 Hi, my name is Monty Johnson. I teach philosophy at the University of California, San Diego, and this is the sixth of my six lectures on Lucretius, this one about Epicurean meteorology, and the conclusion of Deirem Natura 6. And I'm using the translation of Cyril Bailey, which is available in the public domain through the Internet Archive. So, having proven that an infinite number of atoms is constantly at motion in an infinite void space, and that these atoms combine to form larger and larger compounds until there are bodies that we can actually see, and that among these things that we can see, some of them are living and have souls, and among those they have sensations, desires, thoughts, and fears, and that among those animals are human beings who have pulled themselves up from a primitive condition by use of various kinds of technology and come to comprehend the courses and motions of the heavens and the moon, sun, stars, and separate out and see the large regions of land, sea, and sky. Now we finally arrive at a point to explain the large-scale happenings within that environment, most of which could cause disturbance or trouble when we don't realize the cause. So, we've proceeded from the first two books to give an account of the microscopic levels of atoms in void, and then a thorough going account of how living things and specifically the human soul can function on the basis of these atomic principles, and then moved on to give an account of human development and the growing comprehension of the human world and the wider world of cosmology. So, these physical assumptions have been drawn out from microscopic principles to explain macroscopic phenomena and draw from them ethical implications, like about our fear of death, about our desires for different things. And we have generally progressed from the very opening of the poem which begins by invoking Venus as the goddess of birth and generation and creation, and we've seen a steady progression through a kind of life cycle of growing complexity and difficulties until the discussion in the last book of the overall decline. And now we'll see that this one ends with a horrific account of death due to disease in the episode of the plague at Athens, and so we will have completed an entire balanced cycle of a natural lifespan. Now, the contents of book six, the poem here, again, as in the previous book and some earlier books consists of a praise and even over-the-top deification of Epicurus, before the main line of arguments over a thousand lines, they consist of an interconnected set of explanations of individual meteorological and geological phenomena, natural phenomena, ending with an account of the cause of disease and plagues and an especially elaborate description of the plague at Athens. Now, the poem is again a eulogy to Epicurus with which we should compare books three and five. Here, however, Epicurus is set within the context of the history of Athens, which Lucretius credits with its legendary successes of perfecting agriculture and good laws. And then he says after those great accomplishments came the greatest accomplishment of all perfecting, as it were, philosophy with Epicurus. And this celebration of Athens is balanced by what happens at the end of book six with the plague when Athens degenerates and civilization is on the verge of collapse due to the desperation of the disease. But this has to be balanced by these positive comments about the development and progress of things in Athens and especially at its greatest point, the teachings of Epicurus. So Epicurus is again described as being godlike, but his main accomplishment is described as revealing the limits of desire and fear to humans and thus reducing their suffering. So unlike the Epicurian gods which are located in a place that they are free from any concern and don't intervene in nature and don't have any concern for humans whatsoever, Epicurus, because he is concerned for human beings has shared with him the light of his philosophy. And thus we have the final repetition of the overall slogan of the poem in this introductory section, quote, this terror then this darkness of the mind must needs be scattered not by the rays of the sun and the gleaming shafts of day, but by the outer view and the inner law of nature. That is we have to explain how all of these phenomena occur according to the law of nature and according to certain limits and that way we will be able to live with them tranquilly. So that is the overall purpose of the plethora of arguments that are given in this book. Now that Lucretius has discussed the celestial phenomena in book five, he now moves on to discuss the natural phenomena in the sky and on earth, large scale phenomena in our immediate vicinity, but especially one's events and phenomena that have been attributed to the gods. Ignorance of the material causes and atomistic explanations of these things have caused humans to fear them and attribute them to the gods, gods like Zeus and Poseidon, but a true account of the gods and what the gods are really like coupled with the true account of the causes of these meteorological phenomena will remove our fear and superstition. Now the correct account of the gods is of course that the gods are these tranquil beings free from any care or concern for nature and human beings whatsoever and the truth about the meteorological phenomena is that the true causes of storms, thunderbolts, earthquakes and other such things are atoms moving in void and recognizing and understanding this will eliminate our fear of these things and are the idea that they can be used to punish or menace or terrorize us intentionally by the gods. Now throughout Lucretius offers multiple explanations of the several phenomena that he discusses and this is entirely consistent with Epicurus's scientific method as he lays out in the letter to Pythagnes and Lucretius compares this to just as if one were to see a dead body from a distance there would be multiple possible explanations of the causes of death and it would be precipitous and not at all fitting for a wise person to insist on just one explanation if one is not in a position to examine the phenomena more closely. Now meteorological and celestial phenomena like lightning and earthquakes and the courses and speeds of the sun moon and stars and so forth are necessarily far removed from us and so we cannot possibly insist on a single explanation of them a single dogmatic explanation. All we have to do is get as many possible explanations as are consistent with our basic propositions and the fundamental assumptions of atomism and then we will know that there is available some naturalistic explanation so we don't have to attribute them to some other intelligent being. Lucretius had already made this point extensively in book five as we saw and the explanations given by Epicurus in the letter to Pythagnes are generally closely paralleled here. Now we begin with thunder and lightning these are the most perhaps salient meteorological phenomenon because they're the purview of Zeus he's the one that throws the thunder bolt and uses lightning as a means of punishing and terrifying people but thunder may be caused by clouds crashing together tearing and scraping one another or when wind is enclosed by a cloud it might burst open or when wind blows through or rends clouds or by lightning falling on a wet cloud might extinguish it causing a hissing sound or by hail rattling in a cloud all of those might be causes of the sound we experience as thunder lightning may also be caused by collision of clouds or when wind gets enclosed in a cloud and causes it to burst or when wind is squeezed out of the clouds and they collide or when clouds thin out and start falling to the ground any of those could be causes to explain the natural phenomena of thunder and lightning and Lucretius discusses why lightning is seen before thunder is heard and he gives essentially the correct explanation that light particles travel faster than sound particles so again a materialist explanation is appropriate here then the elaborate explanation of thunder bolts specifically they are lightnings that strike near the ground they consist he says of a kind of fire not water or air he's concerned to explain their power to destroy buildings and monuments and even people and animals they're caused by clouds he says piling very high on top of one another what we see is only the lowest part of some towering structure thunder bolts are full of seeds of fire and when wind collects combines sharpens and drives forth with rain or when the wind splits a crowd a cloud or when wind picks up fire and strikes it like when we strike flint with iron and Lucretius goes into a lot of detail about the speed of thunder bolts their frequency in various seasons and so on all in an attempt to assure us that the naturalistic explanation is at hand now these are plausible natural causes of thunder bolts and lightning and they're of course meant to displace the superstitious belief encouraged by religion that these are things sent from the gods like Zeus and Poseidon and this seems to be the reason why so much space and detail is dedicated to specifically these phenomena again they're the most salient ones attributed to the anger of the gods and their desire to punish humans so it's not just that the phenomena themselves need to be explained but we need to because we have a different picture of the gods they aren't really angry and they don't really need weapons in order to inflict punishment on us and so that's not what thunder and lightning is we need to see thunder and lightning as a regular natural phenomena and that will allow us to see gods like Zeus and Poseidon as not at all being good representation of what the gods are like they aren't angry they don't punish human beings Lucretius points out for example that many bad people aren't struck by lightning while many innocent people are struck by lightning why would god let that happen lightning often falls on deserts and oceans where there are no people to punish and the source from which lightning originates is obscured in darkness why wouldn't Zeus just make himself a parent so that we all know and understand why specifically this person is being punished and lightning often falls on many places at once including temples to the gods and empty mountaintops so there are no religious reasons to believe this view but there are also better explanations available to us through natural science and the same is true of phenomena like water spouts and whirlwinds these are columns of water that appear to descend from the sky into the sea they Lucretius says are caused by wind that fills up a cloud but it's unable to burst it and so it drives it down towards the sea where eventually it does burst causing a kind of boiling of the sea or it's caused when a vortex of wind draws down many clouds which crash together near the surface of the sea and this leads to a general explanation of clouds clouds are formed with a large number of particles atoms ultimately colliding in the air they become only slightly entangled however and so they form small bits of clouds which then join together to form larger and larger clouds that can eventually encompass all parts of the sky that you can see the particles arise from bodies of water on earth like the sea or rivers or they may he says be driven down from the ether some of them may even come from other worlds but at any rate the causes of them are entirely natural and within the realm of nature they are not created by the gods despite the fact that people pray for rain clouds the cause of them is entirely natural as is the cause of rain itself and phenomena connected with rain like rainbows and snail snow hail frost and ice rain forms in clouds when moisture or what do you call seeds of water rise upwards from bodies of water on earth the clouds then become stuff full of moisture and they're forced to discharge water either straight down in showers when the pressure of wind and their own weight is too great or they drip like candle wax when melted by the heat of the sun now Lucretius's discussion of the other phenomena connected with rain like the rainbow is extremely brief he basically just describes its occurrence when the sun's rays are cast from the opposite direction of rain showers then he says the hues of the rainbow stand forth in the black clouds and he also doesn't go into very much detail about snow hail frost and ice but he merely describes them as hardening of water and promises that their causes can be understood on the basis of their elements by contrast Epicurus does give some very interesting and elaborate explanations of phenomena like ice in the letter to Pythagles the next thing to be explained is earthquakes these cause a lot of fear these have been attributed to actions of the gods and Lucretius begins by pointing out that the instability of the very ground beneath our feet shows how ridiculous it is to think that the earth is everlasting and eternal and that it of course shows how it's mortal and destructible at the same time earthquakes are not caused by gods like Poseidon but have entirely naturalistic causes either by turbulence happening in rivers pools and lakes in caverns that are beneath the earth or due to cave walls and cliffs that are under the earth collapsing due to the movement of water or air or internal winds blowing through the hollow parts of earth or extremely violent external winds now Lucretius discusses the sea he raises the question of why the volume of the sea doesn't constantly increase since rivers are continually flowing into it and rains are falling into it so why doesn't it keep increasing and increasing and we see kind of sea level rise everywhere well one answer he says is that everything that flows into it is but a drop compared to the whole volume of the sea so we don't notice that there is a slight increase but another answer is that the water can be drawn off by the sun or wind or evaporated into clouds or it oozes into the hollow parts of earth now it's not obvious and Lucretius doesn't explain here why this phenomena needs explanation why it might cause fear or anxiety if we didn't have a naturalistic explanation and it's almost as if he is just interested in providing an explanation for the phenomena itself according to his physical theory but when he turns to volcanoes again we're back to a topic that causes fear and trepidation and has been attributed to the gods and Lucretius specifically focuses on Mount Edna which is a volcano in Sicily still active today and it also happens to be the volcano into which the early Greek philosopher Empedocles is supposed to have jumped to his death and this is the same Empedocles who also wrote a didactic epic poem about nature and to whom Lucretius refers in book one and praises his poetry now Lucretius compares the eruption of the volcano to an attack of fever on a human body and referring to the causes of horrible symptoms of fever he says quote there are seeds of many things and this earth in heaven has enough disease and malady from which the force of measureless disease might avail to spread abroad and that's very interesting deposit tiny invisible sources of disease that come from the environment because this is an early attempt to describe what we now call contagion theory of disease similarly he says tiny seeds flowing in from the infinite universe could create a great cataclysmic effect like the eruption of Mount Edna and this he explains by pointing out that there are many caverns under the mountain and that um wind and air rush through them heat up and then burst out through the mountains throughout things are projected from the mountain also because water from the nearby sea rushes into the hollows underneath and brings uh things in the next phenomena to be explained is uh flooding and Lucretius focuses on the very traditional topic of the periodic flooding of the Nile which he says is due either to the blowing of the Atesian winds sand blocking up the mouth of the river excessive rains or melted snow but at any rate a naturalistic cause and this has long been a topic of on-nature literature to explain this particular phenomenon many previous writers had offered explanations and Lucretius seems to gather up all that he's aware of and accept them all as possible explanations and perhaps it's because the flooding of the Nile was associated with Egyptian deities in Egypt that Lucretius is concerned to offer this naturalistic explanation but it seems unlikely that it will have been a cause of fear at least for his Roman audience so again here we might just have an intrinsic interest in the natural phenomena the next thing to be explained is the appearance of noxious fumes in the environment so he explains the Avernian lakes which are pools of hot springs near Cumae in Italy which were believed to be an entrance to the underworld because there was a sulfurous smell from noxious fumes in the area and birds who fly over it are said to die because of this and Lucretius describes similar places in Athens and in Syria but of course he insists that these are not the gates of Orcus or where you enter the underworld there's a purely natural explanation for these phenomena quote as I've said often before in the earth are elements of every kind of thing many which belong to food being useful to life and many which can strike us with disease and make death come quickly this then leads to a digression into the ambient causes of diseases a passage again inspirational to Renaissance medical proponents of the contagion theory so poisonous fumes seep out of the earth in various places but this is just because of natural elements that have come to settle there similarly other springs hot springs are cold springs they were considered sacred or divine places and shrines were often set up near them but Lucretius offers naturalistic explanations of both the ordinary and extraordinary phenomenon that are connected with them so he explains for example why springs might seem to run colder in the summer time he describes a hot spring near the shrine of Ammon in Egypt which seems to heat up at night and this curious phenomena he says a lot of other authors have written about he offers an alternative naturalistic explanation that it's heated because seeds of fire and hollows under the spring are pushed up when the earth contracts due to cold and then when the rest of the earth heats up during daytime these seeds return to the other hollows and so they aren't pushed up into the spring that explanation he offers and prefers in order to counteract the view that it's heated by the sun passing under the earth at night he doesn't like that explanation although it's unclear why not accept it as a possibility since he has earlier accepted the possibility that the sun may pass under the earth at night he also discusses a cold spring at Dodona from which torches can supposedly be lit near the surface he explains this in terms of the water containing seeds of fire and he compares a spring at Eredus which sends free water up through salty seawater and he shows how it's possible for water to flow upwards in these springs because it's pressed out by other water air or fire he's concerned to show it doesn't spontaneously move upwards but of course consistent with its heaviness being constituted out of atoms always moves downwards that brings us to the topic of magnets and other attractive surfaces which might be instanced as an exception of that rule so Lucretius next explains quote by what law of nature it comes to pass that iron can be attracted to the stone which the Greeks call the magnet now Lucretius describes how people wonder at how the magnets function they were of interest to early Greek natural philosophers going as far back as Thales who attributed their power to the presence of a soul and he considered all things to be full of souls and even gods democrat is however explain them on the theory of atoms and void assuming there were emanations from the magnet to the iron now of course Lucretius wants to offer a naturalistic explanation but it's interesting that his explanation seems to closely follow one given by Plato in the ion and in general his account forms a kind of miniature treatise on magnetism complete with an exhortation to the reader to pay attention to details a statement of general principles atomistic principles basically they can explain the phenomenon and then the solution to the phenomenon now Lucretius reminds us of his view that there are constant emanations coming from composite bodies odors sounds moistures etc not to mention the simulacra all of that has been established in book four further all composite bodies are more or less porous even rocks metals walls and human bodies in the encompassing atmosphere contain voids and different particles affect different bodies in different ways because those different bodies are composed of differently shaped particles and have porous and voids of different sizes and shapes so the explanation of the magnet is that in the presence of iron it sends out emanations which beat back the intervening air creating a void which the iron then rushes in to fill a magnet held above iron will cause it to rise upwards because it creates a vacuum into which the iron is beaten by bodies lying outside the vacuum under the iron for the iron can't of course spontaneously move upwards so the reason some metals like gold aren't affected by the magnet is due to their density and heaviness and weight while other materials like wood contain too many pores so that the surrounding air is never evacuated so the body doesn't rush in to fill it and he eventually generalizes his discussion into an account of why all kinds of different substances adhere closely to one another like water and wine or glue and timbers or dye and wool while others refuse to mix and are sort of antithetical like oil and water and these he explains according to the interactions of their various textures and so he mentions that iron and the magnet may fit together like hooks and eyes because of their textures the final phenomenon for which Lucretius offers a naturalistic explanation is disease now he doesn't mention the fact that plagues have been attributed to divine punishment but his naturalistic account seems intended like the rest of the accounts in books five to six to clear away religious superstition and fear now he points out that he's already argued several times in fact that just as helpful particles are found in our environment so there are noxious seeds that may become gathered together and cause the air itself to become diseased or polluted thus a theory of contagion or airborne illness Lucretius thinks that the ultimate origin of these seeds could be anywhere from outer space to putrefaction processes that occur within the earth something he's discussed in numerous other places in the work he stresses that there are different effects of different climates on diseases and there is an effect of climate change whether that's caused by travel if you move to a different climate you may be susceptible to different diseases or if you stay in the same place and nature and the weather changes that climate change can result in different diseases he talks not just about airborne transmission of contagion but mentions that plague hovering in the air can fall on water and food and he compares what happens to what happens with diseases among farm animals so offering a thorough going naturalistic account of the causes of disease now the entire poem ends with a description of the plague of Athens that afflicted it in 430 BC Lucretius gives an account that is adapted and actually closely follows an earlier description by the historian Thucydides and he may work in other sources including Hippocratic medical works but it's quite an elaborate historical account and goes into many details and it raises many problems most of it is consumed with the gory details about the symptoms of the disease and the horrifying pain and suffering that it inflicted on both body and mind for example he describes the painful sensation of an internal burning and drying out that was accompanied by an unrelenting thirst that would drive people to throw themselves into wells with their mouths open and he describes a generalized anxiety disorder among not only the afflicted but also the unafflicted so that the entire society is driven mad and he reports that the usual outcome of the disease was death after eight days of intense suffering and that those who had recovered even partially had to have numerous amputations and so this raises some challenges for an Epicurean theory of pleasure and pain uh is sharp pain always short lived uh well eight days of intense suffering of plague and the longer period of watching your loved ones die and so forth might test that theory or test your commitment to that theory now in addition to these mostly factual and medical details that derive largely from Thucydides Lucretius adds some what we might call moralizing elements that we can ask how they fit with wider Epicurean philosophy so for example when he points out that some people had to have their limbs or genitals amputated due to the disease he says that instead of just dying some people would actually go through with this so firmly had the sharp fear of death got ahold of them and it's as if he's condemning them for fearing death so that they mutilate their own bodies but this is balanced with his description of others who gave up on life realizing they had become afflicted quote losing courage he would die with a grieving heart looking for death to come he would breathe out his spirit so whether you gave up immediately or soldiered on and even amputated limbs there was no hope of coming out of it so this serves merely to convey the incredibly desperate situation and does not suggest I think a moralizing point again you might read a moralizing point into his comparison of those who shunned to visit their own sick because he calls them over greedy of life and fearful of death those are very bad things according to Epicureanism they're actually said by Lucretius to have been punished a while afterwards by slaughtering neglect with a death hard and shameful abandoned and reft of help now this seems like it could be potentially very inconsistent with Epicurean ethics because the whole point of describing disease and even the plague at Athens should be to show that the causes are entirely naturalistic and that they affect everyone equally and they are not a kind of punishment for moral failings if you think that powerful forces like gods punish people with diseases or with thunderbolts for that matter then you're very far from an Epicurean way of seeing things so why does Lucretius even poetically suggest that people are punished for this fear of death well as in the previous case he balances it pointing out that those who stayed near to hand were would fair no better of course they died by contagion in the toil and he describes the miseries that they undergo so once again the disease offers no quarter no escape it affects the moral and the immoral equally and that is because it is a natural phenomenon and not a punishment coming from the gods now towards the end he points out that death had filled all the sacred shrines of the gods with lifeless bodies and all the temples of the heavenly ones remained everywhere numbered with carcasses for these places the guardians had filled with guests for indeed now the religion of the gods and their godhead was not counted for much the grief of the moment overwhelmed at all so this is not I think a moral condemnation meant to show the collapse of society or civilization due to fear of gods but to show the irrelevance of religion how religion offered no help against this and so people abandon it when necessity replaced the need to and even the possibility of worshiping the gods and so I also don't think that Lucretius objects when he describes funerals being deserted and unattended and hurried on almost in rivalry although the way the entire poem ends with describing clashes over funeral pyres raises an interesting point he says nor did the old rites of burial continue in the city for the whole people was disordered and in panic and every man sorrowing buried his dead laid out as best he could and too many things the sudden calamity and filthy poverty prompted men for with great clamoring they would place their own can on the high piled pyres of others and set the torches to them often wrangling with much bloodshed rather than abandon the bodies so they didn't want to abandon the bodies is this because of a religious impulse to ensure that they were disposed of in the correct way no because it's just been explained that burial was the custom of the city and that this wasn't followed either so once again it's the utter desperation in the face of natural causes so why why me we may ask does Lucretius and this entire poem all six books with this horrific description of the plague well for one thing it balances poetically the description of birth and generation with which the poem begins with the praise of venus and the description of the basic seeds and generation of everything here we complete the life cycle by describing the death and degeneration and disease that affect things and that's really how things are that's really day rarum natura now another point is that the plague and its horrible effects may be worsened even if not literally a punishment for the moral ignorance of the Athenians prior to the philosophical enlightenment of Epicurus their unreasonable fear of death and the gods motivates unethical behavior like it might motivate the self amputations and suicides or the clashes over funeral pyres but Lucretius is incredibly graphic description of the plague some have suggested serves as a kind of test for the reader at the end of the poem if the reader has inculcated the poem's overall epicurean message they will be able to bear the horrible description of the plague's effects with equanimity and tranquility like the cliff dwellers of the poem of book two who look down on ships and storms at sea or clashing armies on the plains but fill feel themselves a kind of tranquility because they are free of those concerns so the reader is free of those concerns this is an ancient event that happened long ago but should it happen again the epicurean philosophy taken as a medicine from reading and studying the last six books should offer some kind of consolation so Lucretius's epicureanism and materialist atomism in general explains this plague as a natural phenomenon removing the need for supernatural explanation and thus religious superstition and the epicurean philosophy also offers a consolation for the anxiety and distress that afflict us in a time of plague and epicureanism offers a kind of philosophical inoculation against fear anxiety and distress thank you