Book contents
- Cosmos in the Ancient World
- Cosmos in the Ancient World
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- An Historical Note on Kόσμος – Terminology
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 When Did Kosmos Become the Kosmos?
- Chapter 2 Ordering the Universe in Speech
- Chapter 3 Diakosmêsis
- Chapter 4 Aristotle on Kosmos and Kosmoi
- Chapter 5 Order and Orderliness
- Chapter 6 Polis as Kosmos in Plato’s Laws
- Chapter 7 Relating to the World, Encountering the Other
- Chapter 8 Tradition and Innovation in the Kosmos–Polis Analogy
- Chapter 9 Cosmic Choruses
- Chapter 10 All the World’s a Stage
- Chapter 11 The Architectural Representation of the Kosmos from Varro to Hadrian
- Chapter 12 “The Deep-Sticking Boundary Stone”
- Chapter 13 Cosmic Spiritualism among the Pythagoreans, Stoics, Jews and Early Christians
- Afterword
- Bibliography
- Index Locorum
- General Index
Chapter 12 - “The Deep-Sticking Boundary Stone”
Cosmology, Sublimity, and Knowledge in Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura and Seneca’s Naturales Quaestiones
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 June 2019
- Cosmos in the Ancient World
- Cosmos in the Ancient World
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- An Historical Note on Kόσμος – Terminology
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 When Did Kosmos Become the Kosmos?
- Chapter 2 Ordering the Universe in Speech
- Chapter 3 Diakosmêsis
- Chapter 4 Aristotle on Kosmos and Kosmoi
- Chapter 5 Order and Orderliness
- Chapter 6 Polis as Kosmos in Plato’s Laws
- Chapter 7 Relating to the World, Encountering the Other
- Chapter 8 Tradition and Innovation in the Kosmos–Polis Analogy
- Chapter 9 Cosmic Choruses
- Chapter 10 All the World’s a Stage
- Chapter 11 The Architectural Representation of the Kosmos from Varro to Hadrian
- Chapter 12 “The Deep-Sticking Boundary Stone”
- Chapter 13 Cosmic Spiritualism among the Pythagoreans, Stoics, Jews and Early Christians
- Afterword
- Bibliography
- Index Locorum
- General Index
Summary
This chapter argues for both a broad similarity and a crucial distinction between the ways in which Lucretius (De rerum natura) and Seneca (Naturales quaestiones) employ the category of the sublime in their natural scientific (including cosmological) writings. Both authors, as previous scholars such as Gian Biago Conte and Gareth Williams have observed, use the sublime as part and parcel of their didactic and consolatory projects. Moreover, in both authors the sublime first causes the pupil-reader to "take fright" in the face of nature and then builds him up to conquer nature with his own knowledge. Yet in Lucretius and Seneca the knowledge that allows such conquest is quite distinct: for the Epicurean, scientific knowledge is limited, while for the Stoic, it approaches omniscience.
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- Cosmos in the Ancient World , pp. 247 - 269Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2019
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