liberated oppressed mankind from the lowering menace of religion. In a typically Roman metaphor we
are told how the philosopher's mind sallied forth through the walls of the world, and after scouring the
universe like a reconnoitring raiding party, brought back 'a knowledge of what can be and what cannot':
'quare religio pedibus subiecta uicissim/obteritur, nos exaequat uictoria caelo' (78 f. 'and so religion in
turn is crushed underfoot and victory raises us to heaven'). These fighting words are at odds with the
mild piety of Epicurus, who recommended the observance of one's local form of worship, and Lucretius
recognizes that his line of argument may be thought wicked; but he reflects that the true impiety is
religion's. With suitably epic, or rather tragic, diction he pictures the fate of Iphigeneia, whose
significance is of course symbolic rather than literally relevant to Roman cult: 95 ff. 'lifted by the hands
of men she was escorted trembling to the altar, so that pure impurely, at the very time for her to marry,
she might fall a sorrowing victim, slaughtered by her sire.' And so to the scathing summing up, not
easily paralleled in antiquity, 'tantum religio potuit suadere malorum' (101 'so much evil could religion
recommend).
The first two books are devoted to the atomic theory of Epicurus (above pp. 374 £), which was itself
derived from Leucippus and Democritus (above, p. 121). Lucretius copes skilfully with his technical
problems, the poverty of his ancestral tongue ('patrii sermonis egestas') at least before Cicero
standardized an abstract vocabulary, the clumsiness of Latin compared with Greek as a vehicle for subtle
disputation, the constraints of the metre (for the hexameter was not indigenous in Rome and still could
prove a recalcitrant medium). The theme required argumentation of a kind unusual in poetry, at least
since the fifth-century Empedocles, and as suits a rationalist, there is an abundance of prosaic, logical
words like 'for', 'whereas', 'nevertheless', 'moreover', 'finally', 'therefore'. Each book is ordered into self-
contained sections, which ram home a point by repetition as well as deduction, often ending with a
triumphant restatement of the propositions with which they began (for the procedures are more
polemical than those of a technical philosopher); and as in the physical system that is being described,
these sections interlock in larger structures. It would be quite wrong to suppose that the work consists of
purple passages of eloquence stitched to a monotonous scientific fabric: when Lucretius talks of
'smearing honey on the medicine cup' (I. 936 ff.), he is referring not to the set-pieces, but to the poetic
form itself, which must have startled more professional Epicureans (their founder had rejected the arts as
not conducive to happiness). But "while some of the poet's qualities can be demonstrated, the grasp of
reality, the passionate faith in reason, the actuality of the supporting illustration, no anthology can do
justice to the interdependence and cumulative persuasiveness of the system as a whole.
The second book opens with an exposition of Epicurean ethics, for which the physical theory was simply
the foundation, 'suaue, mari magno turbantibus aequora uentis,/e terra magnum alterius spectare
laborcm' (2. 1 f. "tis sweet, when the winds disturb the calm of the great sea, to look from land at the
great tribulation of another'): here we have the Epicurean ideal of ataraxia (freedom from turmoil)
expressed with the self-centredness of ancient moral philosophy. 'Sweet' is not just a conventional
poeticism, but alludes to Epicurus' theory of pleasure, not the excited pleasure that he disapproved of,
but the static sort which arises from the absence of pain and anxiety. To know the true pleasures of the
body, men do not need a house shimmering with gold and silver, or panelled ceilings echoing to the lute,
as they can enjoy themselves by lying on the soft grass, beside a stream of water, under the branches of a
tall tree (29 f. 'prostrati in gramine molli/propter aquae riuum sub ramis arboris altae'); such passages