Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    On the Nature of Things (Leonard translation)
    On the Nature of Things (Leonard translation)
    On the Nature of Things (Leonard translation)
    Audiobook10 hours

    On the Nature of Things (Leonard translation)

    Written by Titus Lucretius Carus

    Narrated by LibriVox Community

    2.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook


    On the Nature of Things, written in the first century BCE by Titus Lucretius Carus, is one of the principle expositions on Epicurean philosophy and science to have survived from antiquity. Far from being a dry treatise on the many topics it covers, the original Latin version (entitled De Rerum Natura) was written in the form of an extended poem in hexameter, with a beauty of style that was admired and emulated by his successors, including Ovid and Cicero. The version read here is an English verse translation written by William Ellery Leonard. Although Leonard penned his version in the early twentieth century, he chose to adhere to both the vocabulary and meter (alternating between pentameter and hexameter) of Elizabethan-era poetry.

    While the six untitled books that comprise On the Nature of Things delve into a broad range of subjects, including the physical nature of the universe, the workings of the human mind and body, and the natural history of the Earth, Lucretius repeatedly asserts throughout the work that his chief purpose is to provide the reader with a means to escape the "darkness of the mind" imposed by superstition and ignorance. To this end he offers us his enlightening verses, that through them might be revealed to us "nature's aspect, and her laws". (Summary by Daniel Vimont)

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLibriVox
    Release dateAug 25, 2014
    On the Nature of Things (Leonard translation)

    Related to On the Nature of Things (Leonard translation)

    Related audiobooks

    Classics For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      We Should All Be Reading Ancient Poetry Right Now

      Aug 2, 2018

      In 1942, the classicist Edith Hamilton acknowledged the “dark spots” which encroach upon the worlds of Greek myth. Reading ancient poetry today makes you realize how those dark spots have grown. They may be sinister, but like black holes, they suck y

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Visit To Harar

      Oct 14, 2019

      Sir Richard Burton was an extraordinarily brave explorer and scholar with a genius for language and disguise. A year before this trip to Ethiopia, he became the first European to enter Mecca. Burton would go on to elope with his childhood sweetheart,

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Big Idea: Could The Greatest Works Of Literature Be Undiscovered?

      May 30, 2022

      When the great library at Alexandria went up in flames, it is said that the books took six months to burn. We can’t know if this is true. Exactly how the library met its end, and whether it even existed, have been subjects of speculation for more tha

      4 min read

    • Article

      Alchemy enters Europe

      Feb 28, 2020

      Alchemy enters Europe
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Leiden Amun Papyrus

      Aug 22, 2022

      The Leiden Amun Papyrus
      5 min read

    • Article

      A Tantalizing Promise

      Aug 4, 2023

      A Tantalizing Promise
      4 min read

    • Article

      Henry Vaughan’s Eternal Alchemy

      Apr 16, 2021

      What faith teaches is that we're all exiles from that Zion that is eternity, to which we shall one day return. What Vaughan understands is that if we seek eternity, it is now. The post Henry Vaughan’s Eternal Alchemy appeared first on The Millions.

      9 min read

    • Article

      A Textual Pompeii

      Jan 23, 2023

      A Textual Pompeii
      5 min read

    • Article

      Uneasy Anatomical Art

      Jun 15, 2023

      ed. Joanna Ebenstein MIT Press 2022 Hb, 253pp, £32, ISBN 9780262046039 Even in an age when acquiring a “Cabinet of Curiosities” was the aim for every learned European (male) with the means to do so, the collections of the Dutch anatomist Frederik Ruy

      2 min read

    • Article

      We Are All Ancient Mapmakers

      Jan 30, 2020

      In the first half of the sixth century B.C., a Greek man named Anaximander, born in Turkey, sketched the world in a way no one had previously thought to do. It featured a circle, divided into three equal parts. He labeled those parts Europe, Asia, an

      9 min read

    • Article

      Elements of Life

      Jun 1, 2023

      The earliest of the natural philosophers of ancient Greece, Thales was a mathematician and astronomer. His assertion that the world started from water was the first to consider the elements of the Universe. The fundamental question of what the Univer

      3 min read

    • Article

      Original Thinking

      Jan 5, 2020

      Original Thinking
      2 min read

    • Article

      Top 10 Books About Online: An Excerpt from ‘Attention: Dispatches from a Land of Distraction’

      Aug 13, 2018

      1. The Catalog of Nibru (Various, circa 21st to 20th Centuries B.C.) I, the king, was a hero already in the womb I am a king treated with respect Not only did the lord make the world appear in its correct form Lady of all the divine powers These line

      8 min read

    • Article

      Lost Knowledge Of The Ancients

      Feb 25, 2021

      Lost Knowledge Of The Ancients
      8 min read

    • Article

      Kepler's Legacy

      Mar 4, 2020

      Like almost all scholarly works of the 17th century, Kepler’s Somnium was written in Latin, making it inaccessible to the general public. But the small community of scientists interested in alien life and spaceflight took note of the book from the mo

      1 min read

    • Article

      Ten Ways to Lose Your Literature

      Jan 25, 2021

      Just as all literature is haunted by the potential of oblivion, so all lost books are animated by the redemptive hope of their rediscovery. The post Ten Ways to Lose Your Literature appeared first on The Millions.

      28 min read

    • Article

      How The Universe Works

      Feb 23, 2023

      Irven M Resnick & Kenneth F Kitchell Jr Reaktion Books 2022 Hb, 224pp, £16.95, ISBN 9781789145137 The mediæval literary world was plagued with self-effacing authors. Rather than proudly write their own name on the title pages of their manuscripts, th

      3 min read

    • Article

      Chapter & verse

      Feb 10, 2023

      Chapter & verse
      7 min read

    • Article

      Chapter & verse

      Feb 10, 2023

      Chapter & verse
      7 min read

    • Article

      The World Of Writing

      Dec 2, 2021

      The World Of Writing
      4 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for On the Nature of Things (Leonard translation)

    2.5/5

    2 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words