Lucretius: Poetry, Philosophy, Science by Daryn Lehoux, A. D. Morrison, and Alison Sharrock
2014; Classical Association of Canada; Volume: 68; Issue: 1-2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/phx.2014.0013
ISSN1929-4883
Autores Tópico(s)Classical Philosophy and Thought
Resumo184 PHOENIX of tricks” (351)—and in Terence’s Adelphoe, a masterpiece of musical minimalism. Terence communicates much through subtle contrasts between iambic octonarii, sung by young lovers and their allies, and trochaics, sung by characters opposed to them. This play, however, also includes a rather un-Terentian lover’s monody, whose polymetric lyrics are dominated by aeolics. It may be, as Moore wonders in Chapter Five, that the aeolic rhythm deliberately evoked the “original aeolics of Sappho and others” (207). The possibility of such extra-comedic (and extra-Roman) musical allusions in Roman comedy is fascinating, but only superficially engaged by Moore. Further teasing out of implications would be welcome. (The same could be said of Moore’s suggestive comments on paratragic cretics in Plautus [195].) Finally, the thorough Conclusion judiciously compares and contrasts Roman comedy with modern musico-dramatic forms and the appendices assemble useful data on metrical and musical arrangements in the preserved comedies. This excellent book is essential for all serious readers of Plautus and Terence, and for anyone interested in ancient music. Scholars of Attic comedy and tragedy will also greatly benefit from its methodologies. Rutgers University Timothy Power Lucretius: Poetry, Philosophy, Science. Edited by Daryn Lehoux, A. D. Morrison , and Alison Sharrock. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2013. Pp. x, 326. A welcome addition to the field, this volume of papers from a 2009 University of Manchester conference of the same title (plus one invited chapter), is predicated on the notion that “no other Latin poem . . . so requires and rewards approaches that combine the critical perspectives of literary analysis, philosophy, and the history of the sciences” (vi) as does Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura (henceforth DRN). As a whole, the authors represent the diversity and the richness of Lucretian scholarship, and several essays successfully straddle double or multiple approaches to the interpretation of the poem. Quite simply, this is an excellent collection; while I am not certain that it is more than the sum of its parts, the parts themselves stand as valuable contributions, and some chapters make big steps forward in our understanding of DRN. Current science and literary criticism have gone in opposite directions from each other and from their ancient counterparts with regard to multiple vs. univocal aetiologies, as Alison Sharrock points out in her Introduction. Causes in modern science (and in ancient literary criticism) are ideally singular, while in modern literary criticism (and in ancient natural philosophy) multiple accounts are embraced. The Introduction also considers how the Lucretian speaker uses the same verb, uolitare, for simulacra, atoms, and even false shades of the dead (a classic Lucretian inconsistency) and asks whether this constitutes intentional self-undercutting, poetic over-enthusiasm, or (with the Formalist theorist Viktor Schklovsky) the readers’ being “shocked into a new understanding” of the poem and of life (7–10). A fresh look at Lucretian themes of labor and justice prompts Monica Gale (Chapter One) to revisit her earlier claim (in Myth and Poetry in Lucretius [Cambridge 1994]) that DRN embraces not didactic but heroic epic. She argues here instead that Hesiod lurks between the lines all over the poem, and that DRN “undertakes a comprehensive and BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 185 systematic refutation of the world view presented in the Works and Days” (27–28). Piety and justice have no role in Epicurean accounts of agricultural labor: DRN inverts the moral value Hesiod ascribes to toil and makes toil characteristic of the non-Epicurean. Next, in Chapter Two, Duncan Kennedy argues that DRN 1.62–79 (the heroic Epicurus passage) links empire and infinity, and in its presentation of Epicurus may anticipate the principate. Epicurean theory is like the Grand Unified Theory: it is reductionist, an account of reality that does not explicitly describe everything in the universe but that can be universally applied, in contrast to accumulative knowledge projects such as Wikipedia or the Natural History of Pliny the Elder. According to Kennedy, “Lucretius’ description of Epicurus offers a legitimating narrative of the knowledge he has gained in terms not just of an empire project, but of a universal empire project” (65, emphasis preserved), one that trumps Alexander the Great. So Epicurus becomes princeps (DRN 5.9) in...
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