36 Lucretius, De rerum natura, Book V, Lines 1011–1240

The enduring influence of Lucretius’s De rerum natura is evidenced by its impact on the most rigorous scientific minds of the modern era. Albert Einstein, in his 1924 foreword to the edition by Hermann Diels, observed that the poem possesses a unique “magic” for those who feel like spectators to the intellectual attitudes of their own time. Einstein expressed a profound admiration for Lucretius’s “firm confidence” in the intelligibility of the world—a world governed not by divine whim, but by the “causal connectedness” of all natural phenomena. This worldview, Einstein noted, is rooted in the regular motion of immutable atoms, where even the phenomena of life and the soul are attributed to “geometric-mechanical movements.” Einstein celebrated Lucretius as an independent thinker who, despite having “not even the faintest notion of the results of today’s science,” reasoned out a logical universe through sheer “scientific and speculative curiosity.”

This curiosity is nowhere more evident than in Book V. Here, Lucretius explains the “organic origin of language” and the “discovery of fire” not as gifts from the gods, but as the inevitable result of the same atomic movements Einstein admired. The transition from primitive life to civilization is depicted as a process of natural cause and effect.

The physical preservation of these ideas is a testament to the “meme” theory proposed by naturalist David Attenborough. Referencing the 1515 Aldine edition—a small, elegant volume printed in Venice—Attenborough describes books as “memes”: units of information and human experience transmitted across generations outside the biological body. For Attenborough, the 1515 Lucretius represents the preservation of 600 years of human wisdom that preceded the electronic age. This OER module continues that transmission, presenting the text in the tradition of Hermann Diels, whose 1923 edition sought to recover the “ancient vigor” of the poet’s original voice.

2. Parallel Text: The Origins of Civilization (Lines 1011–1240)

The following text adheres to the orthography of Hermann Diels (1923), preserving the antiqua vestigia (ancient traces) such as the genitive in -ai and archaic forms like quom.

3. Critical Apparatus: Testimonia and Codices

Primary Manuscripts (Codices)

Following the research of Hermann Diels, the textual tradition of Lucretius is reconstructed from several 9th-century manuscripts preserved in Leiden, which represent the most authentic traces of the poet’s original orthography (antiqua vestigia). Unlike the Italian Renaissance editions (the Poggiano tradition), which modernized the text and introduced “new-fangled elegances,” Diels favored these Carolingian sources:

• Codex Oblongus (O): A 9th-century manuscript (Leidensis Vossianus Latinus Fol. 30) consisting of 192 leaves in Carolingian minuscule. Diels asserts its superiority, identifying it as a product of the school of Alcuin at Fulda.
• Codex Quadratus (Q): Also 9th-century (Leidensis Vossianus Quadratus 94), containing 69 leaves. Formerly of the monastery of St. Bertin, it represents a different branch of the transmission and contains specific lacunae.
• The Schedae (G, V, U): Fragmentary manuscripts: Schedae Haunienses (G), and Vindobonenses (V and U). Diels demonstrated that G and V derive from the same parent as Codex Q.

The Archetype

Diels concludes that all extant manuscripts descend from a single Archetypus Insularis, likely produced in Britain or Ireland around the 7th century. This archetype was a copy of a 4th-century prototype written in capital letters. The loss of indices for the first three books is attributed to the physical fragility of the prototype’s initial papyrus pages.

Testimonia: De Vita et Arte Lucreti

The following ancient witnesses provide context for Lucretius’s standing among his contemporaries and successors:

• Cicero (Ad Quintum Fratrem II 9,3): Characterizes the poem as having “many highlights of genius, yet much art” (multis luminibus ingeni, multae tamen artis).
• Ovid (Amorum I 15,22): “The verses of sublime Lucretius are destined to perish only when one day shall give the world to destruction.”
• Vitruvius (IX Praef. 16-17): “Therefore, those whose minds are steeped in the delights of letters… will have the image of the poet Ennius dedicated in their hearts… Likewise, many born after our memory will seem to dispute about the nature of things in the presence of Lucretius (cum Lucretio videbuntur velut coram de rerum natura disputare), just as they will dispute rhetoric with Cicero and the Latin language with Varro.”
• Cornelius Nepos (Atticus 12,4): Places Lucretius alongside Catullus as the benchmark for poetic elegance in his age.

Diels’ Methodology

Hermann Diels’s editorial philosophy was governed by the principle of antiqua vestigia. He resisted the 15th-century tendency to normalize Latin, instead preserving archaic forms (e.g., militiai, quom, pos) found in the Oblongus (O) manuscript. Diels viewed Lucretius as an “enemy of new-fangled elegances” and sought to present a text that reflected the “ancient vigor and simple simplicity” of the Republican era.

4. Technical Metadata for Pressbooks

• Author: Titus Lucretius Carus
• Editor: Hermann Diels (1923/1924 Edition)
• License/Copyright:
  • Text: Public Domain. Hermann Diels’s edition is globally recognized as being in the public domain and remains the favored text in academia for its “natural” and authoritative reading of the Lucretian hexameter.
  • Images/Reference: The 1515 Aldine edition carries no known copyright in Canada (SFU Library Digital Collections).
• Type: Literature / Classical Philology
• Subject: Epicurean Philosophy; Evolution of Civilization; Latin Hexameter.