Introduction

Manuscripts containing the works of Quintus Ennius (239–169 BC) appear not to have survived much beyond the fourth century AD,Footnote ¹ so scholars interested in the disiecti membra poetae (“limbs of a scattered poet,” Hor. Sat. 1.4.62) have long been focusing on later authors who engaged with his oeuvre. That group includes the late-Republican writer Lucretius, whose Epicurean poem On the Nature of Things is steeped in archaic language and metrical constructions reminiscent of Ennian poetry. It also contains a prominent reference to the earlier poet’s views on the afterlife (1.112–135). In revisiting the intertextual connection between the two authors in this paper, I do not seek to contest the typical conclusion that Ennius ranked next to Homer and Empedocles among those literary predecessors whom Lucretius revered but with whose worldview he often disagreed.Footnote ² Rather, I will reassess a number of familiar points of contact between the two writers in Book 1 of On the Nature of Things – which is where Lucretius first sets up his poem’s sustained allusive conversation with Ennius – in pursuit of a twofold thesis.

First, I posit that in those passages where Lucretius is known to engage with Ennius – not just in the discussion of life after death, but also in the encomium of Epicurus (1.62–79), the sacrifice of Iphigenia (1.82–101) and the brief narration of the Trojan War (1.464–482) – the Epicurean poet repeats more key terminology from his Ennian source passages than has previously been recognized. The depth and number of these references to Ennius suggest that throughout Book 1, Lucretius tends to contest not just common worldviews in a general sense, but common worldviews as expressed – more specifically – by Ennius. This thorough engagement with Rome’s first “national” poet shows that Ennius’ compositions provided more than engaging accounts of classical mythology and vivid narrations of historical events on which to hinge Roman identity. Rather, the cosmology of his poetry could count as religion or even philosophy.

Second, I posit that Lucretius’ need to refute Ennius is so urgent because the earlier poet’s works continued to be included at the Roman ludi and hence contributed to the spectators’ mass-indoctrination in what, to an Epicurean, would constitute a harmful ideology. In an attempt to counter this potentially detrimental effect, Lucretius alludes specifically to those parts of Ennius’ epic and dramatic output that, as writers from Cicero to Aulus Gellius consistently report, remained popular in recitations and revival performances. What is more, where Lucretius describes mythological events in particularly Ennian language and imagery, his versions correspond closely to the same stories’ portrayal in the visual arts. This phenomenon hints at a rich cross-pollination between stagings of Ennius’ works and depictions of classical myth in Roman painting. In engaging with both at the same time, Lucretius provides his readers with a guidebook on how to deconstruct commonly held misconceptions wherever they encounter them, be it in their studies of classical literature, while attending Ennian performances in the theater or while glancing at pictorial representations of mythological scenes on the walls of Roman houses.

Pyrrhus and Epicurus

Lucretius’ engagement with Ennius begins well before he actually mentions the older poet in Book 1 (at line 117). After the opening hymn to Venus (1.1–43) and an initial explication of the vocabulary he will be applying to atoms (1.49–61), Lucretius introduces the reader to his idol, Epicurus (1.62–79). The philosopher remains unnamed, but it is commonly understood that he is the Greek man who, back “when life lay foully on the earth, oppressed by heavy superstition” (foede cum vita iaceret | in terris oppressa gravi sub religione, 1.62–63), first dared to look up at the sky (primum Graius homo mortalis tollere contra | est oculos ausus, 1.66–67) and challenged the reign of religio. His intellect “proceeded far beyond the burning walls of the world” (extra | processit longe flammantia moenia mundi, 1.72–73) and brought back actual knowledge of what can and cannot happen, and thereby dispelled irrational fears of the gods and brought us closer to ἀταραξία.

In this context, the phrase Graius homo – used to describe Epicurus at 1.66 – connects back to, and establishes a firm intertextual connection with, Ennius’ Annals.Footnote ³ The sixth book of this epic narrated Pyrrhus’ campaign against Rome, and it seems to have made its author’s admiration for the Hellenistic king readily apparent.Footnote ⁴ Ennius describes the Epirote invader as “from the highest stock” (a stirpe supremo, fr. 166 Sk) and as “a vigorous man …, a Greek man with a Greek father, a king” (navos repertus homo, Graio patre, Graius homo, rex, fr. 165 Sk). Throughout the rest of the book, which foregrounded its martial interests from its very first lines,Footnote ⁵ Ennius explored what such terms as virtus (“manly valor”), vis (“force”) and vincere (“to be victorious”) come to mean when they are applied to a general who famously won every battle but at such a cost that he might as well have lost. It is this key vocabulary that, I posit, was of particular interest to Lucretius. In Ennius, Pyrrhus is said, for example, to have dedicated an inscription in the temple of Jupiter in Tarentum, which noted that “men who previously were undefeated, best father of Olympus, I have defeated with force in battle and I have, in turn, been defeated by the same men” (qui antehac | invicti fuere viri, pater optume Olympi, | hos ego vi pugna vici victusque sum ab isdem, fr. 180–182 Sk).Footnote ⁶ Words derived from vincere (in-victi … vici victusque) here alternate and alliterate with forms of vir (“man,” hence virtus) and vis in an evaluation of the paradox that is a Pyrrhic victory. The source that contains the fragment (Oros. Hist. 4.1.14) goes on to say that, when asked “why he called himself defeated although he had won” (cur se victum diceret qui vicisset), Pyrrhus responded “truly, if I win another time in this same manner, I will return without a single soldier to Epirus” (ne ego si iterum eodem modo vicero sine ullo milite Epirum revertar). Presuming this wording echoes the king’s presentation in the Annals, it seems that vocabulary derived from vincere (victum … vicisset … vicero) predominated not just in the fragment itself, but also in its immediate surroundings.Footnote ⁷

As far as Ennius’ use of the term virtus is concerned, it also stands at the center of Pyrrhus’ assertion that he has no interest in riches but wants to challenge the Romans in the area of “manly valor” (virtute experiamur, fr. 187 Sk.). Those who retain their virtus will be spared, even if they end up captured (quorum virtuti belli fortuna pepercit | eorundem me libertati parcere certum est, fr. 188–189 Sk.). The sentiment serves not only to praise the king’s own manliness, but also to declare his martial virtus more important than the decisive kind of victory that so famously eluded him.Footnote ⁸

In repeating the epithet Graius homo, then, from Ennius’ depiction of Pyrrhus, Lucretius evokes memories of the earlier poem but proceeds to paint an altogether different picture of what constitutes a Greek hero. In particular, he employs the same key vocabulary that Ennius had used in the Annals but re-purposes it for a celebration of the human mind.Footnote ⁹ The world’s depressing state awakens Epicurus’ virtus, but, in notable contrast to Ennius’ Pyrrhus, his is a virtus of the intellect (acrem | irritat animi virtutem, 1.69–70). Similarly, the phrase “the vigorous force of [Epicurus’] mind prevails” (vivida vis animi pervicit, 1.72) is as alliterative as the Ennian source passage it recalls, and it relies on the same terminology (vis … per-vicit). Yet the philosopher’s victory, unlike Pyrrhus’, is never in doubt. Indeed, his victoria raises all of us up to the sky (nos exaequat victoria caelo, 1.79).Footnote ¹⁰

Lucretius thus issues a challenge to traditional conceptions of heroism as propagated, in particular, in the sixth book of Ennius’ Annals. Since Cicero refers to the Ennian Pyrrhus’ aforementioned speech on the subject of virtus as “those famous [words]” (illa praeclara, Off. 1.38),Footnote ¹¹ it seems that access to the text would have been readily available to Lucretius’ readers.Footnote ¹² Yet that is not to say that they would have necessarily studied the poem in a scroll. After all, Latin epics were also recited at the Roman ludi in the first century BC,Footnote ¹³ and Aulus Gellius still witnessed a public reading from Book 6 of the Annals as late as the second century AD.Footnote ¹⁴ The event occurred when “there was rest on a certain day at Rome in the forum from business” (otium erat quodam die Romae in foro a negotiis) amid a “certain happy celebration of a festival” (laeta quaedam celebritas feriarum, Gell. 16.10.1). It seems likely, therefore, that Lucretius’ readers would have encountered Ennius’ views on virtus, vis and vincere at official celebrations of city-wide holidays. On these occasions, anyone steeped in On the Nature of Things would have been ready to critique the Annals’ use of the relevant terms, and to advance the counter-model provided by Epicurean philosophy. This multi-mediality of Ennian reception – occurring, as I contend it would have, both through reading and through performance – is particularly relevant to the next section, where I discuss an intertextual connection that relies even more directly on non-written media.

Iphigenia

Having completed the encomium of Epicurus, Lucretius segues into his famous description of the sacrifice of Iphianassa/Iphigenia. The account of Agamemnon’s ritual murder of his daughter on what she thought was to be her wedding day – meant to ensure the Greek fleet’s passage out of the Bay of Aulis – constitutes a prime example of Lucretius’ thesis that superstition in the guise of reverence will sway people toward terrible deeds (tantum religio potuit suadere malorum, 1.82–101 at 101). The passage has also long been recognized as richly intertextual.Footnote ¹⁵ Depending on their respective backgrounds and interests, different modern critics have foregrounded certain allusions at the expense of others, as would no doubt have been the case among the varied readership(s) of the Roman Republic. There are, for example, clear echoes of the parodos of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon in Lucretius’ focus on the pollution incurred through human sacrifice, the theme of a wedding perverted into a funeral and in the fact that, as in the Oresteia, Iphigenia has to be carried to the altar and actually dies (rather than being replaced with a deer and spirited away by Diana at the very last second). In particular, Aeschylus’ Agamemnon notes the horror of “soiling a father’s hands with streams of a young woman’s blood right by the altar” (μιαίνων παρθενοσφάγοισιν | ῥείθροις πατρώιους χέρας | πέλας βωμοῦ, Aesch. Ag. 209–211). Similar language recurs in Lucretius’ lament that “at Aulis, the leaders of the Greeks, the first among the men, foully soiled the altar of Diana with the blood of a young woman, Iphigenia” (Aulide … Triviai virginis aram | Iphianassai turparunt sanguine foede | ductores Danaum delecti, prima virorum, 1.84–86).Footnote ¹⁶

To these Aeschylean resonances has been added the observation that in Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis, the young woman “was first to call [Agamemnon] father” and to “attach [her] body to [his] knees” (πρώτη σ᾽ ἐκάλεσα πατέρα … | πρώτη δὲ γόνασι σοῖσι σῶμα δοῦσ᾽ ἐμὸν, Eur. IA 1220–1221). In Lucretius, Iphigenia is “silent with fear” and, “having fallen to her knees, she sought the ground. And it did not help the miserable woman at such a time that she had been first to bestow the name of father on the king” (muta metu terram genibus summissa petebat. | nec miserae prodesse in tali tempore quibat | quod patrio princeps donarat nomine regem, 1.92–94).Footnote ¹⁷ Based on the similarities between these passages, Barnaby Taylor (Reference Taylor2016, 145–150) has argued that Lucretius alludes to competing dramatic versions of the myth, including some where Iphigenia is saved (as, apparently, she was in Euripides’ IA) and others where she is not (e.g., Aeschylus’ Agamemnon). In doing so, Lucretius endorses the latter in an attempt to “correct” or rationalize the former and underlines the true horror of the event.

This argument is convincing, but it is nevertheless necessary to account more fully than Taylor does for Stephen Harrison’s (2002, 4–6) observation that the passage’s entire style is markedly Ennian, even and especially at the start (the episode’s first lines, 1.84–86, are quoted above). This suggests that the main – though certainly not the only – author whose work Lucretius employs to exemplify the noxious beliefs on display in many tragedies is Ennius. Harrison himself points to the use of indugredi at 1.82 as reminiscent of Ennius’ favored term induperator; to the archaic genitives Triviai (1.84; the noun also occurs in Ennius’ fr. 171 M.) and Iphianassai (1.85); to Ennius’ phrases duxit delectos (fr. 331 Sk.) and delecti viri (fr. 89.5 M.), which fuse into Lucretius’ ductores … delecti (1.86); and to the fact that the construction prima virorum (1.86) in its combination of a neuter plural with a genitive is recognizably Ennian as well.Footnote ¹⁸ To these linguistic echoes, I would add that Iphigenia wears an infula at 1.87–88. This noun describes the headband of a priestess, particularly a Vestal Virgin,Footnote ¹⁹ which reinforces the passage’s specifically Roman ring. In turn, the phrase muta metu at 1.92 is not attested in Ennius, but its alliteration does contribute to the passage’s archaizing tone and recalls the earlier author’s penchant for this stylistic feature. Most importantly, the phrase used to describe Iphigenia’s murder (aram … turparunt sanguine, 1.84–85) is lifted directly out of Ennius’ Andromacha, where – looking back to the night she was captured – the titular character uses the same words to describe the slaughter of Priam at the altar of Jupiter (aram sanguine turpari, fr. 23.17 M).Footnote ²⁰ Occurring as it does at the outset of the Lucretian episode, and providing a summary of it, the quote sets an emphatically Ennian tone for Lucretius’ entire narration of the sacrifice. Other intertexts are certainly active as well, but the reader has to pass through Ennian Latin, as it were, in order to reach them.

A further example of this latter phenomenon is provided by an additional echo of Ennius’ tragedies that has, to my knowledge, not previously been discussed. As the sacrifice begins, Lucretius’ Agamemnon stands motionless at the altar and is despondent (maestum … ante aras adstare parentem, 1.89), but he does not cry. By contrast, “the citizens shed tears at the sight of [Iphigenia]” (aspectu … suo lacrimas effundere civis, 1.91). Ennius points to this difference between rulers and their subjects in fr. 194 M., likely from his Iphigenia: “The plebs in this regard is preferable to the king: The plebs is allowed to cry, the king is not allowed to do so honorably” (plebes in hoc regi antestat loco: licet | lacrimare plebi, regi honeste non licet). Lucretius echoes this Ennian passage in both sentiment and wording (note the correspondence between lacrimas effundere and lacrimare, adstare and antestat). At one step’s further remove, one also notices similar lines in Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis, where Agamemnon complains that those of low birth “are allowed to cry readily” (δακρῦσαι ῥαιδίως αὐτοῖς ἔχει, 447) while “to a high-born man these things are wretched” (τῶι δὲ γενναίωι φύσιν | ἄνολβα ταῦτα, 448–449). This similarity between Euripides’ and Ennius’ lines has given rise to the suspicion that the Roman tragedian’s Iphigenia may have been based at least in part on the Greek Iphigenia at Aulis. Yet while the additional, Euripidean intertext would have been readily detectable to the learned, the road there leads through Ennius’ Iphigenia.Footnote ²¹

In alluding to this particular Latin play, and to Ennius more broadly, Lucretius notably does not attack the earlier poet outright. It is apparent from the fragments of the plays as much as from the Ennian language preserved in On the Nature of Things that the relevant tragedies would have been critical of Iphigenia’s murder as well.Footnote ²² Lucretius may – I submit – even be appropriating a voice from within Ennius’ own oeuvre. In one fragment from the Iphigenia, Achilles complains that “nobody looks at what is in front of their feet, instead they study the expanses of the sky” (quod est ante pedes nemo spectat, caeli scrutantur plagas, fr. 82.3 M.). This condemnation of astrological superstition is compatible with Lucretius’ depiction of Iphigenia’s sacrifice, where excessive contemplation of the supernatural leads to a horrible atrocity. Perhaps, then, the play contained a scene where Achilles rejected his bride-to-be’s murder in almost proto-Lucretian terms. Either way, Lucretius uses some of tragedy’s own insights against itself. He activates vivid reminiscences of Ennius’ plays and uses them to undermine the religious beliefs that motivate many of the genre’s most memorable characters.

This observation brings us back to the question of how Lucretius’ readership would have become familiar with the relevant intertexts. The Iphigenia passage’s most overt allusion to Ennian drama occurs in the aforementioned quotation from the Andromacha (aram … turparunt sanguine, Lucr. 1.84–85 ~ aram sanguine turpari, Ennius fr. 23.17 M.). Like Ennius’ other works, this play would have been available for perusal in written form, but the tragedies of the Middle Republic also continued to be re-performed with great frequency.Footnote ²³ In the repertoire of dramatic classics, the Andromacha featured prominently. At Acad. 2.20, Cicero observes that many are able to recognize this tragedy as soon as the accompanying piper plays his first notes. At Att. 4.15.6, he mentions a specific revival of the play at the ludi Apollinares of 54 BC.Footnote ²⁴ Cicero thus delivers firm evidence that the Andromacha was staged in the very decade of the original publication of On the Nature of Things,Footnote ²⁵ perhaps routinely so. This provides further support for the thesis that, as I posited was the case with Lucretius’ earlier reliance on Book 6 of the Annals, the Epicurean poet preferred to employ those parts of Ennius’ oeuvre that were most readily recognizable from performances at Roman festivals. Elsewhere in On the Nature of Things, Lucretius imagines his fellow Romans assembled in a theater and bathed in the varied colors cast off by the awnings that protect the spectators against the sun (4.72–83). He notes that after attending such ludi, spectators for days “seem to perceive … the glitter of the varied marvels of the stage” (videantur | cernere … | scaenai … varios splendere decores, 4.979–983).Footnote ²⁶ In picking his Ennian quotations, Lucretius relies on these lasting memories of dramatic festivals, but he deconstructs the value systems that underlie the shows and provides his readers with a toolkit for confronting the plots the next time they encounter them at the ludi scaenici.Footnote ²⁷

To a reader, then, whose first language was Latin, who was well-versed in the Roman classics and/or who attended the ludi, Lucretius’ condemnation of the sacrifice of Iphigenia would have conjured especially strong reminiscences of Ennius’ Trojan plays (including the Iphigenia and Andromacha), familiar as they continued to be from the stage. Yet I submit that there would have been a further, non-textual component to a late-republican reader’s understanding of Lucretius’ Iphigenia passage that likewise relates to the reception of Ennius. It has long been noted that the relevant lines of On the Nature of Things correspond closely to the sacrifice’s depiction in a fresco from the House of the Tragic Poet in Pompeii (Figure 9.1).Footnote ²⁸ In Lucretius, Iphigenia “perceived that her father was standing despondent by the altars and that the servants were hiding the iron on his account” (et maestum … ante aras adstare parentem | sensit et hunc propter ferrum celare ministros, 1.89–90). In the image, Agamemnon likewise sorrowfully veils his head on the left while his daughter looks at him, and a priest conceals a dagger on the right. Furthermore, the young woman’s lips are closed in the fresco, which suggests that she is “silent with fear” (muta metu, 1.92), and in both painting and poem, “she was lifted up by the hands of men and, shivering, she was brought to the altars” (nam sublata virum manibus tremibundaque ad aras | deductast, 1.95–96).

Figure 9.1 Sacrifice of Iphigenia, Pompeii, House of the Tragic Poet (VI.8.3), Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, inv. 9112.

Photo credit: Scala / Art Resource, NY

The Pompeian fresco likely stems from the Neronian era,Footnote ²⁹ and it therefore postdates Lucretius’ poem by about a century. Yet the motif itself harks back to a painting by the fourth-century BC artist Timanthes,Footnote ³⁰ variations of which were popular already in the Roman Republic.Footnote ³¹ It strikes me as significant that Lucretius’ description of the sacrifice of Iphigenia is simultaneously so rich in Ennian language and so similar to the story’s typical depiction in the visual arts. The resemblances suggest that tragic actors could have taken cues from images portraying the sacrifice of Iphigenia. In turn, the myth’s visualizations on the walls of Roman houses could themselves be partially informed by dramatic (re-)performances of classic plays, including those of Ennius. We may imagine, for example, that his Iphigenia contained a scene where the young woman is carried off stage to be sacrificed while Agamemnon veils his head, or that a different play, like the Andromacha, narrated the event (as we know it did the sacrifice of Priam). Witnessing such a moment in the theater could have influenced a painter, even if he was also imitating Timanthes. Cicero, for one, hints at such mutual cross-pollinations at Orat. 74, where he notes that in portraying the sacrifice of Iphigenia (immolanda Iphigenia), a painter (pictor ille) will portray varied characters in different gradations of sadness, culminating in Agamemnon with his head veiled (obvolvendum caput Agamemnonis esse) as in the Pompeian fresco, and that similar observations apply to an “actor” (histrio).

On this reading, Lucretius would be using specifically Ennian language to activate memories of the tale’s portrayal on the Roman stage and in the visual arts, that is, in different media that exerted a noticeable influence on each other. For a full appreciation of this triangular relationship, it is significant that the fresco includes Diana on the top right and Iphigenia with a deer on the upper left. The painter has emphasized that the young woman escaped her painful death through the goddess’ intervention, as she likely did in Ennius’ plays as well, considering his Iphigenia was based in part on Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis. In alluding only to the painting’s lower register and ignoring the top, Lucretius urges his readers to assume the same kind of “selective ambivalence” (Taylor: 2016, 143–144 and 150) toward the visual arts that they are to bring to bear on tragedy. They are to accept certain parts of the story (i.e., condemnations of the violence inherent in Iphigenia’s sacrifice) but reject any supernatural components, because the gods do not in fact meddle in human affairs.

Pergama partu

For a further example of Lucretius’ multi-medial intertextuality, we now jump ahead a few hundred lines in Book 1 of On the Nature of Things. Moving beyond the prologue and into a more thorough discussion of Epicurean physics, Lucretius first establishes the duality between atoms and void. The next step is to distinguish between coniuncta and eventa. According to 1.451–454, coniuncta are concrete, palpable properties that are inseparably tied to the objects that display them. Stones have weight, fire has heat and water is a liquid because of these elements’ specific atomic structures. Everything else is an eventum, a mere accident, including “slavery … poverty and riches, freedom, war, concord, everything else by whose arrival and departure Nature herself remains unimpaired” (servitium … paupertas divitiaeque, | libertas bellum concordia, cetera quorum | adventu manet incolumis natura abituque, 1.455–457). Even time does not exist independently (1.459) but only in the observation of physical objects. This juxtaposition between coniuncta and eventa contains an overt value judgment. As Monica Gale (1994, 109–110) has argued, Lucretius declares his own subject matter, natura, more lasting and significant than the transitory topics that concern other writers, especially those who focus on epic, tragedy or history.Footnote ³² It makes sense, therefore, that he would employ the language of earlier authors in providing an example of one such “insignificant” eventum, namely, the Trojan War (1.464–477):

Lucretius here flags the presence of various intertexts in the background of his own composition. After all, the verb dicunt (1.465) provides a prime example of an Alexandrian footnoteFootnote ³³; that is, it constitutes a self-reflexive marker of allusivity that encourages the reader to contemplate which earlier writers may have spoken about Troy. One obvious answer is Homer, and the adjective durateus (“wooden,” 1.476, transliterated from the Greek δουράτεος) indeed underlines Lucretius’ debts to this earlier poet, who had likewise applied the word to the Trojan Horse in his account of the city’s sack (Od. 8.493 and 8.512).Footnote ³⁴ As far as the metaphor of the horse’s pregnancy is concerned, it also features in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon (ἵππου νεοσσός, “the offspring of the horse,” 825) and Euripides’ Trojan Women (ἐγκύμον᾽ ἵππον τευχέων, “the horse pregnant with weapons,” 11). These varied Greek intertexts would all have been readily detectable to the more learned members of Lucretius’ readership.

Nevertheless, as was the case in Lucretius’ description of the sacrifice of Iphigenia, the passage is again especially rich in the language of Ennian drama. Prior studies have noted the presence of the archaizing noun Tyndaris (1.464 and 1.473) to describe Helen, of Troiugenae (1.465) to refer to the Trojans and of Graiugenae (1.477) to describe the Greeks.Footnote ³⁵ Even more notable, because demonstrably based in Roman tragedy, is Lucretius’ observation that the Trojan horse “set Pergamon (Pergama) on fire with its nocturnal birthing (partu) of Greeks” (1.476–477). The words Pergama and partu are lifted directly out of Ennius’ Alexander,Footnote ³⁶ a play dealing with young Paris’ expulsion from Troy and his eventual rediscovery. According to this tragedy “the horse pregnant with armed men has jumped over (the walls) with a huge leap to destroy harsh Pergamon with its birthing” (nam maximo saltu superavit gravidus armatis equus | qui suo partu ardua perdat Pergama, fr. 22 M.). This Latin expression of the pregnant-horse motif would likely have been most easily detectable to Roman readers, while its Aeschylean and Euripidean versions would have required a bit of extra intellectual effort. I would add that the above quotation from Ennius’ Alexander has to be part of a prophecy, since the play was set before the destruction of Priam’s kingdom. Accordingly, the relevant lines must belong to Cassandra, who in this same play prophesies the fall of Troy and exclaims with reference to her brother that “the torch is here, is here, covered in blood and fire” (adest, adest fax obvoluta sanguine atque incendio, fr. 151a M.).Footnote ³⁷ Ennius’ Hecuba is similarly said to have envisioned “that she was birthing a firebrand, and then she produced Paris, who was the cause of the conflagration” (haec se facem parere vidit et Parin creavit, qui causa fuit incendii, fr. 200 M.). In a context already rich in allusions to Ennius, Lucretius is picking up on this fire imagery as well, and his reference to the fire “blazing up in the Phrygian chest of Alexander” (1.474) echoes the Alexander’s depiction of Paris as a torch that will destroy the city.Footnote ³⁸

It turns out, then, that we are dealing with a passage that is remarkably similar to the two we have already examined. Lucretius’ Iliupersis engages with a variety of different intertexts, but Ennian language is especially conspicuous. As before, the lines even contain one clear instance of direct citation (Pergama partu, 1.476; compare Graius homo at 1.66 and aram … turparunt sanguine at 1.84–85). It also seems, yet again, that Lucretius has picked a motif that was popular with theatrical audiences. We admittedly do not have any direct attestations for performances of the Alexander in the 50s BC, but we do know from a letter of Cicero’s (Fam. 7.7) that a luxurious revival of an Equus Troianus tragedy was put on at the spectacular inauguration of the Theater of Pompey in 55 BC. The show was a great success with the people (Fam. 7.7.2), though the orator himself disapproved, and it occurred only briefly before the aforementioned staging of the Andromacha in 54 BC. In alluding to the Alexander’s narration of the fall of Troy and the Trojan Horse, Lucretius is thus gesturing toward a moment that his readers would have experienced in one form or another at the late Republic’s increasingly sensational ludi scaenici, perhaps even on multiple occasions.

The visual record likewise provides parallels to my prior discussion, in that rediscovered Roman houses on the Bay of Naples have yielded multiple depictions of the Trojan Horse. Like Ennius’ plays, these images foreground the prophecies of Cassandra, who stands apart on the bottom left (Figure 9.2) and top left (Figure 9.3) of two early-Imperial Pompeian frescos, predicting the city’s downfall as it is about to occur.Footnote ³⁹ In a third, now badly damaged, from the Villa Arianna in Stabiae, the artist emphasized the horse’s “birthing” of enemy combatants through the prominent inclusion of a ladder.Footnote ⁴⁰ Given the aforementioned consistency in the visual record from the Republic to the Empire, the frescos – though later than the works of Ennius and Lucretius – could provide further support for a triangular connection of reciprocal inspiration between On the Nature of Things on the one hand and memorable portrayals of mythological events in paintings and in tragedy on the other. In alluding to multiple media at the same time – which would, in turn, have influenced each other – Lucretius is instructing his readers on how to respond if they are wowed by impressive displays related to the Trojan War, be it at the opening of the city’s first permanent theater or in their studies or while glancing at frescos on a dining-room wall. In the end, the plots portrayed are only eventa. They are long gone, and they could never have happened in the first place if it were not for the rerum natura. What counts, therefore, is the philosophical instruction provided by a poem like Lucretius’, which will teach the reader about the far more significant coniuncta of Epicurean physics.

Figure 9.2 Trojan Horse, Pompeii, House of Cipius Pamphilus (VII.6.38), Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, inv. 9010.

Photo credit: Mathias Hanses

Figure 9.3 Iliupersis, Pompeii, House IX.7.16, Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, inv.120176.

Photo credit: Mathias Hanses

Ennius noster

There is one final way in which Lucretius’ Trojan-War episode highlights its engagement with Ennius, and that is in its use of the archaic verb cluere (“to be said to be,” “to be reckoned as existing”; cf. OLD s.v. clueo). Two occurrences of the word bookend the relevant lines in On the Nature of Things. At the start, Lucretius uses it in his definition of eventa and coniuncta (nam quaecumque cluent, aut his coniuncta duabus | rebus ea invenies aut horum eventa videbis, “for all things that are reckoned to exist, you will either find them to be properties of these two [i.e., of atoms and void] or you will see that they are accidents that result from them,” 1.449–450). At the end, cluere recurs in Lucretius’ assertion that eventa do not exist in the same manner as atoms and void (nec ratione cluere eadem qua constet inane, 1.480). I would suggest that in repeatedly employing cluere to deny that mere “accidents” such as the Trojan War maintain an independent presence in the universe, Lucretius inverts Ennius’ own use of the same verb in expressing the hope that his “subject matter and poems will be reckoned famous broadly among the peoples” (latos <per> populos res atque poemata nostra | <… clara> cluebunt, fr. 12–13 Sk.). Lucretius paraphrases these same lines of the Annals in his rejection of Ennius’ views on metempsychosis, which I mentioned briefly at the outset of this chapter. Here, he refers to Ennius noster as “the one who first brought a crown of perennial foliage down from delightful Mt. Helicon for it to be reckoned famous throughout the Italic tribes of men” (Ennius ut noster cecinit qui primus amoeno | detulit ex Helicone perenni fronde coronam, | per gentis Italas hominum quae clara clueret, 1.117–119). The fact that Lucretius’ clara clueret echoes the Annals’ cluebunt is often adduced in tentative reconstructions of the Ennian source passage but has not been factored into interpretations of On the Nature of Things.Footnote ⁴¹ I submit that Lucretius intended the verb to have an Ennian ring, both here and in its recurrence in the Trojan-War episode, thereby undermining the earlier poet through the use of his own vocabulary.

Since I have now mentioned Lucretius’ explicit naming of Ennius at 1.117, the surrounding lines can lend themselves to some concluding reflections on the role the earlier poet plays in On the Nature of Things. At 1.102–135, Lucretius targets Ennius’ eschatological views and, as in the other passages I have examined, uses Ennius’ own words against him. For example, Ennius had dismissively referred to a preceding generation of poets (and especially to Naevius) as “fauns and soothsayers” (fauni vatesque, fr. 207 Sk.). Lucretius now lumps Ennius himself in with the vates, whose “fearmongering words” (vatum | terriloquis … dictis, 1.102–103), “superstitions and threats” (religionibus atque minis … vatum, 1.109) will cause people to stray from their commitment to Epicurean philosophy and hence to lose their peace of mind.Footnote ⁴² In particular, Ennius propagates misleading but long-lived (Ennius aeternis exponit versibus edens, 1.121) views about the nature of the soul.Footnote ⁴³ As a result, there is widespread “ignorance” (ignoratur enim, 1.112) as to whether the “soul” (anima) is born with the body or, on the contrary, inserted into the body at the moment of birth, whether it perishes together with us at death or “sees the darkness of Orcus and the vast emptinesses” or, finally, whether it “inserts itself in a divine manner into other animals,Footnote ⁴⁴ as our Ennius sang” (an tenebras Orci visat vastasque lacunas, | an pecudes alias divinitus insinuet se, | Ennius ut noster cecinit, 1.115–117). The latter claim about the transmigration of souls is puzzling even to Lucretius, especially in light of Ennius’ own view that “there do in fact exist Acherusian expanses … where neither our souls abide nor our bodies, but certain images pale in wondrous ways” (etsi praeterea tamen esse Acherusia templa | … | quo neque permaneant animae neque corpora nostra | sed quaedam simulacra modis pallentia miris, 1.120–123). Lucretius dismisses this tripartite division – soul, body and a pallid ghost-like image – as distracting from Epicurus’ calming insight that our existence ceases with death.

I have been making a case throughout that Lucretius’ need to deconstruct Ennius’ harmful perceptions arose specifically from the continued inclusion of the latter’s works at the Roman ludi (shows that, in turn, had an impact on contemporary painting, and vice versa). This argument is also borne out by the passage quoted immediately above. It has not, to my knowledge, been previously emphasized that Lucretius’ description of misconstrued ideas about the underworld once again reflects key lines of the popular Andromacha.Footnote ⁴⁵ In fr. 24 M., one of this play’s characters, perhaps Andromache herself, greets “the Acherusian expanses and the vast depths of Orcus” (Acherusia templa alta Orci salvete infera). The fragment is preserved in Varro’s On the Latin Language (7.6), but Cicero quotes what may be a longer version of the same passage (omitting salvete) at Tusc. 1.48: Acheru[n]sia templa alta Orci, pallida leti, nubila tenebris loca (“the deep Acherusian fields of Orcus, pale places of death clouded in darkness”).Footnote ⁴⁶ At 1.115–123, Lucretius is thus reusing at least three (Acherusia templa … Orci) and possibly five words (tenebris/tenebras … pallida/pallentia) from the Andromacha’s address to the Acherusian realm of Orcus. It seems, therefore, that the responsibility Lucretius ascribes to Ennius’ works for perpetuating harmful ideas about the afterlife connects directly, here as elsewhere, to plays we know to have been frequently performed at Roman festivals. In other words, Lucretius addresses a threat that emanates from the ludi, where a dangerous ideology undermines the ἀταραξία of Roman audiences. Lucretius is warning his readers against these perilous beliefs and tells them how to respond the next time they encounter them in their reading or in the theater.

Similar observations apply to Lucretius’ paraphrase of Ennius’ views on the transmigration of souls. When he ascribes to his predecessor the statement that the soul “inserts itself in a divine manner into other animals” ([anima] pecudes alias divinitus insinuet se, 1.116, see above), he is basing this claim on the first book of the Annals, where Ennius maintained that “the race adorned with feathers is in the habit of producing eggs, not a soul … the soul itself comes afterwards from there (i.e., the sky) in a divine manner to the chicks” (ova parire solet genus pennis condecoratum, | non animam … post inde venit divinitus pullis | ipsa anima, fr. 8–10 Sk). We can note here both the overlap in content and the recurrence of anima and divinitus, a parallel that has not been previously observed. Furthermore, Lucretius’ dismissal of Ennius’ claim that the soul of Homer came to live in him after a chain of Pythagorean transmigrations, and that the Greek poet’s ghost-like simulacrum visited him in a dream to explain this development (1.124–126), is well known likewise to be based on Book 1 of the Annals (e.g., visus Homerus adesse poeta, “the poet Homer appeared to be present,” fr. 3 Sk.). The same is true of Lucretius’ reference, at 1.117–119, to Ennius’ hope that his “subject matter and poems will be reckoned famous broadly among the peoples” (fr. 12–13 Sk.), with which I started this section. All of these paraphrases and quotations engage with the same part of Ennius’ epic. Of course, we do not in this case have any evidence testifying to later recitations of the book in question. Yet the plethora of fragments that survive from Book 1 of the Annals show beyond a doubt that it too was among the best-known parts of Ennius’ works,Footnote ⁴⁷ even though we can no longer tell if it was familiar through public recitations or private reading (or both).

Lucretius thus engages yet again with a part of Ennius’ oeuvre that would have been of central importance to the literary, dramatic and artistic scene of late-Republican Rome. The Trojan tragedies (certainly the Andromacha, and possibly the Iphigenia and the Alexander as well) were a staple at the ludi’s increasingly impressive shows, which evidenced some cross-contamination with the visual arts. In turn, the Annals’ book on Pyrrhus would have been comparably well known from public recitations at the same events. Whatever the preferred medium may have been for the distribution of Book 1, it too exerted a formative influence on many Romans’ (faulty) understanding of the workings of the cosmos. Lucretius engages with these Ennian compositions in greater detail than has been previously shown and confronts them specifically in their capacity as works that communicate ideas of a philosophical, religious and even scientific nature to large audiences.Footnote ⁴⁸ He makes the latter element clear by noting that in Ennius’ dream, Homer’s ghost proceeded “to expound upon the nature of things” (rerum naturam expandere dictis, 1.126). Ennius continued to pass this information on to Lucretius’ contemporaries even and especially in the first century BC. This made Ennius an adversary to be reckoned with and a direct competitor in asserting a hold on the understanding of the rerum natura. Accordingly, Lucretius equips his readers with the necessary gear to confront Ennius’ supposedly harmful ideas wherever they next encounter them, be it in a well-stocked library, at a literary recitation, on the walls of a domus or at the late-Republican ludi’s exceptionally lavish revivals of classic tragedies.