On the Nature of the Universe (Oxford World’s Classics) (64 page)

909
verses sweet though few
: see above 180 ff.

962–3
those pursuits which most we love to follow
: the connection between the manifest content of dreams and preceding waking action was a common place of ancient as of modern thought, even when they were thought also to foretell the future (cf. e.g. Aristotle,
On Prophecy in Sleep
463
^a
, Accius (second–first century
BC
),
Brutus
frr. 29–31, Fronto (second century
AD
),
On the Holidays at Alsium
3. 13). Belief in divination through dreams was wide-spread (cf. e.g. the
Dream Book
of Artemidorus, second century
AD
) and provided with a theoretical underpinning by Stoic theories of the universal ‘sympathy’ of the universe (cf. especially Cicero’s dialogue
On Divination
). Epicureans were naturally opposed (cf. Epicurus frr. 326–8, Diogenes of Oenoanda frr. 9–10, Petronius fr. 30), though they did believe that dreamers could see visions of the gods (5. 1169 ff.).

1029
Babylonian coverlets
: cf. 1123.

1030–1
when the seed first penetrates | The racing tides of youth
: the production of semen in adult males and at puberty was another phenomenon of considerable interest to ancient doctors and philosophers. Epicurus believed that seed was produced by both men and women, and that its substance came from the whole body: cf. ‘Aetius’ 5. 3–5 (Epicurus frr. 329–30, following on from the discussion of dreams as in Epicurus fr. 311).

1053–4
Whether a boy… | Or a woman
: the addressee of the poem remains male: as normal in antiquity, it is taken for granted that male sexual desire may be for either a younger male or a female.

1056
the fluid
: at several points in this passage Lucretius plays on the resemblance between the Latin words
umor
‘fluid’ and
amor
‘love’.

1058
the name of love
: probably a play on the Latin word for desire (‘yearning’ in 1057)
cupido
, personified as Cupid, the companion of Venus. As in the opening lines of the poem, Venus is equated with pleasure (‘bliss’ in 1057): sex is opposed to love (cf. 1073 ff.). The Epicureans classified the desire for sex as a desire for sensual pleasure that was natural but not necessary: sexual pleasure was real in that it consisted in ‘variation’ of the sense organ of touch, and hence the desire for it could be satisfied, but it was not necessary for human life in the way that food, drink, and heat were. Love, on the other hand, was seen as a desire that was neither natural nor necessary: it was classified as a fetishistic desire for a particular type of sex (with a particular person) and thus as unsatisfiable, because lovers cannot attain the union they desire and therefore there can be no physical reality corresponding to the mental passion. We need food in general, it is natural to like nice-tasting food, but it is irrational and debilitating to be able to eat only a particular brand of chocolate; similarly, to insist on sex with a particular person only was wrong for the Epicureans (cf. frr. 456, 483, and see Introduction). The second poem in Horace’s first book of
Satires
expands on the theme; later Propertius and the Roman love-elegists were masochistically to embrace the servility and degradation of love that Lucretius attacks. Throughout the passage Lucretius draws on and perverts the familiar imagery of Graeco-Roman love-poetry, especially epigram.

1061
images
: the theory of
simulacra
(see above on 4. 26 ff.) is used throughout the account of love: cf. especially 1095 ff.

1075
a purer pleasure
: the language is Epicurean: cf.
Master Sayings
12. Epicureans can concentrate on the pleasure of the moment during sex because they are not distracted by insatiable desires for possession of the unattainable.

1122
Obeying another’s whim
: the ‘slavery of love’ later celebrated by Propertius and the other love elegists (though Lucretius does not explicitly use the metaphor).

1123
Wealth vanishes
: young men in Roman comedy are frequently seen squandering their family’s wealth on women, as was the Caelius defended by Cicero in his speech
Pro Caelio
(56
BC
).

Babylonian coverlets
: recalling 1029, the coverlets drenched with urine by the boys. ‘Babylonians’ were expensive textiles (cf. Pliny,
Natural Histories
8. 196): elaborately coloured or embroidered cloth as the embodiment of luxury is an unfamiliar idea in the modern world, but it remained a potent symbol
of wealth down to the development of aniline dyes. (The text may be corrupt here, and the reference in fact to Babylonian perfume.)

1125
slippers from Sicyon
: an expensive type of women’s shoes, also mocked by the satirist Lucilius (second century
BC
, fr. 1161).

1130
A gown of silk from Elis or from Ceos
: both geographical epithets are textually uncertain, but the reference is clearly to expensive clothing. Elis is a region of mainland Greece (north-west Peloponnese), Ceos an island in the Cyclades. The most famous silk came from the suspiciously similar sounding island of Cos in the Sporades.

1153–4
attributing to them | Virtues with which in truth they are not endowed
: a famous list of ‘hypocorisms’ or euphemistic terms of endearment. Plato has a similar list in
Republic
5. 474d (of boys), and the hellenistic ‘love manual’ ascribed to Philaenis seems to have begun with advising the lover to use them (
Oxyrrynchus Papyri
2891, cf. Ovid,
Art of Love
2. 657 ff. (imitating Lucretius), reversed in
Remedies for Love
323 ff.). Theocritus (third century
BC
),
Idyll
10. 24 ff. is another model: Lucretius is also imitated by Horace (
Satires
1. 3. 38 ff., fathers of their children) and Juvenal 8. 30 ff. Sextus Empiricus,
Outlines of Pyrrhonism
1. 108, gives the deception of men about their mistresses’ beauty as an example of the fourth sceptical trope (cf. Plato,
Phaedrus
233b). Most of Lucretius’ terms are Greek words current in Rome, and some are the sort of terms used as professional names by prostitutes: for the use of Greek by lovers, cf. Martial (first century
AD
) 10. 68. 5 ff., Juvenal (second century
AD
) 6. 187 ff.

1168
Ceres | Suckling Iacchus
: gods of the Eleusinian mysteries (Ceres = Demeter: Iacchus was sometimes identified with Dionysus/Bacchus). Lucretius clearly alludes to an artistic representation, though there is no obvious type extant.

1175
She fumigates herself
: the reference is disputed, and possibly ambiguous: it may be to literal medical ‘fumigations’ for gynaecological complaints (cf. e.g. Celsus (first century
AD
),
On Medicine
4. 27. 1), or to foul-smelling cosmetics (Ovid,
Art of Love
3. 213,
Remedies for Love
355 ff., Lucian,
Loves
39), but it is phrased to suggest more widely traditional male disgust at ‘female smells in rooms’ (T. S. Eliot, ‘The Lovesong of Alfred J. Prufrock’).

1177
The lover, shut out
: the ‘excluded lover’ was a familiar figure in Roman comedy and especially love-elegy.

1183
placing her above all mortal women
: again, love poets typically see their beloveds as ‘divine’: cf. e.g. Catullus 68. 70.

1192
Not always is a woman feigning love
: female sexual pleasure seems to have been connected by the Epicureans with the notion of female ejaculation (see above on 1030–1 and cf. Aristotle,
Generation of Animals
727
^b
33 ff.).

1211
From the mother’s seed then children like the mother | Are born
: from antiquity down to the experiments of Mendel (published 1866, but little noticed until the beginning of the twentieth century) there was much speculation about the workings and mechanism of genetic inheritance, and in particular the respective contributions of male and female (cf. the summaries of views in ‘Aetius’ 5. 3 ff.). For Aristotle (
Generation of Animals
726
^a
28 ff.) the female contributed matter, the male form, but he also used the principle of ‘prevalence’ (
epikrateia
) of one influence over another (767
^b
20 ff.). The Epicureans believed that both parties provided seed, and both had an influence on the nature of the child: the seed derived from the whole body of each parent (‘pangenesis’, a view still held by Darwin in
On the Origin of Species
(1859)), and the characteristics fought it out at the time of conception.

1233
And it is not the power of gods that blocks | The generating seed in any man
: an emphatic anti-theological motivation for a traditional topic, again much discussed by both doctors (e.g. the third book of the Hippocratic
Gynaecia
, fifth–fourth century
BC
) and philosophers (e.g. Aristotle,
Generation of Animals
746
^b
12 ff.). Offerings for infertility were a common form of votive dedication in temples.

1268
Wives have no need at all of wanton movements
: a famously depressing view into Roman marital life; note, however, the context of a concern with fertility, and contrast 1192 ff. on female sexual pleasure.

1277
And not from power divine or Venus’ shafts | It sometimes happens that a wench is loved
: so Diogenes Laertius,
Lives of the Philosophers
10. 118, remarks that, according to Epicurus, ‘love is not sent from god’ (contrast e.g. Plato,
Phaedrus
242d,
Symposium
206c).

1281
gentle pleasing ways
: an allusion to the promise made by a Roman bride to be complaisant to her husband.

1286
a drop of water | By constant dripping wears away a stone
: cf. the end of
Book 2
, with a similar emphasis on gradual decay.

4
the man who left us such great treasures
: Epicurus. He is named only at 3. 1042. Cf. 6. 5 ff.

8
He was a god, a god indeed
: the Epicureans liked to shock by playing with the exaggerated language of praise used for rulers and other supposed benefactors (which sometimes passed over into real cult); so, for instance, the young Epicurean Colotes is said to have prostrated himself before Epicurus (Plutarch,
Against Colotes
1117b–c). This was justified for them by the magnitude of Epicurus’ blessings for mankind, but it was also true that the Epicurean wise person was literally as happy as the gods (see above on 3.
322). Virgil imitates the line in
Eclogue
1. 6 referring to the young Octavian (the future Augustus).

13
and earned the name divine
: an influential ‘euhemerist’ theory, put forward first by Prodicus (fifth century
BC
) and later by Hecataeus of Abdera and most famously Euhemerus of Messene (both fourth–third century
BC
), held that the gods were originally human beings deified for their achievements. Prodicus used the examples of Dionysus (Bacchus) and Demeter (Ceres) as here (fr. B5, cf. Euripides,
Bacchants
274 ff.): Euhemerus was translated into Latin by Ennius (third–second century
BC
).

20
through mighty nations spread
: gods, culture heroes, and great conquerors like Alexander all spread their gifts by global travel (cf. Diodorus Siculus (first century
BC
),
Library of History
6. 1 ff.), but they must yield place to the spread of Epicureanism through the master’s words.

22
Hercules
: ‘paradoxical’ criticism of generally accepted heroes or praise of bad things or people was an established rhetorical exercise, and Lucretius’ assault on Hercules is paralleled in a speech of Euripides,
Heracles
(
c
.414
BC
, 148 ff.) which shares some details. Hercules was allegorized as an ideal model by Stoics and Cynics (cf. e.g. Heraclitus ‘the Allegorizer’ (perhaps first century
AD
) 33, Cicero,
On Ends
2. 118). And he is a particularly pointed target here as a man who became a god through his labours (cf. Theocritus (third century
BC
),
Idylls
17, 13 ff., Cicero,
Tusculan Disputations
1. 28). In general, cf. G. K. Galinsky,
The Hercules Theme
(Oxford, 1972).

24–7
Nemean lion… Arcadian boar |… Cretan bull… Lerna’s pest | The Hydra
: Lucretius mentions eight of the canonical twelve labours of Hercules (first attested in the sculptures of the temple of Zeus at Olympia,
c
.460
BC
), concentrating on those that involve the slaying or capture of wild beasts (and stressing their geographic remoteness). The killing of the lion that terrorized Nemea (mainland Greece) regularly came first: it provided him with his lion skin. Nemea and Lerna are in central Greece (Argolid).

28
Geryon
: a monstrous three-bodied herdsman killed by Hercules in Spain.

29
Stymphalus’ horrid birds
: man-eating birds that infested Lake Stymphalus (Arcadia) and were shot by Hercules with his arrows.

30
Diomed’s Thracian horses
: man-eating mares owned by Diomedes of Thrace (north Greece), to which his guests were fed. Bistony and Ismara are in eastern Thrace.

32
The golden apples of the Hesperides
: in the far west (the ‘wild Atlantic shore’), taken by Hercules after killing their guardian snake.

64
the order of my theme
: in 64–75 Lucretius outlines the subject matter of 91–109 and 235–415 (65–6), 416–508 (67–8), 771–924 (69–70), 1028–90 (71–2), and 1161–1240 (73–5). He then returns to the subject matter of 509–770, the workings of the heavenly bodies (76–81). In the order of the book, this
comes as a digression after the account of the creation of the earth, since the workings of the system are bound up with its origins, but Lucretius singles it out here to provide a firmly anti-theological conclusion to his summary.