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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2016
Cicero was credited by Jerome with having corrected the D.R.N. ‘later’ (posted), presumably after the poet’s death rather than while he was writing it. The statement is surprising. Cicero was outspokenly hostile to Epicureanism, to him of all men avoidance of public life was heresy, and scientific inquiry as Lucretius understood it had no appeal to him. The elaborate Pythagorean cosmology of the Somnium Scipionis is no more than a technicolor backdrop to his Sunset Home for Retired Statesmen. The tone of his one reference to Lucretius can hardly be called warm; it does not suggest that he would have put himself or Atticus (who is sometimes said to have ‘published’ the D.R.N.) to much trouble to secure the survival of his work.
1. For the latter suggestion cf. Bailey, 20-1, unwisely relying on the Vita of G. Borgia.
2. Cf. Zetzel, 5-6, 222.
3. See Dalzell, 426-7, for recent discussions of the connected problems of completeness and order of composition.
4. The problem of how they come to do so in our text is of secondary importance: see Bailey, 757-8.
5. Other examples at Bailey, 162-3.
6. Examples at Bailey, 163-5; as he remarks, ‘A modern prose-writer would in such cases refer to the previous passage in a footnote’. Cf. Maguinness, 73-5. See also below, p. 31 n. 29.
7. Cf. Sparrow, 55-154.
8. See Bailey, 165.
9. As is done by Muller in his edition. Cf. the judicious remarks of Wormell (1968), 382.
10. See further below, pp. 22-3.
11. ficta (i.e. fixa) uestigia = pressa signa: ‘I plant my footsteps in yours’. Cf. 1. 52 ‘studio disposta fideli’.
12. See Bailey, 22-8; Dalzell, 80-3. For a convenient summary of Epicurean doctrine see Long, 14-74; bibliography ibid., 252-3.
13. Douglas, 34, quoting Poncelet.
14. For an attempt to prove the essentially Epicurean character of Lucretian ‘poetic’ see Schrijvers; for reservations see Kenney (1972b).
15. This is very nearly the conclusion at which Waszink arrives at the end of his careful and perceptive discussion: ‘Eventually it was this creative power which aroused in him the idea that, in spite of what his Master had said, poetry and truth can never be enemies’ (257). For the view that he was ‘neither primarily an Epicurean nor a poet’ see Classen.
16. Gow and Page, ii. 372. Quinn however holds that ‘as a love poet Philodemus is a strict Epicurean’ (147).
17. Cf. Waszink, 247-8;Classen, 116-18;Cox (1971), 10.
18. Cf. Kenney (1970), 369-71.
19. And a public conception: it is difficult to believe that Lucretius’ effort to win over Memmius ‘dictates the form of the poem’ to the extent eloquently argued by Farrington, 27-30. Cf. below, p. 17 n. 46.
20. Waszink, 252;contra Wormell, 47: ‘his poetry and his philosophy are indissolubly one’.
21. See Lienhard and Cox (1971); and cf. Dalzell, 84.
22. Cf. the hybrid Memmiadae at 1. 26, Scipiadas at 3. 1034, and Romulidarum at 4.683.
23. Cf. Galinsky, 221.
24. Ann. 249 V.2 ‘multorum ueterum leges diuumque hominumque.’
25. Cf. Lienhard, 350.
26. Cf. 2. 172-3 ‘Ipsaque deducit dux uitae dia uoluptas / et res per Veneris blanditur saecla propagent eqs.’, quoted by Classen, 103; and see Bignone, 427-43. That Lucretius could have used the word uoluptas in the first line of his poem without regard to its Epicurean implications is the sort of thing that scholars are specially trained to believe.
27. Typical of the hymn are the use of a relative clause (v. 3) to introduce the catalogue of Venus’ manifestations and the emphatic repetition of the pronoun ‘te. . .te . . .te. . .tibi. . .tibi’ (vv. 6-8). Lucretius evidently knew the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite (H.H. 5; cf. Munro ad loc); cf. also Callim.Hymn. 1.6-7, 3. 2, Lucret. 3. 2, 9-10, Ov. Met. 4. 17-24.
28. The commentators have been troubled by ‘nam’ at v. 10: ‘a poet’s logic’ (Munto); ‘the logic must not be pressed’ (Bailey). This nam is not inferential; what follows illustrates and expands what has just been said. For the love-in-springtime motif the most striking parallel is in Lucretius himself, in the famous processional tableau at 5. 737-47 ‘it Ver et Venus eqs.’ cf. also Nisbet and Hubbard on Hor. C. 1. 4. No doubt Horace had D.R.N. 1. 10-11 in mind when he wrote the opening line of that Ode ‘soluitur acris hiems grata uice ueris et Fauoni’. It is worth noting that in the earliest fully preserved example of the ‘spring’ poem, by Leonidas of Tarentum (A.P. 10. 1 = 2490-97 G.-P.), the speaker is Priapus. In Horace’s Ode his place is taken by Faunus: ‘both gods were connected with the fertility of the animal kingdom’ (Nisbet and Hubbard, 60). Lucretius ennobles the idea by his treatment, but the affinity with the literary tradition is clear.
29. See Elder, 101-14, for a more detailed analysis.
30. Cf. Bailey, 1567, on the invocation of Calliope at 6. 92-5.
31. Emout-Meillet, ii.430 ‘sens rare et archaïque’.
32. For the use of Ьфроб and uenus in discussions of style, used of a writer’s capacity to give pleasure, see Classen, 103-4.
33. Cf. (one example of many) 1. 336-7 ‘namque officium quod corporis exstat, / officere atque obstare. . .’, ‘for the distinctive action of matter, which is counteraction and obstruction. . .’ (Latham), ‘that which is the province of body, to prevent and to obstruct. . .’ (Smith). See further Kenney (1971), 125; Friedländer (1941); Dalzell, 67.
34. See Lau, 173-4; Kenney (1971), 133; and cf. Catull. 1.5-7 ‘ausus es unus Italorum / omne aeuum tribus explicare cartis / doctis Iuppiter et laboriosis’. On the implications of 6. 82-3 cf. Cox (1971), 9-10.
35. Cf. Bailey, 589-90; Dalzell, 400, 84-5.
36. Cf. D.R.N. 1.44-9 = 2. 646-51. For the critical problem posed by these verses see Bailey, 601-3, 1750-1 (summarizing the views of Bignone); Smith, 6.
37. Kirk and Raven, 320-61; Guthrie, 152-85; Cox (1969), 137-40. In Emped. fr. 424 (Kirk-Raven) ‘Love’ (Φίλότης) is expressly equated with ‘Joy’ (Γηθοσύνη) or ‘Aphrodite’; for the implicit identification of ‘Strife’ with ‘Ares’ (Mars) see Kirk and Raven, 349.
38. Saintsbury(1923), 257. On Aen. 8. 387-93 see Gransden, 40-1, 138. To my mind the simile of the widow woman, exemplifying the traditional Republican virtues, serves to heighten the lascivious impropriety of Venus’ conduct. Cf. Heyne, iii. 225 ‘locus, meo iudicio, artis magis quam ingenii laudem habet’.
39. Bailey, 590; but see his second thoughts ibid., 1749-50 and at (1949) 153.
40. Wormell, 39.
41. See Dronke, 417-22. Virgil’s treatment of the Venus-Vulcan episode (above, n. 38) shows that at all events he did not miss (how could he?) the allegorical and symbolical import.
42. Galinsky, 233-4.
43. We are not bound to resort to this explanation whenever we encounter a comparable passage of vivid description, but in this case there are obvious analogies in Greek art, in pictures of (e.g.) Aphrodite with Adonis or Dionysus with Ariadne (as in the great fresco from the Villa of the Mysteries, a replica of which was included in the exhibition ‘Pompeii A.D. 79’): see Friedländer, 368 n. 2, and cf. on the Sacrifice of Iphigenia Kenney (1974), 25 n. 29. It is generally held that the Procession of the Seasons at 5. 737-47 is based on a painting or mosaic; that may be right, but some touches, such as Winter’s chattering teeth (v. 747) are literary rather than pictorial: cf. Hes. W. & D. 530.
44. Amory, 158-9.
45. Cf. Kenney (1970), passim.
46. Smith, xxvii, x1viii; cf. Sinker, 101 (‘the. . .passage has the true Epicurean ring’); Farrington, 24-6; Wormell, 42; contra Wiseman, 35. The word amicitia occurs only twice elsewhere in the poem (3. 83, 5. 1019), in neither case with Epicurean overtones.
47. De Lacy, 121.
48. Bailey, 794; cf. Smith, 1ii.
49. mensque Marullus: mente codd.
50. Cf. Rist, 122-6 on The role of pleasure in ethics’.
51. Solon 24 = Theogn. 719-28; Theogn. 1155-6; Socrates, fr. 13 Mein.; Eur. fr. 714 N.; Menander, fr. 619; Isocr. Ad Demon. 27. Similar expressions occur after Lucretius in the works of writers who are definitely not Epicurean in their sympathies. On the ordinary man’s version of D.R.N. 2. 18-19 as ‘mens sana in corpore sano’ cf. the passages cited by Nisbet and Hubbard, 357. Lucretius’ definition of ‘health’ is undeniably Epicurean; the manner of his insistence on the corollary is not. For a full analysis of the literary and rhetorical character of this Proem see Wallach (1975); and on the diatribe element in Lucretius Wallach (1976), 1-10.
52. Hdt. 3.40, 7. 10; cf. Aristotle, fr. 16 Mein.: ‘Better for happiness to have a little rather than much attended with envy.’
53. Bailey (1949), 148.
54. Ennius had constructed his great epic, the Annales, on this principle, but the detailed treatment can only be conjectured. Originally the word for ‘book’ (βφΧίου, liber) meant the book as a physical object, the roll of papyrus (Lat. uolumen; Greek lacks a specific word). The idea that an author should himself divide his work into ‘books’ and exploit the division for literary ends took its rise in Alexandria, where Homer’s epics were divided into books as we now have them by the scholars of the great Library (Pfeiffer, 115-16). The length of a book was limited, if not rigidly dictated, by the amount of text that could be contained on a roll of convenient size. From the time of Augustus onwards a norm of 700-900 lines of verse became established. By this standard Lucretius’ books are inordinately long (1117, 1174, 1094, 1287, 1457, 1286 verses respectively); a more relevant comparison is perhaps with the figures for an Alexandrian epic such as Apollonius’ Argonautica: 1302, 1285, 1407, 1781. Cf. below, pp. 22-3.
55. Dalzell, 426-7; cf. Minadeo, 15-16. On the futility of the ‘archaeological’ approach see Elder, 88-90.
56. For more elaborate accounts of the structure of the D.R.N. see Owen, Minadeo (esp. 31-54), and Nichols, 46-100;and cf. Dalzell, 427.
57. Cf. also 1. 80 ‘ne forte rearis’ ~ 5. 78 ‘ne forte. . .reamur’.
58. Cf. Boyancé, 77.
59. Cf. Kenney(1971), 13 n. 2.
60. Cf. Camps, Ch. VI ‘Principles of structure; continuity and symmetry’.
61. Thus Bailey thinks Book III ‘better constructed and more orderly and self-consistent than the first two’, but in point of finish, ‘though better than iv’, not reaching ‘the standard of i and ii’ (984, 33). Cf. Boyancé, 72.
62. See Mullett for a fine assessment of Lucretius as a historian of culture.
63. On Diodorus’ cosmogony and zoogony cf. Cole, 174-92.
64. Kenney (1971), 30-1.
65. Principio at v. 235 is an abrupt resumption of an argument that was broken off as long ago as v. 109.
66. Cf. Bailey, 1337; Solmsen, 3 n. 6.
67. Bailey, 33-4. Bailey’s corollary, that one would expect such passages to occur most frequently in the books which have been most carefully finished, appears equally dubious.
68. Cf. Boyancé, 260-1.
69. 6. 24 ‘ueridicis igitur purgauit pectora dictis’, looking back to 5.43 ‘at nisi purgatumst pectus eqs.’
70. Bailey, 1725.
71. Something of a contradiction in terms, be it observed.
72. Bright, 632; cf. Commager, Smith, 578-9. Bright’s suggestion that This is Lucretius’ equivalent to the Myth of Er or the Somnium Scipionis’ blurs a vital distinction between myth and history.
73. Bright, 631; cf. Amory, 158 n. 22; Nichols, 38-9, Thornton and Thornton, 64.
74. Nichols, 178.
75. Thornton and Thornton, 64-5, argue that it is characteristic of Lucretius’ ‘appositional’ way of writing that the poem should tail off. Not all their parallels are cogent, the case of Pindar in particular: choral lyric is not epos.
76. On the relationship of the last line of the Argonautica to the ‘Alexandrian’ ending of the Odyssey at 23. 296 see Livrea, 486-7.
77. See Santayana, 42-3 and Bignone, 318-22 (summarized by Bailey, 1759). The fact that Virgil ends Book III of the Georgics with the description of a plague hardly shows that ‘he considers [the plague] the intended and appropriate ending of Lucretius’ poem [my emphasis] ‘, as suggested by Nichols, 38.