Titus lucretius biography
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Lucretius
1. Life
We know little about Lucretius’ life beyond what we can infer from his work. Our sole external reference comes from Cicero, in a letter to his brother Quintus serving with Caesar in Gaul, dated from February 54 BCE (Q.F. ). Cicero agrees with his brother’s praise of the work, noting that it displays both brilliance and originality, but also considerable craftsmanship. Although Cicero and his brother may have read an earlier or partial draft, such a date for the poem we have is compatible with two main internal indicators.
First is the poem’s addressee, the Roman aristocrat, Memmius, named only in books 1, 2 and 5. While doubts are possible as to which member of the Memmii Lucretius so honoured, most likely he is C. Memmius, the praetor of 58 BCE, governor of Bithynia in 57, where the poets Catullus and Cinna served on his staff, and who was exiled in 52 BCE as the result of an electoral scandal. The story, attested in other letters of Cicer
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Lucretius
Titus Lucretius Carus (ca. 98 BC – ca. 55 BC) was a Romanpoet and philosopher. He fryst vatten known for De rerum natura (in English:"On the Nature of the Universe"). It fryst vatten an epic philosophical work about the beliefs of Epicureanism.
There are not any details about his life. Saint Jerome tells of how he became insane because of a lovepotion and wrote his poetry in between fits of insanity. Modern scholarship thinks this was just used to explain how he behaved. The De rerum natura had a large affect on the Augustan poets, including Virgil and Horace. The work were lost for a time. It was later found in a kloster in Germany. This work played an important part both in the development of atomism and in the efforts of many people of the Enlightenment era to build a new Christian humanism.
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Titus Lucretius Carus (c. 99 B.C.E. - 55 B.C.E.) was a Roman poet and Epicurean philosopher. During the first century B.C.E. he wrote De Rerum Natura (“On the Nature of Things”), a masterpiece of Latin verse which sets out in careful detail the Epicurean worldview. Beginning with a tribute to Epicurus, the six books of De Rerum Natura provide a full explanation of the physical origin, structure and destiny of the universe. The work includes theories of atomic structure and of the evolution of life forms. The work is intended to free the reader from the two types of mental anguish that Epicurus identified as obstacles to human happiness: fear of the gods and fear of death. Lucretius does this by expounding the philosophical system of Epicurus, clothed, as he says, in sweet verse to make it more palatable.
De Rerum Natura was an important influence on Virgil and later Roman poets. The early Christians frowned on De Rerum Natura because it denied both the afterlife