- The Poets Of The Late Republic
(By Robin Nisbet)Lucretius
Early in 54 B.C. Cicero ended a letter to his brother with a note on his recent reading. 'Lucretius' poetry
is just as you say; many brilliances of natural genius, all the same much technique; but more anon. If you
read Sallustius' Empedoclea I'll think you a man, but I'll not think you a human being' (QF 2. 10. 3).
Here we glimpse a society where some public men find time for new literature, and comment on it
"without affectation. Both the works mentioned are philosophical and scientific, reflecting the
intellectual curiosity of a small Hellenized elite, an enlightenment that Cicero was to transmit but did not
originate. The didactic poem was a familiar form that continued the Alexandrian tradition of versified
scholarship; Cicero himself in his youth had produced a translation, innovating for its day, of the
astronomical Phaenomena of Aratus. Such works were more noted for technique than genius, but
Lucretius in his six books De rerum natura found a theme to engage both the reason and the imagination,
the now fashionable Epicurean explanation of the universe. The poet himself is a shadowy figure, no
doubt comfortably born, certainly well educated, perhaps recently dead; his poem will speak for him.
'Aeneadum genetrix, hominum diuumque uoluptas,/alma Venus', 'Mother of Aeneas' race, pleasure of
men and gods, life-giving Venus' (1. 1 f): already in the resounding invocation we find the complexity of
reference that was thereafter to characterize much of the greatest Roman poetry. Venus is the mythical
and literary goddess of Love, the ancestress of the Roman People, the protecting deity of Memmius, the
ambitious politician for whom the work is nominally written, but at a deeper level she personifies the
creative forces in the world, and in particular uoluptas or pleasure, the prime impulse and supreme good
of the Epicurean moral system. The poet tells how at the goddess's epiphany the inventive earth sends up
fragrant flowers, and beasts bound through the lush pastures: the universality of the divine influence is
described in conventional religious patterns, but the comprehensive sympathy suits a philosophy that
sees man as part of nature. Then, as is appropriate in prayer, the suppliant relates Venus' powers to his
own needs: 'forasmuch as without thee nothing rises to the radiant shores of light, nor docs anything
joyful or lovable begin ... grant, goddess, to my precepts a charm everlasting' (28 ' aeternum da dictis,
diua, leporem'); the archaic alliteration suits the solemnities of old Roman poetry, but 'charm' (here
paradoxically combined with 'everlasting') suggests a more up-to-date awareness of beauty. Finally
Lucretius prays that Venus may bring peace on earth by making love to the war-god Mars; once again he
astonishes us by blending traditional religious diction with a sensuousness of description associated with
the poetic movements of his own day (35 f. 'leaning back his shapely neck, and gasping at thee, goddess,
he feeds his greedy gaze with love'). He conflates scandalous Homeric story-telling with a more
sophisticated hint of Harmonia, the daughter of Mars and Venus; at the same time he includes a
reference to the political anxieties of 60-55 B.C., when Caesar was already subverting the Republic.
Lucretius next turns to a panegyric of Epicurus, who like Hercules ridding the world of monsters