Marietta Horster / Christiane Reitz (Hg.)

Wissensvermittlungin dichterischer Gestalt

Franz Steiner Verlag Stuttgart 2005

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INHALTSVERZEICHNIS

Marietta Horster, Christiane ReitzDichtung und Lehre

Peter TooheyPeriodization and Didactic Poetry

Bernd EffeTypologie und literarhistorischer Kontext: Zur Gattungsgeschichtedes griechischen Lehrgedichts

Wilhelm BliimerHesiods Gedichte. Schriftlichkeit und Mundlichkeit in der archaischengriechischen Lehrdichtung

Oliver PrimavesiTheologische Allegorie: Zur philosophischen Funktion einer poetischenForm bei Parmenides und Empedokles

Christian KaferThe Poet and the ,Polis. The Aetia as Didactic Poem

Peter KruschwitzLehre oder Dichtung? Die archaische didaktische Poesie der Romer

Wolfgang HubnerDie Rezeption der P/Jainomena Arats in der lateinischen Literatur

Katharina VolkLehrgedicht oder ,,Naturgedicht? Naturwissenschaft und Natur-philosophic in der Lehrdichtung von Hesiod bis zur Aetna

Monica GaleAnia Pierdum /om: Tradition and Innovation in Lucretius

Claudia SchindlerVorn Kochrezept zu den Sternen: Aspekte der Gattungsgenese undGattungsentwicklung im romischen Lehrgedicht

Christiane ReitzHoraz Literaturbriefe und die Lehrdichtung

A VIA PIERIDUMLOC/1:TRADITION AND INNOVATION IN LUCRETIUS*

MONICA R. GALE

Abstractzz Dieser Beitrag untersucht das Wechselspiel zwischen didaktischen Tradi-tionen und poetischen Neuerungen in Lukrez De Rm/222 Naiura. Obwohl Lukrez aufder Hesiodeischen Tradition und insbesondere auf der von Empedokles entwickel-ten didaktischen Formensprache beruht, entwickelt der romische Dichter einigetechnische und stilistische Neuerungen, durch die dieses Lehrgedicht sich von denVorlaufern dieses Genres deutlich unterscheidet.

Writing at the turn of the 1950s and 6Os, Donald Wormell said of Lucretius: clearlyhis study of Epicurus had come to him as a kind of religious experience, as a con-version, and in his high seriousness, his sense of mission, his eagerness to convertothers, he is a preacher and a prophet. Though we might nowadays prefer to char-acterize the poems tone in terms of the rhetoric of Lucretian didactic - or of thepoets construction of his didactic speaker rather than appeal to the writers hy-pothetical personal experience, Wormells characterization of the De Rmmz Naturahas nevertheless been echoed by a number of more recent critics. There is a wide-spread perception that Lucretius speaks, not with the cool detachment characteristicof Hellenistic didactic, but with the impassioned fervour of the evangelist. My aimin what follows is to interrogate the assumption that, in adopting such a tone,Lucretius is reverting to the style of pre-Hellenistic epic; I want to try to pin down alittle more precisely just how the poet creates the note of eagerness and urgencywhich seems so characteristic of the DRN, and also to consider how the poem itselfseems to conceptualize its relationship with the tradition stretching back to Hesiod.just what is traditional and what is new in the DRN? And does the poet simply turn

* I am grateful to Christiane Reitz and Marietta Horster for their invitation to participate inthe Colloquium, and to all who took part in the discussion, especially Oliver Primavesi, whorightly took me to task for underestimating the importance of Empedocles as a model forLucretius in the original version of this paper. The research for this paper was greatly fa-cilitated by the tenure of an Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social SciencesSenior Research Fellowship during the academic year 2003-4.1 Wonnell 1960: 64.

176 MONICA R. GALE

the clock back - as is sometimes suggested to the age of Empedocles,2 or shouldwe rather see him as revitalizing, almost reinventing, the didactic mode to suit hisown age and his own purposes?3

The most obvious factor contributing to the urgent, impassioned feel of Lu-cretius poem is - as suggested above the characterization of the didactic speakerand his relationship with the addressee. Under the latter heading, I include not onlythe relatively small number of passages in which Memmius is addressed by name,but also the far more numerous instances of second-person verbs and pronouns, aswell as the many occasions when the rst person plural seems to group addresseeand speaker together as joint participants in the learning process. If Aratus and Ni-cander may be regarded as representative of Hellenistic didactic poetry in general,the addressee seems to have played a relatively restricted role here. Aratus ad-dressee is not even named, but seems - as Peter Bing has argued to represent abroad, general audience (albeit apparently a more naive and simple-minded one thanthe g_cg1_al implied audience to whom the poet speaks, as it were, over his internaladdressees heads). Neither this pupil nor the Hermesianax and Protagoras ad-dressed by Nicander has much more to do than simply listen, observe, and ac-knowledge the value of the p0ets teaching. Both Hesiod and Empedocles seem, bycontrast, more urgently interested in their pupils welfare. In both cases, the ad-dressee is named, and - particularly in Hesiods case more fully personalized thantheir Aratean and Nicandrean equivalents. In Parmenides poem, the roles of poetand pupil are exceptionally conflated, Parmenides himself being the recipient ofthe goddess teaching; this redistribution of roles in one sense dispenses with thepupil-figure altogether, but in another gives him an even more prominent part toplay than is usual elsewhere.

The characterization of Memmius seems at first glance to confirm the hy-

2 For this view of Lucretiuss style, as reverting to that of pre-Hellenistic didactic, see e.g.Effe 1977: 66-79; cf. also Conte 1994, esp. 4-16.3 Discussion of any ancient writers originality is, naturally, a hazardous business given theinevitably lacunose state of our knowledge of Classical literature as a whole and it goeswithout saying that any conclusions reached on such a question must be regarded as provi-sional. In particular, I have not attempted to take account of the tradition of Latin didacticpoetry preceding the DRN (for which see the discussion by Peter Kruschwitz in this vol-ume): the remains of these poems seem to me too fragmentary for any realistic estimate oftheir importance for Lucretius to be attempted. My tacit assumption that the fragments ofParmenides and Empedocles are representative of those poets work as a whole is, perhaps,rather less risky, given that a relatively large portion of each text appears in these instancesto have survived; moreover, Empedocles self-consciously repetitive style makes it likelythat the lost portions of his work would not have differed greatly in form from the existingfragments.4 Bing 1993.

/ll/IA PIERIDUM LOCA 177

pothesis that Lucretius looks back to the style of archaic didactic for his models.Like Hesiods Perses and (especially) Empedocles Pausanias, he is quite clearly de-picted as a beginner taking his rst steps on the path to wisdom, or setting out onthe rudiments of philosophy (rationzk inire elememfa), as the poet puts it in 1.81; he isrepeatedly assured of the value of the teaching he is to receive, and also like bothPerses and Pausanias warned sternly of the consequences of rejecting it. This isparticularly evident in the proems to books 2 and 3 where the joys of philosophi-cal contemplation are contrasted with darkness and anguish of the unenlightenedlife and the diatribes against the fear of death and the follies of romantic love inthe finales to books 3 and 4. Yet I would argue that, despite supercial similaritieswith Hesiod and Empedocles, Lucretius approach to the relationship betweenpraereptor and addressee is actually much more innovative than critics have tended torecognise.

Lucretius use of rst- and second-person verbs and pronouns repays thor-ough scrutiny. Careful consideration of the poets deployment of these reveals Ithink two quite subtle rhetorical strategies, neither of which, so far as I can see,occurs in the work of any of his predecessors. The first is the construction of thepoem, not as a monologue like Hesiods harangue or Empedocles somewhat lessvehement lecture, but as a dialogue. This is of course a very one-sided dialogue,since (with two exceptions, discussed below) direct speech is not directly attributedto Memmius; nevertheless, the pupils role as potential interlocutor is one on whichthe poet constantly plays throughout the poem. Lucretius frequently imagines hisaddressee as formulating objections to his argument, for example. This is, of course,a well-known rhetorical ploy, discussed by the rhetorical theorists under the head-ings of xermorinatio and amz'cz]>atz'0,6 and especially common in diatribe-literature. It isstriking, though, that the role of the anonymous objector is frequently attributedby Lucretius to his addressee, and that this happens especially in the early books ofthe poem. In book 1 we actually find two passages of quoted direct speech (1.803-808 and 897-900), each introduced by the verb inquiy, in which possible counter-arguments are raised only to be quashed by the praeceptor. This never happens againafter book 1; instead, the phrasing of similar objections appears to become increas-ingly hypothetical as the poem proceeds: phrases such as si paras or 52' medis (1.770,916, 1057; 2.80, 739; 3.533, 698; 4.366; 5.338) gradually give way to the more hypo-thetical nefarte pales (2.410-421, 718, 731-736, 842; 4.129, 435; 5.114, 305, 890f.) or

5 See esp. Op. 213-218, 298-302, 397-404, 473-482, and Emp. fr. 16.6-10 I B1106-10; cf.also Emp. fr. 3 = B4. (The fragments of Empedocles are cited throughout according to thenumeration of Inwood 2001, whose second edition conveniently incorporates the newfragments derived from the recently-published Strasbourg papyrus (Martin and Primavesi1999); the traditional Diels-Kranz numeration follows.) E.g. R/yet. Her. 4.55 and 65, Quint. Inst. 9.2.16-18 and 29-37.

178 MONICA R. GALE

prom! est uz mzdere pomk (4.856; cf. 3.370, 4.823f., 5.146, 6.411f.), while objections areoccasionally attributed to a genuinely anonymous third party, a/iquzlr (e.g. 2.225,2.931, 5.908, 6.673).

Furthermore, the pupil is occasionally said in the rst two books to distrusthis teacher, or characterized as a raw recruit, in danger of deserting the Epicureancause (1.267-270, 331-333, 2.1040f.; 1.103, 370f.). The only comparable passages Ihave found in the later books are the paired warnings at the beginning of book 5and book 67 against backsliding into superstition; and in both cases, the point isprecisely that this can happen even to an advanced student of Epicurean philoso-phy. Of particular interest is the challenge issued to the pupil at the beginning of thediscussion of the innite universe in 2.1023-1047: here, the praeceptor invites activeparticipation in the learning process, as an altemative to passive rejection (am /iudido perpende er, si tibi z/era uzdentur, / dede manus, aut, sifa/sum est, aca'ngere contra, weighup [my argument] with keen judgment, and, if it seems truthful, give me your hand,or, if it is false, take up arms against me, 2.1041-1043). This model of activeengagement is (as Diskin Clay observess) conrmed several times towards the endof the poem, when the reader is assured that he or she can work certain things outfor him-/herself without needing to have them explained in detail (4.572f., 5.1282,6.532-534, 10811083; cf. 3.10241052, 4.11881191).

My contention is, then, that the poet both seeks to engage his reader activelyin the learning process and represents the addressee as actually making philosophi-cal progress over the course of the poem, learning not to be fearful and supersti-tious but to think rationally for him- or herself. In this respect, Lucretius rhetoricalstrategy seems distinctively different from that of Empedocles, while building inobvious ways on the Empedoclean model: the Presocratic philosopher, like hisRoman successor, both threatens and cajoles his addressee (and, by implication, hiswider readership), but maintains throughout a studied air of superior authority.9Pausanias is, it seems, offered the opportunity to accede to the godlike status of hismentor, but remains for the duration of the poem on a par with the wretched andunhappy race of mortals (fr. 118.1 = B124.1) from whom the didactic speaker dis-tances himself in fr. 1.4 I B112.4; if he absorbs the poets teaching, he may there-after become a wonder-worker like his teacher (fr. 15 = B111), but - so far as wecan tell from the surviving fragments he is not represented as approaching thatgoal during the course of the recitation itself.

7 5.82-90 = 6.58-66.8 Clay 1983: 225.9 Admonitions and exhortations: frs. 3, 13-16, 25.14 and 21-26, 74 (I B4, 1, 3, 111, 110,17.14 and 21-26, 71); on Empedocles consistently superior air vis-a-vis the pupil, cf. Tr-panier 2004: 88-100.

/II/IA PIERIDUM LOCA 179

For these reasons, too, I disagree with the view put forward by Philip Mitsisand Katharina Volk, that Memmius acts rather like the Hesiodic Perses as a kind ofAunt Sally or foil for the implied reader, showing us how @ to receive the teachingwe are offered) Rather, I see Lucretius addressee as a positive model for the idealreader, one who is actively and critically engaged with the poets teaching, whostands to benet hugely from it, but will eventually be able to make his or her ownway independently as an Epicurean once the poem is over. Thus, the sense of ur-gency which we gain in reading the DRN comes not just from the characterizationof the speaker, but also of his pupil and the relationship between the two. We are,so to speak, written into the text of the poem, and shown how greatly our partici-pation in it matters. This is particularly clear in a series of passages in books 1 and 2,briey discussed by Katharina Volk in her book T/9e Poetic: 0fLatz'n Dz'dactz'c, whichemploy the gure designated by Godo Lieberg as poeta creator that is, the gurewhereby the poet is imagined as actually mg what he describes as being done.The characteristics of the elementary particles are described in terms which suggestthat they are being brought into being and put together to form compounds beforeour very eyes, though it might be more accurate to speak in this instance of a /ectorcreator, since it is the addressee rather than the poet who is imagined here as actuallyconstructing the universe. Repeatedly, we are warned against the disasters which willinevitably follow from fundamental errors at the atomic level: attributing colour tothe atoms, for example, will result in the destruction of the entire universe:

proinde :0/are cave corztingas Jemzha rmmz,ne tibi res redeanz ad nz'/umrnditzls omnes.

So beware of staining the seeds of things with colour, lest you should nd thewhole universe reduced to nothingness.

(2.755f.; cf. 1.797, 918,1111-1113; 2.56O566, 864)

As Volk suggests, 1z'hz' in the second line, following as it does on the second-personc0n1z'ngas, should be taken in a strong sense, virtually as a dative of agent: Lucretiussuggests that the consequences of any designfault imported by the reader will benothing short of earth-shattering.

A second way in which Lucretius can be seen to manipulate his readerthrough the use of rst- and second-person verbs and pronouns also tends tocounteract the view that Memmius functions in an analogous way to HesiodsPerses. Once again, the poet can be seen to operate in a very subtle and, I think,

1 Mitsis 1993; Volk 2002: 79-82. Cf. also Keen 1985.11 Volk 2002: 78f.; Lieberg 1982.

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innovative way here, by effectively introducing a third element into the traditionalpupil-teacher constellation. I noted above that Parmenides exceptionally conflatesthe roles of pupil and didactic speaker, by allocating the role of teacher to a thirdperson, the goddess who is the source of his teaching. In a similar way, Epicurushas an important part to play in the DRN, as the authority who validates Lucretiusteaching. But the relationship between Epicurus, Lucretius and Memmius (or thepupil in a more general sense) is considerably more complicated than that whichexists between their Parmenidean equivalents. Different groupings between thethree characters, and the broader communities of the Epicureans and the un-enlightened, continually fluctuate and re-form throughout the poem. The speakersometimes groups himself with the pupil as a member of the Epicurean communityin contrast with the unenlightened, sometimes with the pupil as one of the un-enlightened in contrast with the transcendent greatness of Epicurus himself; atother times, the speaker distances himself from the pupil, as one who has alreadyfound the path to true reason, and is therefore qualified to induct the pupil in turn.

To give just one illustration of the subtle shifts which Lucretius constantly in-troduces into these varied groupings, let us look briefly at the proem to book 2.This begins with the famous priamel, mam mad magno etc., which gives powerfulexpression to the mixture of moral superiority and pity which the enlightened Epi-curean experiences in contemplating his fellow human beings engaged in the futilestruggle for power and position. In the opening lines, the passage is focalizedthrough the pupil, who as it were looks down along with the speaker from thecitadel of the wise: deipzrere unde queai" a/1'05 passimque uidere / errare (2.910). At line20, the poet shifts to the first person plural: we see (uidemm) that few things areneeded for true happiness. At line 40, however, there is a further dramatic shift tothe second person: if ;o;1r legions (mar /qgiones) and the splendour of gold and pur-ple cannot frighten away the fear of death, how can ycg doubt (quid dubitas) that thepower to do so belongs to reason alone? (2.4053, paraphrase). The pupil has now,as it were, been banished from the philosophers citadel and deposited backamongst the unenlightened, to see how he fends for himself down in the world ofpower-politics. Finally, in the closing lines of the proem, the speaker seems to take

12 Once again, Lucretius seems distinctively different from Empedocles in this respect,though the latter also appears to have addressed parts of his poem to the unenlightened ingeneral, from whom Pausanias is emphatically differentiated in fr. 8 I B2. But Empedoclesconception is much more static and hierarchical: while the first person plural may occasion-ally be used with reference to human beings in general (e.g. fr. 17.1 I B109.1), the speakeris generally careful to mark his separation from the wretched race of mortals (fr. 118 IB124) through the use of the second person; his own superior status as one at or near theend of the cycle of reincarnations is most clearly indicated in fr. 1 = B112. On singularand plural addressees, see further Obbink 1993 and Trpanier 2004: 46-69.

A I/TA PIERIDUM LOCA 181pity again and descends to join his pupil: in the famous lines comparing the fears ofthe non-Epicurean to the night-terrors of children, Lucretius strikingly employs therst person plural, this time to designate the unenlightened: in the same way Lesometimes fear (nos tmzemuy) things no more terrible then those at which childrentremble in the dark (2.5658). The proem as a whole, then, moves subtly fromwhat we might call an idealistic identication of the pupil with the teacher, througha separation of pupil and teacher, to a renewed, sympathetic identification ofteacher with pupil. Fluctuations of this kind occur throughout the poem, and can beseen to constitute a highly effective rhetorical strategy: by identifying himself as analready-enlightened Epicurean in contrast to his pupil, Lucretius establishes his cre-dentials as teacher, while the alternating addresses to the pupil as one of the enlight-ened and as one of the genlightened amount to promises and threats, or a kind ofcarrot and stick approach to the educational process. Conversely, the alternationbetween distancing from the pupil and identication with the pupil on the speakerspart contributes greatly to the urgent tone to which I called attention at the begin-ning of this paper: the speaker represents himself at once as fully aware of and con-versant with the blessings conferred by Epicurean understanding, and as able toidentify sympathetically with his pupil as one who has not yet been through theprocess of conversion.

Having, I hope, demonstrated that Lucretius reworks the traditional constellation ofpupil, teacher and the authority-figure who is the ultimate source of the poetsteaching in a very subtle way which in my view represents a striking and effectivemodification of the tradition, I now want to look more briefly at some other waysin which he can be seen both to exploit and to move away from didactic con-vention.

Since Lucretius relationship to the traditions of heroic epic as well as didacticpoetry will be an issue of particular concern in what follows, my views on the still-controversial question of the relationship between these two genres (or sub-genres)should perhaps be made explicit. It has been argued that on the one hand thereis n_0 essential distinction between didactic and narrative or heroic epic, and onthe other that they should be regarded as completely separate genres. I take aposition somewhere between these two extremes. It has, I believe, been clearlydemonstrated that most ancient critics made no distinction between them, while atthe same time the poets themselves unmistakably demarcated a tradition of techni-cal or scientific hexameter poetry descending from Hesiod from the parallel tradi-tion of poetry concerned with kings and battles descending from Homer. I suggestthat the best way to negotiate this seeming contradiction is to regard the two

13 See e.g. Toohey 1996: 5-7 (no essential distinction), Volk 2002: 35 (separate genres).

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branches of spas which we can I think legitimately label narrative or heroic epicand didactic epic - as distinctive traditions which are nevertheless closely and pro-ductively related to each other from the outset. The didactic poets may have hadtheir own ways of exploiting (for example) epic language or the epic simile; but Iwould argue that they are always aware of the epic-ness of their style. Homericpoetry seems to have been regarded from an early date as a privileged vehicle forthe preservation and transmission of cultural truth and meaning; didactic feeds offthis perception, appropriating epic authority as a means of validating its own rivaltruths.

My suggestion is, then, that Lucretius self-consciously sets out to revitalize thedidactic tradition with a new infusion of epic-ness. This is most obviously mani-fested in the scale of the poem. It is easy to forget given that the multi-book di-dactic poem became fairly standard after Lucretius that almost all pre-Lucretiandidactic poems consisted of one book only. Empedocles seems to have been anexception; but the Peri P/gyreos was probably still a much shorter work than theDRN, in two or perhaps three books only. Lucretius poem is verynearly epic inscale; and it is also, I think, self-consciously epic in scope. Here I am thinking spe-cically of what Philip Hardiels refers to as the totalizing impulse of heroic epic: itsaspiration to comprehensiveness and completeness, to tell the whole story of anevent, a society, a people. Virgil, classically, manages to encapsulate the wholehistory of the Roman people within the story of Aeneas journey from Troy toLatium: by means of prophecy and retrospective narrative, aetiology and typology,the poet looks both back and forward in time and so vastly expands the surfacenarrative of his poem. Lucretius goes one better: the DRN tells the whole story ofthe entire world, from creation to destruction; it encompasses the history of animaland human life as a whole, and also the typical narrative of any one individual, frombirth to death. As has often been observed, Lucretius also accentuates the richvariety of the world accessible to our senses, even while insisting that the only ul-timate realities are imperceptible atoms and void: the emphasis laid on the sheermultiplicity of things in our world, from tiny insects to elephants, from purely in-ternal sensations to worldconvulsing earthquakes and eruptions, adds to the im-pression of comprehensiveness which the poem presents. (Empedocles, it is true,

14 Different figures for the number of books and total number of lines are recorded by Dio-genes Laertius and the Suda; for discussion, see Osborne 1987: 28f., Inwood 2001: 8-15,Trpanier 2004: 1-30. The hypothesis advanced by Osborne and subsequently refined byInwood and Trpanier, that Peri P/gyxeos and Katbamzoi were not separate works but alterna-tive titles for the same poem, is in my view persuasive.15 Hardie 1993: 1.1 On the narrative aspect of the poem, see Fowler 2000 and Gale forthcoming; for Lu-cretius aspiration to comprehensiveness, see also Kennedy 2000.

AI/IA PIERIDUM LOCA 183seems also to have drawn on minute details of plant and animal physiology in il-lustrating his theory that different mixtures of the four elements suffice to accountfor, and are visibly present in, the world we see around us; but his emphasis israther on the essential sameness of - for example - fur, leaves, feathers and scales[fr. 86 I B82] than on the range of variation within or between species) Also rele-vant from this point of view are the characteristically Lucretian inventories of theanimal kinds or products of the earth: at 2.342-346, for example, the poet lists thehuman race and the mute swimming herds of scaly sh, fruitful flocks and wildanimals and the variegated birds which throng the fruitful wetlands around river-banks, springs and pools and ll the pathless groves in ight; another comprehen-sive catalogue at 2.594-597 includes shining crops and fruitful trees for humanbeings rivers, leaves and fruitful meadows for the mountain-roaming race ofbeasts." Here again, the impetus comes from Empedocles

whose phrasing is, insome instances, closely echoed. Once more, however, Lucretius tends toparticularize what for Empedocles are broad general categories (analogous to thetraditional triad earth/sea/sky): the addition of epithets and sub-categories (theriver-banks, springs and pools in the passage cited above, for example), as well asLucretius tendency to vary rather than repeat the list of items in each separate in-ventory, have the effect yet again of stressing the abundance of individual thingswhich make up the phenomenal world, as well as the comprehensive explanatorypower of a theory which can account for them all.

In this respect, too, our poet seems to me to be distinctly different from hisdidactic predecessors, who can be seen in general to offer their relatively restrictedsubject-matter as a kind of microcosm or synecdoche of the wider world: where

17 See especially Emp. frr. 77-87 I B72, 74-83, and contrast (e.g.) DRN 2.333-380; whileincorporating an Empedoclean echo (342-344 ~ Emp. fr. 25.39-40 I fr. 26.10-11 IB21.10-11: Martin and Primavesi 1999: 186), Lucretius strikingly alters the emphasis of thesource-text by locating the lines in the context of a lengthy paragraph dilating on the varietyof atomic shapes and the resultant variation on the macroscopic level between individualmembers of a single species, in addition to differentiation between species.18 Cf. also 1.252-261; 2.994-998, 1081-1083; 5.821-825; and the inventories of meteorologi-cal phenomena at 5.1189-1193 and 6.529-531.1 Inventories appear at Emp. fr. 22 I B9; fr. 25.39-40 I fr. 26.10-11 I B21.10-11; fr.25.6567 I Strasbourg ensemble a (ii) 2628; fr. 27.6-9 I B23.69; fr. 38.6-7 I B206-7;compare also the lists (with variations) of the four elements at fr. 12 I B6, fr. 25.18 IB17.18, fr. 37.2 I B222, fr. 39.3-4 I B38.3-4. All but one of the inventories are variationson or selections from the list men and women, animals, plants, birds, fish, gods; epithetssuch as i:8a"ro9pu|io1/es or TrTepoBduo0t serve to distribute the species amongst the ele-mental bodies of earth, water and sky rather than to particularize. On the more elaborateinventory at lines a (ii) 26-28 of the Strasbourg papyrus echoed by Lucretius at 2.1081-1083 see Martin and Primavesi 1999: 230, Sedley 2003: 6-9.

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Lucretius, as it were, holds a mirror up to the entire universe, earlier didactic poetstend on the whole to focus on one little piece of it. Here again, Parmenides andEmpedocles, with their grand theories of the nature of reality,2 offer a partialexception and a partial precedent; but it is, I think, only partial, in the sense thatneither, so far as we can tell from the fragments, aspires to the detailed and com-prehensive representation of the surface of the world, as opposed to its underlyingreality, which we find in Lucretius. Hesiod and Aratus might be said to offer thereader natume ipedey, Parmenides and Empedocles naturae ratio; only Lucretius aimsfor both.

There are a number of other ways in which I think Lucretius can be seen asepicizing (or perhaps re-epicizing) the didactic tradition; most have been exploredelsewhere, by myself and others, and I can do no more here than briefly mentionone or two. The striking and often-observed preponderance of military and civicimagery in the DRN is perhaps the most obvious of these epic elements: both Epi-curus and Nature itself are implicitly represented as epic warriors, in the one casebattling superstition and the inadequate theories of rival philosophers, in the otherdirecting the wars and alliances of the atoms. Also notable is Lucretius use ofthe extended epic simile, which he exploits much more frequently and more fullythan his predecessors. Homer, of course, often compares the actions of his warri-ors to natural phenomena: fires, floods, storms and the behaviour of wild animals.Lucretius brilliantly inverts this procedure, comparing natural phenomena implic-itly or explicitly - to warfare. In some cases, Homeric similes can be shown to havebeen specifically inverted in this way (a technique better known from Virgil, whotook it over from Lucretius and used a number of times in the Georgia): a metaphorat the beginning of book 6 (96-98), for example, where winds are described asclashing in battle, recalls a simile applied in Iliad 16 (765-769) to the confrontationof Greek and Trojan armies. Such allusions contain in several instances an elementof implicit polemic: the first simile in the poem the famous comparison of thewind to a flooding river is an excellent example. The Lucretian simile is derived

2 For the notion that Empedocles offers a single theory of everything, see Trpanier 2004:31-34.21 Hardie 1986: 193-219; Mayer 1990; Conte 1994: 1-3; Gale 1994: 117-127. Empedoclessurviving similes, by contrast, are drawn almost exclusively from the sphere of the visualarts and crafts (painting, fr. 27 = B23; cheese-making, fr. 75 = B33; the construction of alantern, fr. 103 I B 84).22 Bibliography on the Lucretian simile is extensive: see esp. West 1969, Hardie 1986: 220-233, Schiesaro 1990, Clay 1996, Schindler 2000: 72-149.23 Cf. also DRN 2.325-327 (~ I/. 19.362-364), 5.1074f. (~ I/. 6.506511), 5.1078-1082 (~ I/.2.459-463); 6.191-193 (~ I/. 5.522-526).

/II/IA PIERIDUM LOCA 185from I/iad 5.87-92, where Diomedes attacks the Trojans like a river in spate; butwhere Homer attributes the flood to Zeus rain, Lucretius pointedly substitutesmo!/ii" aquae 1, the soft substance of water (1.281) as the agent of destruc-tion. In this marked context, the periphrasis can be seen as more than just anequivalent to the simple noun aqua; Lucretius implicitly corrects Homers idea thatrain and floods are sent by Zeus, representing them instead as natural processes.

The polemical element present in Lucretius exploitation of the heroic epic traditionbrings me to my nal point: the DRl\T can be seen to stand like so many works ofGreek and Roman literature - in a kind of productive tension with its models. BothHomer and Ennius, the main representatives of the narrative branch of thetradition, and Hesiod, Empedocles and Aratus are, explicitly or implicitly, treatedwith a heavily qualied respect in Lucretius poem. This is most obvious in theproem to book 1 - where Ennius and Homer are cited by name and in the almosthymnic lines in praise of Empedocles later in the same book (1.712-741). In allthree cases, the earlier poets are praised for the greatness of their carmina, butfaulted on their misguided view of the ream natura. Empedocles comes closest totruth: like Lucretius himself, he is said to have pronounced oracles much truer andmore pious than those of the Pythia, but is nevertheless subject to stern criticismfor his theory that the four elements are the ultimate constituents of matter. En-nius and Homer are much more severely criticized for their nonsensical and perni-cious representation of the afterlife: it is this tradition, Lucretius says, that makes itso essential for him to explain the true nature of the gods and the fate of the soulafter death (1.112-135).

In these three instances, Lucretius critique of the world view presented by hisepic and didactic predecessors is quite explicit; as I have already suggested, though,there are many other places in the poem where implicit polemic is conveyedthrough intertextual echoes or 0pp0iz'zz'0 in Zmitando. The most obvious place to lookfor such echoes is the proem, the usual location for reflexion on poetics and thewriters relationship with his predecessors, as well as announcement of the poetssubject-matter. In addition to the explicit references to Homer and Ennius, allu-sions to several poets in the didactic tradition can be detected in Lucretius proem.As will become clear, I want to dispute, or at least heavily qualify, the theory ad-vanced by David Sedley, that the proem of the DRN is directly and extensivelymodelled on that of Empedocles;2" while Sedley is clearly right to suggest that Lu-cretius repeatedly evokes Empedocles in the embrace of Mars and Venus, which

241.738f. I 5.111f.25 Sedley 1998: 15-34; for a critique of Sedleys reconstruction, see now Trpanier 2004: 38-44.

186 MONICA R. GALE

calls to mind Empedoclean Love and Strife; in the praise of Epicurus, which recallsEmpedocles encomium of Pythagoras (fr. 6 = B129); and in the sacrice ofIphigenia, which contains echoes of the Empedoclean fragment (fr. 128 = B137) inwhich a father unwittingly sacrices his reincarnated son I will suggest that theseallusions are skilfully interwoven with echoes of Empedocles predecessors and suc-cessors. In this way, Lucretius proem seeks to evoke - and offer his own poem asat once the culmination of and substitute for - the epic and didactic tradition as awhole.

It can be argued, in fact, that this procedure itself is part of the tradition. Vir-tually every didactic poet in the sequence which has come down to us seems to lookback to his predecessors and seek to take on their mantle, creating a kind of apos-tolic succession. In particular, Hesiods opening hymn to Zeus and the Muses andhis myth of the Five Ages are taken up and developed with more or less subtlevariations by each of his successors. It is, I think, no accident that the latter passageis itself a myth of origins and succession; it thus lends itself with particular neatnessand elegance to exploitation as a vehicle for metaliterary reflection.

Constraints of space make it impracticable to elaborate this point fully; I limitmyself here to brief discussion of one or two examples. Aratus proem, like He-siods, takes the form of a hymn to Zeus; there are clear Hesiodic allusions, par-ticularly the promise that mortals will never leave Zeus H77/781071 (1-2), which invertsHesiods assertion that mortals become rbetoi or arr/Jetoi through Zeus (with the ad-ditional complication that Aratus seems to pun here on his own name; could weperhaps see the adverb urreoa in line 13 as a similar play on the name of Empe-docles, in this programmatic context?).2 The patterned word-repetition (AiogAiog A105, uecrrai trdoai rrdoal. ueot, >\'YL 8 )\'Yt 8) is also remi-niscent of the four-fold repetition of pa/peia in Hesiods proem.27 These echoesare, arguably, combined with less obvious reminiscences of Empedocles, whoseinsistent request that the Muse guide him to speak piously of the gods is picked upin Aratus closingf] Guig (cf. 9uL d|

AVTA PIERIDUM LOCA 187

unlike his providential Aratean successor.Empedocles and Aratus reworking of the Myth of Ages is well known, and

can again be seen in terms of oppositio in imzitando. Briefly, the Empedoclean fragmentwhich describes life in the Golden Age (fr. 122 = B128) recalls Hesiod in its empha-sis on the absence of strife, but corrects the Hesiodic story that the god who ruledover the Golden Race was Kronos, asserting that the only deity worshiped at thattime was Kypris. There may also be a touch of polemic in Empedocles referencesto meat-free sacrices, given that Hesiods Golden Race is described as rich inocks an epithet suggestive of animal sacrifice and feasting. Aratus complicatesthe Hesiodic picture in a different way, by making agricultural work a positive aspectof Golden Age life, not a punishment inicted by the gods on the degenerate IronRace. Hesiods ambivalent attitude to agricultural labour, which seems to be re-garded at once as a virtue and a regrettable necessity, is self-consciously modied bythe later poet. At the same time, Aratus can be seen to nod in the direction ofEmpedocles, who states more explicitly than does Hesiod that there was no s_'tr1;fe1 inthe Golden Age: Aratus phrase 008% Kv8oiuof) (P/men. 109) closely echoes Empe-docles, who places the same words in the same prominent position at the line-end(o1:8 Kv8oi|i6, fr. 122.1 = B1281), and the immediately preceding reference topainful strife (kevyakov veilceog, P/yaen. 108) also seems pointedly Empedocleanin this context.

Lucretius can be fitted into this succession on both counts. just as Aratushymn to Zeus echoes and corrects both Hesiod and Empedocles, so Lucretiushymn to Venus can be seen to echo and correct Empedocles and Aratus. The ideathat Venus fills sea and land recalls Aratus Zeus, as do the reference to the signsof heaven (2 ~ P/vaen. 10) and to the new growth of plants and animals in spring (7-16 ~ Plaaen. 79); but the stern, if providential, power of the Stoic Zeus is replaced,as Liz Asmis has pointed out, by the seductive force of Epicurean pleasure,uolzg>za.r." Again, Lucretius request towards the end of the hymn that Venus supporthim as an ally, soda, seems reminiscent of Empedocles, who asks Calliope to standby him, TT(1piO'T(1O'O (fr. 10.3 = B131.3); this echo, too, underlines a correction,since for Lucretius the forces of creation and destruction Venus and Mars arewound in a perpetual embrace. As I have argued elsewhere, this can be taken as

28 Gn the controversial issue of Aratus relations to early Stoicism, see Effe 1977: 45-53,Hunter 1995: 4-9, Gee 2000: 70-91; contra, Fakas 2001: 18-39.29 On Aratus Golden Age and its relation to the Hesiodic version, see esp. Solmsen 1966and Schiesaro 1996; for the Empedoclean allusion, cf. Kidd 1997 ad 108.5 Asmis 1982.5 Cf. also Simonides, eleg. 11.20-22 West, which may act as an intertext for bothEmpedocles and Lucretius: OHara 1998.

188 MONICA R. GALE

symbolic of the interdependence of creation and destruction in the Epicureansystem, and as ruling out Empedoclean alternation.

I can only touch still more briey on Lucretius version of the Golden Agemyth, which forms part of his history of civilization at the end of book 5. There arein fact two sections of the culture-history where Hesiodic allusion can be detected:rst, and more obviously, the account of primitive life at 5.925-1010, and, secondly,the discussion of the development of metalworking at 1241-1296. In both cases, theHesiodic account is severely and, I think, self-consciously rationalized. Perhaps theclearest instance of this is the transition from the Bronze to the Iron Age at 1289f.,where the anaphora aere aereque is strongly reminiscent of the similar anaphora atWor/es and Days 150f., )((i)\K(l uv Teuxea, )(Ci)\K6OL 8 "re oikot / Xa>\|

/ll/IA PIERIDUM LOCA 1 89

descends. But he does not, in my view, simply turn the clock back to an earlier,more serious phase of that tradition in creating his Epicurean epic; rather, as Ihope I have shown, he exploits a variety of conventions derived from bothbranches of the tradition in very subtle and innovative ways. It was above all thismanipulation of the didactic tradition which enabled him to adapt it so successfullyas a vehicle for that most apparently unpoetic of subjects, the rationalist philosophyof Epicurus.

BIBLIOGRAPHYAsmis, E. (1982), Lucretius Venus and Stoic Zeus, Hermes 110, 458-470Bing, P. (1993), Aratus and his Audiences, in: Schiesaro et al., Mega Nq;>z'0i", 99-109Campbell, G. L. (2003), Lucretius on Creation and Evolution: A Commentary on

De Remm Natzzra, Book Five, Lines 772-1104, OxfordClay, D. (1983), Lucretius and Epicurus, Ithaca and London4- (1996) An Anatomy of Lucretian Metaphor, in: G. Giannantoni and M.

Gigante (edd.) Epicureismo greco e romano: Atti del Congresso Internazion-ale, Napoli, 19-26 Maggio 1993, Naples, vol. 2, 779-793

Conte, G. B. (1994) Instructions for a Sublime Reader: Form of the Text and Formof the Addressee in Lucretiuss De Remm Natum, in: Genres and Readers, Bal-timore/London, 1-34

Effe, B. (1970) lIpoTpr| yeve - eine stoische Hesiod-Interpretation in AratsPhainomena, RhM 113, 167-182

-- (1977) Dichtung und Lehre. Untersuchungen zur Typologie des antikenLehrgedichts, Munchen

Fakas, C. (2001) Der hellenistische Hesiod: Arats Phainomena und die Tradition derantiken Lehrepik, Wiesbaden

Fowler, D. P. (2000) The Didactic Plot, in: M. Depew and D. Obbink (edd.) Matri-ces of Genre: Authors, Canons and Society, Cambridge (MA), 205-219

Gale, M. R. (1994), Myth and Poetry in Lucretius, Cambridge- (forthcoming), The Story of Us: A Narratological Analysis of Lucretius

De Rm/m Natura, in: Gale, M. R. (ed.) Latin Epic and Didactic Poetry: Genre,Tradition and Individuality, Swansea

Gee, E. (2000), Ovid, Aratus and Augustus: Astronomy in Ovids Faslz, CambridgeHardie, P. R. (1986), Virgils Aenezd: Cosmos and Imperium, Oxford- (1993), The Epic Successors of Virgil, Cambridge

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Hershbell, P. (1970), Hesiod and Empedocles, C] 65, 145-161Hunter, R. L. (1995), Written in the Stars: Poetry and Philosophy in the Pbainomena

of Aratus, Arachnion 2 (wu/22/.eisi.anit0.it/arae/me/arae/yne//Jim!)Inwood, B. (2001), The Poem of Empedoclesz, Toronto]ames, A.W. (1972), The Zeus Hymns of Cleanthes and Aratus, Antichthon 6, 28-38Keen, R. (1985), Lucretius and his Reader, Apeiron 19, 1-10Kennedy, D. F. (2000), Making a Text of the Universe: Perspectives on Discursive

Order in the De Reram Natara of Lucretius, in: A. Sharrock and H. Morales(edd.) Intratextuality: Greek and Roman Textual Relations, Oxford, 205-225

Kidd, D. A. (1993, Aratus: P/aaenomena, CambridgeLieberg, G. (1982), Poeta ereaton Studien zu einer Figur der antiken Dichtung,

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Martin, A. and Primavesi, O. (1999), LEmpdocle de Strasbourg, Berlin/New YorkMayer, R. (1990), The Epic of Lucretius, PLLS 6, 35-43.Mitsis, P. (1993), Committing Philosophy on the Reader: Didactic Coercion and

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Obbink, D. (1993), The Addressees of Empedocles, in: Schiesaro et al., Mega nepios,51-98

OHara, J. (1998), Venus or the Muse as Ally (Lucr. 1.24, Simon. Frag. Eleg. 11.20-22 W), CPh 93, 69-74

Osborne, C. (1987), Empedocles Recycled, CQ 37, 2450Porter, H. N. (1946), Hesiod and Aratus, TAPhA 77, 158170Schiesaro, A. (1990), fima/aeram et imago. Gli argomenti analogici nel De reram natara,

Pisai-_ (1996), Aratus Myth of Dike, MD 37, 9-26Schiesaro, A., Mitsis, P. and Clay, S. (edd.) (1993), Mega nepios. I1 destinatario nell

epos didascalico, Pisa (I MD 31)Schindler, C. (2000), Untersuchungen zu den Gleichnissen im romischen Lehrge-

dicht: Lucrez, Vergil, Manilius, GottingenSchrijvers, P. H. (1994), Intertextualit et polmique dans le De reram natara (V 925-

1010): Lucrece vs. Dicarque de Messene, Philologus 138, 288-304 (= Lucreceet les sciences de la vie, Leiden 1999, 81-101)

Sedley, D. N. (1998), Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom, Cam-bridge

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Solmsen, F. (1966), Aratus on the Maiden and the Golden Age, Hermes 94: 124-128

/II/IA PIERIDUM LOCA 191Toohey, P. (1996), Epic Lessons: An Introduction to Ancient Didactic Poetry, Lon-

donTraglia, A. (1963), Reminiscenze Empedoclee nei Fenomeni de Arato, in Miscellanea

di studi Alessandrini in memoria di A. Rostagni, Turin, 382-393Trpanier, S. (2004), Empedocles: An Interpretation, New York/LondonVolk, K. (2002), The Poetics of Latin Didactic: Lucretius, Vergil, Ovid, Manilius,

OxfordWest, D. A. (1969) The Imagery and Poetry of Lucretius, EdinburghWormell, D. E. W. (1960) Lucretius: The Personality of the Poet, G&R 7, 54-65 (=

C.]. Classen (ed.) Probleme der Lukrezforschung Hildesheim, 1986, 17-28)

338 QUELLENINDEX

8,51-77 280 fr. 6 B 129 1868,57 273 fr. 8 B 2 1808,67-72 281 fr. 9 B 3,4 1849,18-23 280 fr. 10 B 131,3 187

Diom. fr. 12 B 6 1831,4826 95 fr. 15 B 111 178

Dionys. Per. fr. 16 B 110,6-10 177513f 38 fr. 17 B 109,1 180709ff. 38 fr. 22 B 9 1831166ff. 38 fr. 25 B 17 178, 183

fr. 26,10-11 B 21 183fr. 27 B 23 183, 184fr. 37 B 22,2 183

Eur, [Austin] fr. 38 B 20,6-7 183ft 50,743 101 fr. 39 B 38 3-4 183

Emp [D__[ 33 fr. 122 B 128 1871. 31 B 17,7-8 74, 83 fr- 128 B 137 186fr. 31 B 17,18 74 E1111 var [V-J1. 31 B 21 83, 84, 86 33-44 195fr. 31 B 21,12 83, 84, 85 E1111 Epivbwmw1. 31 B 21,9-12 83 Frg- 45 12ft 31 B 36,1 33 Eratosth. Cat.1. 31 B 26,12 83 1 1451. 31 B 26,5 87 13 141ff, 31 B 27,4 87 Euseb. Pragb. ez/ang.1. 31 B 27-29 84 13,12,6 1441. 31 B 28,2 87 E1. Luv.B. 31 B 29 85, 86, 87 13,24 1441. 31 B 30-31 84 E2 Mr.1. 31 B 35 85 7,6 3191. 31 B 35,3-5 84 7,13f- 1441. 31 B 39,25. 167 10,16 3191. 31 B 963 751. 31 B 98,2 75B. 31 B 115 881. 31 B 115,13 88, 89 P661116 c;/66.1121.fr. 31 B 129 89, 167 35OL 249fr. 31 B 132,1 167 FGrH1. 31 B 134 86, 87, 89,90 III B 36 2841. 31 B 142 76 111 B 566 284

Emp. [Inwood (D.-K.)] 111 F 35b 284fr. 1 B 112 178, 180 Firm. Math.fr. 3 B 4 177 8,17,6 149fr. 13-16 B 3.110.111 178 8,17,7 148