On the Nature of Things

Couverture
Hackett Publishing, 9 mars 2001 - 262 pages
0 Avis
Martin Ferguson Smith's work on Lucretius is both well known and highly regarded. However, his 1969 translation of De Rerum Natura--long out of print--is virtually unknown. Readers will share our excitement in the discovery of this accurate and fluent prose rendering. For this edition, Professor Smith provides a revised translation, new Introduction, headnotes and bibliography.
 

Avis des internautes - Rédiger un commentaire

Aucun commentaire n'a été trouvé aux emplacements habituels.

Autres éditions - Tout afficher

Expressions et termes fréquents

Fréquemment cités

Page 97 - On that hard Pagan world disgust And secret loathing fell. Deep weariness and sated lust Made human life a hell. 'In his cool hall, with haggard eyes, The Roman noble lay; He drove abroad, in furious guise, Along the Appian way. 'He made a feast, drank fierce and fast, And crown'd his hair with flowers— No easier nor no quicker pass'd The impracticable hours.
Page 68 - The Gods, who haunt The lucid interspace of world and world, Where never creeps a cloud, or moves a wind, Nor ever falls the least white star of snow, Nor ever lowest roll of thunder moans, Nor sound of human sorrow mounts to mar P 2 Their sacred everlasting calm...
Page 91 - For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn. Or busy housewife ply her evening care; No children run to lisp their sire's return, Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.
Page 151 - Never, lago. Like to the Pontic sea, Whose icy current and compulsive course Ne'er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on To the Propontic and the Hellespont, Even so my bloody thoughts, with violent pace, Shall ne'er look back, ne'er ebb to humble love, Till that a capable and wide revenge Swallow them up. Now, by yond marble heaven, [Kneels] In the due reverence of a sacred vow I here engage my words.
Page 37 - Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark : and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other. Certainly, the contemplation of death, as the wages of sin and passage to another world, is holy and religious ; but the fear of it, as a tribute due unto nature, is weak. Yet in religious meditations there is sometimes mixture of vanity and of superstition. You shall read in some of the friars...
Page xv - It is the fashion of the day to lay great stress upon what they call "imagination" and "invention," the two commonest of qualities: an Irish peasant with a little whiskey in his head will imagine and invent more than would furnish forth a modern poem. If Lucretius had not been spoiled by the Epicurean system, we should have had a far superior poem to any now in existence. As mere poetry, it is the first of Latin poems. What then has ruined it? His ethics. Pope has not this defect; his moral is as...
Page 160 - In those days, again, many species must have died out altogether and failed to reproduce their kind. Every species that you now see drawing the breath of life has been protected and preserved from the beginning of the world either by cunning or by prowess or by speed.
Page xv - Lucretius had limed the wings of his swift spirit in the dregs of the sensible world; and Virgil, with a modesty that ill became his genius, had affected the fame of an imitator, even whilst he created anew all that he copied; and none among the flock of mock-birds, though their notes...
Page 202 - Next in order I will proceed to discuss by what law of nature it comes to pass that iron can be attracted by that stone which the Greeks call the Magnet from the name of its native place, because it has its origin within the bounds of the country of the Magnesians. This stone men wonder at ; as it often produces a chain of rings hanging down from it.
Page ii - Aeneiaque arma legentur Roma triumphati dum caput orbis erit; donec erunt ignes arcusque Cupidinis arma discentur numeri, culte Tibulle, tui. Gallus et Hesperiis et Gallus notus Eois et sua cum Gallo nota Lycoris erit.

À propos de l'auteur (2001)

Martin Ferguson Smith is Prof. of Classics Emeritus, Univ. of Durham, United Kingdom. Among his scholarly achievements are his revisions of the Rouse translation of De Rerum Natura for the Loeb Classical Library.

Informations bibliographiques