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BOOK REVIEWS T. Lucreti Cari de Rerum Natura Libri Sex. Edited with Introduction and Commentary by WILLIAM ELLERY LEONARD and STANLEY BARNEY SMITH. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press. Pp. ix +886. $5.00. Lucretius is an author about whom opmrons have greatly differed and one whose study has fluctuated to a great extent during different periods. Some writers have assigned him the primacy among the poets of Rome. No less capable a Latin scholar than Denys Lambin wrote the following tribute to his use of language: non dubitanter affirmabo, nullum in tota lingua Latina scriptorem Lucretia latine melius esse locutum, non M. Tullii, non C. Caesaris orationem esse puriorem. Yet he never attained the prominent place in later Roman education that was justly granted to the bards of Mantua and Venusia. As a philosopher, Lucretius has failed to make a great mark. His hexameter poem De Rerum Natura is the best Latin exposition of Epi. cureanism; but his school lost the Roman field to Stoicism, which, for all its errors, appeared more worthy of acceptance to the minds of Romans. The middle ages looked upon him as a scientist more than as a philosopher; and even in science he was not held in the same esteem as Pliny or Seneca, to mention only the Latin authors. Modern philological study of Lucretius began with Lachmann in the last century. Munro in England, Brieger in Germany, and Giussani in Italy carried on further researches into the interpretation of his poem. In our own century, Ernout and Robin, Bailey, Merrill, Diels, and Martin have published useful editions and commentaries of De Rerum Natura. The present edition is a cooperative project, " the result of nearly lifelong interests of two scholars, which some fifteen years ago became merged in a cooperative enterprise." Professor Leonard has contributed the General Introduction. on" Lucretius: The Man, the Poet, and the Times"; Professor Smith has contributed the Latin text, the Commentary, and the Introduction to the Commentary, but "in a broader sense they are jointly responsible for the whole" (p. v) . Such a cooperative project has the obvious advantage of two heads instead of one, but in one instance at least it has led to overlapping. Witness the treatment by Leonard of Mss. (pp. 84-91) and the fuller treatment by Smith (p. 95 ff.), where there is necessarily some repetition. Usually, however, this overlapping is happily avoided. 408 BOOK REVIEWS 409 Leonard's introduction is pleasantly written and sufficiently informative. It shows first-hand acquaintance with the Latin writings of the contemporaries and predecessors of Lucretius. His years are given as 99-55 B. C. on the basis of St. Jerome's Chronicle. The question of his madness is discussed, and Leonard is unable to agree fully with Postgate and Conway who considered V. 1308-49 as a "madman's dream." The poem itself is used with advantage to obtain a view of the author's personality, but some of the conjectures are rather fine spun and unconvincing. The treatment of Epicurus, his influence on Lucretius, and the independence of the latter in certain instances, is excellent. Leonard deals roughly with Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle (p. 4~) ; especially with the last, whose scientific interests in the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms receive scant mention. A student would get the erroneous idea that Aristotle was a mere deductive logician with a distaste for experiment. Again, Epicurus is mentioned as "perhaps the founder of inductive (as distinct from deductive) logic" (p. 47) , although Aristotle is more deserving of such a title from the viewpoint both of time and of merit. It is admitted (p. 48) that Epicurus and Lucretius " smuggled into " their system both reason and ethical judgments which are not accounted for by theirĀ· system of materialistic atomism. The strong influence of Empedocles in addition to (and sometimes even distinct from) that of Epicurus is rightly insisted on. The agreement between the philosophical atomism of Lucretius and the modern scientific atomic theory is greatly overstressed. Leonard has a prejudice against teleological thinking, upon which his information seems very limited (p. 60). He fails to appreciate the value of divine revelation as a guardian against error, and so naively...

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