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Materiam superabat opus: Lucretius Metamorphosed*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 April 2014

Alessandro Schiesaro
Alessandro Schiesaro*
Affiliation:
Sapienza Università di Roma
*
[email protected]
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Abstract

Ovid's narrative of Phaethon's failed attempt prematurely to emulate his father in his unique expertise can be read as a reflection on the virtues and limits of Lucretius' philosophical poetry. The paper suggests that, while he gives much credit to the De Rerum Natura's literary quality and its striving for the sublime, Ovid also critiques the hubristic connotations of Lucretius' rejection of divine authority and agency from the workings of nature. The second part of the article explores how this particular version of the myth touches upon issues of poetic authority, political positioning, and Oedipal competition.

Keywords

OvidLucretiusEpicurusdidactic poetrysublime
Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 104 , November 2014 , pp. 73 - 104
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2014. Published by The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies 

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Footnotes

*

This paper was first delivered at Oxford on 7 May 2009 as the Don Fowler Memorial Lecture. I offer it to Peta and Sophie Fowler in memory of Don's deeply missed friendship and inspiration: omne immensum peragravit mente animoque. I am very grateful to the Fowler Fund Committee for the invitation and to Armand d'Angour and Tobias Rheinhardt for their warm welcome. Further versions were delivered at Athens, Geneva, Leiden, Pisa and Edinburgh, at the kind invitation of, respectively, Eleni Karamalengou and Myrto Garani, Damien Nelis, Antje Wessels, Gian Biagio Conte and Donncha O' Rourke. I thank my hosts and audiences on those occasions, as well as Andrea Cucchiarelli, Luigi Galasso, Ingo Gildenhard, Philip Hardie, Stephen Hinds, Stefano Rebeggiani and Victoria Rimell for their incisive criticism. Thanks are also due to the Editor and referees of JRS, who provided much helpful guidance.

References

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