Lucretius describes the plague in great detail in the final part of book VI p1145

The symptoms first to strike was fiery fever in the head,
And both eyes, burning hectic bright, were all shot through with red.
The throat as well would sweat with blood, all black within. And stung
With sores, the pathway of the voice would clog and choke.

The tongue, Interpreter of the mind, oozed pus, and, made limp with the smart,
Was too heavy to move, and rough. Thence the disease would start,
Passing the gullet, to fill the chest, and flood the heavy heart of the afflicted, and then, indeed, all of the gates of Life
Began to give.
From the open mouth, there would exhale a rife stink, like the stench of rank unburied corpses left to rot.
And then all of the powers of the mind and body, brought To the very brink of doom, began to flicker.
Mental strain ever danced attendance on intolerable pain;
Pleas, mingled with moans. Ceaseless retching, lasting day
And night, was ever causing seizure and cramp, and
wasting away the strength of men already racked with suffering and
worn out.

This goes on for pages and pages and then the poem suddenly stops. This was not because he had caught the plague as we know he died from ingesting some sort of elixir. Maybe he stopped out of sheer despair or maybe he did not stop but the rest of his poem was lost.

So how do we sum up the importance of this work of Lucretius?

He was very influential. I think this is because his philosophy is directly rooted in our daily lives. Lucretius was trying to explain the physical word. His poem encompasses a range of subjects: nutrition, perception of mental illness, cosmology, the seasons, eclipses. thunder, clouds, the properties of magnets, the emergence and evolution of animal and plant life, poisoning and contagious disease, especially the plague. He discusses things we experience and wonder about and many of his ideas are close to modern scientific thinking. The great philosopher Socrates (470BC) tried to answer the questions what is virtue? what is patriotism? what do you mean by morality?  He could never provide answers whereas Lucretius asked questions to which he could provide answers. Socrates and his followers could not differentiate fact from fiction, that history is different from myth and that philosophy and theology are totally different from the natural word. Plato (~420BC) was a student of Socrates and founded an Academy for philosophic thought in Athens. He is the only early philosopher whose entire work survives. In contradiction to Lucretius he firmly believed in the immortality of the soul and the afterlife . He wrote in dialogues in which he discussed  knowledge and opinion, perception and reality, nature  and custom, and body and soul. He also believed Homer’s Iliad to be divinely inspired and could govern the way we live if only it could be interpreted correctly. It would function as the Bible does today. That was the prevailing philosophy when Lucretius was rediscovered and his materialism was a shock. Lucretius appealed to the common man but Plato’s metaphysics set him at odds with the common man. He says you do not have to hold something in your hand for it to be real. Lucretius’ Epicurean ideas effectively supplanted the dominant Aristotelian ideas and became the bedrock of Scientific thought.

That completes my survey of book talks not all of which have even been presented as talks. After 20 years of volunteering at Charlecote this is my swansong. The Covid pandemium is having a devastating effect on the National Trust with properties shut and losses amounting to 200 million pounds. A large reduction in staff numbers will be necessary and it will be regarded as no longer safe for volunteers over 70, which is surely a large proportion of us. So my Charlecote days are over but I have many very happy memories and have met so many wonderful people. Two in particular are Jess Wolverson and Alex Parré. Together we explored the library and Alex is a collector of old books and was the source of a wealth of knowledge. I thank them both.

Len Mullenger 30-7-2020