GRICE E LUCREZIO

 The reception of Lucretius's De rerum natura  (DRN) is a saga of extreme highs and lows, shifting from foundational influence in Rome to near-oblivion in the Middle Ages, before sparking a philosophical revolution in Renaissance Italy.    I. Roman Philosophy (1st c. BCE – 5th c. CE) Lucretius was a massive, if controversial, presence in the Golden and Silver Ages of Roman literature.  54 BCE: The earliest recorded critique appears in a letter from Cicero to his brother, praising the poem for its "inspired brilliance" and "great artistry". Augustan Age (late 1st c. BCE): Virgil famously alludes to Lucretius in the Georgics ("Happy is he who has discovered the causes of things"), though he later uses myth to counter Lucretius’s rationalism. Horace adopts a pragmatic, less dogmatic Epicureanism, while Ovid predicts the poem will only perish with the end of the world. Imperial Rome: Seneca the Younger quotes the poem multiple times, and Pliny the Elder lists Lucretius as a primary source for his Natural History. Late Antiquity: Early Christian writers like Lactantius (c. 250–325) used Lucretius’s attacks on pagan superstition to support Christianity but mocked his atomism as "brainless".  II. Italian Medieval Philosophy (6th c. – 14th c.) During this period, the work nearly vanished from the Italian intellectual landscape, preserved only in rare Carolingian manuscripts.  7th Century: Isidore of Seville is a rare exception, quoting Lucretius twelve times in his works on natural history. "The Dark Age" of DRN: For centuries, Lucretius was virtually unknown to Italian medieval scholastics. His denial of the soul’s immortality and a creator God made his work "dangerous" and largely inaccessible in a world dominated by Aristotelian and Christian thought.  III. Italian Renaissance & Early Modern (15th c. – 18th c.)  The "rediscovery" of Lucretius is often cited as a catalyst for the modern world.  1417: Humanist Poggio Bracciolini discovers a manuscript of De rerum natura in a German monastery, bringing the text back to Italy. 15th Century Florence: Thinkers like Marsilio Ficino and Pomponio Leto begin engaging with the text. It becomes a radical tool for Machiavelli, who uses Lucretian atomism and the "swerve" (clinamen) to help frame his ideas on free will and political chance. 1511: Johannes Baptista Pius publishes the first major commentary on the poem, attempting to reconcile its atomism with orthodox frameworks. Counter-Reformation (late 16th c.): As the Church cracked down on "heretical" ideas, Italian readers adopted a "dissimulatory code"—praising the poem’s beauty while publicly distancing themselves from its "godless" physics to avoid censorship. 1589: Girolamo Frachetta publishes the Spositione, the first vernacular Italian explanation of Lucretius, making his radical ideas accessible beyond Latin-reading elites.  IV. Modern Italian Philosophy (19th c. – Present) 19th Century: Lucretius influenced the pessimistic materialism of Giacomo Leopardi, who found resonance in Lucretius’s depiction of a "stepmother" nature and the ultimate void. 20th/21st Century: Scholars like Stephen Greenblatt (in his 2011 book The Swerve) revitalized public interest in the Italian reception of Lucretius, arguing that the poem's rediscovery in the Italian Renaissance was the spark that "invented modernity".