Expert: Maria - 7/15/2009

Question
Dear Maria,

I heard somewhere this quote attributed to Lucretius =

'What evil would we have suffered from not being created?'


Do you know this quote and can you give me a source?

thank you,

Charles

Answer
Hello,

Actually such a sentence could be a kind of adaptation of  a passage we read in Lucretius, On the Nature of Things,  Book I, lines 150-159, where the Roman poet (died ca.55 BC)  expresses a concept  that can be roughly  summarized as “What evil would we have suffered from not being created?" .

See below for the Latin text and its English translation.

Concerning this matter, I could also mention a quote from the 6th century BC Greek elegiac  poet  Theognis who also tells us that "The best of all things for earthly men is not to be born and not to see the beams of the bright sun; but once born, the best thing would be to pass the gates of Hades as soon  as possible,  and to lie deep buried” (Fragment, line 425).

Regards,
Maria
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De Rerum Natura, I, 150-159

“Nullam rem e nihilo gigni divinitus umquam.
quippe ita formido mortalis continet omnis,
quod multa in terris fieri caeloque tuentur,
quorum operum causas nulla ratione videre
possunt ac fieri divino numine rentur.
Quas ob res ubi viderimus nil posse creari
de nihilo, tum quod sequimur iam rectius inde
perspiciemus, et unde queat res quaeque creari
et quo quaeque modo fiant opera sine divom”.

("Nothing from nothing ever yet was born.
Fear holds dominion over mortality
Only because, seeing in land and sky
So much the cause whereof no wise they know,
Men think Divinities are working there.
Meantime, when once we know from nothing still
Nothing can be create, we shall divine
More clearly what we seek: those elements
From which alone all things created are,
And how accomplished by no tool of Gods.”
[translated by William Ellery Leonard]