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LUCRETIUS' SELF-POSITIONING IN THE HISTORY OF ROMAN EPICUREANISM

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2013

Chris Eckerman
Chris Eckerman*
Affiliation:
University of Oregon
*
[email protected]
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Extract

At Book 5.324–37, the DRN’s narrator says that the world is young, claims that the nature of the world has been understood only recently (with the advent of Epicureanism), and asserts that he is either the ‘very first’/‘most pre-eminent’ or, as I suggest here, ‘among the first’/‘among the most pre-eminent’ to turn (vertere) Greek Epicureanism into Latin. It is the last of these three claims that concerns us:

      denique natura haec rerum ratioque repertast   335
      nuper, et hanc primus cum primis ipse repertus
      nunc ego sum in patrias qui possim vertere voces.
Commentators and translators persistently interpret the phrase primus cum primis at line 336 to mean ‘the very first’, taking cum primis as an intensifier of primus and providing primus with a temporal denotation. A comment by Reid is typical: ‘The phrase cum primis, as used by [Lucretius], has lost its literal sense, and means “particularly”, “especially”’. It is not immediately clear, however, whether one should choose the temporal (‘first’) or qualitative (‘pre-eminent’) denotation for primus or whether one should allow ambiguity and grant that some readers may interpret the adjective temporally while others may interpret it qualitatively. I suggest that the passage primus cum primis ipse repertus | nunc ego sum in patrias qui possim vertere voces means ‘I myself have now been discovered to be a pre-eminent person, among pre-eminent people, of the type who is able to turn this (i.e. the ratio mentioned in the previous line) into our native tongue’. Cum primis should be understood literally, following standard Latin grammar, as an ablative construed with cum denoting accompaniment rather than as an intensifier. While Leonard and Smith suggest that ‘the phrase cum primis … seems to have originated in the idea of accompaniment and implicit comparison’, here I show that the prepositional phrase cum primis retains its original meaning of accompaniment in Lucretius. As I shall argue, we should be sceptical of commentators who exhort us to interpret cum primis at 5.336 as an intensifier, since the phrase makes good sense, following standard Latin grammar, as an ablative of accompaniment, and Lucretius’ use of the phrase cum primis elsewhere is always qualitative, never temporal. Moreover, several scholars have used 5.336 to date early Italian Epicureans, including C. Amafinius, and the interpretation of 5.336, accordingly, affects Lucretius’ temporal position, as well as, perhaps, his intellectual engagement in relation to Italian Epicureans. There is, then, much at stake in the interpretation of 5.336, since the narrator may be found to be either honest or not (depending on how one interprets 5.336), when he positions Lucretius in relation to the translation of Epicureanism into Latin.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 63 , Issue 2 , December 2013 , pp. 785 - 800
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2013 

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References

1 For the text I follow Rouse, W.H.D. and Smith, M.F., Lucretius. De rerum natura (Cambridge, MA, 1992)Google Scholar.

2 Commentaries: Gale, M.R., Lucretius. De rerum natura V (Oxford, 2009), 39, 134–5Google Scholar; Brown, P.M., Lucretius. De rerum natura I (London, 1984), 69Google Scholar: ‘cum primis, especially’; Costa, C.D.N., Lucretius. De rerum natura V (Oxford, 1984), 74Google Scholar: ‘Lucretius’ very emphatic claim (primus cum primis)’; Bailey, C., Lucretius. De rerum natura: Edited, with Prolegomena, Critical Apparatus, Translation and Commentary (Oxford, 1947), 1371Google Scholar: ‘cum primis only emphasizes primus “first of all”’; Leonard, W.E. and Smith, S.B., T. Lucreti Cari. De rerum natura, Libri sex (Madison, WI, 1942), 674Google Scholar: ‘Primus cum primis: Lucretius seems to be mistaken’; Duff, J.D., T. Lucreti Cari, De rerum natura, liber quintus (Cambridge, 1903), 64Google Scholar: ‘primus cum primis is emphatic’. Translations: e.g., Englert, W., Lucretius: On the Nature of Things (Newbury, MA, 2003), 136Google Scholar: ‘I myself have been found to be the very first’; Rouse and Smith (this note), 405: ‘I myself am now found the very first’; Bailey (this note), 449: ‘I myself was found the very first’.

3 Reid, J.S., ‘Lucretiana: notes on Books I and II of the De rerum natura’, HSPh 22 (1911), 1–53Google Scholar, at 2.

4 Cf. OLD s.v. for the broad semantic range of primus.

5 Repertus may be adjectival, since there are numerous examples of participles used thus with forms of esse in Republican Latin; cf. Woodcock, E.C., A New Latin Syntax (London, 1959), 79–80Google Scholar. For the argument made here, it does not matter whether we choose to separate or conjoin repertus and sum, but I conjoin them and construe them as a perfect passive indicative.

6 Leonard and Smith (n. 2), 216.

7 With one exception discussed below (comparandum 7).

8 See 1.54–7 and Bailey (n. 2), 621–2.

9 On atomic vocabulary in Lucretius, see Sedley, D., Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom (Cambridge, 1998), 38–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On Latin atomic vocabulary, see Reiley, K.C., Studies in the Philosophical Terminology of Lucretius and Cicero (New York, 1909), 35–66Google Scholar.

10 Sedley (n. 9), 38.

11 Warren, J., ‘Lucretius and Greek philosophy’, in Gillespie, S. and Hardie, P. (edd.), The Cambridge Companion to Lucretius (Cambridge, 2007), 19–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 21.

12 e.g. Bailey (n. 2), 622, who glosses cum primis as ‘more especially’; Leonard and Smith (n. 2), 216, who gloss cum primis as ‘“especially”. Construe closely with sagaci’; Brown (n. 2), 69, who glosses cum primis as ‘especially’. Cum primis as an intensifier is, along with in primis, a well-documented expression not peculiar to Lucretius. However, Lucretius’ cum primis is not simply an intensifier like adprime (or, for that matter, adverbs like longe and valde), since primis retains adjectival value in DRN and Lucretius regularly expects his readers to supply a noun, easily understood from context, with primis.

13 Sedley (n. 9), 21.

14 Tatum, W.J., ‘The Presocratics in book one of Lucretius' De rerum natura’, TAPhA 114 (1984), 177–89Google Scholar, at 178; cf. 179–80: ‘As the Epicureans looked back in time to the teachings of their founder so they might expect others to look back to relevant philosophers. Hence the need for a historical philosophical polemic.’

15 1.734–5: Hic tamen et supra quos diximus inferiores | partibus egregie multis multoque minores.

16 Pace Bailey (n. 2), 725, who cites no comparanda in support of his gloss ‘cum primis = primus or princeps’; see too the discussion of Sallust's in primis on p. 793 below. Leonard and Smith (n. 2), 271 comment that ‘cum primis may possibly have temporal force here as well as the usual superlative denotation’.

17 Munro, H.A.J., T. Lucreti Cari De rerum natura Libri sex (Cambridge, 1928), 89Google Scholar: ‘quorum appears to be governed of cum primis, not est’; Leonard and Smith (n. 2), 271: ‘quorum: Construe as partitive genitive with cum primis’; Brown (n. 2), 158: ‘quorum … cum primis: “foremost of these” (lit. with the first)’; Bailey (n. 2), 725: ‘Going directly with quorum’.

18 Giussani, C., T. Lucreti Cari De rerum natura Libri sex (Turin, 1896)Google Scholar, 1.97.

19 Bailey (n. 2), 888 uses ‘equal distribution’ to render ἰσονομία, but things are not distributed equally but rather are in equilibrium according to the principle.

20 Cf. Bailey (n. 2), 934: ‘Lucretius believes each of the secondary qualities to be caused by a concrete emanation, colour by the simulacra, sound and scent by emitted particles (iv. 524–614, 673–705), taste by the juices which issue from food (iv. 615–72). For this reason he can group with them heat and cold, which are similarly for him concrete bodies which penetrate into things.’

21 On Lucretius’ analogic arguments see J. Farrell ‘Lucretian architecture: the structure and argument of the De rerum natura’, in Gillespie and Hardie (n. 11), 76–91, at 90–1; Schiesaro, A., Simulacrum et imago: gli argomenti analogici nel De rerum natura (Pisa, 1990)Google Scholar.

22 Giussani (n. 18), 256.

23 For the principal of multiple explanations, note the sequence nam fieri (621) … fit quoque (637).

24 Costa (n. 2), 89. So, too, e.g. Rouse and Smith (n. 1), 427: ‘among the most likely causes’.

25 Bailey (n. 2), 1421 suggests ‘perhaps first of all’ for vel cum primis, while Leonard and Smith (n. 2), 697 offer ‘vel cum primis: in all probability’. Both translations would be improved if they suggested that Lucretius positions Democritus’ whirl theory among other theories (as Costa's translation cited above does). So too Gale (n. 2), 57 aptly translates: ‘For this, it seems, may be among the most likely causes’.

26 Leonard and Smith (n. 2), 216; Godwin, J., Lucretius, De rerum natura VI (Warminster, 1991), 111Google Scholar.

27 As Godwin (n. 26), 111 notes: ‘Lucretius deliberately uses the polyptoton of ignibus ignem to convey the idea that this is “the fire to beat all fires” for subtlety’.

28 Leonard and Smith (n. 2), 787.

29 Cf. Godwin (n. 26), 114.

30 On information unit and metrical unit, see Slings, S.R., ‘Information unit and metrical unit’, in Pfeijffer, I. and Slings, S.R. (edd.), One Hundred Years of Bacchylides (Amsterdam, 1999), 113–30Google Scholar.

31 On the programmatic importance of the Muses for Lucretius, see below.

32 Virgil. Georgics (Cambridge, 1988)Google Scholar, 2.40. On Virgil's dependence here on Lucretius 1. 117–19, see Mynors, R.A.B., Virgil. Georgics (Oxford, 1990), 180Google Scholar.

33 For further discussion, with a list of examples in Roman poetry, see Nisbet, R.G.M. and Rudd, N., A Commentary on Horace: Odes, Book III (Oxford, 2004), 375–6Google Scholar.

34 Strictly speaking, Horace is not the first Roman poet to have used Aeolic meters, since Catullus uses Sapphics in 11 and 51. As Nisbet and Rudd (n. 33), 375 observe, ‘Horace feels at liberty to ignore the Sapphics of Catullus 11 and 51 because those were the only two examples’.

35 On the theme of the prôtos heuretês generally, see Kleingünther, A., Protos Heuretes: Untersuchungen zur Geschichte einer Fragestellung (Leipzig, 1933)Google Scholar. On its use in Lucretius, see Volk, K., The Poetics of Latin Didactic: Lucretius, Vergil, Ovid, Manilius (Oxford, 2002), 88, 114–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 149–50, 211–19.

36 For discussion cf. Bailey (n. 2), 619; Leonard and Smith (n. 2), 214–15.

37 Brown (n. 2), 66.

38 Volk (n. 35), 88.

39 Minadeo, R., The Lyre of Science: Form and Meaning in Lucretius’ De rerum natura (Detroit, 1969), 39Google Scholar.

40 The primus motif is also used of Athens in the proem to Book 6 (1–6), and there too the motif is marked by adjectives and finite verbs in the perfect active indicative.

41 Allen, J.H. and Greenough, J.B. (updated by A. Mahoney), New Latin Grammar for Schools and Colleges (Newburyport, MA, 2001), 333Google Scholar.

42 Contrast Howe, H., ‘Amafinius, Lucretius, and Cicero’, AJPh 72 (1951) 57–62Google Scholar, at 57, who does not distinguish between being the first to compose on Epicureanism in Latin and being the first to do so in poetic form; cf. Cabisius, G., ‘Lucretius' statement of poetic intent’, in Deroux, C. (ed.), Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History. Collection Latomus: 164 (Brussels, 1979), 239–48Google Scholar, at 242: ‘Epicurus was the first to bring the truth to the Greeks; Lucretius will be the first to present it to the Romans.’

43 Minadeo (n. 39), 42.

44 Tatum (n. 14), 180.

45 I thank one of the referees for bringing this to my attention.

46 On the early history of the debate, see Valle, G. Della, Tito Lucrezio Caro e l'epicureismo campano (Naples, 1933), 169–81Google Scholar.

47 Rouse and Smith (n. 1), 405.

48 Howe (n. 42) argues that Cicero was moved to attack the Epicurean followers of Amafinius as a contemporary political danger. Accordingly, he asserts that Amafinius must have been much closer to Cicero in time in order to have developed a loyal entourage that was problematic for Cicero. The problem with Howe's argument is that although there were prominent Epicureans at Cicero's time, there is no reason to assume that these were immediate followers of Amafinius.

49 Cf. Howe (n. 42), 57: ‘A few writers have believed that [Amafinius] was a contemporary of Lucretius – a conjecture which is, perhaps, more in accord with our scanty evidence. Most of the debate has been carried on by scholars of Lucretius, examining the claim he makes in De Rerum Natura (I, 922–950, V, 335–337).’

50 Shackleton Bailey, D.R., Cicero. Epistulae ad familiares, vol. II (Cambridge, 1977), 381Google Scholar; Rawson, E., Intellectual Life in the Late Roman Republic (London, 1985), 284Google Scholar.

51 Tusc. 4.6–7: … cum interim illis (i.e. the Peripatetics, Stoics and Academics) silentibus C. Amafinius exstitit dicens, cuius libris editis commota multitudo tulit se ad eam potissimum disciplinam … post Amafinium autem multi eiusdem aemuli rationis multa cum scripsissent, Italiam totam occupaverunt …

52 Beard, M., ‘Cicero and divination: the formation of a Latin discourse’, JRS 76 (1986), 33–46Google Scholar, at 38.

53 e.g. Howe (n. 42), 57: ‘Modern scholars have debated the date of this man; the consensus of opinion has been that he worked at the end of the second or the beginning of the first century’; cf. Beard (n. 52), 38. For Amafinius’ imitators, cf. Acad. post. 1.5; Fam. 15.16.1, 15.19.1.

54 For Lucretius, see Q. fr. 2.10(9) = SB 14.

55 On early Epicureanism, see E. Rawson (n. 50), 284; Eckman, G., Controversial Elements in Lucretius (New York, 1899), 8–10Google Scholar; Della Valle (n. 46), 169–81.

56 Cf. Sedley (n. 9), 64–5.

57 Cabisius (n. 42), 239.

58 For productive comments and criticisms on a previous version of this paper, I would like to thank David Blank, Sander Goldberg, the anonymous referees and the editor of the journal, Bruce Gibson.