Born and living during the late Roman Republic, the mysterious poet, Lucretius, offered a new philosophy through his poetry - one that proposed a stark contradiction to pre-socratic philosophies and others in a milieu of contemporary madness and disbelief of others, such as the late Roman Republic was.   

 

Lucretius is considered “mysterious” in modern times since very little is known about his life or the date of the publication of his works.  There are only a few clues into both questions, garnered from minute references by other authors.  The firmest indication comes from Cicero, who, writing in 54 BC, transmits in a sentence of a letter to his brother some praise towards “the poems of Lucretius”.  Secondly, there are some verbal echoes between Lucretius’ work and that of Catullus, for instance Catullus’ Poem 64, known as "Peleus and Thetis".  Catullus’ poem was published in the 50s and we can guess that he might, perhaps, have been reading Lucretius’ De Rerum Naturae at his time of writing.  However, with that knowledge, Lucretius poem, can only be opaquely dated to the 60s, 50s or 40s BC.  

 

Rather, the best way of approaching the publication is to situate it within the procession of Greco-Roman history of thought.  Taking first Lucretius’ most prominent characteristic - an exposition of Epicurean philosophy - we can immediately assess the development of Greek thought that stemmed from the Greek writer, Epicurus, himself. 

 

Having lived from 341 - 270 BC, Epicurus’ writings were the primordial expounding of a natural scientific approach to human comprehension.  At its simplest levels, Epicurus’ tenets began with not an abstract cogitation but rather the external world.   According to him, the phenomenal world is all made up of minute indivisible particles, labelled atoms.  Nothing exists other than atoms and empty space.  Embellishing his theories, he argued that moral truths arrived from an analysis of the phenomenal world around us.

 

The pre-existing stream of thought was very much the antithesis.  Greek intellectual thought began at a sophisticated level not until the late 5th Century BC where Greek writers had begun to differentiate between different academic approaches - a break away of the entwinement of theology and philosophy or myth and history for example that had permeated the early works of Homer and Hesiod.  Neither distinguished the academic fields they were working in, whether it be the mythology and physics of Hesoid and the poetry and history of Homer.  By the 5th BC, however, Socrates had made the distinction absolute.  

 

Yet the presiding dominance in philosophy - Socrates’ pupil Plato, and Plato’s pupil Aristotle - all promoted looking inwards and assessing the nature of reality with one’s own mind.  Alternatively, Epicurus argued that natural science is the route to philosophical understanding, taking, in effect, an observation and comprehension approach of the external world instead.  

 

Immediately we can observe some similarities between Lucretius and Epicurus, for instance in Book 4 where he argues for an avoiding of romantic love for its loss of rationalism and self-control, and in Book 3 where he offers serene pleasure after death.   

 

Importantly, Lucretius’ offers of salvation can help us situate a time of writing and aid our understanding of the text in its itself.  Firstly, let us look at Lucretius’ approach to religion. He denies the presence of the supernatural, praises Epicurus for discrediting religion and claims that religion has caused many abhorrent acts, citing the death of Iphigenia at the hands of Agamemnon, intended to seek a good voyage to Troy.  This is immediately underscored at the start of the poem, where Lucretius writes, “So potent was Religion in persuading to do wrong.”  (I. 101).  

 

Yet Lucretius is fervent in his devotion and adoration of Venus. The poet opens with a hymn to Venus. Ultimately, it is intended to set the tone of the whole poem - one of exuberant licentiousness.  Equally, it expresses in metaphorical form Lucretius' most intensely held beliefs and invites and entices the reader into a position of adoration.  

 

And, ultimately, it is to claim that the attributes of Venus encapsulate everything that he believes is caused by the atoms pervading the phenomenal world.  Venus is the mother of the Romans, the Epicurean pleasure principle, the season of spring, the sexual drive, the goddess of peace and a form of muse invoked to impart beauty to the poet’s language.  As such, she is the imprint for phenomenal atoms at the crux of everything.  

 

Assessing the style of Lucretius’ poem, therefore, along with references from other authors, is unfortunately the best way to label a date of publication.  And it is Lucretius’ hymn to Venus at the start that is one of the best shards of evidence.  Lucretius depicts sexual union between Venus and Mars, the god of war.  At times, Lucretius’ language suggests harmony, balance and equality between the two deities, peace prevailing over war at other occasions and Mars yielding to Venus.  It is with this very evidence that we can situate the publication to roughly the 50s, when Rome was engaged in largely mundane wars in Parthia, Britannica and Germanica.  

 

Coupled with this, the work must have conclusively been published before 30 BC, since Virgil offers him an eloquent tribute in the second book of the Georgics. His words were, “Happy is he who has discovered the causes of things and has cast beneath his feet all fears, unavoidable fate, and the din of the devouring world.”