Download or read book Lucretius and His Sources written by Francesco Montarese and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2012-05-29 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book discusses Lucretius’ refutation of Heraclitus, Empedocles, Anaxagoras and other, unnamed thinkers in De Rerum Natura 1, 635-920. Chapter 1 argues that in DRN I 635-920 Lucretius was following an Epicurean source, which in turn depended on Theophrastean doxography. Chapter 2 shows that books 14 and 15 of Epicurus’ On Nature were not Lucretius’ source-text. Chapter 3 discusses how lines 635-920 fit in the structure of book 1 and whether Lucretius’ source is more likely to have been Epicurus himself or a neo-Epicurean. Chapter 4 focuses on Lucretius’ own additions to the material he derived from his sources and on his poetical and rhetorical contributions, which were extensive. Lucretius shows an understanding of philosophical points by adapting his poetical devices to the philosophical arguments. Chapter 4 also argues that Lucretius anticipates philosophical points in what have often been regarded as the ‘purple passages’ of his poem - e.g. the invocation of Venus in the proem, and the description of Sicily and Aetna - so that he could take them up later on in his narrative and provide an adequate explanation of reality.
Download or read book Lucretius and the Language of Nature written by Barnaby Taylor and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020-06-05 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lucretius' Epicurean poem De Rerum Natura ('On the Nature of Things'), written in the middle of the first century BC, made a fundamental and lasting contribution to the language of Latin philosophy. The style of De Rerum Natura is like nothing else in extant Latin: at once archaic and modern, Romanizing and Hellenizing, intimate and sublime, it draws on multiple literary genres and linguistic registers. This book offers a study of Lucretius' linguistic innovation and creativity. Lucretius is depicted as a linguistic trailblazer, extending and augmenting the technical language of Latin in order to describe the Epicurean universe of atoms and void in all its complexity and sublimity. A detailed understanding of the Epicurean linguistic theory brings with it a greater appreciation of Lucretius' own language. Accordingly, this book features an in-depth reconstruction of certain core features of Epicurean linguistic theory. Elements of Lucretius' style discussed include his attitudes to, and use of, figurative language (especially metaphor); his explorations, both explicit and implicit, of Latin etymology; his uses of Greek; and his creative deployment of compounds and prefixed words. His practice is related throughout not only to the underlying Epicurean theory but also to contemporary Roman attitudes to style and language. The result is a new reading of one of the greatest and most difficult works to survive from the Roman world.
Download or read book Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom written by D. N. Sedley and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-09-18 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book studies the structure and origins of De Rerum Natura (On the nature of things), the great first-century BC poem by Lucretius. By showing how he worked from the literary model set by the Greek poet Empedocles but under the philosophical inspiration of the Greek philosopher Epicurus, the book seeks to characterise Lucretius' unique poetic achivement. It is addressed to those interested both in Latin poetry and in ancient Greek and Roman philosophy.
Download or read book Oxford Handbook of Epicurus and Epicureanism written by Phillip Mitsis and published by Oxford Handbooks. This book was released on 2020 with total page 848 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers authoritative discussions of all aspects of the philosophy of Epicurus (340-271 BCE) and then traces Epicurean influences throughout the Western tradition. It is an unmatched resource for those wishing to deepen their knowledge of Epicureanism's powerful arguments about death, happiness, and the nature of the material world.
Download or read book Approaches to Lucretius written by Donncha O'Rourke and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-16 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Takes stock of existing approaches in the interpretation of Lucretius, innovates within these, and advances in new directions.
Download or read book Empedocles Redivivus written by Myrto Garani and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2007-12-12 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book consists of a thorough study of Lucretius’ poetic and philosophical debt to Empedocles, focusing on their respective uses of analogy and examining how both poets turn these poetic techniques to use in their epistemological approaches to nature.
Download or read book Oxford Handbook of Epicurus and Epicureanism written by Phillip Mitsis and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-16 with total page 848 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus (341-270 BCE), though often despised for his materialism, hedonism, and denial of the immortality of the soul during many periods of history, has at the same time been a source of inspiration to figures as diverse as Vergil, Hobbes, Thomas Jefferson, and Bentham. This volume offers authoritative discussions of all aspects of Epicurus's philosophy and then traces out some of its most important subsequent influences throughout the Western intellectual tradition. Such a detailed and comprehensive study of Epicureanism is especially timely given the tremendous current revival of interest in Epicurus and his rivals, the Stoics. The thirty-one contributions in this volume offer an unmatched resource for all those wishing to deepen their knowledge of Epicurus' powerful arguments about happiness, death, and the nature of the material world and our place in it. At the same time, his arguments are carefully placed in the context of ancient and subsequent disputes, thus offering readers the opportunity of measuring Epicurean arguments against a wide range of opponents--from Platonists, Aristotelians and Stoics, to Hegel and Nietzsche, and finally on to such important contemporary philosophers as Thomas Nagel and Bernard Williams. The volume offers separate and detailed discussions of two fascinating and ongoing sources of Epicurean arguments, the Herculaneum papyri and the inscription of Diogenes of Oenoanda. Our understanding of Epicureanism is continually being enriched by these new sources of evidence and the contributors to this volume have been able to make use of them in presenting the most current understanding of Epicurus's own views. By the same token, the second half of the volume is devoted to the extraordinary influence of Epicurean doctrines, often either neglected or misunderstood, in literature, political thinking, scientific innovation, personal conceptions of freedom and happiness, and in philosophy generally. Taken together, the contributions in this volume offer the most comprehensive and detailed account of Epicurus and Epicureanism available in English.
Download or read book Lucretius on Creation and Evolution written by Gordon Lindsay Campbell and published by Oxford Classical Monographs. This book was released on 2003 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lucretius' account of the origin of life, the origin of species, and human prehistory is the longest and most detailed account extant from the ancient world. It gives an anti-teleological mechanistic theory of zoogony and the origin of species that does away with the need for any divine aidor design in the process, and accordingly it has been seen as a forerunner of Darwin's theory of evolution. This commentary locates Lucretius in both the ancient and modern contexts, and treats Lucretius' ideas as very much alive rather than as historical concepts. The recent revival of creationismmakes this study particularly relevant to contemporary debate, and indeed, many of the central questions posed by creationists are those Lucretius attempts to answer.
Download or read book The Early Textual History of Lucretius De Rerum Natura written by David Butterfield and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-10-17 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first detailed analysis of the fate of Lucretius' De rerum natura from its composition in the 50s BC to the creation of our earliest extant manuscripts during the Carolingian Age. Close investigation of the knowledge of Lucretius' poem among writers throughout the Roman and medieval world allows fresh insight into the work's readership and reception, and a clear assessment of the indirect tradition's value for editing the poem. The first extended analysis of the 170+ subject headings (capitula) that intersperse the text reveals the close engagement of its Roman readers. A fresh inspection and assignation of marginal hands in the poem's most important manuscript (the Oblongus) provides new evidence about the work of Carolingian correctors and offers the basis for a new Lucretian stemma codicum. Further clarification of the interrelationship of Lucretius' Renaissance manuscripts gives additional evidence of the poem's reception and circulation in fifteenth-century Italy.
Download or read book Lucretius and the Late Republic written by J.D. Minyard and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-07-17 with total page 95 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The crisis Rome experienced in the last decades of the Republic was intellectual as well as political, social and military. This crisis was marked by conflicts over values and a growing dichotomy between words and things, as a result of which the key words of the Roman tradition lost their anchor in the inherited, commonly-held percepetion of reality known as the mos maiorum. The crisis was therefore also one of the Latin language itself. The monograph explores this thesis in discussions of the background and character of Roman intellectual history, the nature of the mos maiorum, the relationship of the Late Republic to the Mediterranean world, the roles of Julius Caesar, Catullus, Cicero, and Lucretius in the crisis, and its Augustan and later consequences. The major portion of the discussion is devoted to Lucretius, because the De Rerum Natura is the clearest example of the extent and nature of the crisis, from which it took its origin and gained its form and purpose. A principal goal of the essay is to relate Lucretius to the structure of Roman literary and intellectual history. It finds the explanation for his work in the nature of that history and the characteristic Roman modes and categories of thought rather than in the general history fo Greek philosophy. It also offers a new explanation of the relationshiop of the authors of the Late Republic to each other. In so doing, it indicates the foundation for a new history of Roman literature and a new conception of the reality and importance of the intellectual history of Rome.
Download or read book Lucretius De Rerum Natura IV written by Titus Lucretius Carus and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 1986 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Book IV of Lucretius' great philosophical poem deals mainly with the psychology of sensation and thought. The heart of this book is a new text, incorporating the latest scholarship on the text of Lucretius, with a clear prose facing translation. The commentary concentrates on the thought of the text (relating it to other philosophers beside Epicurus) and the poetry of the Latin, placing the text in relation to Roman literature in general, and attempting to demonstrate the poetic genius of Lucretius. The introduction deals with the didactic tradition in ancient literature and Lucretius' place in it, the structure of De Rerum Natura, the salient features of the philosophy of Epicurus and the transmission of the text.
Download or read book A Reading of Lucretius De Rerum Natura written by Lee Fratantuono and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2015-06-03 with total page 519 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lucretius’ philosophical epic De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things) is a lengthy didactic and narrative celebration of the universe and, in particular, the world of nature and creation in which humanity finds its abode. This earliest surviving full scale epic poem from ancient Rome was of immense influence and significance to the development of the Latin epic tradition, and continues to challenge and haunt its readers to the present day. A Reading of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura offers a comprehensive commentary on this great work of Roman poetry and philosophy. Lee Fratantuono reveals Lucretius to be a poet with deep and abiding interest in the nature of the Roman identity as the children of both Venus (through Aeneas) and Mars (through Romulus); the consequences (both positive and negative) of descent from the immortal powers of love and war are explored in vivid epic narrative, as the poet progresses from his invocation to the mother of the children of Aeneas through to the burning funeral pyres of the plague at Athens. Lucretius’ epic offers the possibility of serenity and peaceful reflection on the mysteries of the nature of the world, even as it shatters any hope of immortality through its bleak vision of post mortem oblivion. And in the process of defining what it means both to be human and Roman, Lucretius offers a horrifying vision of the perils of excessive devotion both to the gods and our fellow men, a commentary on the nature of pietas that would serve as a warning for Virgil in his later depiction of the Trojan Aeneas.
Download or read book On the Nature of Things written by Titus Lucretius Carus and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 2004-01-01 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Roman philosopher's didactic poem in 6 parts, De Rerum Natura — On the Nature of Things — theorizes that natural causes are the forces behind earthly phenomena and dismisses divine intervention. Derived from the philosophical materialism of the Greeks, Lucretius' work remains the primary source for contemporary knowledge of Epicurean thought.
Download or read book Lucretius and the Fears of Death written by Peter Aronoff and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Approaches to Lucretius written by Donncha O'Rourke and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-16 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Both in antiquity and ever since the Renaissance Lucretius' De Rerum Natura has been admired – and condemned – for its startling poetry, its evangelical faith in materialist causation, and its seductive advocacy of the Epicurean good life. Approaches to Lucretius assembles an international team of classicists and philosophers to take stock of a range of critical approaches to which this influential poem has given rise and which in turn have shaped its interpretation, including textual criticism, the text's strategies for engaging the reader with its author and his message, the 'atomology' that posits a correlation of the letters of the poem with the atoms of the universe, the literary and philosophical intertexts that mediate the poem, and the political and ideological questions that it raises. Thirteen essays take up a variety of positions within these traditions of interpretation, innovating within them and advancing beyond them in new directions.
Download or read book De Rerum Natura written by William Ellery Leonard and published by Univ of Wisconsin Press. This book was released on 2008-08-08 with total page 916 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now available in paperback, this annotated scholarly edition of the Latin text of De Rerum Natura has long been hailed as one of the finest editions of this monumental work. It features an introduction to Lucretius's life and work by William Ellery Leonard, an introduction to and commentary on the poem by Stanley Barney Smith, the complete Latin text with detailed annotations, and an index of ancient sources. --University of Wisconsin Press.
Download or read book The Return of Lucretius to Renaissance Florence written by Alison Brown and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2010-05-05 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brown demonstrates how Florentine thinkers used Lucretius—earlier and more widely than has been supposed—to provide a radical critique of prevailing orthodoxies. She enhances our understanding of the “revolution” in sixteenth-century political thinking and our definition of the Renaissance within newly discovered worlds and new social networks.
