The Early Textual History of Lucretius' De rerum natura

David Butterfield author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Cambridge University Press

Published:17th Oct '13

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

This hardback is available in another edition too:

The Early Textual History of Lucretius' De rerum natura cover

Surveys the first millennium in the circulation of Lucretius' De rerum natura, analysing its ancient readers, annotators, scribes and owners.

The first full study of the survival of Lucretius' De rerum natura, the controversial six-book poem espousing Epicurean philosophy. A detailed analysis of the poem's circulation, readers and commentators in antiquity, as well as its medieval scribes and owners, sheds light on the poem's tenuous threads of transmission.This is the first detailed analysis of the fate of Lucretius' De rerum natura from its composition in the 50s BC to the creation of our earliest extant manuscripts during the Carolingian Age. Close investigation of the knowledge of Lucretius' poem among writers throughout the Roman and medieval world allows fresh insight into the work's readership and reception, and a clear assessment of the indirect tradition's value for editing the poem. The first extended analysis of the 170+ subject headings (capitula) that intersperse the text reveals the close engagement of its Roman readers. A fresh inspection and assignation of marginal hands in the poem's most important manuscript (the Oblongus) provides new evidence about the work of Carolingian correctors and offers the basis for a new Lucretian stemma codicum. Further clarification of the interrelationship of Lucretius' Renaissance manuscripts gives additional evidence of the poem's reception and circulation in fifteenth-century Italy.

'The style and the structure of the volume are very clear and the book can be considered a valuable tool …' Bryn Mawr Classical Review

ISBN: 9781107037458

Dimensions: 223mm x 143mm x 24mm

Weight: 590g

368 pages