A note on Lucretius

I’ve just watched an ICE Dartmouth video presenting a conversation on Lucretius with Margaret Graver, Professor of Classics, Dartmouth College. The inquirer opens the conversation: ‘We’re going to talk about Lucretius, the very famous Lucretius, although, I gather, he wasn’t very famous in his time, or was he?’ M.G: ‘Well we don’t know a great deal about Lucretius and his life. We know that he had a very high standing in his society, for he had a very fine education …’

Professor Graver did not answer the question.

What came to my mind as I listened to the introductory question was what Ovid says on Lucretius: ‘carmina sublimis tunc sunt peritura Lucreti’ exitio terras cum dabit una dies’ (‘The poems of majestic Lucretius will then perish when one day will give the earth to destruction’).

I quote from Ovid, ‘The Immortality of Verse’, Cavin Betts and Daniel Franklin Beginning Latin Poetry Reader, verse 23-4, p. 129. The translation is given by the authors, p. 286. What I find really great are their comments: ‘sublīmis … Lucrētī of majestic Lucretius; sunt peritūra (fut. pple of pereō -īre = perībunt will perish; cum is postponed; exitiō dat. after dabit will give to destruction (exitium –(i)ī N.), i.e. will see the destruction of; terrās here the earth – Ovid is stating a theory of Lucretius.’