Anyone Read Lucretius

[The Comedian]

Just finished reading On the Nature of things -- atomic theory, origin stories, metaphysics, and poetry all in one. I really loved reading this work of Hellenistic philosophy -- just curious to see if anyone else has read/has an opinion about this work.

[Charles Darnay]

I was able to get my hands on the Loeb edition of this work (Rouse translation) containing both the Latin and English. While I did not like his translation of Homer, his translations of The Dionsyiaca and De Rerum Natura are fantastic.
Lucretius' poem is both wonderfully constructed, extremely complex, and a great historical document to challenge those who believe science and the questioning of religion is a modern concept.

I recommend Stephen Greenblatt's "Swerve" as a follow-up to Lucretius. It may be a bit polemic in regards to the church at times, but it puts Lucretius into the context of late Medieval history quite nicely.

[namenlose]

I read De Rerum Natura last year. Although the translation was not very concerned with the poetic qualities of the book, I could yet enjoy it quite significantly. His unusual handling of the poetic voice and his treatment of the theme of death particularly stood out to me.

[Gahlen]

I like Lucretius very much. I particularly like the fact that he isn't merely trying to entertain, that he wants to communicate something he thinks is of real importance (not the sense you necessarily get, for example, with characters like Ovid …). It's a pity, for those of us who read Latin, that there's no proper modern critical edition. Smith's text in the Loeb, facing Rouse's translation, is pretty good, but of course a Loeb doesn't give you much space as an editor to include variants and discuss options. It would be nice to have a full-scale scholarly version that reflects work on the manuscript tradition since Bailey's big edition in 1947.