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Treading the Aether: Lucretius, De Rerum Natura 1.62–79

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

M. J. Edwards
M. J. Edwards
Affiliation:
New College, Oxford
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Extract

As befits the proem to so original and immense an undertaking, this passage echoes, in order to retort them upon their inventors, the mythopoeic commonplaces of other ancient schools. One such commonplace was the assertion that some man was the first to effect a revolution in life or thought: those who held with Empedocles that Pythagoras was the first to see beyond his generation, or with Aristotle that Thales was the earliest cosmogonist and Plato the first discoverer of happiness, must learn that neither scientific truth nor human felicity was known before Epicurus. A figure dear to Plato and his admirers was that of the Gigantomachy: if he himself professed to fear that contemporary atomists would drag the heavens to earth, and Aristotle showed similar apprehensions with regard to some of Plato's own interpreters, they were right to foresee the destruction of their own systems, wrong to suppose that this portended anything but deliverance to mankind.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 40 , Issue 2 , December 1990 , pp. 465 - 469
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1990

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References

1 On which see Hardie, P. R., Cosmos and Imperium (Oxford, 1986), pp. 209–13Google Scholar and the fine study of Reiche, H., ‘Myth and Magic in Cosmological Polemic’, RhM 114 (1971), 296–321Google Scholar. I am indebted for my knowledge of the latter to comments made by a referee on a previous version of this article.

2 Cf. Empedocles Fr. 129DK, where Pythagoras is said to have striven with his wits until he saw the nature of all things up to ten generations beyond him. The parallel with the vivida vis of Epicurus is obvious: note also the significant placing of ⋯ν⋯ρ at 129.1, as of homo at De Rerum Natura 1.66. Furley, D., ‘Variations on Empedocles in the Proem of Lucretius’, BICS 17 (1970), 55–64, pp. 61–2Google Scholar, rightly rejects the doubts of Edelstein concerning the identity of the Graius homo; the suppression of the name may be intended to ape the anonymity of Pythagoras at Empedocles 129DK.

3 On Metaphysics 98366 (Thales) and 986b24 (Xenophanes) see Reiche (1971), p. 320. On Plato see the elegiac lines cited by Olympiodorus, In Gorgiam 41.9 = p. 215.5ff. Westerink. Here Plato, an Athenian like Epicurus (De Rerum Natura 6. Iff.), is alluded to only as an αν⋯ρ and is called the ‘first of mortals’ to show how goodness and happiness are to be achieved.

4 Sophist 246a4–b3. On the Giants see Cornford, F. M., Plato's Theory of Knowledge (London, 1935), pp. 231–2Google Scholar. On the possibility that Lucretius was acquainted with Plato's dialogues see Shorey, P., ‘Plato, Lucretius and Empedocles’, HSCP 12 (1901), 201–10Google Scholar. I am not convinced by all the allusions collected by Lacy, P. H. De in his ‘Lucretius and Plato’ in ΣϒζητηΣιΣ: Studi sull’ epicureismo greco e latino offerti a Marcello Gigante (Naples, 1983), i. 291–307Google Scholar.

5 On the Xenocrateans and Aristotle's humorous intimations of sorcery see Reiche (1971), 299–307.

6 See Jones, R. M., ‘Posidonius and the Flight of the Mind through the Universe’, CPhil 21 (1926), 97–113Google Scholar. Plato, Phaedrus 246cl–el, speaks of the soul as rising to the heavens, but not of the aether, of an ascent inspired by the words of the teacher himself, or even at this point of the fear of death.

7 On the date and authorship of the Irrisio see Diels, H., Doxographi Graeci (Berlin, 1879), pp. 259–63Google Scholar. The text appears at pp. 651–3. I do not think that Kindstrand, J. F., ‘The Date and Character of Hermias’ Irrisio' Vigiliae Christianae 34 (1980), 341–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar, does more than provide a terminus post quern with his citations of second-century pagan authors, and the absence of any disclosure of Christian interests in the Irrisio need signify no more than the failure of Tatian, Theophilus and Minucius Felix to mention the name of Christ.

8 The Acherusia templa are a deplorable feature of Ennius' poetry at 1.120. Like Empedocles Ennius is a Pythagorean and an author against whom Lucretius measures himself: cf. 1.117–18 and 1.922–34.

9 See Souilhe's commentary (Paris, 1962) on the date of the Axiochus, and p. 128 on its relation to Epicurus.

10 De Rerum Natura 3.820–1; Epicurus, , Kuriai Doxai 2Google Scholar; Cicero, De Finibus 2.100. On the difficulties of tracing commonplaces to particular sources see Wallach, B. P., Lucretius and the Diatribe against the Fear of Death (Leiden, 1976), pp. 15–20Google Scholar.

11 Tantalus, Tityus and Sisyphus appear in the same order as in the Axiochus, and the Danaids also figure in both: Axiochus, loc. cit. and De Rerum Natura 3.1008–10. At Gorgias 525e the order is Tantalus, Sisyphus. Tityus, and the Danaids are mentioned only at 493b.

12 Here again Lucretius seizes the opportunity to turn the conceits of others to his own account. For Pythagorean allegories of this kind see Plato on the treatment of the Danaids by certain ‘Italian and Sicilian Muses’ at Gorgias 493a and Cumont, F., ‘Lucrece et le Symbolisme Pythagoricien des Enfers’, Revue de Philologie 44 (1920), 229–40.Google Scholar.

13 The repetition of the line at 1503 would be more pointed if the boast was already notorious in the mouth of Socrates. On the representation of Socrates as a Pythagorean see Taylor, A. E., Varia Socralica (Oxford, 1911), pp. 129–77Google Scholar.

14 The verb translated ‘despise’ in Hermias is καταφρον⋯, the sense of περιφρον⋯ is frequently the same. Dispiciantur in Lucretius 3.26 is no doubt the truer reading, but may suggest the ambiguous despiciantur.

15 On his satirical echoes of these dialogues, as recorded in Plutarch's Adversus Colotem, see Loeb, P. De Lacy's edition of the Moralia, Vol. xiv (London, 1967), pp. 171–3Google Scholar. For his attacks on the content and authenticity of the Myth of Er see Proclus, , Comm. in Rem Pub, 2. 196ffGoogle Scholar. (Kroll) and Macrobius, , In Somnium Scipionis 1. 10–21Google Scholar.

16 See On Nature 29.28 Arrighetti. Empedocles is named as a source at 29.28.17.

17 On Roman Pythagoreanism see Rawson, E., Intellectual Life in the Late Roman Republic (London, 1985), pp. 291–7Google Scholar; on Nigidius also Pauly-Wissowa, , RE.xvii (1936), 200–12Google Scholar. (Cicero, it seems, would not have agreed with Rawson's disparaging estimate of Nigidius). On sacrifice see Aulus Gellius, Nodes Atticae 16.6.12 for a quotation from the De Extis of Nigidius. On the Pythagorean iconography and poetry of the afterlife see Carcopino, J., De Pythagore aux Apotres (Paris, 1956)Google Scholar.

18 For full bibliography see Brown, R. D., ‘Lucretian Ridicule of Anaxagoras’, CQ 33 (1983), 149 n. 21CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Furley (1970), pp. 60ff. The relation of Lucretius to Empedocles is considered at greater length in my article, ‘Lucretius, Empedocles and Epicurean Polemic’, Antike und Abendland 35 (1989), 104–15Google Scholar, where I argue that Furley is wrong to suppose that most of the allusions pay Empedocles an unqualified compliment.