Roman State ('patriai tempore iniquo'), and the adjective
_patrius_ to the Latin language, these words are used by other Roman
poets,--Ennius and Virgil for instance,--in reference to their own
provincial homes. The Gentile name Lucretius was one eminently Roman,
nor is there ground for believing that, like the equally ancient and
noble name borne by the other great poet of the age, it had become
common in other parts of Italy. The name suggests the inference that
Lucretius was descended from one of the most ancient patrician houses
of Rome, but one, as is pointed out by Mr. Munro, more famous in the
legendary than in the later annals of the Republic. Some members
of the same house are mentioned in the letters of Cicero among the
partisans of Pompey: and possibly the Lucretius Ofella, who was one of
the victims of Sulla's tyranny, may have been connected with the poet.
As the position indicated by the whole tone of the poem is that of a
man living in easy circumstances, and of one, who, though repelled
by it, was yet familiar with the life of pleasure and luxury, he must
have belonged either to a senatorian family, or to one of the richer
equestrian families, the members of which, if not engaged in financial
and commercial affairs, often lived the life of country gentlemen
on their estates and employed their leisure in the cultivation of
literature. The tone of the dedication to Memmius, a member of a noble
plebeian house, and of the occasional addresses to him in the body of
the poem, is not that of a client to a patron, but of an equal to an
equal:--
Sed tua me virtus tamen et sperata voluptas
Suavis amicitiae--.
While Lucretius pays the tribute of admiration to the literary
accomplishment of his friend, and to the active part which he played
in politics, he yet addresses him with the authority of a master. In
a society constituted as that of Rome was in the last age of the
Republic this tone could only be assumed to a member of the
governing class by a social equal. Memmius combined the pursuits of
a politician, a man of letters, and a man of pleasure; and in none of
these capacities does he seem to have been worthy of the affection and
admiration of Lucretius. But as he filled the office of Praetor in the
year 58 B.C.[11] it may be inferred that he and the poet were about
the same age, and thus the original bond between them may probably
have been that of early education and literary sympathies. That
Memmius retained a taste for poetry amid the pursuits and pleasures of
his profligate career is shown by the fact that he was the author of a
volume of amatory poems, and also by his taking with him, in the
year 57 B.C., the poets Helvius Cinna and Catullus, on his staff
to Bithynia. The keen discernment of the younger poet, sharpened by
personal animosity, formed a truer estimate of his chief, than that
expressed by the philosophic enthusiast. But at the time in which the
words--
Nec Memmi clara propago
Talibus in rebus communi deesse saluti--
were written, even Cicero regarded him as one of the bulwarks of the
senatorian cause against Clodius and his influential supporters. And
neither the scandal of his private nor of his public life prevented
his being in later years among the orator's correspondents.
This relation to Memmius is the only additional fact which an
examination of the poem brings into light. Nothing is learned from
it of the poet's parentage, his education, his favourite places of
residence, of his career, of his good or evil fortune. There were
eminent Epicurean teachers at Athens and Rome (Patro, Phaedrus,
Philodemus, etc.) during his youth and manhood, but it is useless to
ask what influence of teachers or personal experience induced him
to become so passionate a devotee of the doctrines of Epicurus.
Yet though no direct reference to his circumstances is found in his
writings, we may yet mark indirect traces of the impression produced
upon him by the age in which his youth and manhood were passed; we
seem to catch some glimpses of his habitual pursuits and tastes, to
gain some real insight into his being, to apprehend the attitude in
which he stood to the great teachers of the past, and to know the
man by knowing the objects in life which most deeply interested him.
Nothing, we may well believe, was further from his wish or intention
than to leave behind him any record of himself. No Roman poet has
so entirely sunk himself and the remembrance of his own fortunes
in absorption in his subject. But his strong personal force and
individuality have penetrated deeply into all his representation, his
reasoning, and his exhortation. From the beginning to the end of the
poem we feel that we are listening to a living voice speaking to us
with the direct impressiveness of personal experience and conviction.
No writer ever used words more clearly or more sincerely: no one shows
a greater scorn for the rhetorical artifices which disguise the lack
of meaning or insinuate a false conclusion by fine-sounding phrases:--
Quae belle tangere possunt
Auris et lepido quae sunt fucata sonore[12].
The union of an original and independent personality with the utmost
sincerity of thought and speech is a characteristic in which Lucretius
resembles Thucydides. It is this which gives to the works of both,
notwithstanding their studied self-suppression, the vivid interest of
a direct personal revelation.
The tone of many passages in the poem clearly indicates that
Lucretius, though taking no personal part in the active politics of
his age, was profoundly moved by the effects which they produced on
human happiness and character. Thus the lines at iii. 70-74--
Sanguine civili rem conflant, etc.--
recall the thought and spectacle of crime and bloodshed vividly
presented to him in the impressible years of his youth[12]. Other
passages are an immediate reflexion of the disturbance and alarm of
the times in which the poem was written. Thus the opening lines of
the second book, which contrast the security of the contemplative
life with the strife of political and military ambition, seem to
be suggested by the action of what is sometimes called the first
triumvirate. The lines--
Si non forte tuas legiones per loca campi, etc.--
have been noted[14] as a probable allusion to the position actually
taken up by Julius Caesar outside of Rome in the opening months of the
year 58 B.C. Some earlier lines of the same passage--
Certare ingenio, contendere nobilitate,
Noctes atque dies niti praestante labore
Ad summas emergere opes rerumque potiri,--
have a resemblance to words directly applied by Cicero to Caesar[15],
and are certainly more applicable to him than to any other of the
poet's contemporaries. The political reflexions in the poem, as for
instance that at v. 1123, seem, in almost all cases, to be forced from
him by the memory of the first civil war, or the vague dread of that
which was impending. It is not from any effeminate recoil from danger,
but rather from horror of the turbulence, disorder, and crimes against
the sanctities of human life, involved in the strife of ambition, that
Lucretius preaches the lessons of political quietism. And while his
humanity of feeling makes him shrink from the prospect of evil days,
like those which he well remembered, again awaiting his country, his
capacity for pure and simple pleasures makes him equally shrink from
the spectacle of prodigal luxury which Rome then presented in a degree
never before witnessed in the world.
Thus the first general impression of Lucretius which we form from his
poem is that of one who, from a strong distaste to the life of
action and social pleasure, deliberately chose the life of
contemplation,--the 'fallentis semita vitae.' Some illustrations of
his argument--as, for instance, a description of the state of mental
tension produced by witnessing public games and spectacles for many
days in succession[16], of the reflexion of the colours cast on the
stage by the awnings of the theatre[17], of the works of art adorning
the houses of the great[18], etc.--imply that he had not always been
a stranger to the enjoyments of city life, and that they attracted
him by a certain fascination of pomp and novelty. His pictures of
the follies of the 'jeunesse doree' (at iv. 1121, etc.), and of sated
luxury (at iii. 1060, etc.), show that he had been a witness of the
conditions of life out of which they were engendered. At iv. 784,
in speaking of the power of the mind to call up images, he specifies
'conventus hominum, pompam, convivia, pugnas.' But such illustrations
are rare when compared with those which speak of a life passed in the
open air, and of intimate familiarity with many aspects of Nature. The
vivid minuteness with which outward things are described, as well as
the occasional use of such words as _vidi_[19], show that though a few
of the sights observed by him may have been drawn from the physics
of Epicurus[20], the great mass of them had either been originally
observed by himself or at least had been verified in his own
experience. He was endowed not only with the poet's susceptibility
to the beauty and movement of the outward world, but also with the
observing faculty and curiosity of a naturalist: and by both impulses
he was more attracted to the solitudes of Nature than to the haunts of
men. Many bright illustrations of his argument tell of hours spent by
the sea shore. Thus he notes minutely the effect of the exhalations
from the salt water in wearing away rocks and walls (i. 336; iv. 220),
of the invisible influence of the sea-air in producing moisture in
clothes (i. 305; vi. 472), or a salt taste in the mouth (iv. 222), of
the varied forms of shells paving the shore (ii. 374), of the sudden
change of colour when the winds raise the white crest of the waves
(ii. 765), of the appearance of sky and water produced by a black
storm-cloud passing over the sea (vi. 256). Other passages show his
familiarity with inland scenes,--with the violent rush of rivers in
flood (i. 280, etc.), or their stately flow through fresh meadows (ii.
362), or their ceaseless unperceived action in eating away their banks
(v. 256);--or again, with all the processes of husbandry, the growth
of plants and trees, the ways of flocks and herds in their pastures,
and the sounds and sights of the pathless woods. While he anticipates
Virgil in his Italian love of peaceful landscape, he shows some
foretaste of the modern passion for the mountains,--as (at ii. 331)
where he speaks of 'some spot among the lofty hills,' commanding a
distant view of a wide expanse of plain, and (at iv. 575) where he
recalls the memory of wanderings among mountain solitudes--
Palantis comites cum montis inter opacos
Quaerimus et magna dispersos voce ciemus,--
and (at vi. 469) where he notices the more powerful action of the wind
on the movements of the clouds at high altitudes--
Nam loca declarat sursum ventosa patere
Res ipsa et sensus, montis cum ascendimus altos.
Even some of the metaphorical phrases in which he figures forth the
pursuit of truth seem to be taken from mountain adventure[21]. The
mention of companionship in some of these wanderings, and in other
scenes in which the charm of Nature is represented as enhancing the
enjoyment of a simple meal--
Propter aquae rivum sub ramis arboris altae,--
enables us to think of him as, although isolated in his thoughts from
other men, yet not separated from them in the daily intercourse of
life by any unsocial austerity. Such separation would have been quite
opposed both to the teaching and the example of his master. Some
remembrance of active adventure is suggested by illustrations of his
philosophy drawn from the experience of a sea-voyage (iv. 387, etc.,
432), of riding through a rapid stream (iv. 420), of watching the
action of dogs tracking their game through woods and over mountains
(i. 404), or renewing the memories of the chase in their dreams (v.
991, etc.). The lines (at ii. 40, etc., and 323, etc.) show that his
imagination had been moved by witnessing the evolutions of armies,
not indeed in actual warfare, but in the pomp and pageantry of martial
spectacles,--'belli simulacra cientes.' These and many other indirect
indications afford some glimpses of his habitual manner of life and of
the pursuits that gave him most lively pleasure: but they do not give
us any special knowledge of the particular districts of Italy in which
he lived, or of the scenes in foreign lands which he may have visited.
The poem tells us nothing immediately of the trials or passions of his
life, though of both he seems to bear the scars. But as passages in
which he reveals the deep secrets of human passion and suffering prove
him to have been a man of strong, ardent, and vividly susceptible
temperament, so the numerous illustrations drawn from the repertory of
his personal observation tell of an eye trained to take delight in the
outward face of Nature as well as of a mind unwearied in its search
into her hidden laws. One great charm of his work is that it breathes
of the open air more than of the library. If, in dealing with the
problems of human life, his strain--
'Is fraught too deep with pain,'
yet to him too might be applied the lines written of one who, though
not comparable to him in intellectual and imaginative power, yet, in
his spiritual isolation from the world, seems almost like his modern
counterpart--
'And thou hast pleasures too to share
With those who come to thee,
Balms floating on thy mountain air
And healing sights to see[22].'
But we may trust with even more confidence to the indications of his
inner than of his outward life. The spirit and purpose which impelled
Lucretius to expound his philosophy can be understood without any
collateral knowledge of his history. The dominant impulse of his
being is the ardent desire to emancipate human life from the fears and
passions by which it is marred and degraded. He has more of the zeal
of a religious reformer than any other ancient thinker, except one who
in all his ways of life was most unlike him, the Athenian Socrates.
The speculative enthusiasm which bears him along through his argument
is altogether subsidiary to the furtherance of his practical purpose.
Even the poetical power to which the work owes its immortality was
valued chiefly as a pleasing means of instilling the unpalatable
medicine of his philosophy[23] into the minds and hearts of unwilling
hearers. It is the constant presence of this practical purpose, and
the profound sense which he has of the actual misery and degradation
of human life, and of the peace and dignity which are attainable
by man, that impart to his words the peculiar tone of impassioned
earnestness to which there is no parallel in ancient literature.
Among his personal characteristics none is more prominent than his
consciousness both of the greatness of the work on which he was
engaged, and of his own power to cope with it. The passage in which
his high self-confidence is most powerfully proclaimed (i. 920, etc.)
has been imitated both by Virgil and Milton. The sense of novelty,
adventure, and high aspiration expressed in the lines--
Avia Pieridum peragro loca nullius ante
Trita solo--
moved Virgil less powerfully in speaking of his humbler theme--
Sed me Parnassi deserta per ardua dulcis
Raptat amor;
and inspired the English poet in his great invocation:--
'I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.
The sense of difficulty and the joy of overcoming it meet us with
a keen bracing effect in many passages of the poem. He speaks
disdainfully of those enquirers who fall into error by shrinking from
the more adventurous paths that lead to truth--
Ardua dum metuunt amittunt vera viai.
Without disowning the passion for fame,--'laudis spes magna,' so
powerful an incentive to the Roman temperament,--he is more inspired
and supported in his arduous task by 'the sweet love of the Muses.'
The delight in the exercise of his art and the joyful energy sustained
through the long processes of gathering and arranging his materials
appear in such passages as iii. 419-20:--
Conquisita diu dulcique reperta labore
Digna tua pergam disponere carmina cura:
and again at ii. 730--
Nunc age dicta meo dulci quaesita labore
Percipe.
The thoroughness and devotion of a student tell their own tale in such
expressions as the 'studio disposta fideli,' and the 'noctes vigilare
serenas' in the dedication to Memmius, and in the more enthusiastic
acknowledgment of the source from which he drew his philosophy at iii.
29, etc.--
Tuisque ex, inclute, chartis,
Floriferis ut apes in saltibus omnia libant,
Omnia nos itidem depascimur aurea dicta.
The absorbing interest with which he carried on the work of enquiry
and of composition appears in illustrations of his argument drawn from
his own pursuits; as where (ii. 979) in arguing that, if the atoms
have the properties of sense, those of which man is compounded must
have the intellectual attributes of man, he says,--
Multaque de rerum mixtura dicere callent
Et sibi proporro quae sint primordia quaerunt[24];
and, again (at iv. 969), in explaining how men in their dreams seem to
carry on the pursuits to which they are most devoted, how lawyers seem
to plead their causes, generals to fight their battles over again,
sailors to contend with the elements, he adds these lines:--
Nos agere hoc autem et naturam quaerere rerum
Semper et inventam patriis exponere chartis[25].
His frequent use of the sacrificial phrase 'Hoc age,' affords evidence
of the religious earnestness with which he had devoted himself to his
task.
The feeling animating him through all his great adventure,--through
the wastest flats as well as the most commanding heights over which it
leads him,--is something different from the delight of a poet in his
art, of a scholar in his books, of a philosopher in his thought, of
a naturalist in his observation. All of these modes of feeling are
combined with the passion of his whole moral and intellectual being,
aroused by the contemplation of the greatest of all themes--'maiestas
cognita rerum'--and concentrated on the greatest of practical
ends, the emancipation and elevation of human life. The life of
contemplation which he alone among the Romans deliberately chose and
realised he carried out with Roman energy and fortitude. It was with
him no life of indolent musing, but one of thought and study, varied
and braced by original observation. It was a life, also, of strenuous
literary effort employed in giving clearness to obscure materials,
and in eliciting poetical charm from a language to which the musical
cadences of verse had been hitherto almost unknown. Above all, it was
the life of one who, while feeling the spell of Nature more profoundly
than any poet who had gone before him, did not in that new rapture
forget
'The human heart by which we live.'
His high intellectual confidence, based on his firm trust in his
master, shows itself in a spirit of intolerance towards the school
which was the chief antagonist of Epicureanism at Rome. His argument
is a vigorous protest against philosophical error and scepticism,
as well as against popular ignorance and superstition. His polemical
attitude is seen in the frequent use of such expressions as 'vinco,'
'dede manus,' etc., addressed to an imaginary opponent. Discussion of
topics, not apparently necessary to his main argument, is raised with
the object of carrying the war into the enemy's camp. Such frequently
recurring expressions as 'ut quidam fingunt,' 'perdelirum esse
videtur,' etc., are invariably aimed at the Stoics[26]. Of other early
philosophers, even when dissenting from their opinions, he speaks
in terms of admiration and reverence: but Heraclitus, whose physical
explanation of the universe was adopted by the Stoics, is described in
terms of disparagement, levelled as much against his later followers
as against himself, as--
Clarus ob obscuram linguam magis inter inanis
Quamde gravis inter Graios qui vera requirunt.
The traditional opposition between Democritus and Heraclitus lived
after them. Adherence to the doctrine of 'atoms and the void,' and
to that of 'the pure fiery element,' became the symbol of a radical
divergence in the whole view of human life.
While there is frequent allusion to the Stoics in the poem, there is
no direct mention either of them or of their chief teachers, Zeno,
Chrysippus, or Cleanthes. Neither do the greater names of Socrates,
Plato, or Aristotle appear in it, though one or two passages clearly
imply some familiarity with the writings of Plato[27]. But among the
moral teachers of antiquity he acknowledges Epicurus only. The whole
enthusiasm of his temperament breaks out in admiration of him. He
alone is the true interpreter of Nature and conqueror of superstition
(i. 75); the reformer 'who has made pure the human heart' (vi. 24);
the 'guide out of the storms and darkness of life into calm and light'
(iii. 1; v. 11, 12); the 'sun who at his rising extinguished all the
lesser stars' (iii. 1044). He is to be ranked even as a God on account
of his great services to man, in teaching him the mastery over his
fears and passions:--
Deus ille fuit, deus, inclute Memmi[28].
He speaks of his master throughout not only with the affection of
a disciple, but with an emotion akin to religious ecstasy[29]. His
admiration for him springs from a deeper source of spiritual sentiment
than that of Ennius for Scipio, or of Virgil for Augustus. Though
Epicurus inspired much affection in his lifetime, and though
other great writers after Lucretius,--such as Seneca, Juvenal, and
Lucian,--vindicate his name from the dishonour which the perversion of
his doctrines brought upon it, yet even the most favourable criticism
of his life and teaching must find it difficult to sympathise with
the idolatry of Lucretius. Yet his error, if it be one, springs from a
generous source. He attributes his own imaginative interest in Nature
to a philosopher who examined the phenomena of the outward world
merely to find a basis for the destruction of all religious belief.
He saturates with his own deep human feeling a moral system which
professes to secure human happiness by emptying life of its most
sacred associations, most passionate longings, and profoundest
affections.
There was a truer affinity of nature between Lucretius and another
philosopher whom he names with the warmest feelings of love and
veneration--Empedocles of Agrigentum--the most famous of the early
physiological poets of Greece. He flourished during the fifth century
B.C., and was the author of a didactic poem on Nature, of which some
fragments still remain, sufficient to indicate the nature of the work
and the character of the man. These fragments prove that Lucretius had
carefully studied the older poem, and adopted it as his model in using
a poetical form and diction to expound his philosophical system. He
declares, indeed, his opposition to the doctrine of Empedocles, which
traced the origin of all things to four original elements; but he
adopted into his own system many both of his expressions and of his
philosophical ideas. The line in which the Roman poet enunciates his
first principle,--
Nullam rem e nilo gigni divinitus unquam,
was obviously taken from the lines of the old poem [Greek: peri
physeos]--
[Greek:
ek tou gar me eontos amechanon esti genesthai
to t' eon exollysthai anenyston kai aprekton.]
Speaking of Sicily as a rich and wonderful land, Lucretius pays his
tribute of love and admiration to his illustrious predecessor in these
lines,--
Nil tamen hoc habuisse viro praeclarius in se
Nec sanctum magis et mirum carumque videtur.
Carmina quin etiam divini pectoris eius
Vociferantur et exponunt praeclara reperta,
Ut vix humana videatur stirpe creatus[30].
There is a close agreement between the two poetical philosophers in
their imaginative mode of conceiving Nature. They both represented the
principle of beauty and life in the universe under the symbol of the
Goddess of Love--'[Greek: Kypri basileia]'; 'alma Venus, genetrix.'
They both explain the unceasing process of decay and renovation in the
world by an image drawn from the most impressive spectacle of human
life--a mighty battle, waged through all time between opposing forces.
The burden and the mystery of life seem to weigh heavily on both, and
to mould their very language to a deep, monotonous solemnity of tone.
But along with this affinity of temperament there is also a marked
difference in their modes of thought and feeling. The view of Nature
in the philosophy of Empedocles appears to be just emerging out of the
anthropomorphic fancies of an earlier time: the first rays of knowledge
are seen trying to pierce through the clouds of the dawn of enquiry:
the dreams and sorrows of religious mysticism accompany the awakened
energies of the reason. His mournful tone is the voice of the
intellectual spirit lamenting its former home, and baffled in its eager
desire to comprehend 'the whole.' Lucretius, on the other hand, saw the
outward world as it looks in the light of day, neither glorified by the
mystic colours of religion, nor concealed by the shadows of mythology.
He was moved neither by the passionate longing of the soul, nor by the
'divine despair' of the intellect: but he felt profoundly the sorrows
of the heart, and was weighed down by the ever-present consciousness
of the misery and wretchedness in the world. The complaint of the first
is one which has been uttered from time to time by some solitary
thinker in modern as in ancient days:--
[Greek:
pauron de zoes abiou meros athresantes
hokymoroi, kapnoio diken arthentes apeptan,
auto monon peisthentes, hoto prosekursen hekastos,
pantos' elaunomenoi; to d' oulon epeuchetai heurein
autos. out' epiderkta tad' andrasin out' epakousta
oute noo perilepta[31].]
The other gives a real and expressive utterance to that 'thought of
inexhaustible melancholy,' which has weighed on every human heart:--
Miscetur funere vagor
Quem pueri tollunt visentis luminis oras:
Nec nox ulla diem neque noctem aurora secutast
Quae non audierit mixtos vagitibus aegris
Ploratus mortis comites et funeris atri[32].
Besides Epicurus and Empedocles Lucretius mentions Democritus and
Anaxagoras, and speaks even of those whom he confutes as 'making
many happy discoveries by divine inspiration,' and as 'uttering their
responses from the shrine of their own hearts with more holiness
and truth than the Pythia from the tripod and laurel of Apollo.'
The reverence which other men felt in presence of the ceremonies of
religion he feels in presence of the majesty of Nature; and to the
interpreters of her meaning he ascribes the holiness claimed by the
ministers of religion. Thus, to a doctrine of Democritus he applies
the words 'sancta viri sententia.' The divinest faculty in man is
that by which truth is discovered. The highest office of poetry is
to clothe the discoveries of thought with the charm of graceful
expression and musical verse[33].
Of other Greek authors, Homer and Euripides are those of whom we find
most traces in the poem. To the first he awards a high pre-eminence
above all other poets,--
Adde repertores doctrinarum atque leporum,
Adde Heliconiadum comites; quorum unus Homerus
Sceptra potitus eadem aliis sopitu' quietest[34].
The passages in which Lucretius imitates him show how clearly
he recognised his exact vision of outward things, and his true
appreciation of the moral strength and dignity of man. The frequent
imitations of Euripides[35] show that while he felt the spell of
his pathos, he was also attracted by the poetic mould into which the
tragic poet has cast the physical speculations of Anaxagoras. Allusion
is made in tones of indifference or disparagement to other poets of
Greece, as having, in common with the painters of former times, given
shape and substance to the superstitious fancies of mankind. It is
characteristic of his powerful and independent genius, that, unlike
the younger poets of his generation, he adheres to the older
writers of the great days of Greece, and acknowledges no debt to
the Alexandrine School. Although amply furnished with the knowledge
necessary for the performance of his task, he is a poet of original
genius much more than of learning and culture: and he is thus more
drawn to those who acted on him by a kindred power, than to those
who might have served him as models of poetic form or repertories of
poetic illustration. The strength of his understanding attracted him
to some of the great prose-writers of Greece, by whom that quality
is most conspicuously displayed; notably to Thucydides, whom he has
closely followed in his account of the 'Plague at Athens,' and, as has
been shown by Mr. Munro, to Hippocrates. The kind of attraction which
the last of these has for him confirms the criticism of Goethe, that
Lucretius shows the observing faculty of a physician, as well as of a
poet.
The diction and rhythm of the poem, as well as the more direct tribute
of personal acknowledgment[36], prove that he was an admiring student
of his own countryman Ennius, to whom in some qualities of his
temperament and genius he bore a certain resemblance. Many lines,
phrases, and archaic words in Lucretius, such as--
Per gentis Italas hominum quae clara clueret,--
Lumina sis oculis etiam bonus Ancu' reliquit,--
inde super terras fluit agmine dulci,--
multa munita virum vi; caerula caeli Templa; Acherusia templa; luminis
oras; famul infimus; induperator; Graius homo, etc.--
have a clear ring of the old poet. The few allusions to Roman history
in the poem, as, for instance, the line--
Scipiadas, belli fulmen, Carthaginis horror,--
the specification at iii. 833 of the second Punic War as a momentous
crisis in human affairs,--the description at v. 1226 of a great naval
disaster, such as happened in the first Punic War--the introduction
there of elephants into the picture of the pomp and circumstance of
war,--suggest the inference that, just as events and personages of the
earlier history of England live in the imaginations of many English
readers from their representation in the historical plays of
Shakspeare, so the past history of his country lived for Lucretius in
the representation of Ennius. But of the national pride by which
the older poet was animated, the work of Lucretius bears only scanty
traces. The feeling which moved him to identify the puissant energy
pervading the universe with 'the mother of the Aeneadae,' and the
motive of his prayer for peace addressed to that Power,--
Nam neque nos agere hoc patriai tempore iniquo,--
seem indeed to spring from sources of patriotic affection, perhaps all
the deeper because not too loudly proclaimed. But in the body of the
poem his illustrations are taken as frequently from Greek as from
Roman story, from the strangeness of foreign lands as from the beauty
of Italian scenes. The Georgics of Virgil, in the whole conception of
Nature as a living power, and in many special features, owe much to
the imaginative thought of Lucretius; but nothing can be more unlike
the spirit of the older poet than the episodes in which Virgil pours
forth all his Roman feeling and his love of Italy. The height from
which Lucretius contemplates all human history, as 'a procession of
the nations handing on the torch of life from one to another,' is wide
apart from that from which Virgil beholds all the nations of the world
doing homage to the majesty of Rome. The poem of Lucretius breathes
the spirit of a man, apparently indifferent to the ordinary sources of
pleasure and of pride among his countrymen. Living in an era, the most
momentous in its action on the future history of the world, he was
only repelled by its turbulent activity. The contemplation of the
infinite and eternal mass and order of Nature made the issues of
that age and the imperial greatness of his country appear to him as
transient as the events of the old Trojan and Theban wars. To him, as
to the modern poet, whose imagination most nearly resembles his, the
thought of more enduring things had
'Power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal silence.'
But while by his silence on the subject of national glory and his
ardent speculative enthusiasm Lucretius seems to be more of a Greek
than of a Roman, yet no Roman writer possessed in larger measure the
moral temper of the great Republic. He is a truer type of the strong
character and commanding genius of his country than Virgil or Horace.
He has the Roman conquering energy, the Roman reverence for the
majesty of law, the Roman gift for introducing order into a confused
world, the Roman power of impressing his authority on the minds
of men. In his fortitude, his superiority to human weakness, his
seriousness of spirit, his dignity of bearing, he seems to embody the
great Roman qualities 'constantia' and 'gravitas.' If in the force and
sincerity of his own nature he reminds us of the earliest Roman writer
of genius, in these last qualities, the acquired and inherited virtues
of his race, he reminds us of the last representative writer, whose
tone is worthy of the 'Senatus populusque Romanus.' But Lucretius is
much more than a type of the strong Roman qualities. He combines a
poetic freshness of feeling, a love of simple living, an independence
of the world, with a tenderness and breadth of sympathy, and a power
of sounding into the depths of human sorrow, such as only a very few
among the ancients--Homer, Sophocles, Virgil,--and not many among the
poets or thinkers of the modern world have displayed. In no quality
does he rise further above the standard of his age than in his
absolute sincerity and his unswerving devotion to truth[37]. He
combines in himself some of the rarest elements in the Greek and the
Roman temperament,--the Greek ardour of speculation, the Roman's firm
hold on reality. A poet of the age of Julius Caesar, he is animated
by the spirit of an early Greek enquirer. He unites the speculative
passion of the dawn of ancient science with the minute observation of
its meridian; and he applies the imaginative conceptions formed in the
first application of abstract thought to the universe to interpret the
living beauty of the world.
[Footnote 1: According to Mommsen's opinion that Julius Caesar
was born in 102 B.C.]
[Footnote 2: Woltier in Phil. Jahrb. cxxix, referred to in
Schmidt's Catullus, attempts to show by an examination of the
dates assigned for the birth of Lucretius, that he was born in
97 B.C. and died in 53 B.C. But the most definite statement
we have is that he died on the day in which Virgil assumed
the _toga virilis_, and that was in the second consulship of
Pompey and Crassus, i.e. 55 B.C. Besides both tradition and
internal evidence lead to the conclusion that his poem was not
given to the world till after his death, and it certainly had
been read by both the Ciceros early in 54 B.C. F. Marx in the
Rheinisches Museum, 'de aetate Lucretii,' holds that he was
born in 97 B.C., and died in his 42nd year, B.C. 55. He makes
a more important contribution to the controversy in the remark
'acceptissima vero Enniana Lucretii poesis fuisse putanda est
Ciceroni.' Whether Lucretius died in his 44th or 42nd year
cannot be of much consequence to anybody; and, in the
general uncertainty of Jerome's dates, it seems impossible to
determine it one way or other.]
[Footnote 3: Professor Wallace in his interesting account
of 'Epicureanism' writes, in reference to the way in which
Epicurus himself was regarded in a later age, 'And the
maladies of Epicurus are treated as an anticipatory judgment
of Heaven upon him for his alleged impieties.'--Epicureanism,
p. 46.]
[Footnote 4: This consideration is urged by De Quincey in one
of his essays.]
[Footnote 5: iii. 1039, etc.]
[Footnote 6: iv. 33-38:--
Atque eadem nobis vigilantibus obvia mentes
Terrificant atque in somnis, cum saepe figuras
Contuimur miras simulacraque luce carentum,
Quae nos horrifice languentis saepe sopore
Excierunt, ne forte animas Acherunte reamur
Effugere aut umbras inter vivos volitare.]
[Footnote 7: An article in the Fortnightly Review of
September, 1878, on 'Hallucination of the Senses,' suggests
a possible explanation of the mental condition of Lucretius,
during the composition of some part of his work. The writer
speaks of the power of calling these hallucinations up as
being quite consistent with perfect sanity of mind, but as
sometimes inducing madness. He goes on, 'Or, if the person
does not go out of his mind, he may be so distressed by the
persistence of the apparition which he has created, as to fall
into melancholy and despair, and even to commit suicide.']
[Footnote 8: The theory of Lachmann and others that Q. Cicero
was the editor may possibly be true. He dabbled in poetry
himself, and he was more nearly of the same age as Lucretius,
and thus perhaps more likely to have been a friend of his.
The fact that Cicero's remark is in answer to one of his might
suggest the opinion that the poem had been read by him before
it became known to the older brother, and perhaps been sent
by him to Cicero. But if Q. Cicero was the editor, Jerome must
here also have copied his authorities carelessly. In the
time of Jerome the familiar name of Cicero must have been
understood as applying to the great orator and philosophic
writer, not to his comparatively obscure brother. The only
certain inference which can be drawn from this mention of the
poem is that it had been read, shortly after its appearance,
in the beginning of the year 54 B.C., by both brothers. Yet
the consideration of the whole case does not lead to the
rejection of the statement that M. Cicero was the editor as
incredible, or even as highly improbable. If it was he, he
must have performed his task very perfunctorily. Possibly, as
Mr. Munro suggests, all that he may have been asked to do was
to introduce the work to the public by the use of his name.
The actual revision and arrangement of the poem may have been
made by one of the 'librarii' of Atticus.]
[Footnote 9: E.g. Tusc. Disp. i. 21, especially the
sentence--'Quae quidem cogitans soleo saepe admirari non
nullorum insolentiam philosophorum qui naturae cognitionem
admirantur, eiusque inventori et principi gratias exultantes
agunt eumque venerantur ut deum.']
[Footnote 10: The use of _tamen_ in the sense of 'all the
same' is not uncommon in the colloquial language of Terence,
which the language of Cicero's familiar letters closely
resembles.]
[Footnote 11: At that time he would be about forty-one years
of age--the same age as Lucretius, if, as is most probable, he
was born in 99 B.C.]
[Footnote 12: i. 643-4; cf. [Greek: oute hos logographoi
xunethesan epi to prosagogoteron te akroasei e
alethesteron].--Thuc. i. 21.]
[Footnote 13: The lines (v. 999)--
At non multa virum sub signis milia ducta
Una dies dabat exitio, etc.--
might well be a reminiscence of the great massacre at the
Colline gate.]
[Footnote 14: Cp. Munro, Note II, p. 413. Third Edition.]
[Footnote 15: 'Si jam violentior aliqua in re C. Caesar
fuisset, si eum magnitudo contentionis, studium gloriae,
praestans animus, excellens nobilitas aliquo impulisset.'--In
Vatinium 6.]
[Footnote 16: iv. 973, etc.]
[Footnote 17: iv. 75, etc.]
[Footnote 18: ii. 24, etc.]
[Footnote 19: In places where he is not drawing from his own
observation, he uses such expressions as _memorant_;
e.g. iii. 642.]
[Footnote 20: E.g. iv. 353, etc.]
[Footnote 21: E.g.
Ardua dum metuunt amittunt vera viai,
and
Avia Pieridum peragro loca.]
[Footnote 22: Obermann, by M. Arnold.]
[Footnote 23: i. 935-50.]
[Footnote 24: 'And can discourse much on the combination
of things, and enquire moreover, what are their own first
elements.']
[Footnote 25: 'While I seem ever to be plying this task
earnestly, to be enquiring into Nature, and explaining my
discoveries in writings in my native tongue.' This is one of
those passages which seem to indicate an unhealthy overstrain
which may have been the precursor of the final disturbance of
'his power to shape.']
[Footnote 26: Cp. Munro's notes on the passages where these
expressions occur.]
[Footnote 27: E.g. ii. 77, etc. Augescunt aliae gentes, etc.,
suggested by a passage in the Laws:--[Greek: gennontas te kai
ektrephontas paidas, kathaper lampada ton bion paradidontas
allois ex allon]--and the lines which recur several times,
etc. 'Nam veluti pueri trepidant,' which Mr. Munro aptly
compares with the words in the Phaedo (77), [Greek: isos eni
tis kai en hemin pais, hostis ta toiauta phobeitai.]]
[Footnote 28: v. 8.]
[Footnote 29: Cf.
His ibi me rebus quaedam divina voluptas
Percipit adque horror.]
[Footnote 30: 'But nought greater than this man does it seem
to have possessed, nor aught more holy, more wonderful, or
more beloved. Yea, too, strains of divine genius proclaim
aloud and make known his great discoveries, so that he seems
scarcely to be of mortal race.'--i. 729-33.]
[Footnote 31: 'When they have gazed for a few years of a life
that is indeed no life, speedily fulfilling their doom, they
vanish away like a smoke, convinced of that only which each
hath met in his own experience, as they were buffeted about to
and fro. Vainly doth each boast to have discovered the whole.
The eye cannot behold it, nor the ear hear it, nor the mind of
man comprehend it.']
[Footnote 32: 'With death there is ever blending the wail
of infants newly born into the light. And no night hath ever
followed day, no morning dawned on night, but hath heard the
mingled sounds of feeble infant wailings and of lamentations
that follow the dead and black funeral train.'--ii. 576-80.]
[Footnote 33: i. 943-50.]
[Footnote 34: iii. 1036-38.]
[Footnote 35: Cf. notes ii. of Mr. Munro's edition.]
[Footnote 36: i. 117, etc.]
[Footnote 37: Mr. Froude, in his 'Julius Caesar,' says, 'The
age was saturated with cant.' Perhaps, to that condition of
the age we, in part, owe one of the sincerest protests
against cant, and unreality of every kind, ever written.
Both speculatively and practically Cicero appears at a great
disadvantage when compared with Lucretius in these respects.]