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Aeternus Lepos: Venus, Lucretius, and the Fear of Death

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2009

M. J. Edwards
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Extract

In a recent article and a subsequent book Charles Segal finds a paradox in the writing of Lucretius, a paradox which, it might appear, was not to be evaded if the author wished to be both an Epicurean and a poet. On the one hand, his creed makes death as certain for the world as for its denizens and the hope of immortal glory an ignis fatuus; on the other hand, the poet has all the mortal frailties and as much desire as any Roman author for the survival of his name. These longings are both ‘vehement’ and ‘intense’, and, though the reader is to be made aware of their futility, they are latent in the first half of his opening book, until they are brought to light in his ‘second proem’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 40 , Issue 1 , April 1993 , pp. 68 - 78
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1993

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References

Notes

1. Segal, C. P., ‘Poetic Immortality and the Fear of Death: The Second Proem of the De Rerum Natura’, HSCP 92 (1989), 193–212Google Scholar; Lucretius on Death and Anxiety (Princeton, 1990), pp. 180–6Google Scholar. The assumption that Lucretius had designs on immortality is widespread: see, e.g., Townend, G., ‘Imagery in Lucretius’ in Dudley, D. R. (ed.), Lucretius (London, 1965), p. 96Google Scholar.

2. Segal, (1989) follows Clay, D., Lucretius and Epicurus (Ithaca, 1983), pp. 212–66Google Scholar in maintaining that the poem has a psychagogic action on the reader. This essay does not constitute a general criticism of that theory.

3. Of atoms as semina at 1.221; of the atoms as corpora at 1.500; of their motion at 11.1055. This catalogue does not seek to be exhaustive. At 11.118, the collision of visible particles, velut aetemo certamine, is not itself eternal, but is an image and a consequence of invisible blows which are.

4. Death is eternal (III.466), but not punishment (I.I 11), wounds (11.639), grief (III.990), life (1.159) or even monuments (V.329). For the eternal sun in the myth of Phaethon see V.402; for man's gift of immortality to the gods see V.1175, which makes no judgement on the correctness of the attribution.

5. The text and linear numbering follow C. Bailey (Oxford, 1947). I shall offer further annotation only where necessary to my argument.

6. Compare the templa serena of II.8 with the Acherusia lempla of 1.120.

7. See, e.g., Propertius III.3 (which remembers streams and Helicon), Horace, Epistles II.1.50 (which alludes to the dream of Homer), and many other reminiscences quoted by Skutsch, O., The Annales ofQ. Ennius (Oxford, 1985), pp. 147–53Google Scholar.

8. This appears as Varia 17–18 in the edition of the fragments of Ennius by Vahlen, and as Epigrams 9–10 in Warmington.

9. Edwards, M. J., ‘Treading the Aether: Lucretius, De Rerum Natura1.62–79’, CQ 40 (1990), 465–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10. For discussion of Lucretius as an Epicurean poet see Friedlander, P., ‘The Epicurean Theology in Lucretius’ First Proem’, TAPA 70 (1939), 368–79Google Scholar; Cox, A. S., ‘Lucretius and his Message’, G&R 18 (1971), 1–16Google Scholar; Clay, (1983). Zanker, G., ‘Enargeia in the Ancient Criticism of Poetry’, RhM 124 (1981), 397–411Google Scholar suggests that Epicurean theory influenced Alexandrian poetics.

11. On Philodemus see now Asmis, E., ‘Philodemus’ Poetic Theory and On the Good King According to Homer’, Classical Antiquity 10 (1991), 1–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the variations which were permissible to original thinkers within the school see Sedley, D., ‘Philosophical Allegiance in the Greco-Roman World’, in Griffin, M. and Barnes, J. (edd.), Philosophia Togata (Oxford, 1989), pp. 97–119Google Scholar.

12. So, e.g., Fowler, D. P., ‘Lucretius and Politics’ in Griffin, and Barnes, (1989), p. 125Google Scholar; Thury, E. M., ‘Lucretius’ Poem as a Simulacrum of the Rerum Natura’, AJP 108 (1987), 27094Google Scholar, esp. 290. West, D., The Imagery and Poetry of Lucretius (Edinburgh, 1979), pp. 103–14Google Scholar argues cogently that Lucretius does not incline to endorse the allegories of the mythographers. 13. See, e.g., Sellar, W. Y., The Roman Poets of the Republic (3rd ed., Oxford, 1895), pp. 384–407Google Scholar; Townend (1965), West (1969), who insists, as I do, on according literal force to Lucretian metaphors. The intensity of the poet's visual imagination is frequently stressed by Boyancé, P., Lucrece el I'Épicurisme (Paris, 1963)Google Scholar.

14. For comparison see, e.g., Virgil, , Eclogues IV.42Google Scholar: mentiri lana colores.

15. For imbuta cf. Catullus 64.397: tellus scelere esl imbuta nefando.

16. Daedala is used of earth or nature at 1.7,1.228, and V.234; of artefacts at 11.505 and V.1451; of the tongue at IV.551. As the epithet usually belongs to the works of craftsmen, Lucretius may have been thinking in the proem of the union of Hephaestus and Aphrodite, which is reduced to allegory by Cornutus, Theologia Graeca 19.

17. Fr. 23 DK. On the assimilation of the poem to the cosmos in Empedocles see Edwards, M.J., ‘Being and Seeming: Empedocles’ Reply’,Hermes 119 (1991), 282–93Google Scholar.

18. On parody and imitation of the Presocratics in Lucretius see Kranz, W.,‘Lukrez und 78 AETERNUS LEPOS: VENUS, LUCRETIUS, AND THE FEAR OF DEATH Empedokles’, Philohgus 50 (1944), 68–107Google Scholar; Holtsmark, E. B., ‘Lucretius and the Fools’, CJ 63 (1968), 260–1Google Scholar; Furley, D., ‘Variations on Empedocles in the Proem of Lucretius’,. BICS (1970), 55–64Google Scholar; Brown, R. D., ‘Lucretian Ridicule of Anaxagoras’, CQ 33 (1983), 146–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sedley, D., ‘The Proems of Empedocles and Lucretius’, GRBS 30 (1989), 269–92Google Scholar.

19. Friedländer, P., ‘Patterns of Sound and Atomistic Theory in Lucretius, AJP 62 (1941), 16–34Google Scholar.

20. 1.63–4 (religio); 1.911–14 (lignum/ignis); IV.1084–93 (umor/amor).

21. See the criticisms of Dalyell, A., ‘Language and Atomic Theory in Lucretius’, Hermalhena 143 (1987), 19–28Google Scholar, which refute the view that the poet was using a theory about the origin of language, but do not disprove the thesis that the poem itself is an image of the world. For a bold modern statement of this thesis see Thury (1987).

22. Thus, e.g., 1.670–1 – 1.792–3 – II.753–4 – 111.519–20; 1.146–8 – 11.59–61 – III.91–3 – VI.39–41. In the latter case, where the radii solis and lucida tela diei are pronounced to be of less effect than ratio, West (1979), pp. 80–5 observes a hidden metaphor from weaving.

23. We know that such perfunctory economy was typical of the school. For Colotes see Plutarch, Adversus Colotem; on the reputation of the Kuriai Doxai in antiquity see Clay (1983), pp. 72–81.

24. Bollack, J., La Raison de Lucrece (Paris, 1978)Google Scholar robustly maintains that none of the repetitions in Lucretius is superfluous, but on different grounds from those suggested here.

25. Edwards (1991).

26. Pango used of words at 1.25,1.933, and IV.8, but in Ennius of facia (Varia 2 Vahlen); tango of physical bodies at 1.304,11.403, etc., but of Lucretius at III.261, and of Heraclitus at 1.643; discutior of natural force at 11.953,959, etc., but of the poet at 1.148 etc.; cogo of physical impact at 11.152,282,887, etc., but of persuasion at 1.499,1.976; the object of exsolvere is the physical nexus at 1.220, the mind at 11.381. For nature as the object of conectere see 11.251.

27. See 11.167–83,652–60, 991–8 and a 12 above.

28. Over 100 such uses recorded in Roberts, L., A Concordance to Lucretius (New York/London,1977)Google Scholar.

29. 34 uses in Roberts (1977), of which only V.1443 (pacto foedere)is unambiguously literal; but VI.1054 (Jerrea texta… quo pacto) reinforces the metaphorical suggestion.

30. Fowler (1989), 146–7; Davies, H. S.. ‘Notes on Lucretius’, 77K? Criterion 42 (1931), 25–42Google Scholar.

31. Though observations from the arts and trades are of great use in exposition: see West (1969), pp. 64–78 and Schrijvers, P. H., Lucrece (Amsterdam, 1970), pp. 206–14Google Scholar on the figurative use of gold and purple.

32. Virgil, , Georgics 111.13–39Google Scholar; Horace, , Odes 111.30Google Scholar; Ovid, , Metamorphoses XV.871–9Google Scholar, temporarily contradicted in the Tristia at IV.8.45–52. The hope of outliving the present generation is also expressed by Catullus at 1.10. For a Greek model see Pindar, , Olympian VI.1–4;Google Scholar on demiurgic imagery in the archaic poets see Harriot, R., Poetry and Criticism before Plato (Cambridge, 1969), pp. 92–104Google Scholar.

33. Hymn 11.105–112; Epigram 28 Pfeiffer. For the influence of Callimachus on the Latin poets see Clausen, W., ‘Callimachus and Latin Poetry’, GRBS 5 (1964), 181–96Google Scholar; on the relation of Lucretius to the Alexandrians see Kenney, E.J., ‘octus Lucretius’, Mnemosyne 23 (1970), 366–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34. Pindar, , Olympian VII.7Google Scholar; Plato, , Ion 534aGoogle Scholar; Callimachus, , Hymn 11.110Google Scholar; Theocritus VII.82.

35. See, e.g., Porphyry, , De Antro Nympharum 66.21–70.9Google Scholar Nauck, drawing on Plato, the Orphics, and Numenius. Lucretius may also wish to insinuate that his carmina are better than the incantations proposed by Plato, at Laws 659eGoogle Scholar, where a similar analogy from medicine is employed (cf. Bailey, ad loc).

36. On friendship see Farrington, B., ‘Form and Purpose in the De Rerum Natura’, in Dudley (1965), pp. 19–34Google Scholar. The commentary of Ernout (Paris, 1962) observes a play on suavis and suadere in 1.141–2, which implies that sweetness is the proper instrument of persuasion.

37. This verse is not in the MSS, but is supplied by Nonius as a citation from Book II. It is sometimes placed after 11.46.