Lucretius

Last update: 21 Apr 2025 21:17
First version:

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I read about half of De Rerum Natura when I was younger and my Latin was better; when I am older and my Latin is better I should like to translate the whole thing. The Leonard translation is on-line, but I don't like it very much. The translation by Anthony Esolen, not on-line, is the best I've run across. (When I am much older, I should like to translate it into literary Chinese, and Chuang Tzu into Latin, to confound the philologists of the future.)

Recommended (utterly inadequate):
• Ada Palmer, "Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance", Journal of the History of Ideas 73 (2012): 395--416
• A. E. Stallings, The Nature of Things [New translation by a very good contemporary poet]
• Catherine Wilson, Epicureanism at the Origins of Modernity

Not entirely recommended:
• Stephen Greenblatt, The Swerve: How the World Became Modern

To read:
• Alison Brown, The Return of Lucretius to Renaissance Florence
• David Butterfield, The Early Textual History of Lucretius' De rerum natura
• Gordon Campbell, Lucretius on Creation and Evolution: A Commentary on De Rerum Nature Book Five, Lines 772--1104 [Review in BMCR, 2004年06月26日]
• George Hadzsitis, Lucretius and His Influence
• Ada Palmer, Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance [Expansion of her JHI article. Interview with Palmer about this; Review in BMCR]
• Gerard Passannante, The Lucretian Renaissance: Philology and the Afterlife of Tradition
• David N. Sedley, Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom

Notebooks :