De Rerum Natura Libri Sex ad Optimorum Exemplarium Fidem Recensiti
by Titus Lucretius Carus
| De Rerum Natura Libri Sex | ||
 at the College of William & Mary. |
||
| Author | Titus Lucretius Carus | |
| Published | Londini: Sumptibus & typis Jacob Tonson | |
| Date | 1712 | |
Titus Lucretius Carus (c.99-c.55 BCE), known simply as Lucretius, was a Roman poet who believed in Epicurean philosophy:[1] a “strictly mechanistic account of all phenoma” that atoms make up everything in the world, from physical objects to the mind to the soul.[2] Little is known about Lucretius, although various contemporary authors have written about his life.[3]
This is the Latin version of De Rerum Natura, or On the Nature of Things, the only known work of Lucretius, is a poem in six books. "The purpose of the poem is to free men from a sense of guilt and the fear of death by demonstrating that fear of the intervention of gods in this world and of punishment of the soul after death are groundless: the world and everything in it are material and governed by the mechanical laws of nature, and the soul is mortal and perishes with the body."[4] Lucretius wrote with a clear and organizational purpose; even "[the] division of the text corresponds to the Epicurean stress on the intelligibility of phenomena: everything has a systematic explanation, the world can be analysed and understood."[5] Each book has a prologue and a conclusion. The prologue in Book 1 "opens with a famous invocation of Venus, goddess of creative life, to grant to the poet inspiration and to Rome peace."[6]
Evidence for Inclusion in Wythe's Library
See also
- Jefferson Inventory
- Of the Nature of Things
- Titi Lucretii Cari. De Rerum Natura Libri Sex
- Titi Lucretii Cari De Rerum Natura Libri Sex: ex Editione Thomae Creech
- Wythe's Library
References
- ↑ "Lucrē'tius” in The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature, ed. by M.C. Howatson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).
- ↑ "Epicū'rus” in The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature, ed. by M.C. Howatson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).
- ↑ "Lucrē'tius” in The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature.
- ↑ Ibid.
- ↑ "Lucrētius" in Oxford Dictionary of the Classical World, ed. by John Roberts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
- ↑ "Lucrē'tius” in The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature.
