Introduction

1–30

Prooemium. Lucretius begins each book of the poem in the high ‘pathetic’ style (genus grande, amplum, acre (Kenney 2007: 93)); here and in Books i, v and vi, it takes the form of a panegyric on Epicurus (Introd. 10–11). Only here is he addressed in the second person. For a sensitive analysis of the verbal structure and imagery of these lines see Stokes 1975. L. may intend to suggest a contrast with the false revelations of mystery religions, also expressed through images of light and darkness (Richardson 1974: 26–9). Whereas initiates in those cults were sworn to silence about what they had seen, the revelation offered by Epicurus is freely displayed in his teaching and writings and in L.’s verse.

1-4 These opening lines are carefully structured to create and then fulfil expectation. The apostrophe announced by O is deferred by the intervening qui-clause and so gains in weight; the grammatical and rhetorical structure is articulated by the sequence of monosyllables o – qui – te, each beginning a verse. This simple structure (characteristic of L.’s technique: Kenney 1977b/1995: 29; 2007: 103–4) is complicated and enriched by anticipation and enjambment (extollere…potuisti, tuis…signis) and by ‘theme and variation’, sequor being expanded in what follows. As throughout the Prooemium and indeed the whole poem the emotional impact is reinforced by alliteration. The whole style and feeling of L.’s address to Epicurus is hymnic, implicitly anticipating the explicit identification of 5.8 deus ille fuit, deus. Cf. 9–10nn. O: this, the reading of OV, and not the humanist conjecture e, is certainly what L. wrote. The sonorous interjection matches the emotional tone of the passage better than the prosaic (indeed superfluous) preposition (Timpanaro 1960/1978) and imparts ‘an elevated note appropriate to prayer’ (N–H 364 on Hor. C. 1.32.13).

During the forty-odd years since the publication of the first edition of this book, informed interest in Lucretius has continued to grow: a process reflected both by the continuing increase in the number of translations (Kenney 1985: i, x) and the proliferation of the scholarly literature (Gale, ‘Addenda’ in Kenney 1977b/1995; list of works cited in Gillespie and Hardie 2007). The volume on Lucretius in the series Oxford Readings in Classical Studies (Gale 2007a) has made a number of influential articles conveniently available.

That, ‘as weapons in outer space threaten to move from science fiction to fact, Lucretius…seems more tragically contemporary than ever’ (Segal 1990: 227), and that he has much of importance to say to today’s politicians and scientists is strikingly argued in the concluding chapter, ‘Wizards in bondage’ (135−55), of W. R. Johnson’s reading of the DRN as ‘a powerful representation of classical antiquity’s best and most influential effort to speculate on the material universe and the place and conditions of human beings in it’ (Johnson 2000: ix). This is a welcome reminder of the fact that the DRN ‘is the one didactic poem, ancient or modern which is both great poetry and good science’ (Kenney 1998−9: 418).