Book VI describes and accounts for certain natural phenomena—thunderstorms, tempests, volcanoes, earthquakes, and the like. It concludes with a theory of disease, illustrated by a fine description of the plague at Athens.
Professor Tyrrell says: ‘It is interesting to point to places in which Lucretius or his predecessors had really anticipated modern scientific research. Thus Lucretius recognises that in a vacuum every body, no matter what its weight, falls with equal swiftness; the circulation of the sap in the vegetable world is known to him, and he describes falling stars, aerolites, etc., as the unused material of the universe.’ The great truth that matter is not destroyed but only changes its form is very clearly stated by Lucretius, and his account (Book V) of the beginnings of life upon the earth, the evolution of man, and the progress of human society is interesting and valuable.
3. Style.
‘Notwithstanding the antique tinge (e.g. his use of archaism, assonance, and alliteration) which for poetical ends he has given to his poem, the best judges have always looked upon it as one of the purest models of the Latin idiom in the age of its greatest perfection.’—Munro.
‘The language of Lucretius, so bold, so genial, so powerful, and in its way so perfect.’—Nettleship.
Carmina sublimis tunc sunt peritura Lucreti,
Exitio terras cum dabit una dies.
Ovid. Am. I. xv. 23.
‘But till this cosmic order everywhere
Shattered into one earthquake in one day