"Imagine there's no heaven..." This course offers close reading in Latin of extensive selections of the DE RERUM NATURA, the remarkable poem in which Lucretius argues that the world is made up of atoms, that the soul dies with the body, that the gods never help or punish human beings, and that mortals should live their lives in search of the peace of mind of Epicurean philosophy. We will try to understand Lucretius' Latin, which we will hope to read with increasing ease and accuracy to relate fully to his rhetorical and poetic techniques and to the literary, philosophical, historical, and cultural background of this unusual and fascinating poem. |