The original version of this essay was delivered as a paper at the fifth Pacific Rim Roman Literature Seminar, held at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, in September 1991Google Scholar. My thanks to those who heard it on that and subsequent occasions for their comments.

Peter Connor died on 8 December 1996. He was an enthusiastic supporter of the Pacific Rim seminar and was convenor of the tenth in the series, held at the University of Melbourne in July 1996Google Scholar. In gratitude for his congenial companionship and for his multifaceted talents in the study of Classics and the humanities, I dedicate this essay to his memory.

1. Bright, D.F., ‘The Plague and the Structure of the De Rerum Natura’, Latomus 30 (1971), 607–32, at 607.Google Scholar

2. An idea first proposed by Bockemüller in his 1874 edition and taken up by Martin in the 1934 Teubner.

3. See e.g. Munro, who talks of the ‘unfinished state’ of the poem as a whole (Munro, H.A.J., T. Lucreti Can De Rerum Natura Libri Sex [London 1900], ii.5Google Scholar) and of the closing section (ibid. ii.392). Cf. Farrington, B., ‘Form and Purpose in the De Rerum Natura’, in Dudley, D.R. (ed.), Lucretius (London 1965), 19–34, at 33.Google Scholar

4. Bailey takes issue with this position, arguing that (a) 6.92–95 clearly flag Book 6 as the final book in the poem, so that a further book on the gods is not part of the poet’s design and (b) Book 6 is already one of the longer books of the poem, so that there is really no room for a section on the gods to be tacked on to the end. (Bailey, C., Titi Lucreti Cari De Rerum Natura Libri Sex [Oxford 1947), i.34fGoogle Scholar.) The argument based on structure is even more compelling; see below.

5. Deriving from the notice in Jerome’s Chronicle for the year 94 BCE, on which see Kenney, E.J., Lucretius (Oxford 1977), 6f.Google Scholar, and Nussbaum, M., ‘Beyond Obsession and Disgust: Lucretius’ Genealogy of Love’, Apeiron 22 (1989), 1–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 1–3 (with references there cited).

6. Gale, M., ‘The Proems of the De Rerum Natura’, PCPS 40 (1994), 1–17Google Scholar, at 12, appropriately comments that ‘criticism of the text of the DRN has been bedevilled by the idea that the poem was unfinished when the poet died.’ The remarks of Masters on another poem with a problematic ending are pertinent here: ‘The best evidence for the intended ending of a poem is the place where it does, in fact, end. Poets lie; biographers distort; readers misread.’ See Masters, J., Poetry and Civil War in Lucan’s ‘Bellum Civile’ (Cambridge 1992), 216;Google Scholar cf. his comments on the ending of the Aeneid at 250f. and also D.E.W. Wormell, ‘The Personal World of Lucretius’, in Dudley (n.3 above), 35–67, at 37.

7. Minadeo, R., The Lyre of Science: Form and Meaning in Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura (Detroit 1969Google Scholar), passim: cf. his earlier (and in some ways more compelling) ‘The Formal Design of De Rerum Natura’, Arion 4 (1965), 444–61Google Scholar (largely reproduced as Chapter 2 in his book). As will become apparent, I do not agree in precise detail with Minadeo’s analysis; but I certainly support its main thrust. See also Jope, J., ‘The Didactic Unity and Emotional Import of Book 6 of De Rerum Natura’, Phoenix 43 (1989), 16–34, at 17CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8. For argument in favour of this textual emendation, see Bright (n.l above), 620–23. Quotations from the text of the DRN are taken (with slight orthographic changes) from Bailey (n.4 above); the translations are my own.

9. See Cicero, De Natura Deorum 1.19.50; for the purposes of the De Rerum Natura the relevant part of this doctrine is that which relates to the balance between the forces of conservation and destruction. Cf. Penwill, J.L., ‘Image, Ideology and Action in Cicero and Lucretius’, in Boyle, A.J. (ed.), Roman Literature and Ideology: Ramus Essays for J.P. Sullivan (Bendigo 1995), 68–91Google Scholar, at 91 n.77.

10. Thuc. 2.47–54. At 2.51.6 Thucydides speaks of those who recovered: ‘Such people were congratulated on all sides, and they themselves were so elated at the time of their recovery that they fondly imagined that they could never die of any other disease in the future’ (tr. Warner). For Lucretius no such ray of hope is permitted to lighten the gloom; his is a narrative of total destruction (exhausit ciuibus urbem, ‘it drained the city of its people’, 6.1140) and the only way of escape is by self-mutilation, the effects of which the recovered victims wear for the rest of their lives as a brand which marks the depths to which their abject fear of death has reduced them (6.1208–12). Cf. Bright (n.l above), 609f; Clay, D., Lucretius and Epicurus (Ithaca 1983), 664;Google Scholar and now Stoddard, K., ‘Thucydides, Lucretius and the End of the De Rerum Natura’, Maia 48 (1996), 107–28Google Scholar, at 119.

11. ‘[Epicurus said that] only the wise man would discourse correctly about music and poetry; but he would not in fact write poems himself’ (D.L. 10.120). On the ‘honey round the cup’ image, see n.75 below.

12. For the view outlined here see esp. Commager, H.S., ‘Lucretius’ Interpretation of the Plague’, HSCP 62 (1957), 105–18Google Scholar; cf also Schrijvers, P.H., Horror ac divina voluptas: Études sur la poétique et la poésie de Lucrèce (Amsterdam 1970), 314–20;Google Scholar Wormell (n.6 above), 60; Segal, C., Lucretius on Death and Anxiety: Poetry and Philosophy in the De Rerum Natura (Princeton 1990), 234f;Google Scholar and Gale, M., Myth and Poetry in Lucretius (Cambridge 1994), 126 and 227fGoogle Scholar. Minyard, J.D., Lucretius and the Late Republic: An Essay in Roman Intellectual History (Leiden 1985), 59–61Google Scholar, calls the close ‘a satire or diatribe against Athenian life’, saying that the reason for the plague victims’ behaviour was that ‘they were left abandoned intellectually and morally by the way of life that was supposed to give them the method of understanding and dealing with the world.’

13. 6.76–78; cf. Epicurus Letter to Menoeceus 123f.

14. Commager (n.12 above), 113; and on the link between plague and religion, Bright (n.l above), 627f., and Minyard (n.12 above), 60f.

15. M.F. Smith (ed.), Lucretius: De Rerum Natura ² (Cambridge MA and London 1982), 492f. and 579.

16. Stoddard (n.10 above), in one of the more thorough analyses of the intertextual relationship between Lucretius and Thucydides to appear in recent years, makes the interesting observation that the Thucydidean allusion extends to the μέv/δέ contrast that Thucydides sets up between the Athens of the Funeral Speech and the Athens of the plague; the reader is thereby invited to draw a similar contrast between Athens in the proem and Athens at the end of Book 6 (127f). I agree that Lucretius is well aware of the point of Thucydides’ juxtaposition of Funeral Speech and Plague and that he expects such an awareness on the part of his readers; but he is not drawing a contrast between pre- and post-Epicurean Athens so much as between the comfortable Stoic/Ciceronian view of a universe controlled by a rational deity (see esp. Cicero’s De Re Publico and its concluding myth) and the harsh realities of natura: a contrast in fact much closer to the Thucydidean one between vóμoς and φύσις. See Penwill (n.9 above), 83f. and 91 nn.76–78.

17. See esp. 6.1156–59, 1182–89, 1213f., where mental degradation is specifically described as one of a set of physical symptoms. Nowhere in these passages is it suggested that a ‘correct’ world-view would ameliorate the suffering; such views are dependent upon the retention of a healthy mind. As I have written elsewhere (n.9 above, 91 n.76), it is hard to see how one can retain one’s philosophical beliefs and a proper perspective on things if one is suffering from delirium or amnesia (or Alzheimer’s disease). It is true that Lucretius uses the fear of death as a moral cudgel with which to beat the self-mutilators (1208–12; cf. n.10 above) and those who shrank from offering assistance to the afflicted (1240), but it is not brought to the forefront in the way that for example religion is in the Iphigenia exemplum; and it is certainly not suggested in any sustained way that this philosophical incorrectness is to blame for the general misery brought on by the plague. The depression described at 1230–34 (which closely follows Thuc. 2.51.4) is not presented as a criticism of the sufferers but rather as something ‘to be pitied’ (miserandum); its thematic purpose to to act as counterfoil to the exuberant joy of the birds and animals of 1.10–20. (See further pp. 156–60 below.)

18. 3.1060–67 and 2.352–66 respectively—each with a specific moral point to be drawn. For the former cf. Betensky, A., ‘A Lucretian Version of Pastoral’, Ramus 5 (1976), 45–58, at 54f.CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for the latter Amory, A., ‘Obscura de re lucida carmina: Science and Poetry in De Rerum Natura’ YCS 29 (1969), 145–68, at 160–64;Google ScholarSegal, C., ‘Delubra Decora: Lucretius 11.352–66’, Latomus 29 (1970), 104–18Google Scholar; Betensky op. cit. 49–51.

19. See n.16 above. Bright (n.l above, 618f.) suggests that Lucretius universalises the description by ‘tak[ing] from the reader any sense of a precise context’ and so ‘lull[ing] the reader into the impression that this could be anywhere and anytime…The result is not Athenians facing the plague but Everyman facing Disease.’ This view is supported by Clay (n.10 above), 257f., and Gale (n.12 above), 113. But the echoes of Thucydides are too frequent and insistent to allow this to happen; the ubiquitous presence of the historian is a constant reminder of the historicity of this event. These things happen…

20. Cf. Woodman, A.J., Rhetoric in Classical Historiography: Four Studies (London & Sydney 1988), 34fGoogle Scholar.; and again cf. n.16 above.

21. A structural point noted by Minadeo Lyre (n.7 above), 45f.

22. It may be objected in view of the argument advanced in n.19 above that Athens is named only twice (and that periphrastically: fines Cecropis 6.1139, populus Pandionis 1143) at the beginning of the plague narrative, too; but there is nothing to tie the laudes Epicuri to Athens in the way that the Thucydidean echoes fix the plague there.

23. Clay (n.10 above), 266; cf. Jope (n.7 above), 16, and Müller, G., ‘Die Finalia der sechs Biicher des Lukrez’, in Gigon, O. (ed.), Lukrez (Vandoevres-Genève 1978), 197–21Google Scholar, at 219f.

24. Cf Lucilius 1145–51 W., Tityrus in Virgil Ecl. 1, Horace Sat. 2.6, Juvenal Sa. 11, etc.

25. This is the general thrust of the argument put forward by Jope (n.7 above), who claims that the goal of Book 6 is to ‘lead the reader to an attitude of philosophical detachment’ (16) and ‘to accept death from the plague with the same equanimity with which he should view the marvels of nature’ (19). Cf. Michel, A., ‘Lucrèce, Cicéron, Horace: La sérénité et l’acedia’, SIFC 3rd s. 11 (1993), 12–25Google Scholar, at 15: ‘Le sage accède au plaisir véritable qui est de contempler la tempête.’ As will become obvious, I do not subscribe to this view.

26. It would become another of Lucretius’ ‘distant views’: de Lacy, P., ‘Distant Views: The Imagery of Lucretius 2’, CJ 60 (1964-65), 49–55Google Scholar. Unfortunately this image of philosophical detachment (which de Lacy sees Lucretius as striving for throughout the poem) is in no way applicable to this final scene. It may be ‘distant’ from us in time; in impact it is wrenchingly immediate. Cf. Segal (n.12 above), 36f.

27. Cf West, D., The Imagery and Poetry of Lucretius (Edinburgh 1969Google Scholar), whose whole argument revolves around the fact that reading Lucretius is above all an emotional experience. It is strange therefore that West at no stage applies his critical methodology to the description of the plague; the last entry in the index of passages cited is 6.1074–77. Was it too disturbing?

28. Minadeo ‘Formal Design’ (n.7 above), passim.

29. Hence the comparison with Ceres, Liber and (especially) Hercules at 5.13ff. On the Euhemerist aspects of this passage, cf. Gale (n.12 above), 79f.

30. And of course our awareness of a literary/religious tradition that goes back to Hesiod’s Theogony.

31. Cf. 2.644–60.

32. These phenomena are caused by violent clashes between the constituents of our world (e.g. thunder is caused by clouds crashing together [6.96ff.] or by wind bursting out of a cloud [6.121ff.]; lightning by superheated wind bursting through a cloud [6.173ff.] or by clouds being crushed together by wind [6.204ff.]; earthquakes by mountains collapsing into the great chasms that exist under the earth [6.535ff.] or by wind bursting through these chasms [6.557ff.]). Cf. 6.377f., where Lucretius talks of ‘war’ between the elements of air, water and fire.

33. Cf esp. 2.1105–74, 5.235–415.

34. Thus this repetition (like all the repeated passages in the poem) is functional; a fact which commentators seem singularly unable to grasp. See e.g. the comments of Bailey (n.4 above, 1373) ad 5.351–79 and Smith (n.l5 above, 250f.) ad 3.806–18. A welcome exception is Minadeo Lyre [n.7 above], 5If.; cf. also Gale (n.6 above), 5f.

35. They also occur as one of the many possible causes of clouds at 6.483ff.; thus clouds in addition to participating in the violence of the heavens and so being outward and visible signs of the instability of the atomic construct that is the world we live in (no [‘secure foundation of all things for ever’, of the earth at Hes. Theog. 117] here!) become a constant reminder of the irruption of particles from the infinite universe: a cosmic memento mori. Cf. 6.1119–21, where a sky pregnant with disease is compared to ‘mist and cloud’ (ut nebula ac nubes, 1121). It may also be relevant to observe with Gale (n.12 above, 68) that wind and cloud flee the coming of the life-affirming Venus at 1.6f.

36. Cf. n.9 above.

37. Moenia mundi, ‘the ramparts of the world’ (Humphries), is a Lucretian formula (1.73, 1.1102, 2.1144, 5.454). At 1.73 Epicurus bursts through them to apprehend the reality of the infinite universe; at 2.1144 they are breached in the opposite direction by the enemy from without. Their counterparts on the level of microcosm are the uitai claustra (‘bars of life’—1.415, 3.396, 6.1153), similarly assaulted by the morbida uis (‘toxic force’) of the plague at 6.1152f. The ultimate defencelessness of man against death is brought out in Epicurus Vatican Sayings 31 (= Metrodorus fr. 51): ‘It is possible to procure security against other things, but as far as death is concerned all of us human beings live in an unwalled city [].’ For a detailed analysis of the image of corporeal boundaries and their violation see Segal (n.12 above), 94–170, and ‘Boundaries, Worlds and Analogical Thinking, or How Lucretius Learned to Love Atomism and Still Write Poetry’, in Galinsky, K. (ed.), The Interpretation of Roman Poetry: Empiricism or Hermeneutics? (Frankfurt a.M/Bern/New York/Paris 1992), 137–56Google Scholar.

38. Another Lucretian formula: 1.77, 1.596, 5.90, 6.66.

39. I cannot therefore agree with Hardie, P., Virgil’s Aeneid: Cosmos and Imperium (Oxford 1989), 194Google Scholar, when he says that ‘man, from being previously a victim of nature (through his own lack of understanding) comes to have control of nature; the purely intellectual comprehension of natura rerum becomes a possession, a command, of nature.’ As Book 6 makes clear, any sense we have that we control nature is an illusion; we may understand how nature works, but that does not mean that we are any less susceptible to natural disasters and the inevitability of death. What we are challenged to take command of, or responsibility for, is our state of mind—though even our capacity to do that is not unlimited.

40. On which see Segal, C., ‘War, Death and Savagery in Lucretius: The Beasts of Battle in 5.1308–49’, Ramus 18 (1986), 1–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The seemingly positive attitude towards the advance of civilisation in the conclusion to Book 5 (1440–57), where developments in town planning, agriculture, navigation, international relations, and especially the arts are listed as significant human achievements, is seriously undercut by the prologue to Book 6: human beings have all these things, but they have not brought them happiness (see esp. 6.9–16). Cf. Green, W.M., ‘The Dying World of Lucretius’, AJP 63 (1942), 51–60Google Scholar, at 58f.

41. Segal (n.12 above), 229: ‘We must accept our own end…as part of the processes of the universe, in which death is the inevitable concomitant of life.’

42. Cf. Penwill (n.9 above), 83f.

43. See esp. 6.1246, where death afflicts optimus quisque (‘all the best people’—best because they tended to the needs of their loved ones) as well as those who tried to escape by avoiding all contact with the victims.

44. See p. 147 above.

45. On the ideological aspect of Venus and Mars in the proem to Book 1, see Penwill (n.9 above), 76–78. On the Empedoclean aspects, cf. Furley, D., ‘Variations on Themes from Empedocles in Lucretius’ Proem’, BICS 17 (1970), 55–64;Google Scholar Gale (n.12 above), 59–74. ‘Venus and Mars’/‘Ares and Aphrodite’ go back to Odyssey 8.266–369, and their use here consitutes another example of Lucretius’ functional exploitation of the rich literary/philosophical tradition that he inherited.

46. Cf nn. 32 and 35 above. Anderson draws attention to the dark tone of Book 6 with specific reference to the ‘earth mother’ image: ‘In Book 6 [Mother Earth] plays the role of a cruel stepmother…scheming the destruction of unwanted step-children by means of earthquakes, poisonous fumes, and plagues…Lucretius proceeds from his first charming picture of the total unity of Man and a creative Mother Earth to a final description of the human struggle against, and fear of, a menacing, deadly earth.’ See Anderson, W.S., ‘Discontinuity in Lucretian Symbolism’, TAPA 91 (1960), 1–29Google Scholar, at lOf. For the significance of ‘fear’, cf. p.159 below.

47. The thematic appropriateness of the magnet passage is well presented by Jope (n.7 above, 31f.).

48. See DK 11 A 22. The two passages from Aristotle’s De Anima there cited (405a.l9–21 and 411a. 7–8) when taken together suggest that the moving power of the magnet formed a particular instance of this general proposition.

49. Cf. n.35 above, on clouds. On the ubiquity of void, see 1.329–69. Jope (n.7 above, 32) claims a link between the destructive aspects of matter and void presented at 6.921–1001 and their generative aspects at 1.146–417, which would then form another element in the contrasting ring composition formed by the Venus/plague polarity. Unfortunately the correspondence is not quite as neat as Jope implies; there are certainly some wonderful images of creation in the earlier passage (e.g. 1.250–64), but there are destructive elements too (e.g. the section on wind at 1.271–97).

50. Cf. 6.1009–11: nec res ulla magis primoribus ex elementis/indupedita suis arte conexa cohaeret/quam ualidi ferri natura et frigidus horror (‘nor does any substance cling more closely connected together, entangled by its own primary particles, than the nature and cold roughness of iron’). Yet even in iron there is penitus…abditus aer (‘air hidden in the depths’, 1037).

51. Note esp. the juxtaposition of lapis and ferrum at 907 and 1004; the interaction within the line reflects the physical interaction that demonstrates the point.

52. Lines 970–78 allude to such fragments of Heraclitus as 4, 19, 30 and 61; the point of the allusion is that the ‘back-stretched connexion’ (παλιντоνоς άρμονιη) so fundamental to Heraclitus’ world-view (fr. 51) cannot last for ever—the bowstring will break, the lyre fall apart.

53. Minadeo’s (n.7 above) is the most sustained analysis of this aspect of the poem. See also Schiesaro, A., ‘The Palingenesis of De Rerum Natura’, PCPS 40 (1994), 81–107Google Scholar.

54. Cf. 1.817–29. The impact of the image is reinforced by observing the subtle changes wrought in the later passage. 2.1015f. are identical to 1.820f. with one significant exception: significant (‘signify’) has replaced constituunt (‘constitute’) as the first word of the second line—for of course the earlier passage is talking about the way the primary particles constitute actual things (eadem standing for primordia), while the second is representing the way letters constitute the words that denote these things (eadem either being used substantively or standing for [an understood] elementa). Similarly 2.1013 echoes 1.823 (and 2.688) with again one change: the passim of the earlier lines (quin etiam passim nostris in uersibus ipsis, ‘indeed, all the way through in these verses of mine’, marking the transition from fact to illustration) is replaced by refert from 1.817 (and 1.908), a word that belonged in the context of ‘things’ rather than ‘words’. The repetitions caused some anguish among editors who lacked empathy with Lucretius’ poetic technique: see Bailey ad loc. (n.4 above, 960). Other examples of the letters in words analogy occur at 1.197, 1.907–14 (where 909f. repeat 818f.), and 2.688–99 (where 688–90 repeat 1.823–25). The elaborate pattern of repetition again gives the image a formulaic quality. The groundwork for the study of the relation between words and things in Lucretius was set by Friedländer, P., ‘Pattern of Sound and Atomistic Theory in Lucretius’, AJP 62 (1941), 16–34Google Scholar; cf. also Snyder, J.M., Puns and Poetry in Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura (Amsterdam 1980Google Scholar); Dionigi, I., Lucrezio: Le parole e le cose (Bologna 1988);Google ScholarTraina, A. (ed.), Lucrezio: L’atomo e la parola (Bologna 1990Google Scholar); Schiesaro (n.53 above), 83–85.

55. ‘Tragedy is mimesis of an action that is complete, whole and of magnitude…A whole is that which has a beginning, middle, and end. A beginning is that which does not itself follow necessarily from something else, but after which a further event or process naturally occurs. An end, by contrast, is that which itself naturally occurs, whether necessarily or usually, after a preceding event, but need not be followed by anything else. A middle is that which both follows a preceding event and has further consequences.’ (Aristotle Poetics 1450b.23–31, tr. Halliwell). In its representation of the cosmic cycle, the DRN constitutes a mimesis of the greatest event of all.

56. To claim that the removal of wonder entails the removal of fear (Jope [n.7 above], 25–27) or that ‘fear ends when mankind learns that religio’s lessons are false’ (Summers, K., ‘Lucretius and the Epicurean Tradition of Piety’, CP 90 [1995], 32–57, at 57Google Scholar) is clearly fallacious. I may understand how thunderbolts are formed, but I also know that they can kill me and cause widespread devastation (6.240–43) and the weather conditions that are conducive to their formation consequently themselves inspire fear (see esp. 6.253–55).

57. It is worth noting that Etna, here described as inspiring terror in the onlookers, is seen in Book 1 as one of Sicily’s big tourist attractions—the magna miranda uisendaque (‘great things to be marvelled at and seen’, 1.726f.) of Empedocles’ homeland. Here we have another example of the difference in perception between Books 1 and 6.

58. Particularly in a philosophical system which regards pain as a criterion of avoidance: Epicurus Principal Doctrines 3.

59. Conrad, J., Heart of Darkness (London 1902; repr. Harmondsworth 1989), 111Google Scholar.

60. Nil igitur mors est ad nos neque pertinet hilum (‘Death is therefore nothing to us and pertains to us not at all’, 3.830): the triumphant declaration of victory over death, and the second leg of the Epicurean tetrapharmakon. The question posed at the end of the paragraph is taken from Lamentations 1.12, and is at least as legitimate a response to Lucretius’ text as Kinsey’s ‘Can we seriously maintain that he [L.] regarded death as an evil, in the face of the famous line nil igitur…?’ (Kinsey, T.E., ‘The Melancholy of Lucretius’, Arion 3.2 [1964], 115–30, at 120.Google Scholar)

61. Cf. Knox, B.M.W., Oedipus at Thebes (Ithaca 1957; repr New York 1971), 53–106Google Scholar.

62. Cf. Poetics 1453a.2–6: ‘Pity is felt for the undeserving victim of adversity, fear for one like ourselves’.

63. D.L. 10.15f. and 22. To infer a connection between the agony described at the end of the DRN and that endured by Epicurus during his final illness as does e.g. Müller (n.23 above, 219) is not entirely out of place, but it is certainly not the main point.

64. The speaker is Torquatus, the spokesman for the Epicurean position in the dialogue. On the question of σνμπάθεια, ‘fellow-feeling’, in the moral sense, cf. Epicurus Vatican Sayings 66: (‘Let us express our fellow-feeling for our friends not by lamentation but by showing concern’). Our response to the plague victims may be different from that of those caught up in the disaster itself; but it can never be one of indifference. On the universality of friendship cf. Vatican Sayings 52 and DeWitt, N.W., Epicurus and his Philosophy (Cleveland 1967), lOlfGoogle Scholar. Clearly one needs to draw a distinction between the friendship that one feels towards particular individuals and that more general sense of common humanity that links the human race together; but I suggest that the distinction is one of degree rather than kind. It is in this latter sense that Lucretius uses the word amicities at 5.1019 when discussing the origin of the social compact that we call justice (cf. Epicurus Principal Doctrines 31–33), and it is not just a matter of agreeing nee laedere nec uiolari (‘not to harm and not to be harmed’, 5.1020) but also imbecillorum esse aequum misererier omnis (‘that it is right for all to pity the weak’, 5.1023). Cf. Farrington (n.3 above), 26. Lucretius through his poetry leads us to extend this pity beyond helpless children and the mothers who bear them (5.1021) to the victims of religio, of ignorance and of the plague. On the link between φιλανθρωπια and the tragic sensibility cf. Aristotle Poetics 1452b.38 and 1456a.20; on the compassion of Lucretius, see Bergson, H., The Philosophy of Poetry: The Genius of Lucretius, tr. W. Baskin (New York 1959), 82fGoogle Scholar. The general question of the tension between ‘fellow-feeling’ and the godlike perspective of true pietas as defined at DRN 5.1203 (placata [so OQ: pacata Bailey] posse omnia mente tueri, ‘the ability to look upon all things with a mind composed/pacified’) is discussed in an excellent essay by Nussbaum, M., ‘Mortal Immortals: Lucretius on Death and the Voice of Nature’, Ph&PhenR 50(1989),303–51Google Scholar.

65. Anderson (n.46 above, 28f.) suggests that ‘it is humanity that gives Lucretius’ images their negative associations’ and that our response is a consequence of ‘false values’ from which Epicurus can set us free. But if we make ‘false values’ synonymous with ‘humanity’ then the only way to escape them is to lose our humanity and so cease to care. And if we do not care, then we have no motive for helping our fellow human beings out of their ignorance and no capacity for friendship. Cf. Castner, C.J., ‘De Rerum Natura 5.101–103: Lucretius’ Adaptation of Empedoclean Language to Epicurean Doctrine’, Phoenix 41 (1987), 40–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 48: ‘Epicurus and his philosophy cannot of course be divine in the true Epicurean sense defined by, for example, Kyria Doxa 1 and Ep. ad Hdt. 76, which would in fact exclude Epicurus from divine status by virtue of his having conferred benefits on mortals.’

66. Hamlet 3.1.62f. Watch for more quotations from this play, and remember: Hamlet was a philosophy student…

67. The tragic aspect of the poem’s ending is well brought out by Arragon, R.F., ‘Poetic Art as a Philosophic Medium for Lucretius’, Essays in Criticism 11 (1961), 371–89, at 387–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cf. also Herford, C.H., ‘The Poetry of Lucretius’ in Shakespeare’s Treatment of Love and Marriage and Other Essays (London 1921), 47–79Google Scholar, at 76, and Wormell (n.6 above), 61.

68. See esp. Soph. OT 216–18, where Oedipus implies that he is the one the Thebans should look to for salvation rather than the gods.

69. The idea that evil and undeserved suffering is inconsistent with the gods’ involvement in the world is a recurring motif in Senecan tragedy. Cf. Sen. Tro. 371–408 (Epicurean reflections drawn on for comfort in dire adversity), Thy. 885–95 and 1006–21 (withdrawal of the gods in the face of Atreus’ crime), Med. 1026f. The plague is Lucretius’ answer to the vision of a morally ordered universe promulgated by Cicero in the ‘Dream of Scipio’; cf. n.16 above.

70. And so the uncovering of nature leads to that famous bitter-sweet response:

his ibi me rebus quaedam diuina uoluptas percipit atque horror, quod sic natura tua ui tarn manifesta patens ex omni parte retecta est. (DRN 3.28–30)

At these things a certain godlike pleasure seizes me and a shuddering as well, since by your power nature so manifestly lies open and has been uncovered in every part.

The feeling is analogous to what Aristotle sees as the essence of the tragic experience: a catharsis (‘purification’) of pity and fear, which we experience in their ‘pure’ or ‘distilled’ form as a consequence of what is represented on the stage (which through its artifice and relative brevity is the distilling medium par excellence)—an experience which paradoxically arouses pleasure. See Poetics 1449a.26–28 (catharsis) and 1453b.ll-13 (‘the pleasure that comes from pity and fear’); it is just before the latter passage (1453b.5) that Aristotle uses the word φρíττειν (‘shudder’), a word which closely corresponds to Lucretius’ horror, in place of the more usual φóβος or Υοβεισθαι (‘fear’).

71. The phrase is Apollo’s: Il. 24.49. It is the lesson that Achilles finally succeeds in learning in Il 24.

72. And conspicuously no reminder of or link back to passages such as 1.262–64, 2.75–79 or 3.964f., where we might at least be comforted by the thought that it is through death that life can go on (cf. Klingner, F., ‘Philosophic und Dichtkunst am Ende des zweiten Buches des Lukrez’, Hermes 80 [1952], 3–31, at 26Google Scholar). The focus is on death as painful and final, and on undeserved suffering as integral to the human condition. Lay not that flattering unction to your soul…

73. Kermode, F., The Sense of an Ending : Studies in the Theory of Fiction (New York 1967).Google Scholar

74. Ibid. 7.

75. The ‘honey round the cup’ image of 1.937f./4.12f. lends itself readily to the ‘poetic embellishment’ interpretation, and commentators have been all too willing to swallow the bait. The significant verb in this repeated mission statement (1.926–50 = 4.1–25 with minor but significant modifications) is contingere, which occurs three times: musaeo contingens cuncta lepore (‘touching all things with the Muses’ grace’, 1.934/4.9), prius oras pocula circum/contingunt mellis dulci flauoque liquore (‘they first touch the rims around the cups with the sweet, yellow liquid of honey’, 1.937f./4.12f.), and uolui…/quasi musaeo dulci contingere melle (‘I have chosen to touch it [sc. my doctrine] as it were with the Muses’ sweet honey’, 1.947/4.22). Natura is of itself reducible to insensate particles and the space in which they move, and to understand the phenomenal world ‘scientifically’ is to make propositions about it in those terms. But to make a work of art out of natura necessarily involves ‘touching everything with the Muses’ grace’—as anyone who feels ‘touched’ by the beauty of a sunrise or the pain of human suffering will recognise, that is the way we respond to the world around us, not with godlike detachment (cf. nn.64 and 65 above). The idea that the poetry is simply there as a ‘sweetener’ is surely ironic, and may very well be a reflection of what Lucretius felt about the shallowness of Memmius’ literary sensibility (Cicero Brutus 70.247; Ovid Tristia 2.433f.: Memmius is the tibi of 1.945/4.20 and 1.948/4.23, and the subject of the second person singular verb[s] in 1.949/4.24 and 4.25); those who take it literally should find a sufficient antidote in the plague description, just as those captivated by the Venus proem should be cured by the last section of Book 4.

76. The three criteria of truth according to Epicurus in the Canon were (‘sense-perceptions’, ‘general concepts’, ‘feelings’, D.L. 10.31).