Ancient Philosophy · Part 22 · Rome, Alexandria and beyond · B2
Lucretius and Cicero: Philosophy in Latin
Part 22 of Ancient Philosophy: the Romans conquered the Greeks, and then had to learn their philosophy. A poet turned Epicurus into one of the great poems of Latin, and a statesman, grieving for his daughter, taught Latin to speak like Greek. Verb + object + infinitive (made Latin speak, let us see, helped readers understand, allowed him to), with Philo, Sophia, Marcos and Demetria.
The educated ones did. But two men decided that Rome needed philosophy in its own words: a poet and a politician.
Our Roman officials quote Cicero constantly. I have never read Lucretius.
You may find him dangerous, Philo. He is an Epicurean, and a very beautiful one.
Lucretius (about 99–55 BCE) wrote a long poem in six books, On the Nature of Things, explaining the philosophy of Epicurus in Latin verse: atoms, the void, the soul, the gods, the origin of life and society, and why death is nothing to fear. We know almost nothing about his life.
Cicero (106–43 BCE) was the greatest orator of Rome, a consul and a leading senator. When Caesar’s dictatorship pushed him out of politics, and after the death of his beloved daughter Tullia, he wrote, in less than two years, a whole series of philosophical works in Latin, explaining the Greek schools to Romans.
Cicero was killed in the proscriptions of 43 BCE. Many of his philosophical works survive; others were lost and partly recovered much later. Lucretius’s poem survived in very few copies and almost disappeared.
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