Toward a New Interlinear Gloss of De Rerum Natura

Quote from Cassius

Looks like it is Lucian I am remembering, so the issue would be the word in Lucian's Greek --

Lucian, section 47:

τὰς Ἐπικούρου κυρίας δόξας, τὸ κάλλιστον, ὡς οἶσθα, τῶν βιβλίων καὶ κεφαλαιώδη περιέχον τῆς τἀνδρὸς σοφίας τὰ δόγματα
So, you're correct. Lucian specifically uses κυρίας δόξας kurias doxas, simply the inflected form of Kuriai Doxai, and, of course, we have the title in the list in DL as Godfrey points out. Plus it works make sense for DL to include that book just like he included the letters.,

Don is there a greek word for "book" there in DL or does it give any hint that it might be a "list" rather than a "book"?

Quote from Cassius

Don is there a greek word for "book" there in DL or does it give any hint that it might be a "list" rather than a "book"?

βιβλίων

... the Epicurus's principal doctrines, the noblest, as you know, of the books...

It goes on to say the book holds a summary of The Man's (Epicurus) wisdom of the beliefs (dogmata δόγματα,)

[PS. I know that's a really clunky quick-n-dirty translation btw. All the words are in order but...]

Would we be doing too much of a stretch to infer that calling it the noblest of the books implies that it was in a form similar to the other "books"? Once you get past the initial greeting in the letters, it doesn't read that much differently in my mind from the letters, especially in the way the final doctrines are directed at organizing one's life for the best result, and not lamenting the passing of friends.

Agreed. "Readers Digest Condensed Epicurean philosophy"

I have to vent for a moment at how frustrating it can be to correlate the various translations. For only one example:

Just before the memorable section about Epicurus starting "Humana, ante oculous....." the 1743 edition has this lengthy sentence about the nature of the gods (the graphic above just has the last part). (The full text is "For it must needs be that all the nature of the gods enjoys life everlasting in perfect peace, sundered and separated far away from our world. For free from all grief, free from danger, mighty in its own resources, never lacking aught of us, it is not won by virtuous service nor touched by wrath.")

Munro does not include that.

Bailey's 1926 does not include that.

But by 1947, Bailey has added it back in, and the Loeb Rouse/Smith has it, as does Smith in his most recent Hackett edition.

Smith's Hackett version gives a footnote that says that it also appears at Book 2 line 646, so apparently some people think that this was added in by an editor and should not be there twice.

Who knows for sure, but it does make for frustrations in trying to get the various editions to line up, and it's particularly galling when the same translator (Bailey) takes two different positions in two different editions.

Quote from Don

Agreed. "Readers Digest Condensed Epicurean philosophy"

I checked the Arundel manuscript of DL and the Principal Doctrines are <6 pages. I'm curious to check any breaks in the text and see if they line up to natural breaks in the text flow of ideas/themes.

Quote from Don

Quote from Don

Agreed. "Readers Digest Condensed Epicurean philosophy"

I checked the Arundel manuscript of DL and the Principal Doctrines are <6 pages. I'm curious to check any breaks in the text and see if they line up to natural breaks in the text flow of ideas/themes.

Lo and behold, I found some earlier Greek manuscripts (< 1400) digitized online so I can't compare those too. Don't hold your breath, but it'll be on my list of things to do.

Tonight I finally finished correlating my online copy of Bailey to the paragraph / line number divisions in the Loeb edition. That means that for the remainder of the Lucretius podcast I should be able to be a little more precise in referring to "line numbers."

But the reason I make this post is directed at Joshua: I still don't have a feel for whose translation I really think is "most literal."

I get the idea in comparing the Smith to Bailey that there's a lot of "paraphrasing" going on and that we might have a lot of simply looking at Bailey and using a different wording. I don't have a feel yet for whether the word choice of Bailey or Smith is really closer to the Latin word form and word order, which is what I would prefer. I have always suspected that Monro was the closest of all, but I am not sure there either. And the 1743 edition significantly predates Monro, but despite its age in many instances reads (to me) more smoothly than Munro, which I find counterintuitive.

So Joshua as you make progress in your interlinear edition, after a couple of pages it might be very helpful to try to gauge which public domain translation is most helpful to you in aligning the latin with an understandable English word. To me that would be one of the benefits of at least starting on the interlinear - it might give us once and for all a basis to classify the different translations as to which is "closest" to the Latin.

Thank you for reminding me of the Watson translation! I have had it for a long while but for some reason it doesn't seem to be mentioned as often as Munro or Bailey by commentators. I seem to remember something turned me away from it myself (maybe some religious lecturing in the notes?) but I cannot remember. It certainly does have useful notes and seems worthy of checking against the others whenever looking into any particular passage. Interesting that I do not see him mention Munro in his history of translations - maybe I am overlooking that too. I do agree with his comment that Creech takes far too many liberties - enough to make his version unusable in my eyes.

Anyone have any thoughts on the W.E. Leonard verse translation or the R.E. Latham prose translation? Not for interlinear use, just as general translations.

As for me, I have to confess that I have a personal prejudice against the Leonard poetry version. That's the free version that is frequently found on the internet, and that's the version I tried to read for literally decades, always giving up. I am sure the majority of that blame is on me, and maybe if I looked at it today I would feel differently, but at least for beginners I would not recommend Leonard. If someone wants "poetry" I would send them to Rolfe Humphries' "the way things are. If someone wants the current standard, I would send them to Smith's Hackett edition. If someone wants public domain prose, I would send them to Bailey or Munro or 1743 or Watson. I have the feeling that there are probably many others like me whose first exposure to Lucretius is Leonard, and I think that unless someone is already very familiar with the subject matter, the poetry form makes it much harder to get a good grip on the point of it all.

I don't think I am familiar at all with Latham.

Other opinions?

Quote from Cassius

If someone wants "poetry" I would send them to Rolfe Humphries' "the way things are. If someone wants the current standard, I would send them to Smith's Hackett edition.

I admit my "poetry" preference is Stallings since hers is the one I first read all the way through.

I like Stallings as well, it's an attempt to make DRN more relatable to us modern folks. Which of course has pros and cons.

Latham, I think, is a similar attempt in prose as I gather, released I think in the 50s.

Leonard is bundled with Munro and a Latin version in an inexpensive Delphi Kindle edition, which is what made me curious about it.

Quote from Godfrey

I like Stallings as well, it's an attempt to make DRN more relatable to us modern folks. Which of course has pros and cons.

I am always impressed by her commitment to maintaining the poetic meter throughout the work.