This monograph is the third volume of a trilogy dedicated to the author of De rerum natura (DRN). The very first sentence of the first volume of this trilogy reads: ‘The time has come for a return to Lucretius. A text that was lost for over a thousand years is today once again collecting dust on the bookshelves, read only as a historical document that once inspired an outdated scientific revolution’. These first few lines reveal N.'s attitude towards Lucretius: he presents himself as the new Poggio Bracciolini who re-rediscovered the DRN and whose project is ‘the first attempt in a long time to reinterpret this classical text as an absolutely contemporary one’ (Nail, Lucretius I [2018], p. 1). These statements may sound baffling to some readers, especially to scholars of Lucretius, given that many publications in the last decade have discussed the modernity of DRN. The problem with N.'s books is precisely the presumption to have understood and uncovered the ‘real Lucretius’ while other scholars, who have been studying the DRN so far, have not.
The first book of this trilogy is dedicated to ontology (and analyses Books I–II of DRN), the second (2020) to ethics (Books III–IV of DRN), and the third and last one to history (Books V–VI of DRN). An excellent review (and fair critique) of the first two books have been published (M.J. Bennet, Parrhesia 35 [2022]).
‘No atoms’, ‘no stasis’, ‘no gods’ (2022, pp. 11–13): this is the Lucretian formula, the recipe that, according to N., all Lucretian scholars should adopt instead of following what he labels the ‘Epicurean hypothesis’. The fact that N. marks his interpretative model as a (magical) ‘formula’, while the most accepted interpretation (i.e. that Lucretius was an Epicurean) is labelled as a ‘hypothesis’, is an indication of his attitude. N. admits that Epicurus profoundly influenced Lucretius, but also says that the Roman poet diverged from the Greek philosopher to the point that his famous eulogies of Epicurus were acts of ‘performative contradiction’ (p. 22). Furthermore, Lucretius was not an atomist, and he did not believe in gods (therefore, he was an atheist); more than everything, he was ‘a philosopher of movement and motion’, which entails that, for instance, he did not value ataraxia, the static pleasure, as the goal of life.
N. is firmly convinced that Lucretius did not believe in the existence of atoms. This is the most radical and least convincing feature of his thesis: without postulating atoms as the building blocks of our world, many of Lucretius’ theories do not make sense; think, for instance, of the letter-atom analogy or the idea according to which atoms have different shapes. But, for N., the fact that Lucretius did not use the word ‘atom’ is decisive evidence that he did not believe in atoms. It may suffice to say that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence and that a convincing refutation of this hypothesis has already been provided (Bennet, Parrhesia 35 [2022], 125–6).
After having got rid of atoms, N. replaces them with ‘flows, folds, and weaving’ (p. 12): according to (his) Lucretius, the primary constituents of the world are not the atoms but the movements and flows of matter. Matter, therefore, constantly flows, spreads out and dissipates, and its dissipation and iteration produce history. N. accurately chooses powerful images to illustrate his ideas and persuade readers; according to him, history is ‘a woven and unwoven web stretched across the universe like a cosmic labyrinth of mycelium’ (p. 53).
Death is the foreseeable outcome of a history made through dissipation and unmaking; hence, the plague at Athens is a perfectly suitable ending for Lucretius’ poem. N. deals with the plague at Athens in the last chapter and in the conclusion of this third book, large portions of which have already been published in an article (‘Dark Lucretius’, Rev. Int. Philos. 6 [2021]). N. disproves (and he is probably right on this point) the thesis advanced by G. Deleuze and other commentators, according to which the sixth book of the DRN must be unfinished because the poem's dreadful and deathful ending would be incompatible with the vitalist interpretation of matter that some scholars at times attach to Lucretius. But N.'s Lucretius is a philosopher of indeterminacy and dissipation, for whom there is no ‘vitalist redemption’ at the end of the universe, ‘just an indeterminate swerve’ (p. 202). And it is precisely the swerve theory and the indeterminacy it entails that make Lucretius’ philosophy compatible with the laws of quantum physics. This not-so-unexpected suggestion is just one of the foreseeable conclusions of N.'s bold premise in the introduction that ‘much of the basic scaffolding of contemporary cosmology, physics, and history … was initially put forward by Lucretius’ (p. 19).
It seems evident that N. finds it challenging to place DRN in a historical-philosophical perspective; on the contrary, he cannot help looking at Lucretius through the lenses of modernity and attaches his preconceptions to DRN, remodelling the text according to his philosophical view.
What draws the attention of any (classical) scholar is the abundance of typos and inaccuracies, especially when N. quotes ancient texts: see, for instance, on p. 50, declinare solerant instead of solerent; on p. 64, similus instead of similis. Then, on p. 129, N. refers to line 5.1176, where Lucretius explains that humans get visions of gods while sleeping. The verb subpeditabatur is wrongly transcribed as subpeditatur and, most importantly, incorrectly translated as ‘get under our feet’, while the word means ‘to be available, fully supplied’. Lucretius is saying that images of the gods were continually reinforced in our minds, so we ended up attributing immortality to the gods. The wrong translation of this term leads N. to misread the passage entirely. He says that the images of the gods may ‘get under our feet’ – just as religio in the first book of DRN – and trip us up. This is not the sole instance in which the wrong reading of the Latin text leads to a misleading interpretation.
N. notes (p. vi) that he follows W. Englert's 2003 translation, but he modifies it when it does not suit his interpretation; for instance, on p. 61, he writes: ‘Only indeterminate matter will not perish. This is not because it is not a self-identical thing but an “indivisible material” [solida cum corpore] process or flow (5.552)’. The correct line is 352, and the right word is solido (not solida). But, apart from these minutiae, Lucretius explains that natural calamities, like floods, prove the earth's mortality; what is everlasting must have a solid body. The word ‘solid’, however, would inevitably lead to atoms; thus, even though Englert uses the term ‘solid’, N. changes the translation to accommodate his reading.
Finally, the lack of a comprehensive bibliography makes it challenging for readers to follow up on some of the themes and to verify N.'s sources, some of which (but not all) are only mentioned in the endnotes of each chapter. In many cases page numbers are not included. A general index (nominum et rerum) completes the volume, while an index locorum is missing, and references to ancient texts, except Lucretius’, are inaccurate. The book also features many illustrations that make the reading more pleasant, but do not make the thesis more convincing.
Even though the book contains a few thought-provoking ideas, the primary and most controversial claim that Lucretius was not an atomist but rather a philosopher of flux and movement remains unconvincing.
