Lucretius’ De rerum natura is not only a great literary work, writes B. in his introduction, but also a concise account of a revolutionary doctrine, from which the author expected a moral and cultural regeneration for himself and his contemporaries. The aim of B.’s book is to shed light on the scientific relevance of Lucretius’ doctrine and to show that his (natural) philosophy had a major impact both in antiquity and in the modern era. In antiquity, because Lucretius’ Epicureanism contributed to undermining the traditional hierarchy of values, by turning natural philosophy into the basis for ethics and politics, and, more importantly, because it denied the prescriptive role of divine providence. In the modern period, because Lucretius’ poem was often considered a reservoir of revolutionary ideas, which contributed to overturning Aristotle's natural philosophy and paved the way for the development of new scientific theories.
According to B., although philologists have tended to diminish the philosophical relevance of Lucretius’ didactic poem, focusing only on its stylistic aspects, De rerum natura should not merely be considered as a literary work. There are good reasons to believe that behind the enthusiasm with which Lucretius describes the atomic causes of natural phenomena lies a deep scientific interest. One of the goals of this book is to demonstrate this assumption, and the arguments put forward by B. are certainly very convincing.
The first chapter is devoted to an analysis of the social context in which Lucretius composed his work. Despite the common opinion according to which the natural sciences were not held in high esteem among the Romans, B. shows that, in Lucretius’ days, one can document a scientific ‘renaissance’, which involved different fields, including astronomy, geometry, geography, medicine and botany. The attention paid by Lucretius to Epicurean science should, therefore, not be considered an isolated case. Rather, Lucretius’ goal was to orient the common interest for the sciences, rapidly growing among the Romans, towards Epicurean natural philosophy.
In the second chapter, B. focuses on Epicureanism and on the major impact that its revolutionary ideas had on Roman society. Interestingly, in order to show this, he relies not only on literary sources, but also on papyri and archaeological records, which attest the diffusion of Epicureanism especially during the first century b.c., in Rome and in Campania.
B. devotes the third chapter to the reconstruction of Lucretius’ life, of which we know very little. In addition to the most common literary sources (especially Cicero and Jerome), B. includes other textual and non-textual evidence, some of which is taken from Lucretius’ own work. In the same chapter, B. summarises the contents of De rerum natura and discusses some relevant sections, such as the proems to each of the six books. He then addresses the vexata quaestio whether Lucretius relied on sources other than Epicurus and whether he made any original contribution to his master's philosophy. According to B., he surely did. At the end of the chapter, B. briefly discusses the poem's early circulation.
What is remarkable about these first three chapters is the astonishing number of testimonies collected by B. to describe the background against which Lucretius composed his De rerum natura. These include many literary sources, some of them very little known, but also material evidence.
In Chapters 4–7, B. illustrates some of the most innovative aspects of Lucretius’ philosophy: his particular interpretation of the atomic theory, the key role played in his doctrine by the observation of natural phenomena, his cosmology and his idea of progress and evolution. That B. is a specialist in the history of philosophy and science is clearly shown by his expertise in dealing with these topics.
Lucretius’ atomism is shown to be innovative in various ways: for instance, instead of transliterating the word ‘atom’ from the Greek, he presented his own set of Latin terms (such as semina or primordia), which emphasised not just the physical but also the biological properties of these first principles. Other innovative aspects of Lucretius’ atomism are the stress he puts on the molecular structure of atomic matter, the fact that he suggested a new idea concerning mixture and introduced into the Latin language the concept of ‘transmutation’, which was later to become crucial for Renaissance alchemists.
In Chapter 5, B. shows that Lucretius, like Epicurus, not only insisted on the veracity of all sense perceptions, but resorted to his personal observations of natural phenomena, thought experiments and technical devices in order to elucidate his atomic theory. Again, since Lucretius is essentially the only one among Epicurus’ followers to resort systematically to arguments drawn from direct or indirect observations of natural phenomena, one may conclude that this feature represents an original contribution to his master's doctrine.
In Chapter 6, B. deals with Lucretius’ cosmology and shows that its revolutionary force does not lie in the (often incorrect) explanations of the astronomical phenomena, but rather in Lucretius’ effort to unify the heavenly and sublunary world within the same physical model, showing that the laws that control the terrestrial world are the same as those that govern the celestial bodies. In so doing, Lucretius not only offered an alternative model to the dichotomous Aristotelian model, but also managed to replace the finalistic cosmology of the Stoics with a rational and scientific model of the universe.
Chapters 7 and Chapter 8 are updated versions of essays published in 2008. The former deals with the idea of evolution and progress in the fifth book of De rerum natura, while the latter is devoted to Lucretius’ reception and especially to the editions of the poem from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries. B.’s aim here is to document that Lucretius’ poem has often been read primarily as a scientific text, rather than a literary work.
B. is unnecessarily modest by not drawing attention to the innovative aspects of his own book, especially in relation to the available secondary literature. Still, the main claim of the book is clear and is proven very convincingly.
The volume is a highly valuable contribution to modern scholarship, for the vast number of sources consulted and the accuracy of B.’s analysis. Contrary to certain other scholars, B. does not make exaggerated claims about the influence of Lucretius’ revolutionary philosophy, nor does he linger on improbable connections between the latter and modern scientific discoveries. Through a detailed analysis of De rerum natura, in combination with many other sources, he manages instead to make a case against those who used to or still consider Lucretius’ work a merely literary product.
