This chapter offers a reconsideration of the well-known letters–atoms analogy in Lucretius’ DRN. By reviewing two readings of this analogy and then turning to the anagrammatic ‘readings’ of Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (who in three unpublished cahiers found significant names hidden in DRN), the chapter highlights gaps and omissions in the two existing interpretations. In particular, whereas the previous interpretations use the analogy as license to focus on either the sound of syllables or the arrangement of letters, Saussure instead allows us to think that the force of the analogy may lie not only in the written or spoken properties of letters but also in their creative power, their performative ability to create new words and denote new objects in the world.

This chapter shows how Lucretius repeatedly draws parallels between the human soul and the stars in DRN 3. These parallels are achieved through intertextual reference to the Aratea, Cicero’s poem on the stars. In drawing as densely on the Aratea as it demonstrably does, the DRN creates a problem for its interpretation. The Aratea, a translation of the Phaenomena of the Hellenistic poet Aratus, is a text with a markedly Stoic orientation, as I’ve shown elsewhere (Gee 2001 and 2013). The Stoic approach to the stars and the soul is that of an intelligent-design philosophy, and therefore in opposition to Lucretius’ atomist understanding of the universe and mankind. What then is the meaning of Lucretius’ tapestry of allusions to the Aratea? This chapter shows how Lucretius deliberately hijacks a text in the opposing philosophical tradition as part of his polemical strategy. Through close readings it becomes clear that Lucretius eviscerates Cicero’s poem of its intelligent-design substance and substitutes his own Epicurean content in its stead. The reader familiar with the Aratea now views the Stoic poem through the mesh of allusions in the DRN, with the result that Lucretius has partially eclipsed the worldview of the Aratea and replaced it with his own.

The first part of this paper looks into the question of Lucretius’ philosophical sources and whether he draws almost exclusively from Epicurus himself or also from later Epicurean texts. I argue that such debates are inconclusive and likely will remain so, even if additional Epicurean texts are discovered, and that even if we were able to ascertain Lucretius’ philosophical sources, doing so would add little to our understanding of the DRN. The second part of the paper turns to a consideration of what Lucretius does with his philosophical sources. The arguments within the DRN are not original. Nonetheless, the way Lucretius presents these arguments establishes him as a distinctive philosopher. Lucretius deploys non-argumentative methods of persuasion such as appealing to emotions, redeploying powerful cultural tropes, and ridicule. These methods of persuasion do not undercut or displace reasoned argumentation. Instead, they complement it. Lucretius’ use of these methods is rooted in his understanding of human psychology, that we have been culturally conditioned to have empty desires, false beliefs and destructive emotions, ones that are often subconscious. Effective persuasion must take into account the biases, stereotypes and other psychological factors that hinder people from accepting Epicurus’ healing gospel.

This chapter takes a metapoetic approach to Lucretian allusion to show that the DRN figures the phenomenon of echo as a metaphor for literary appropriation. Lucretius culminates his discussion of acoustic phenomena and hearing with the example of the echo (DRN 4.549–94). Insofar as echo is introduced as the most prominent effect in the perceptible world of the atomic reverberations that give rise to auditory aisthēsis, I argue that Lucretius' multiple allusions to earlier poetry in this passage also serve to illustrate metapoetically the process itself of hearing. The ideas inherent in this Lucretian passage find parallels in the fragmentary papyri of Philodemus.

There is a long history in Lucretian scholarship of finding conflict in the DRN between its philosophical content and its poetic form. Recent criticism has emphasized rather how the poem’s poetic form complements its Epicurean message. This chapter argues for important differences between literary and philosophical approaches to the poem, in particular with regard to its relationship with other texts, in order to identify some important differences in common modes of reading the poem. The chapter examines a ‘master-text’ model of reading, in which the DRN is related in strong fashion to another text on which it is dependent. The precise nature and identity of this ‘master-text’ can vary, according to the purpose or use to which the DRN is put. The approach of such ‘master-text’ readings is strikingly different from the dominant intertextual mode. In the examples of intertextual reading examined, the relationship to the other text is not one of subordination, but a tool used by the DRN to serve a particular function within the poem itself. The modes of reading explored in this chapter can lead to real differences in interpretation: e.g., on the end of the DRN, or on how uncompromising or sympathetic we should view certain parts of the poem. One important consequence is the need to acknowledge the differences in our reading practices and theoretical assumptions.

This chapter turns to Karl Marx’s treatment of Epicureanism and Lucretius in his doctoral dissertation, and argues that the questions raised by Marx may be brought to bear on our own understanding of Epicurean philosophy, particularly in respect of a tension between determinism and individual self-consciousness in a universe governed by material causation. Following the contours of Marx’s dissertation, the chapter focusses on three key topics: the difference between Democritus’ and Epicurus’ methods of philosophy; the swerve of the atom; and the so-called ‘meteors’, or heavenly bodies. Marx sought to develop Hegel’s understanding of Epicurus, in particular by elevating the principle of autonomous action to a first form of self-consciousness – a consideration largely mediated by Lucretius’ theorization of the atomic swerve and his poem’s overarching framework of liberating humans from the oppression of the gods.

This paper addresses the role of first-person plural expressions in DRN. I begin by outlining some ambiguities in the Latin first person plural before going on to demonstrate how those ambiguities may function for readers of DRN. First I show how ambiguity between inclusive and exclusive uses of the first person plural allow such expressions as quod inane vocamus to be interpreted differently by readers at different stages of their Epicurean education. I then discuss Lucretius’ use of inclusive first-person plural forms to characterize his own relationships with his reader. Finally, I discuss the role of collective first-person plurals in the argumentation of the poem, and its implications for Lucretius’ avowed empiricism. A central aim of the paper is to show how the ambiguities inherent in the language of Lucretian didaxis allow for different responses by different groups of readers.

The idea that the universe is infinite in size is central to the Epicurean system. Infinity, however, is also a concept that, in the history of philosophical, scientific and artistic discussion before and after Lucretius, has defied explanation, engendered paradox, and stimulated the romantic sensibility. This chapter looks at the strategies, philosophical and literary, deployed by Lucretius to achieve closure on this inherently open topic. Co-ordinate with the relationships of analogy and complementarity between the text of the DRN and the nature of the universe it describes, the poem’s poetics of closure and enclosure, on the one hand, and of non-closure or ‘false closure’, on the other, express and enact the infinity of the universe conceived both as all-encompassing and as open-ended. These rival conceptions of infinity are modeled throughout the poem, and especially in Epicurus’ triumph of the mind (1.62–79) and Lucretius’ reworking of a thought-experiment attributed to Archytas of Tarentum (1.951–83). Taken together, they bring out the tension, or complementarity, in Lucretius between the totalizing scientist who prescribes an intellectual panacea and the sublime poet who reaches into the beyond.

In Alexandria at some point in the early third century bc, Herophilus of Chalcedon identified the nerves as a distinct system within the body, traced their origins to the brain, and recognised their role in transmitting sensation and voluntary motion. His discovery was based on dissection and vivisection, not only of animals, but also of human beings. Herophilus’ younger contemporary Erasistratus also integrated these findings into his rather bolder physiology. The implications of this discovery were of course wide-ranging. From a modern perspective, it is now widely celebrated as having established, for the first time on something like a scientific basis, that the brain has more or less the functions that we now ascribe to it. Likewise, in antiquity, Galen relied heavily on Herophilus’ discovery in his proof that the rational soul is located in the brain. As we shall see, it also had an impact on Stoic psychology. What exactly Herophilus and Erasistratus saw as its implications, however, is a different question, and the difficulties in answering it are considerable given the state of the evidence.