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6 - The wonders of the natural world

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 October 2009

Monica R. Gale
Monica R. Gale
Affiliation:
Trinity College, Dublin
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Summary

Ratio and miratio

To what extent is the natural world susceptible to rational understanding and explanation? To what extent can it be seen as ordered, regular, predictable? Lucretius' answer to these questions is confident and unambiguous. Epicurus taught mankind the fundamental principles which govern the behaviour of everything in the universe, from microscopic atoms and invisible souls to elephants and thunderstorms:

refert nobis victor quid possit oriri,

quid nequeat, finita potestas denique cuique

quanam sit ratione atque alte terminus haerens.

1.75–7

He brought back to us, victoriously, knowledge of what can come to be and what cannot – how, in short, the power of each thing has its limit and its deep-set boundary-stone.

The universality of these principles is most clearly illustrated in DRN 6, where Lucretius sets out to explain a range of frightening and curious phenomena, from lightning to magnetism. What unites this motley assortment of topics is that all the phenomena discussed have a tendency to evoke fear or wonder; and wonder is a dangerous emotion, leading all too often to fear and superstition:

nam bene qui didicere deos securum agere aevum,

si tamen interea mirantur qua ratione

quaeque geri possint, praesertim rebus in illis

quae supera caput aetheriis cernuntur in oris,

rursus in antiquas referuntur religiones

et dominos acris adsciscunt, omnia posse

quos miseri credunt, ignari quid queat esse,

quid nequeat, finita potestas denique cuique

quanam sit ratione atque alte terminus haerens.

5.82–90=6.58–66
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Information
Virgil on the Nature of Things
The Georgics, Lucretius and the Didactic Tradition
 , pp. 196 - 231
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2000

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