The Swoop and Surge of Life: Lucretius on Ethics in Motion
Ethics, power and a life in motion.
Love, Strife and The Mad Machinery of War
In his great poem, On the Nature of the Universe (De Rerum Natura), Roman poet-philosopher Lucretius (born c. 100 BCE) asks what it means to live fully in a world where everything is always in motion. A follower of the Greek philosopher Epicurus, Lucretius proposed that the universe was both dynamic and unstable. But as well as setting out a vision of physics, or how the world is, Lucretius also set out a compelling vision of what it means to live in such a world.
Ethics appears right at the beginning of On the Nature of the Universe, when Lucretius sings the praises of the goddess Venus. He conjures up the image of the struggle between Venus and Mars, between love and strife. Lucretius offers up a prayer to the Goddess (in the brilliant translation by Alicia Stallings) as follows:
Both on dry land and on the deep,
Make the mad machinery of war drift off to sleep.
For only you can favour mortal men with peace, since Mars,
Mighty in Arms, who oversees the wicked works of wars,
Conquered by Love’s everlasting wound, so often lies
Upon your lap, and gazing upwards, feasts his greedy eyes
On love, his mouth agape at you, Famed Goddess, as he tips…
