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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 April 2024
Lucretius (3.894–9) puts words into the mouths of mourners as part of his attack on the fear of death. The language of the passage has been read simply as mockery of the bereaved, but the poet is using language strongly reminiscent of Homer, in particular from Circe's speech advising Odysseus about the dangers of hearing the Sirens’ singing. This adds a level of irony to the passage as the poet has a complex relationship with the bewitching power of poetry.
1 Gordon, P., ‘Kitsch, death and the Epicurean’, in Yona, S. and Davis, G. (edd.), Epicurus in Rome: Philosophical Perspectives in the Ciceronian Age (Cambridge, 2022), 129–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 133–4; Wallach, B.P., Lucretius and the Diatribe against the Fear of Death: De Rerum Natura III 830–1094 (Leiden, 1976), 46–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
2 Kenney, E.J., Lucretius De rerum natura Book III (Cambridge, 2014 2), ad locGoogle Scholar.
3 Preisigke, F. and Bilabel, F., Sammelbuch Griechischer Urkunden aus Aegypten (Strassburg, 1915), 321CrossRefGoogle Scholar, no. 4314, quoted by Lattimore, R., Themes in Greek and Roman Epitaphs (Urbana, IL, 1942), 176Google Scholar.
4 One of the anonymous referees for this article has pointed out that iam iam (in the sense of non iam) is strikingly close to the sense of oὐκέτι in the Philoxenus inscription and compares the similar sentiment at Verg. Aen. 11.71. oὐκέτι as first word is also a common motif in funerary epigrams (e.g. Anth. Pal. 7.189, 192, 200–4).
5 Wallach (n. 1), 48–9.
6 Mynors, R.A.B., Virgil Georgics (Oxford, 1990), 174Google Scholar.
7 The literature on Lucretius and epic is vast, but good starting points are: West, D., ‘Lucretius and epic’, in Gale, M.R. (ed.), Oxford Readings in Classical Studies: Lucretius (Oxford, 2007), 289–99Google Scholar; Mayer, R., ‘The epic of Lucretius’, PLLS 6 (1990), 35–43Google Scholar; Gale, M.R., Myth and Poetry in Lucretius (Cambridge, 1994), 106–17Google Scholar.
8 Kenney (n. 2), 193.
9 Griffin, J., Homer on Life and Death (Oxford, 1980), 106–11Google Scholar discusses, inter alia, 20.389–92, 11.817–18, 17.301–3.
10 It actually figures less than one might expect in the funerary epigrams, with the exception of the sequence of ‘shipwreck’ deaths commemorated at Anth. Pal. 7.282–307, with Lattimore (n. 3), 199–202; cf. Catull. 68.97–100 for a contemporary of Lucretius using similar language of his own brother's death in Troy.
11 Kaiser, E., ‘Odyssee-Szenen als Topoi’, MH 21 (1964), 109–36Google Scholar and 197–224.
12 Homer's heroes do address corpses but mostly to express contempt, as most famously in the case of the Greeks’ taunting and maltreating of the corpse of Hector at Il. 22.364–75: see also Il. 21.122–4.
13 Cf. Eur. Cyc. 504.
14 Hom. Od. 12.187–91.
15 Halliwell, S., Between Ecstasy and Truth: Interpretations of Greek Poetics from Homer to Longinus (Oxford, 2012), 91–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
16 Cf. 10.120. See also Freer, N., ‘Virgil's Georgics and the Epicurean Sirens of poetry’, in B. Xinyue and N. Freer (edd.), Reflections and New Perspectives on Virgil's Georgics (London, 2019), 79–90Google Scholar, at 81 (‘the myth of the Sirens perfectly encapsulates Epicurus's views on poetry’) and cf. Gale, M.R., Myth and Poetry in Lucretius (Cambridge, 1994), 14–18Google Scholar. For wider discussion of the Epicurean attitude towards poetry, see e.g. E. Asmis, ‘Epicurean poetics’, in D. Obbink (ed.), Philodemus and Poetry (Oxford, 1995), 15–34; Gale, M.R., ‘Otium and uoluptas: Catullus and Roman Epicureanism’, in S. Yona and G. Davis (edd.), Epicurus in Rome: Philosophical Perspectives in the Ciceronian Age (Cambridge, 2022), 87–108CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 92–3.
17 Cf. Plut. Mor. 15D = De audiendis poetis 1, Mor. 1094D = Non posse suauiter uiui secundum Epicurum 12.
18 See Kaiser (n. 11), 208–10 on this scene.
19 One of the anonymous referees for this article points me towards Diog. Laert. 10.120: ‘only the wise man will be able to converse correctly about music and poetry’ (μόνον τε τὸν σοφὸν ὀρθῶς ἂν περί τε μουσικῆς καὶ ποιητικῆς διαλέξεσθαι).
20 Besides Verg. G. 2.523–4, Kenney quotes Thomas Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard 21–4.