I have written once before on this blog about David Butterfield's book entitled The Early Textual History of Lucretius' De Rerum Natura. It's a pleasure to return to Butterfield's book and report some of what he found about the indirect tradition of Lucretius, as I examine the question: to what extent can Lucretius said to have been "forgotten" before Poggio found a manuscript of Lucretius in 1417 at a German monastery he did not bother to name? A manuscript which Poggio then lost, as he seems to have lost by far the most of those Classical manuscripts he discovered. To be fair to Poggio: copies were made of most of these manuscripts before they were lost; also, Poggio had very good handwriting, as we can see from some of these copies which have somehow survived.
Butterfield sums up what he has been able to find of Lucretous' indirect tradition between when Lucretious wrote his poem, around 55 BC, and the end of the 10th century, on pp 100-101, where he says: "Fifty-five different Latin authors cited 492 different Lucretian verses in full or in part." On page 100 Butterfield also notes that the indirect tradition indicates that manuscrupts of Lucretius were available in Rome up until the 5th century, in north Africa between the 2nd and the 4th centuries, and, most interestingly, in Spain around the turn of the 7th century.
Lucretius is not always named by these authors who quote him. On pp 47-100, Butterfield goes over the indirect tradition in great detail. I hope these are in mostly chrological order: Lucretius is named by Cicero, Ovid, Vitruvius, Nepos, Velleius Paterculus, Pliny the Elder, Statius, Tacitus, Quintilian, Apuleius, Quintus Serenus, Jerome, Sidonius Appolinaris, the anonymous 8th-century Fragmentum Parisinum de notis the anonymous 9th-century florilegium Exemplore diversorum auctorum, and the anonymous work of the 9th or 10th century known as the second Vatican Latin mythology. That's quite a lot of prominent mentions, by 12 different authors, which would work against Lucretius been forgotten. As for the times when the remaining 43 authors quoted Lucretius without naming him, and as for how often readers would have known that Lucretius was being quoted, that's much more difficult to say.
Butterfield is very conservative in mapping out this tradition: on many occasions, he mentions that other scholars have described passages in various texts as having come from Lucretius, but he feels that the evidence for this is insufficient. For example, papyrus fragments from the 1st century AD have been found at Herculaneum, and some have attributed the texts to Lucretius, but Butterfield maintains that the texts are too short to allow us to be certain of this attribution.
Butterfield stops this phase of his description of the indirect tradition at the end of the 10th century, because these are the only instances, before 1417, where he believes that it can be conclusively demonstrated that another author had direct access to a manuscript of Lucretius. In a footnote on pp 286-286, about two dozen further authors from the eleventh century up until 1417 are mentioned who seem to have been familiar with some part of the text of de rerum natura, but who, in Butterfield's judgment, could have been familiar with the indirect tradition only. That is, instead of referring to a complete text of Lucretius' poem, they may be simply quoting a quotation.
To depart from the theme of indirect tradition and mention direct tradition, while staying with the question of to what extent Lucretius can be said to have been "forgotten" before 1417: there are 3 surviving 9th-century manuscripts of Lucretius, 2 complete and fragments of a 3rd.
On page 32, Butterfield offers a stemma, a diagram showing his theory of which manuscripts were copied from which other ones, which, in addition to those 3 surviving 9th-century manuscripts, postulates the existence of 5 more made between the 9th and the 12th centuries.
And of course there there was more readership of Lucretius, there were more quotations and and mentions, there were more manuscripts. We don't know how many more. Butterfield is not saying that this is the extant of the readership of Lucretius. He's saying that this is the extent of what he can prove.
And it's a great pleasure, for me, to follow Butterfield on his search for all of this evidence. It's great to get into so many details. But, for a long time previously, I already had had a general idea of the size and shape of Lucretius' audience. As had very many others who had some familiarity with Latin literature.
Which is why it seemed so strange to us when we heard about this hugely best-selling book by a Harvard English professor, which claimed, among other strange things, that Lucretius had been forgotten before Poggio miraculously, just by chance, saved him from oblivion, which in turn changed the world, because the world had been completely unfamiliar with Lucretius and all that he had to say.
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