Our own Ennius, who first brought down from pleasant Helicon a garland of evergreen leaves

I wander through trackless places of the Muses, trodden by no foot before mine. It is pleasant to approach untouched springs and drink, and pleasant to pluck fresh flowers and seek a glorious garland for my head in places whence the Muses have crowned no other brow.

These two closely related passages from Lucretius’ first book suggest - when taken together - a concern with literary filiation and poetic originality typical of the poets of the first century bc. A cross-reference is implicit in the shared image of the garland plucked on the mountain of the Muses: even as he stakes his own claim as a literary innovator, the poet points us back to his earlier acknowledgement of Ennius as literary forebear. Paradoxically, the poet’s originality is predicated on the existence of a prior tradition.

Lucretius’ engagement with previous poetic traditions is intense and sustained, though largely conducted with a subtlety that has often led commentators to overlook its existence. The issue was a particularly pressing one for an Epicurean poet: Epicurus himself appears to have held literary pursuits in general to be trivial, if not positively dangerous.