Page:The Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology, Volume 1, 1854.djvu/43

 * Oil Lucretius. 33 reads si manticuler, and still more strangely explains it. I propose : Quippe etenim sumam hoc quoque uti ; as c and qu, c and t, t and I, are frequently interchanged, it is easy to get sumam cocuti, sumant oculi; (n. 291, it is perhaps best to insert hoc not id before cogatur). Just above Lucretius has intro- duced a concession by the words, id quoque uti concedam. The argument here clearly is, "For though I were to assume this point also, that a finite number of generating elements of one thing were tossed about throughout the All, yet whence, by what force, in what manner will they come together and com- bine in so vast an ocean, such an alien medley of matter ?" The construction of n. 483, &c, supposing my reading of quoniam to be right, where quoniam. . . fac enim, &c. . . . down to 495, is all the protasis, will, I think, illustrate in. 425, &c, where you have quoniam at the commencement ; then in 429 nam longe fyc. wrongly altered by Lachmann to jam, for the apodosis does not begin here ; the sentence is then interrupted by the paren- thetical lines 431 and 432, and the protasis is again taken up at 434 : Nunc igitur &c. Compare also iv. 546163, where the anacoluthon is precisely similar. I now proceed to some other passages in which the philosophy of Lucretius has been misunderstood. The poet (i. 995) says : " All things are ever carried on in ceaseless motion from all parts, and particles of matter sent up out of the infinite are supplied from below (inferna)." Lachmann reads ceterna, and says : " Marullus aiternaque rei convenienter, quamvis secus vi- deatur Wakefieldo et Forbigero, qui quotiens philosophantur delirant." But here it is not Wakefield and Forbiger, "qui delirant." Epicurus conceived his atoms as originally racing through space with a uniform perpendicular downward motion, and thus incapable of combining and producing aught ; when, by his curious supposition of an imperceptibly small declination from the perpendicular, they were enabled to clash together, atoms could then receive by impact an upward or a transverse motion ; so that in his view the downward movement represented the destructive power, the upward the productive and conser- vative power. Lucretius says (i. 1049) that in order to preserve existence, "it is necessary that many particles should rise up from below, suboriri." This might be illustrated at greater length. But it will be said that Lucretius repeats over and Vol. I. March, 1854. 3