Lucretius Poet and Philosopher : Background and Fortunes of ›De Rerum Natura‹

Six hundred years after Poggio’s retrieval of the De rerum natura , and with the recent surge of interest in Lucretius and his influence, there has never been a better time to fully assess and recognize the shaping force of his thought and poetry over European culture from antiquity to modern times. This volume offers a multidisciplinary and updated overview of Lucretius as philosopher and as poet, with special attention to how these two aspects interact. The volume includes 18 contributions by established as well as early career scholars working on Lucretius’ philosophical and poetic work, and his reception both in ancient and early modern times. All the chapters present new and original research. Section I explores core issues of Epicurean-Lucretian epistemology and ethics. Section II expounds much new material on ancient response to and reception of Lucretius. Section III presents new material and analysis on the immediate, fraught early modern reception of the poem. Section IV offers a wide collection of new and original papers on Lucretius’ fortunes in the period from Machiavelli up to Victorian times. Section V explores little known aspects of the iconographical and biographical motifs related to the De rerum natura . Contents 6 List of Figures 10 Introduction 12 Part I: Lucretius and the Traditions of Ancient Philosophy 22 Lucretian Pleasures 22 Lucretius and the Epicurean View That “All Perceptions are True” 34 Lucretius and the Mind-Body Relation: the Case of Dreams 54 Can You Believe your Eyes? Scepticism and the Evidence of the Senses in Lucretius, De Rerum Natura 4. 237–521 72 Epicurean Meteorology, Lucretius, and the Aetna 94 Part II: Ancient Receptions 116 Seneca as Lucretius’ Sublime Reader (Naturales Quaestiones 3 praef.) 116 Lucretius in Late Antique Poetry: Paulinus of Nola, Claudian, Prudentius 138 Part III: Recovery: Early Modern Scholars, Readers and Translators 156 Lost in Translation. The Sixteenth Century Vernacular Lucretius 156 The Persecution of Renaissance Lucretius Readers Revisited 178 Part IV: Modern Receptions of Lucretius and his Thought 212 Machiavelli’s Lucretian View of Free Will 212 Reading Lucretius in Padua: Gian Vincenzo Pinelli and the Sixteenth-Century Recovery of Ancient Atomism 230 Atoms, Elements, Seeds. A Renaissance Interpreter of Lucretius’ Atomism 246 Lucretius in (moderate) Baroque: Meanings and Functions of the Lucretian Auctoritas in Giovanni Delfino’s Philosophical and Scientific Dialogues in Prose 262 Lucretius in Leibniz 284 Lucretius in the Spanish American Enlightenment 300 Victorian Lucretius: Tennyson and Arnold 320 Part V: Images of Lucretius 336 The Story of Lucretius 336 Simulacra Lucretiana: The Iconographic Tradition of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura 350 List of Contributors 392 Index 396