34 Explōrātiō Septima (VII) Adventure Seven
Lucretius, de Rerum Natura, book 3 Nominative, Genitive, and Accusative Plural Introduction to Adjective Declension
Campus Martius, Rōma Mēnsis Iānuārius
L. Domitiō Ahēnobarbō Ap. Claudiō Pulchrō cōnsulibus
“B
Campus Martius, Rome January, 54 BCE
undle up,” she said. “Last night was as cold as it gets in Rome, almost freezing. The park we are going to has walls, but they only slow the wind, they don’t stop it.”
I closed my eyes and took a sip of the drink. Today it tasted horribly bitter, a bitterness only partially offset by a dab of honey smeared on the rim of the glass. After I blinked, I felt a chill air on my face. We were in a large park, with fountains and leafless trees laid out in tidy rows, hemmed in on all four sides by porticūs, porticoes, rows of columns with covered walkways. We were standing behind a group of people who were all facing a large stack of firewood. On top of it there was a blanket wrapped around a corpse, and I realized: this was a funeral. The attendees were of about the same age, and it struck me that they were probably the dead man’s friends.
Most had the well-fed look of upper-class Romans, yet they wore the simple wool and linen garments of the plebs. About two dozen men and four women stood there, holding hands or with their arms around each other’s backs; one, to judge by his tattoos and branding scars, either was or had been a servus, a slave.
“These are members of the Epicurean community,” she whispered. “This is a funeral for their friend, the poet Titus Lucretius Carus. Notice they are all smiling, or trying to. Not the usual behavior for Romans at a funeral! There is a reason for this.”
“Epicurus, the Greek philosopher whose teachings they follow, taught a simple creed based on a handful of basic principles: that the basic needs of life are easy to meet; that things that seem frightening can, with mental practice, be overcome; and that gods are nothing we should fear.
He argued that the world is made up of atoms, created without any help from the gods, and that the soul is a kind of vapor, which dissipates when people die. Perhaps his most important
teaching was that death is not a thing people should worry about, since nothing of a person is left behind that can suffer. The only correct attitude toward death is to consider it completely irrelevant; timor mortis, fear of death, is to be confronted and eliminated. People should enjoy the lives they have, avoid the violent world of politics, and build a societātem amīcōrum, a society of friends – hence,” and she gestured to the group in front of us, its members leaning against each other to keep off the cold, “these are Lucretius’ dear companions, seeking to mark his death in a manner consistent with Epicurean teaching. Lucretius meant a lot to them as a person, and he was, in addition, a genius of a poēta.”
The pyre was lit and sprang quickly to life, offering a welcome blast of warmth. As the flames crackled and roared, one man stood before them and began to read lines of poetry from a scroll:
“To raise so bright a lamp above such darkness,
you were the first who could do so, shining a light on the conveniences of life: and you I follow, o pride of the Greek nation, and now
in the marks you made I plant and fix my footsteps.”
Ē tenebrīs tantīs tam clārum extollere lūmen quī prīmus potuistī inlūstrāns commoda vītae,
tē sequor, ō Grāiae gentis decus, inque tuīs nunc ficta pedum pōnō pressīs vestīgia signīs.
“What he is doing,” she explained to me, “is very appropriate. He is reading from the third book of Lucretius’ long poem, dē Rērum Nātūrā, On the Nature of Things. The poem is an introduction to Epicurean philosophy in verse, and this book opens with Lucretius’ tribute to Epicurus. The reader is reusing it as a tribute to Lucretius himself.”
He went on:
“It is not so much from a desire to challenge as it is from love that I yearn to copy you. For how could a swallow compete with swans, or how could baby goats with trembling limbs do anything on a racecourse like the force of a mighty horse?
nōn ita certandī cupidus quam propter amōrem quod tē imitārī aveō; quid enim contendat hirundō cycnīs, aut quidnam tremulīs facere artubus haedī cōnsimile in cursū possint et fortis equī vīs?
You, father, are the discoverer of facts, you provide us with a father’s rules, and from your famous papers,
like bees sipping everything in meadows full of flowers, we feed upon your words, all of them like gold,
golden, and always most worthy of ongoing life.
tū, pater, es rērum inventor, tū patria nōbīs suppeditās praecepta, tuīsque ex, inclute, chartīs, flōriferīs ut apēs in saltibus omnia lībant,
omnia nōs itidem dēpāscimur aurea dicta, aurea, perpetuā semper dignissima vītā.
“For as soon as your reason has started to give voice to
the nature of things – a reason rising from a godlike mind – the terrors of the mind scatter, and the walls of this world go away…”
nam simul ac ratiō tua coepit vōciferārī nātūram rērum, dīvīnā mente coorta, diffugiunt animī terrōrēs, moenia mundī discēdunt…
After finishing the introduction, he went on to read Lucretius’ explanation of how the soul is made out of atoms and cannot survive apart from the body. He concluded with a passage where Lucretius brought in Nature herself to teach a final lesson about acceptance of life’s limits:
“Finally, what if the Nature of Things, Rērum Nātūra, suddenly got a voice, and personally criticized one of us like this –
‘What is the reason, mortal being, why you indulge in sick grief so much? Why do you groan and weep for death?
For if you are grateful for what you’ve lived, your life so far,
and if all the goods you possessed have not washed away and vanished unappreciated, as if stuffed into a bucket full of holes,
why then don’t you leave like a dinner guest, full of life, plēnus vītae, and take your carefree rest with a mind at peace, you fool?”
We could see the Epicureans working hard with their feelings, struggling to confront and overcome the natural human loathing of non-existence, the desire for a life that goes on and on forever. When the reading came to an end, the flames on the pyre had largely burned themselves out; the participants exchanged hugs and kisses, and they broke up into two groups to go home.
A pair of teenage boys, intrigued by the proceedings, attached themselves to one group and began to ask them questions. The other group raised their cloaks over their heads and broke into a jog after an old woman taking a stroll with her son began to throw rocks at them, calling them atheists and impiī, impiī, impious, unreligious folks.
That was my introduction to the Epicureans. To escape the cold we retreated to an official- looking building set into of one the porticoes, climbing its stone steps. Latinitas explained that this place was meant to be an alternative venue for Senate meetings when it was finished.
Construction was ongoing, and some craftsmen were still busy carving and polishing its stones. One team was applying paint to the hair and clothing of a larger-than-life statue of a Roman general: Pompeius Magnus, Pompey the Great, who was the patron of this whole complex, she explained. We availed ourselves of the workers’ portable fireplaces, and sat down to study.
“Let’s start with some nouns that are relevant to Epicureanism and Lucretius’ poem:”
First Declension Nouns
anima, anim-aef.soul causa, caus-aef.cause nātūra, nātūr-aef.nature
Third Declension Nouns
pater, patr-ism.father
māter, mātr-isf.mother
homō, homin-ism.human being, person ratiō, ratiōn-isf.reason; method gēns, gent-isf.family line; nation
mēns, ment-isf.mind, will
ars, art-isf.art, skill
pars, part-isf.part
fīnis, fīn-ism.end; goal; plural: territory