Renotisance Studies Vol. 5 No. 3

Lucretius and the Poetry of argument DAVID WEST

Titus Lucretius Carus lived through nearly half a century of corruption and civil war, perhaps from 99 to 55 BC, as the republican constitution of Rome approached its last crisis. Only one work of his survives, the De remm natum, ‘On the Nature of Things’, an exposition of the philosophy of Epicurus, whose school had been founded in Athens in 306 BC. The principal tenet of Epicureanism was that men’s lives should be governed by pleasure, not thoughtless self-indulgence, but pleasure rationally calculated. Tranquillity was their ideal, ataraxia. To pursue this end they lived in harmonious communities, ‘Gardens’, xixot as they were called, knit together by friendship, and opposed to luxury, ambition and war. Hence the school was known as the Garden, as opposed to the Stoa, the portico. They were not atheists, but the gods they believed in took no part in human affairs, living untroubled in their intermundia described by Tennyson in his poem ‘Lucretius’:

the lucid interspace of world and world where never creeps a cloud, or moves a wind, nor ever falls the least white star of snow . . .

The Epicureans believed that fear of the gods and of divine punishment in an afterlife was the cause of much human misery.

So the gods take no part in human affairs. How then was our world made if gods did not make it? And how is it maintained if gods do not maintain it? The answer is provided by the atomic theory which Epicurus derived from Leucippus and Democritus, two Greek philosophers of the fifth century BC. Everything in our world, animate and inanimate, is composed of myriads of atoms so minute as to be imperceptible. It is their endless movements, collisions, unions and separations which cause the birth and death and change we see all about us. When you look at me, the film of particles which is continually peeling off my body is bom- barding your eyes, and your eyes transmit corresponding movements to the mind. This, we know, is false. But with some of the other senses the Epicureans were nearer the truth. For instance, when I smell the effluvium from the chipboard factory four miles away at Hexham, I know the west wind is blowing and that material particles of some undisclosed substance are being deposited in my nostrils whence they stimulate my mind.

The De rerum natura is not a glowing exposition of the humane and loving ethical doctrines of Epicureanism. It is devoted mainly to physics,

0 1991 The Society for Rmirrancc Studies, Oxford Unz‘verszty Press

Lucretius and the poetry of argument 243

to a study of the material minutiae of the world, illuminated, or rather ignited, by a contempt for wealth, ambition, superstition and indeed for all who disagree with Epicurus. It has often been said that Lucretius succeeds as a poet despite the intractability of his highly technical subject matter. Nothing could be further from the truth. How does he know about the atoms? By working back from the seen to the unseen. His poem is largely composed of analogical arguments about the invisible world of the atoms based upon acute observation of the world before his eyes. The doctrine he propounds provides a glorious opportunity for a poet with a passionate nature, a high intelligence and inordinate powers of visualization.

Today I propose to take a passage on astronomy from the fifth book and try to show how it works as poetry. Lucretius is here giving four possible explanations of the waning and waxing of the moon. The first of these is the notion that the moon reflects the light of the sun and that what we see depends on the relative positions of the sun, moon and earth. This happens to be the truth but the Epicurean is not interested in single solutions to astronomical problems. He studies physics not in order to discover the truth, but in order to show that there are possible material explanations for everything and that there is no need to invoke divine interference. We should have no need of natural science, Epicurus says, if we were not troubled by fear of death and fears about meteorological phenomena (A.inciptZ Doctnizes, 11). The Epicureans wen despise those who argue for the truth of one explanation as against any other equally consistent with the phenomena (Letter to ethocles, 85-7).

So Lucretius now moves to a second possible explanation of the phases of the moon. This proposes that the moon shines with its own light but there is an unseen satellite which glides along with it and blocks our view in different ways every day:

corpus enim licet esse aliud quod fertur et una labitur omnimodis occursans officiensque nec potis est cemi, quia cassum lumine fertur.’

At this point a Renaissance digression. Titian’s poesia (fig. 1), ‘Diana and Actaeon’, in the National Gallery of Scotland, shows the goddess on the right, and beside her a black nymph or maidservant helping her to hold up a piece of material to veil Actaeon’s view of the divine face and breasts. Diana is presented not only in her capacity as goddess of hunting, (witness the skull of the stag on the top of the square column), but also as the goddess of the moon (witness the crescent in her hair surrounded by

(V, 717-19)

’ ‘It is possible that there is another moving body which floats along with the moon, colliding with it and obstructing it in all sorts of ways, hut this body cannot be seen as it moves. because it has no light.’ Translations from Lucrctius my own.

244 David West

Fig. 1 of Scotland.

Titian: O i a ~ and Actaeon. Duke of Sutheriand Collection. on loan to the National Gallery

jewels like the stars). But who is the maidservant whose hair is flecked with the velvet blue of the night sky?*

M. Tanner argues that she represents ‘the twofold nature of Diana, at once dark and light’, and also that ‘this is associated with the light and dark sides of the moon’.3 Tanner also shows the Diana of Ephesus from the Naples Museum, a black-faced Diana with many white breasts, and produces medieval evidence for the identification of Fortune and the moon, Fortuna and Luna, for example in a MS of Boethius in the British Library (MS 4338, fol. Iv). J. C. Nash repeats this view writing that she ‘reinforces references to Natura and Fortuna associated with the cult figure of Diana’.*

Being a Lucretian I would not wish to reject any explanation, but being a Lucretian I would wish to retort that these explanations do not

’ Lesley Milner of Corbridgc drew my attention to this figure and helped me with this digression. ’ ‘Chance and coincidence in Titian’s “Diana and Actaeon”’, Art BuU, 56 (1974). 535-50. ‘ Veiled Images (Philadelphia., Pa, 1949). 64.

Lucretius and the poetry of argument 245

closely conform to the physical facts. In the first place a black Diana with seventeen (at latest count) white breasts is not a black woman. In the second place Titian does not present a Diana with one side white and the other black. Rather what Titian offers is a dark body coming between us and the goddess of the moon. This, I suggest, is the explanation of the figure. Note (fig. 2) that she is holding up a veil to obstruct Actaeon’s view of the goddess; that she casts a shadow on the goddess’s back and blocks our view of the right shoulder; that her shape is not unlike the gorgeous shape of the goddess. It would be easy to imagine her floating

Fig. 2 Titian: fins and Actaeon (detail). Duke of Sutherland Collection. on loan to the National Gallery of Scotland.

246 David West

across and blocking our view. What may lend some force to this sug- gestion is that according to S. Kennedy North until a very late stage in the painting of this work the figure was not black but fair-skinned. Titian scraped away a great deal of paint and replaced it with the head of the maidservant in a slightly different position. By an unfortunate error, the plate which North produces to show this is not from this picture at all but from the accompanying picture ‘Diana and Callisto’.’ More work is needed here, but dare we suggest that Titian either read this passage in Lucretius or heard it being discussed while he was working on the poesia in 1556-9 and incorporated the African as an anthropomorphic represen- tation of the dark body in Lucretius’ second explanation of the phases of the moon? The first Aldine edition of Lucretius, by Avancius, was published in Venice in 1500 and the second, by Naugerius, in 1515. End of digression.

Lucretius now produces a third possible explanation, that the moon is a rotating sphere, half of it ablaze with light and half in darkness so that our view of it changes nightly as it rotates. This, says Lucretius, is what astrologers believe and argue vigorously for against astronomers:

proinde quasi id fieri nequeat quod pugnat uterque aut minus hoc ill0 sit cur amplexier ausk6

(v, 729-30)

After these three explanations of the lunar cycle, Lucretius now offers a fourth, the least plausible of them all, that a new moon is born every day of the month, each slightly different in shape from its predecessor. He proceeds to bolster this fantasy with the spectacular analogy of the pro- cession of the seasons. This massive reinforcement of the weakest point could be put down to perversity - Lucretius is perfectly capable of per- versity - but I suspect rather that his tactic is to boost the weakling in order to demonstrate, in line with Epicurean dogma, how difficult it is to refute astronomical theories:

735

ordine formarum certo certisque figuris inque dies privos aborisci quaeque creata atque alia illius reparari in parte locoque difficilest ratione docere et vincere verbis, ordine cum possint tam certo multa creari.

pennatus graditur. Zephyri vest@ popter Flora quibus mater paespargens ante viai cuncta coloribus egregiis et odoribus opplet.

it Ver et Venus, et Veneris parnuntius ante

740 inde loci sequitur Calor aridus at comes una

’ Burlington Maguzzhc, 6‘2 (1933). 15. ‘ ‘But surely there is no reason why either of their contentions should be wrong and no reason why

you should think fit to embrace one of them rather than the other.’

Lucretiiu and the poetry of argument

inde Autumnus adit, graditur Jimul Euhius Euan. pulvurulenta Ceres et etesia flabra Aquilonum.

inde aliae Tempestates Ventique sequuntur. altitonilns Volturnus et Auster fulmine pollens. 745

tandem Bruma Nives adfwt pignunque Rigorem

quo minus est mirum si certo tempore luna reddit Hiemps, seqw'tur crepitans hanc dentibus Algor.

gignitur et certo deletur tempore rursus, cum fieri possint tam certo tempore multa.' 750

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This extract has often been taken as a purple passage in a desert of and astronomical technicalities. This is nonsense. Lucretius is not to be picked over for goodies, but swallowed whole and digested. The argument and the poetry are one thing. You cannot truly taste the one without devour- ing the other. The rigour of the logic is unrelenting, and hammered home by forceful repetitions:

(i) multa repeated (736 and 750), stressing the number of forms: (ii) ordine certo (732 and 736) and certo tempore (748, 749, 750),

stressing the fixed order of their appearance: (iii) formurum and figu7iS (732) stressing the shape of each new

moon.

Each of these elements in the argument, the number of different moons, their fixed order of appearance and their different shapes, is demonstrated with Lucretian abundance and acuity of visualization in this imagined picture of a procession of personified seasons.

Immediately there is a problem: there are four seasons and nearly thirty moons. For Lucretius no problem. I count eighteen participants in this

'And there is another possibility: why should there noa always be a n m moon coming into existence. each with its fixed shape and each shape in a fixed order, each perishing on the day it is ma& and another being supplied

It would be hard to refute this by reason and disprove it by words when so many things can come into existence in h e d order.

going before her with Flora at the heck of Zephyr sprinkling

to take its place and fulfil its function? 734

Spring comes, and Venus, and Venus's winged herald

all the path before them with glorious coloun and odours. 740 Then comes parching Heat and with him his dusty comrade Ceres

Then coma Autumn and with him Euhius Euan. and the Etcsian winds blasting from the north.

Then follow all sorts of Wind and Weather. The southeaster. high-thundering Volturnus, and A u e r , lord of lightning, blowing from the south. 745

Last Comes solaice with the snow. and Winter bringing back sluggishness and stiffness, and Cold behind them with his tmh chattering.

It is therefore no surprise if a moon comes into existence at a fixed time and at a fixed time perisha again since so many things can come into existence at a fixed time.'

248 David West

procession (in my Latin text I have given them capital letters) and line 744 can easily be felt to make up the number, innde aliae Tempestates Ventique sequuntur.

As for the fixed order of the moons, that is generously demonstrated by the repeated stress on who follows whom, conveyed by allusions to the order of procession in such words as inde, paespargens, sequi, reinforced by eight verbs of motion (these are all italicized in the Latin).

The third element, the different forms of the different moons, is amply represented by the rich visualization of the varied appearance and behaviour of the different participants. Inter alia we see the procession led, very reasonably, by the west wind, followed by Flora, bringing her flowers, then Cupid, praenuntius Veneris, to give notice of the coming of Venus, then Venus herself alongside Spring, all of them seeing to their different duties. Next comes Summer, side by side with the goddess of grain, covered in dust, presumably from the winnowing; these are followed by another pair, another season and its god, Autumn and with him Euhius Euan - a cult title of the god of wine - and we can hear his cry ‘Euoil’ and see the drunken rout of his companions, all the roystering winds and weathers and thunders and lightnings of autumn; then comes the season for which Lucretius names no god, but he still has a pair to lead the march, Solstice and Winter, no doubt side by side like the other three leading pairs, and perhaps the symmetrica1 arrangement of the phrase suggests their parallel advance, Bruma Nives . . . Rigorem . . . Hiemps. Winter is dragging a stiff and lazy character along with him, figrum Rigorem, and bringing up the rear comes Cold with his teeth chattering.

Other Latin poets have equally ebullient gifts of visualization. Plautus, Horace and Ovid leap to mind, but none like Lucretius for harnessing . that power so rigorously to the chariot of argument.

From the study we can perhaps draw a provisional profile of this greatest didactic poet of antiquity and most sublime of all the Roman poets, noting

(i) (ii)

(iii)

his capacity for vigorous and lucid presentation of argument; his brilliant visual imagination and shrewd selection of telling detail; The powerful emotional charge of his poetry.

We have already noted his burning conviction of the rightness and impor- tance of his own case and his contempt for the folly of his opponents, but there is a more positive side. Since this is a Spring symposium, let us pause and examine more closely the five characters in lines 73740. This is no frozen tableau of etiolated mythological entities. Somehow or other these figures are vividly alive. To say how, is to violate the mysteries, but perhaps it is partly because of the accuracy of the analogies. Warm west winds do tend to come first and then aconites and snowdrops, here

Lucretia and the poety of argument 249

represented by their mother Flora, are not far behind. Then comes Cupid, suggesting the approach of the time of mating, and this is such a vital part of Spring that his name does not even have to be stated. All these attendants build up our expectation and at last there come in sight the two we have been waiting for, it Ver et Venus and the name of Venus is lovingly repeated, et Veneris praenuntius ante. The very paradox of the order of naming is part of this passion for Spring. The first names we hear are Ver and Venus and yet they are preceded in the procession by all their attendants, including the myriad flowers of Spring.

This poetry is, in short, a fusion at white heat of intellect, sense and passion. It will be interesting today to see how his successors are fired by his example.

University of Newcastle upon Tyne