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The Historical Imagination of Lucretius1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

E. J. Kenney
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Extract

ProfessorParatore, in a book that I suspect is too little known to students of Lucretius, has called the Fifth Book of the De Rerum Natura ‘perhaps the richest in poetic inspiration’ in the poem. No part of his subject, it seems, fired the poet's imagination more; and it is the quality of Lucretius' imagination as it is seen in his account of the early history of mankind that I have chosen to discuss. The role of the imagination in the work of the historian is reviewed by Professor G. R. Elton in his book The Practice of History: ‘The discovery of truth requires not only the equipment already discussed–acquaintance with the available evidence and scholarly assessment of it—but also imaginative reconstruction and interpretation. Evidence is the surviving deposit of an historical event; in order to rediscover the event, the historian must read not only with the analytical eye of the investigator but also with the comprehensive eye of the story-teller. The truth is the product of this double process.’ For a good deal of what he says about the history of early man Lucretius had very little evidence as we account it. He had some previous scholarly literature at his disposal, but most of that was theoretical: neither he nor his sources had access to the archaeological and geological record. Yet in certain parts of his subject, as we shall see, this enforced ignorance did not hamper him as much as might be expected, even in comparison with a modern investigator.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 19 , Issue 1 , April 1972 , pp. 12 - 24
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1972

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References

page 12 note 2 Paratore, H., Lucreti De Rerum Natura locos praecipue notabiles collegit et illustravit (Rome, 1960), 323.Google Scholar

page 12 note 3 Elton, G. R., The Practice of History (London, 1969), 109.Google Scholar

page 13 note 1 Elton, op. cit. 111.

page 13 note 2 Cf. Solmsen, F., AJP lxxii (1951), 3 n. 6.Google Scholar

page 14 note 1 Cf. Paratore, op. cit. 323.

page 14 note 2 Williams, G., Tradition and Originality in Roman Poetry (Oxford, 1968), 646.Google Scholar

page 14 note 3 Boyancé, P., Lucrèce et l'épicurisme (Paris, 1963), 239.Google Scholar

page 15 note 1 Wells, C., Bones, Bodies and Disease (London, 1964), 20.Google Scholar

page 16 note 1 Harrison, H. S., in Singer, C., Holmyard, E. J., Hall, A. R. (edd.), A History of Technology, i (Oxford, 1954), 216.Google Scholar

page 17 note 1 Harrison, ibid. 65.

page 18 note 1 Tac. Ann. iii. 4.

page 18 note 2 Friedländer, P., AJP lxii (1941), 16–34Google Scholar = Stud, zur antiken Lit. u. Kunst (Berlin, 1969). 337–53.Google Scholar

page 19 note 1 R. J. Forbes, in Singer etc., op. cit. 579–82; but note the observation on copper as ‘the earliest useful metal’ (585; my emphasis).

page 20 note 1 Rand, E. K., Ovid and his influence (London, 1925), 27.Google Scholar

page 21 note 1 McKay, K. L., AJP lxxxv (1964), 124–35.Google Scholar

page 21 note 2 Schrijvers, P. H., Horror ac divina voluptas. Études sur la poétique et la poésie de Lucr`ce (Amsterdam, 1970), 296–305.Google Scholar

page 22 note 1 McKay, art. cit. 134 and n. 22.

page 23 note 1 Schrijvers, op. cit. 304.

page 23 note 2 Paratore, op. cit. 414.

page 24 note 1 Plin. N.H. viii. 7; cf. Schrijvers, op. cit. 299 n. 14.

page 24 note 2 Cic. Fam. vii. 1.