Physics against fear
Follow how atoms, void and the mortality of the mind support the claim that death is nothing to us in On the Nature of Things.
An original introduction. This guide accompanies the work; it is neither the complete text nor a translation.
Situating the text
Probably composed in the decade before Cicero mentions it in early 54 BCE, the poem appears unfinished: some passages are repeated, announced discussions are missing and Book 6 breaks off with the plague of Athens. Its text rests on two ninth-century manuscripts. A didactic poem in six books and about 7,400 hexameters, addressed to Gaius Memmius. It sets out Epicurean physics—atoms, void, the mortality of the soul, perception, the formation and end of worlds—so that understanding nature may dispel fear of the gods and of death.
Following the arguments
Atoms and void : Nothing comes from nothing and nothing returns to nothing; all bodies are compounds of indivisible particles moving through empty space. Mortal mind : Mind and spirit are bodily, made of very fine atoms, and dissolve at death, so that death cannot harm someone who no longer exists. Nature without design : Worlds, living beings and human societies arise from atomic encounters and slow trial and error, not from divine purpose or providence.
Continuing the reading
Begin with the proems of Books 1, 3 and 5, then read the argument against fearing death at the end of Book 3 in a bilingual edition with line numbers. Probably composed in the decade before Cicero mentions it in early 54 BCE, the poem appears unfinished: some passages are repeated, announced discussions are missing and Book 6 breaks off with the plague of Athens. Its text rests on two ninth-century manuscripts.
For Lucretius, knowing how nature works is the remedy for fears that rest on false beliefs about the gods and death.
Your turn to think.
- Which fear does each proem address, and which physical doctrine answers it?
- Does the symmetry between the time before birth and the time after death remove every reason to fear dying?
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