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Quiz about Lucretius On The Nature Of The Universe Book 1
Quiz about Lucretius On The Nature Of The Universe Book 1

Lucretius: On The Nature Of The Universe (Book 1) Quiz


This quiz concerns the first book (including the prologue) of Lucretius' 1st c. BC treatise "De Rerum Natura", or "On The Nature Of The Universe". How much do you know about this ancient philosophical text? Translation used: R. Melville (1997).

A multiple-choice quiz by AlexxSchneider. Estimated time: 5 mins.
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Time
5 mins
Type
Multiple Choice
Quiz #
354,778
Updated
Feb 22 22
# Qns
10
Difficulty
Average
Avg Score
7 / 10
Plays
234
- -
Question 1 of 10
1. Although the poem is dedicated and addressed to one Memmius (and the reader in general), the prologue begins by addressing someone else: "O mother of the Roman race, delight / Of men and gods, _____ most bountiful..." Who is the goddess in question (a knowledge of the Aeneid will come in handy!)?

Answer: (One word)
Question 2 of 10
2. Does Lucretius believe that things - fruits, animals, men - are generated from nothing?


Question 3 of 10
3. Lucretius says that wetness, heat, weight, and touch, all that is tangible, are called properties. What is the word he uses for those abstract concepts such as war and riches that affect people and things even after they have gone? (I will use both a Latin and English word here to counterbalance other translations' choice of words. Also note that Latin words tend to have several meanings in English, so I will provide just one English equivalent here.) Hint


Question 4 of 10
4. Lucretius soon discusses a certain topic, a central concept to Epicureanism. He talks of the origin of things being tiny pieces of matter that have no void in them whatsoever. This theory was a precursor to the scientific discoveries of men like Lavoisier and Dalton 1800 years later, although it was written about long before Lucretius too! What is the name for this theory that Lucretius has learned of from his master, Epicurus? Hint


Question 5 of 10
5. Who is the philosopher, whose view resembles Stoicism in its material monism, whom Lucretius writes a long polemic against, claiming him to have "fallen far from valid reasoning" and his views to be "utter lunacy"? Hint


Question 6 of 10
6. The next philosopher to be on the end of Lucretius' harsh and dissenting tongue is Empedocles, whose beliefs are that the world is composed of fire, air, earth, and water. Why does Lucretius not believe that the elemental theory holds any truth? Hint


Question 7 of 10
7. Anaxagoras' views are discussed by Lucretius next; he holds the belief that each thing is made up of smaller versions of said thing, so blood is made up of smaller drops of blood, gold is made up of smaller pieces of gold all mixed together, and so for all objects. Does Lucretius agree with this theory?


Question 8 of 10
8. Acknowledging that his theories may be hard for some to grasp, what foodstuff does Lucretius compare his poetry to? Hint


Question 9 of 10
9. Very close to the end of the book, Lucretius changes the subject, focusing instead on the universe at large. What does Lucretius say would happen to all within the universe if there were fixed boundaries to it? Hint


Question 10 of 10
10. What does Lucretius say about those who believe that night and day are opposites on each hemisphere of the earth? Hint



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Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts
1. Although the poem is dedicated and addressed to one Memmius (and the reader in general), the prologue begins by addressing someone else: "O mother of the Roman race, delight / Of men and gods, _____ most bountiful..." Who is the goddess in question (a knowledge of the Aeneid will come in handy!)?

Answer: Venus

This address to Venus by Lucretius requests of her to be "partner in [his] verses" in order to successfully convince Memmius of the philosophy he is expounding. Scholars have generally agreeed that Memmius is Gaius Memmius, a politician of Cicero's (and of course Lucretius') time, who is thought to have disliked Epicureanism.
2. Does Lucretius believe that things - fruits, animals, men - are generated from nothing?

Answer: No

He says that "[t]hings come into being without the aid of gods" and that "each thing gets its growth / And nourishment from its own material". He says that if fruits must begin as seeds and men must begin as babies, and require time to grow, they cannot have been generated from nothing or be the work of a divine being, whom he presumes would not require these things to take time to grow but would have them instead emerge fully grown. If things were generated from nothing, they would not have their specific origins or seasons - men could be sea-creatures, or flowers would bloom at the wrong times of year.

A mere fifteen lines later comes the blatant claim that "nothing can come from nothing".
3. Lucretius says that wetness, heat, weight, and touch, all that is tangible, are called properties. What is the word he uses for those abstract concepts such as war and riches that affect people and things even after they have gone? (I will use both a Latin and English word here to counterbalance other translations' choice of words. Also note that Latin words tend to have several meanings in English, so I will provide just one English equivalent here.)

Answer: Eventa (accidents)

He reasons that everything that exists is either a body or void, or one of these "accidents". ('Eventum' in Latin can more generally refer to something that has happened, whether by accident or otherwise, but Melville, the translator, chooses to use 'accidents', which is not necessarily wrong, but more specific than the word 'eventum' of itself need be.)

Lucretius says the rape of Helen and Troy's defeat in the war are 'accidents' that we should be careful of calling facts - they cannot happen only of themselves, nor are they made of that which void is made of, therefore we must conclude that they are of that third category which is separate from bodies or void.
4. Lucretius soon discusses a certain topic, a central concept to Epicureanism. He talks of the origin of things being tiny pieces of matter that have no void in them whatsoever. This theory was a precursor to the scientific discoveries of men like Lavoisier and Dalton 1800 years later, although it was written about long before Lucretius too! What is the name for this theory that Lucretius has learned of from his master, Epicurus?

Answer: Atomism

TOE, or the theory of everything, is a genuine philosophy, which attempts to answer the all-encompassing question of 'why?'. Heliocentrism is the theory that the planets revolve around the sun. Materialism is the theory that matter is the only thing that exists.

Atomism of sorts is thought to have begun in the 6th century BC in India, with Ancient Greece following a century later. Democritus and his mentor Leucippus formed an atom theory much like the scientific discovery of Dalton et al. Of course, we have since discovered that atoms are not the smallest unit of matter, despite its name coming from the Greek for "uncuttable": the presence of protons, electrons, and neutrons inside the atom, and even smaller still, quarks, disprove Lucretius' claim, but I think it's amazing enough that atoms were "discovered" as far back as the 6th century BC!
5. Who is the philosopher, whose view resembles Stoicism in its material monism, whom Lucretius writes a long polemic against, claiming him to have "fallen far from valid reasoning" and his views to be "utter lunacy"?

Answer: Heraclitus

Lucretius attacks Heraclitus not so much ad hominem but basically uses him as the token representative of material monism. Heraclitus, as you may have guessed from the link to Stoicism, was of the belief that everything arose from fire, and the world remains in constant flux and is dominated by change. Thales of Miletus is similarly a material monist, but his belief is that water is the origin of all things.

Lucretius maintains that some substance must be unchanging, or all would arise from nothing and descend into nothing, therefore Heraclitus' view of constant flux cannot be true.
6. The next philosopher to be on the end of Lucretius' harsh and dissenting tongue is Empedocles, whose beliefs are that the world is composed of fire, air, earth, and water. Why does Lucretius not believe that the elemental theory holds any truth?

Answer: Because it leaves nothing unchangeable.

If fire turns to air, which turns to water, which turns to earth, and then again in reverse, it means that none of the elements are perpetual, and it is their very changeability that Lucretius cannot support. It would lead to nothingness, since there would be no element that forever remains, and atoms cannot change state nor be completely nonexistent at any time.

Lucretius actually states that the four elements are actually inharmonious. He calls them "hostile" and "pure poison" to one another in the event of them coming together.

Just as sentences in a book are all ultimately made up of the same twenty-six letters (or twenty-three to Lucretius), so all things are ultimately made up of atoms, even though they seem to resemble new stuffs altogether. This he uses to suggest that the fire-air-water-earth theory could be the truth, made of atoms as they all are, therefore the origins of the world are not the elements, as Empedocles suggests, but ultimately all comes from atoms.
7. Anaxagoras' views are discussed by Lucretius next; he holds the belief that each thing is made up of smaller versions of said thing, so blood is made up of smaller drops of blood, gold is made up of smaller pieces of gold all mixed together, and so for all objects. Does Lucretius agree with this theory?

Answer: No

No theory that rejects the notion of atoms as the primal part of all objects can be supported by Lucretius! Again, small drops of blood or gold or bones or any object in the world are not atoms, therefore there must be more to the ultimate origins of everything. Anaxagoras also states that the world is made up of everything in different measures, so even if bones are made up of smaller bone pieces, everything else exists within the bone too, but since the element with the largest proportion within that object is bone, so bone is what is visible. Lucretius rejects this theory also, for who, he says, could claim that blood exists within stone or fire within mountains?
8. Acknowledging that his theories may be hard for some to grasp, what foodstuff does Lucretius compare his poetry to?

Answer: Honey

He uses the comparison of doctors' habits of smearing honey around the rim of a medicine bottle to trick children into believing they are ingesting a good-tasting drink; thus are his theories like the dank medicine, hard to take in and rather unwelcome to the reader, so he uses the Muses' medium, poetry, as the honey around the rim of the immense theory.
9. Very close to the end of the book, Lucretius changes the subject, focusing instead on the universe at large. What does Lucretius say would happen to all within the universe if there were fixed boundaries to it?

Answer: Everything would fall to the bottom.

Lucretius believes strongly in the infinity of the universe, for if it were finite, there would have be something outside it, and there can't be something that is not part of the universe. Matter is equally infinite as space, so there's an infinite number of atoms too.
10. What does Lucretius say about those who believe that night and day are opposites on each hemisphere of the earth?

Answer: They are fools.

Here Lucretius is specifically discussing northern and southern hemispheres; it is interesting to wonder whether he knows about the difference in night and day in eastern vs western hemispheres or whether he takes issue with the entire concept of time differences.

He links the concept with a belief that the earth is the centre of the universe, which is untrue, he says, because of course, a limitless universe can have no centre.
Source: Author AlexxSchneider

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor looney_tunes before going online.
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