9 Lucretius, De rerum natura, Book II (Lines 142–332)

1. Module Introduction: The Magic and Legacy of the Poem

The philosophical epic of Lucretius serves as a foundational “meme”—a term David Attenborough adopts from Richard Dawkins to describe how human experience is embedded and handed down across generations. Attenborough, in his survey of the 1515 Aldine edition by Aldus Manutius, prizes the “wonderfully elegant italic script” of these early portable volumes, which acted as the Renaissance equivalent of paperbacks. For the modern reader, Lucretius remains what Albert Einstein described as a “magic” for the spectator of contemporary intellectual attitudes. Einstein particularly admired Lucretius’s “firm confidence” in the “causal connectedness” and intelligibility of a world governed by the regular motion of immutable atoms, ascribing to them only geometric-mechanical qualities.

From the perspective of classical philology, the text provided here is based on Hermann Diels’s landmark 1923 edition. Diels’s work represents a significant milestone in the digital and physical history of the text; it was the first major reconstruction to fully account for the “Insular” or “Anglo-Saxon” archetype (the schedae), which Diels argued had moved from Britain or Ireland to the schools of Alcuin in the 9th century. Diels was a staunch defender of Lucretius’s “ancient vigor” and “rusticity.” In his De Orthographia, he rejects the “Ovidian smoothness” of later editors, preferring the archaic strengths found in the manuscript tradition—notably the Oblongus (O) and Quadratus (Q). Students will note orthographical choices such as genitabilis, militiai, and the consistent use of u for both u and v, which Diels felt best captured the “natural” and “powerful” voice of the poet.

As an OER Information Architect, I have curated this module to ensure that the complex textual history—including the famous displacements in the Quadratus—is rendered transparently for the digital reader. The following sections provide a parallel reading experience designed for the Pressbooks web reader.

2. Section I: DE CELERITATE MOTVS (Lines 142–183)

3. Section II: NIHIL SVRSVM FERRI SPONTE SVA (Lines 184–215)

4. Section III: DE CLINATIONE MOTVS (Lines 216–332)

5. Critical Apparatus: Lines 251–274

Testimonia

The textual tradition for the middle of Book II is notably sparse in ancient citations compared to the “Hymn to Epicurus” in Book I. However, the sequence regarding the “Swerve” (clinamen) and its relation to free will is fundamentally reconstructed through the following:

• Line 251: Diels retains manifestumque against several Renaissance emendations, noting the parallel with II 150.
• Line 263: Referenced implicitly by the late commentators who discuss the “start of motion” (principium motus) within the heart, though specific verbatim citations for 251-274 are largely absent in Nonius or Priscian for this range.

Codices

The transmission of lines 251–274 is historically significant due to the structural failure of the common apograph for several manuscript families.

• Displaced Sheets (Folio 29rv): As detailed in Diels’ Praefatio (“DE CODICE QVADRATO”), lines II 253–278 and 279–304 were contained on a specific leaf of the Insular/Anglo-Saxon archetype. This sheet fell out of its original sequence and was relocated to the end of the common apograph for the Q (Quadratus), G-V (Gottorpienses-Vindobonenses), and U (Vindobonenses fragment) families.
• Line 244: ne is the reading preserved in O, G, and Q1, whereas the original hand of the Quadratus (Q*) provides nec.
• Line 258: deponunt in O and Q is maintained by Diels, reflecting the “powerful” rustic style of the Insular archetype over more polished Renaissance variants.
• Insular Archetype Note: The consistent errors in Q and V regarding these lines (such as the displacement noted above) prove they derive from a common ancestor that had already suffered physical decay—a “British or Irish” volume transcribed by a “monacho satis indocto” as Diels characterizes him in the Praefatio.

6. Pressbooks Implementation Instructions

Copy-Paste Guide

To successfully integrate this OER module into the Pressbooks environment, adhere to the following technical rules:

1. Automated Navigation: The H1 (#) and H3 (###) headers are configured to trigger the Pressbooks Table of Contents (TOC) automatically. Ensure no extra characters are added to these lines.
2. Responsive Layout: The side-by-side Markdown tables are optimized for the Pressbooks web reader. On mobile devices, these tables will allow for horizontal scrolling or stack based on theme settings, preserving the relationship between the Latin and English columns.
3. No Non-Renderable Elements: In accordance with the project constraints, all data is presented in standard Markdown. Avoid using Mermaid, Javascript-based interactive blocks, or external images, as these often break during the PDF/EPUB export process.
4. Philological Monospacing: Variants in the Critical Apparatus must remain enclosed in backticks (e.g., O, Q*) to ensure they render in a fixed-width font, distinguishing manuscript sigla and Latin variants from the descriptive English text.