Lucretius Poet and Philosopher: Background and Fortunes of ›De Rerum Natura‹ 9783110673517, 3110673517

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Lucretius Poet and Philosopher

Trends in Classics – Supplementary Volumes

Edited by Franco Montanari and Antonios Rengakos Associate Editors Stavros Frangoulidis · Fausto Montana · Lara Pagani Serena Perrone · Evina Sistakou · Christos Tsagalis Scientific Committee Alberto Bernabé · Margarethe Billerbeck Claude Calame · Jonas Grethlein · Philip R. Hardie Stephen J. Harrison · Stephen Hinds · Richard Hunter Christina Kraus · Giuseppe Mastromarco Gregory Nagy · Theodore D. Papanghelis Giusto Picone · Tim Whitmarsh Bernhard Zimmermann

Volume 90

Lucretius Poet and Philosopher Background and Fortunes of De Rerum Natura Edited by Philip R. Hardie, Valentina Prosperi and Diego Zucca

ISBN 978-3-11-067347-0 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-067348-7 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-067351-7 ISSN 1868-4785 Library of Congress Control Number: 2020937722 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Editorial Office: Alessia Ferreccio and Katerina Zianna Logo: Christopher Schneider, Laufen Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com

Contents List of Figures  IX Valentina Prosperi, Diego Zucca, Philip Hardie Introduction  1

Part I: Lucretius and the Traditions of Ancient Philosophy David Sedley Lucretian Pleasures  11 Diego Zucca Lucretius and the Epicurean View that “All Perceptions Are True”  23 Francesca Masi Lucretius on the Mind-Body Relation: The Case of Dreams  43 Richard Stoneman Can you Believe your Eyes? Scepticism and the Evidence of the Senses in Lucretius, De Rerum Natura 4. 237–521  61 Francesco Verde The Epicurean Meteorology, Lucretius, and the Aetna  83

Part II: Ancient Receptions Myrto Garani Seneca as Lucretius’ Sublime Reader (Naturales Quaestiones 3 praef.)  105 Philip Hardie Lucretius in Late Antique Poetry: Paulinus of Nola, Claudian, Prudentius  127

VI  Contents

Part III: Recovery: Early Modern Scholars, Readers, and Translators Valentina Prosperi Lost in Translation: The Sixteenth Century Vernacular Lucretius  145 Ada Palmer The Persecution of Renaissance Lucretius Readers Revisited  167

Part IV: Modern Receptions of Lucretius and his Thought Mario De Caro Machiavelli’s Lucretian View of Free Will  201 Andrea Ceccarelli Reading Lucretius in Padua: Gian Vincenzo Pinelli and the Sixteenth-Century Recovery of Ancient Atomism  219 Elena Nicoli Atoms, Elements, Seeds. A Renaissance Interpreter of Lucretius’ Atomism  235 Mauro Sarnelli Lucretius in (Moderate) Baroque  251 Matteo Favaretti Camposampiero Lucretius in Leibniz  273 Andrew Laird Lucretius in the Spanish American Enlightenment  289 Stephen Harrison Victorian Lucretius: Tennyson and Arnold  309

Contents  VII

Section V: Images of Lucretius Giuseppe Solaro The Story of Lucretius  325 Gavina Cherchi Simulacra Lucretiana. The Iconographic Tradition of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura  339 List of Contributors  381 Index  385

List of Figures Fig. 1: Denis Lambin, Titi Lucretii Cari De rerum natura libri sex, Paris, 1563. Title page  358 Fig. 2: Gulielmus Janson, Lucretius, De rerum natura, Amsterdam, 1620. Title page  358 Fig. 3: Michel de Marolles, Les oeuvres du Poète Lucrèce, Latin et François, Paris, 1650. Frontispiece  359 Fig. 4: John Evelyn, An Essay on the First book of T. Lucretius Carus De rerum natura. Interpreted and made English verse by J. Evelyn Esq. London, 1656. Title page  359 Fig. 5: Jacques Parrain de Coutures, Les OEuvres de Lucrèce, contenant la philosophie sur la physique, ou l’origine de toutes choses, Paris, 1682. Title page  360 Fig. 6: Thomas Creech, T. Lucretius Carus, The Epicurean Philosopher, His Six Books De Natura Rerum Done into English Verse, with Notes, Oxford, 1683. Frontispiece  360 Fig. 7: Michel Mattaire, T. Lucretii Cari de Rerum Natura libri sex. Ex Officina Jacobi Tonson and Johannis Watts, London, 1713. Frontispiece and title page  361 Fig. 8: David Norbrook, Stephen Harrison, Philip Hardie (eds.), Lucretius and the Early Modern, Oxford, 2015  361 Fig. 9: Albrecht Dürer, Sol niger, (Melencholia I, 1514, detail)  362 Fig. 10: Albrecht Dürer, Melencholia I, 1514  362 Fig. 11: Salomon Trismosin, Splendor Solis (1582), ed. Julius Kohn, London, 1920  362 Fig. 12: Cesare Ripa, Iconologia, Rome, 1603: Malinconia  363 Fig. 13: Alessandro Marchetti Di Tito Lucretio Caro della natura delle cose libri sei, tradotti in italiano da Alessandro Marchetti, Amsterdam, 1754. Frontispiece engraved by L. Le Mire, designed by Ch. Eisen  363 Fig. 14: Alessandro Marchetti, Tito Lucrezio Caro tradotto da Alessandro Marchetti, Florence, 1820. Frontispiece  364 Fig. 15: Salvator Rosa, Democritus “hominum derisor”, 1600  365 Fig. 16: Jan Pynas, Hippocrates visiting Democritus in Abdera, 1614 (Rembrandt House Museum, Amsterdam)  365 Fig. 17: Johann Theodor de Bry, Proscenivm vitae hvmanae, Antwerp, 1627  365 Fig. 18: Robert Burton (Democritus Junior), The Anatomy of Melancholy, What it is: With all the Kinds, Causes, Symptomes, Prognostickes, and Several Cures of it, Oxford, 1628 (first ed. 1621). Title page  366 Fig. 19: Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1620): “Democritus in the Garden” (detail of the frontispiece)  367 Fig. 20: Gaspar Netscher, Sir William Temple and Dorothy, Lady Temple, 1675 and 1671 (National Portrait Gallery, London)  368 Fig. 21: Michel Mattaire (ed.) T. Lucretii Cari de Rerum Natura libri sex. Ex Officina Jacobi Tonson and Johannis Watts, London, 1713. Book I: “Epicurus in the Garden”  368 Fig. 22: Michel Mattaire, T. Lucretii Cari de Rerum Natura libri sex. Ex Officina Jacobi Tonson and Johannis Watts, London, 1713. Portraits of the Poet and personification of Fame  369 Fig. 23: T. Lucretius Carus Of The Nature of Things in Six Books, […] adorned with copperplates, curiously engraved by Du Guernier, in two volumes, Printed for Daniel Browne, London, 1743. Frontispiece and title page  370 Fig. 24: J. Toland, (Janus Junius Eoganesius ), (1720), Pantheisticon, sive Formula Celebrandae Sodalitatis Socraticae, in tres particulas divisa… London, 1720. Title page and Toland’s portrait  371 https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110673487-203

X  List of Figures Fig. 25: Alessandro Marchetti (1754), Di Tito Lucretio Caro della natura delle cose libri sei, tradotti in italiano da Alessandro Marchetti, Amsterdam. Frontispiece engraved by L. Le Mire, designed by Ch. Eisen  372 Fig. 26: J. Toland, Pantheisticon (1720), p. A3: Vergil’s Lucretian quotation “Felix qui potuit…”  372 Fig. 27: The stormy sky of superstition at the end of Mattaire’ 1713 Lucretius and at the beginning of Toland’s 1720 Pantheisticon  373 Fig. 28: Eros pointing a telescope to the Sun in Mattaire’s 1713 Lucretius and in Toland’s 1720 Pantheisticon  374 Fig. 29: The Sun as Pater Aether, in Mattaire’s 1713 Lucretius and in Toland’s 1720 Pantheisticon  375 Fig. 30: Earth and sky full of living creatures, a naked helpless infant child representing mankind, in Mattaire’s 1713 Lucretius and in Toland’s 1720 Pantheisticon  376 Fig. 31: Venus on a chariot pulled by doves, in Mattaire’s 1713 Lucretius and in Toland’s 1720 Pantheisticon  377 Fig. 32: The solitary man wearing a tricorn hat (Toland himself?), seated on a squared stone, under a tree: early-modern epigone of the melanchonicus sanguineus Democritus, in Toland’s Pantheisticon  378 Fig. 33: The philosophical ‘ancestors’ of the pantheist Sodalitas in Toland’s Pantheisticon, p. 63  379 Fig. 34: Emblem of Toland’s ‘Lucretian’ cosmology in Pantheisticon 1720  379

Valentina Prosperi, Diego Zucca, Philip Hardie

Introduction

An introduction is, in reality, an afterword: it can only be drafted after the research has been completed and one can finally take stock of what has emerged in ways that at first could only be conjectured. This is all the more true when the research is a collective work and the introduction often risks becoming an exercise in which the editors strive to find unifying threads and thus may end up identifying rather tenuous common denominators. The present volume sprung out of an anniversary conference: the six hundred years since the rediscovery of Lucretius in 1417. Seeing as anniversaries and any such celebrations are more often than not the mark not so much of tradition but of its invention, as Eric J. Hobsbawm remarked, as editors, we paused: was the sexcentenary really more than an academic pretext, or did it have its own inherent significance? Moreover, was not an anniversary for a poet whose biography is clouded in uncertainty, a doubly artificial imposition? We might risk ending up with a loosely coherent, albeit excellent, collection of papers. But the three days of the conference did more than reassure us in terms of inner consistency and dialogue across the different papers. This volume is thus not only an extremely valuable collection of papers but a truly coherent collective reflection on the issues that brought about Lucretius’ reappearance, which is, conversely, his disappearance and the aftermath of it. Lucretius’s long absence from Western culture delayed the process of absorbing his work into the revered but often deadening realm of the canonized classics. But would his philosophy and work have been defused and normalized by an unbroken presence in Western culture? In other words, is what we perceive as Lucretius’ singularity merely an optical illusion of his more recent acquisition? The relative newness of Lucretius, and his outsider status, compared to the rest of the Latin corpus, though, are as much a cause as a consequence of his disappearance, and its roots run much deeper than any random combination of circumstances. The sexcentenary thus reveals itself as bearing more significance for the author than any biographical occurrence of life or death, coming closer perhaps to the commemoration of an exile. And speaking of exile, it is hard not to notice that compared to the almost non-existent Lucretian celebrations, 2017 saw an overwhelming number of academic homages paid to Ovid’s bimillenary: a potent if mundane reminder of the different levels of integration at play.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110673487-001

  Valentina Prosperi, Diego Zucca, Philip Hardie In these last twenty years or so, the ever-increasing flow of scholarship regarding Lucretius, and especially of studies in his reception, means that Lucretius will be a focus for a good long time, and perhaps some international scientific committee will bestow on Lucretius an array of coordinated celebrations. Still, any foreseeable future anniversary will have to reckon with the fact that the only certain date in Lucretius’ ‘biography’ is the one of his reappearance, which doubles as the signpost of his long oblivion. Any discussion of Lucretius’ relevance, then, inevitably takes on the deeper significance of an assessment of the causes that brought about his disappearance. In this, we could say that the resurrection of Lucretius in 1417 shapes the history of his reception and of our readings of it, radiating chronologically in both directions. Towards our present age, 1417 fixes the starting point in a way that has few parallels, but 1417 also determines the direction and circumstances of our dialogue with Lucretius, a dialogue that is still evolving; towards the past, 1417 forces us to look for early clues that might have announced his future disappearance. Such clues obviously concern philosophical and theoretical contents rather than literary forms, but above all they concern the rational and argumentative force – underlying the poetical expression – through which such ‘outrageous’ contents were posited and justified. So this is why a critical reconstruction of the philosophical methods and theories which inform the DRN is crucial for an overall understanding of the troubled history of Lucretius’ disappearance-and-reappearance. This implies that Lucretius’ controversial relation to his philosophical source (Epicurus’ doctrine and the tradition of early Epicureanism) as well as certain distinctive features of the source itself must be inquired into and framed as a part of this history of transmission. Consequently, the papers in this volume which directly address Lucretius’ Epicurean philosophy help to shed light on the vicissitudes of disappearance/reappearance/reception(s). It is perhaps a truism to state that Lucretius’ peculiar fate has exposed him to two different waves of receptions, so far apart in time and space that any attempt at tracing differences and similarities between the two might at first glance be seen as little more than academic. Except that the comprehensive reading of these chapters cannot but encourage an informed interest in Lucretius’ reception and fortune, and thereby trace a pattern of constants and variants through the history of what Lucretius has meant over two millennia for readers of all backgrounds. The risk of reading too much into what could after all be dismissed as a string of casual events has been largely offset by an impressive amount of recent scholarship. The 2007 Cambridge Companion included eight chapters on the reception

Introduction  

of Lucretius: an unprecedented amount of space, as both readers and reviewers remarked at the time. 1 And a number of publications 2 dedicated to different aspects of Lucretius’s modern reception has also accumulated enough evidence for reclaiming not only Lucretius’ influence on Western culture, but also the uniqueness of it. To borrow here from the title of a recent volume, it was not the humanistic rediscovery of the DRN, or whatever name we choose to attach to the events of 1417, that ensured that Lucretius stayed modern; it was, rather, his intrinsic resistance to – and friction with – any surrounding cultural landscape, be it before or after his reappearance, that kept him unassimilable and in that sense modern. After all, what other ancient classic author enjoyed – and at the very late date of 1693 – the doubtful privilege of being attacked from the altar of a cathedral as a heresy monger and atheist? 3 And few other authors ever produced lines so acerbic for their readers as the second proem of the DRN. A piece of poetry that has provoked rebuttals and awkward silences not only from all of its readers from antiquity onwards but, remarkably, also from scholars and professional commentators up to the present day.

 1 Martindale, Charles. Review of The Cambridge Companion to Lucretius. Translation and Literature 17, no. 2 (2008): 226–233. 2 The main ones in recent years include: Gambino Longo S., Savoir de la nature et poésie des choses. Lucrèce et Épicure à la Renaissance italienne, Paris, Champion, 2004. Prosperi V., «Di soavi licor gli orli del vaso». La fortuna di Lucrezio dall’Umanesimo alla Controriforma, Turin, Nino Aragno, 2004. Gillespie S., Hardie P. (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Lucretius, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2007. Beretta M., Citti F., (eds.), Lucrezio la natura e la scienza, Firenze, Olschki, 2008; Brown A., The Return of Lucretius to Renaissance Florence, Cambridge (Mass.), Harvard University Press, 2010; Greenblatt S., The Swerve: How the World Became Modern, New York, W.W. Norton & Company, 2011; Paladini M., Lucrezio e l’epicureismo tra Riforma e Controriforma, Naples, Liguori Editore, 2011; Passannante G., The Lucretian Renaissance: Philology and the Afterlife of Tradition, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 2011; Lestringant F., Naya E. (eds.), Renaissance de Lucrèce, Cahiers du Centre V.L. Saulnier 27, Paris, 2010; Butterfield, D., The Early Textual History of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2013; Palmer A., Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance, Cambridge (Mass.), Harvard University Press, 2014; Vesperini P., Lucrèce. Archéologie d’un Classique européen, Paris, Fayard, 2017; David Norbrook, Stephen Harrison, Philip Hardie (eds.), Lucretius and the Early Modern, Oxford, 2015; Jacques Leszra, Liza Blake (eds.), Lucretius and Modernity: Epicurean Encounters Across Time and Disciplines, New York, 2016. 3 The sermon, held by Bishop Cantelmo in Naples’ cathedral, was recorded by Giovan Battista Clemente Nelli in a dispute with Alessandro Marchetti’s son, Francesco: Saccenti M., Lucrezio in Toscana, p. 126 n.

  Valentina Prosperi, Diego Zucca, Philip Hardie As we have already suggested, a comprehensive understanding of Lucretius’ uniqueness cannot just concern DNR’s extraordinary though belated Wirkungsgheschichte in isolation from the ‘direct’ inquiry into Lucretius himself as a philosopher and, in particular, as a critical receiver of Epicurus’ philosophical message. In fact, the very manner of Lucretius’ reception cannot be totally told apart from the manner of Epicurus’ reception by Lucretius himself. Clearly, these are significantly different if not incommensurable phenomena, yet in a sense they are parts of the same broad and non-linear history of transmission, rings of the same (heterogeneous and non-continuous) chain. This is why the first group of papers in this volume explicitly investigate specific aspects of the DRN as a masterpiece of philosophy, not only as a potential source for understanding Epicurus but also as an ‘intrinsic’ treasure of theoretical depth and argumentative rigorousness, aspects too often overshadowed by the understandable focus on the extraordinary quality of Lucretius’ poetry. The epistemology proposed in DRN is critically assessed and framed within the polemical debate with other alternative schools (Diego Zucca, Richard Stoneman); the ‘philosophy of mind’ and the materialistic account of the soul/body relation are interpreted as a consistent global theory (Francesca Masi); Lucretius’ creative appropriation of Epicurus’ ‘multi-layered’ explanatory model in meteorology is reconstructed through contextualizing it within contemporary debate (Francesco Verde); and an original reconsideration of Lucretius’ treatment of Epicurean ‘true pleasures’ (such as studying physics, which Lucretius enjoys) is brilliantly articulated (David Sedley). The DRN originally came into the realm of light, in luminis oras, so that Lucretius could rescue Memmius and all his readers from the darkness of misguided fears, namely those of death and of divine intervention and retribution before and after our death. Such was his messianic fervour that, despite the traditional Epicurean mistrust of poetry, he deferred to the poetical form, so as to clothe in sweetness the bitter medicine of his salvific doctrine for reluctant, child-like readers. It is this clash of form and content that engendered the initial imbalance in the reception of the DRN: readers were drawn to the charm of Lucretius’ poetry more than they were to his philosophy. So much so that the reception of Lucretius was for long equivalent to his poetical reception: responses to the DRN from the foremost Latin poets such as Virgil and Ovid appear to point more to the category of poetical aemulatio and admiration than to any direct engagement with its philosophy. However, the sheer number of responses to the DRN from ancient readers is certainly higher than has normally been assumed. A case in point is Seneca’s treatment of DRN. As Myrto Garani shows in her paper, contrary to what is

Introduction  

commonly held to be the case, Seneca read and made extensive, if polemical, use of Lucretius. The case of Seneca is exemplary of a certain manner of reading Lucretius that we are now familiar with thanks to the recent surge of studies in his early modern reception. The awkward balance between reading the text and correcting problematic parts of its message is a trait most prominent in early modern readers, but one adopted already by ancient. In his contribution, Philip Hardie shows how early Christian poets appropriated the text of DRN and its most famous passages as an efficacious vehicle for Christian contents. This pattern of reusing Lucretius for apologetic reasons resurfaced ten centuries later in Catholic Latin America: Andrew Laird gives a prime example of how Lucretius’s powers of persuasion were appropriated for apologetic reasons in Catholic Latin America, thereby reviving a selective reading that went as far back as early Christian poets and had been reinforced throughout the Italian Renaissance. Of course, our gauging of the exact measure of Lucretius’s unassimilability, is, perhaps inevitably, distorted by our own specific cultural background: this is why books on Lucretius’ reception in modernity which present diametrically opposed points of view have recently been published within a short space of time, as well as a number of more balanced and nuanced works. Stephen Greenblatt’s ambitious and acclaimed The Swerve has famously ruffled academia’s feathers by magnifying the impact of the De Rerum Natura and implying that it was essentially Lucretius’ influence that brought about much of what made the Humanism and the Renaissance exceptional. Conversely, the recent book by Pierre Vesperini, Lucrèce. Archéologie d’un Classique européen, stresses the prompt integration of Lucretius among all the other classics, downplaying any alleged disruption that his philosophy might have provoked as well as any special reaction he might have raised among humanists, outliers, philosophers, clerics, from Humanism to the Enlightenment. This volume brings together the views and thoughts of Lucretian scholars from an array of different cultural backgrounds, thereby gaining an overall balance and polyphony. Nevertheless, taken overall the resulting chapters unmistakably point towards the “special” status of Lucretian reception. A status that has much to do with the historical events that were to unfold in Europe, and Italy in particular, shortly after the time of his recovery. Hence the especial emphasis in our volume on the Italian reception of the DRN, a field of research so productive and multi-layered that no amount of investigation seems to be capable of exhausting it any time soon. Even before the Counter Reformation brought about its enforcement of ecclesiastical control and censorship on culture and thought, Italy did not appear as

  Valentina Prosperi, Diego Zucca, Philip Hardie particularly suited to welcome the redivivus Lucretius, and the risk posed by his materialistic poetry so concerned his very first reader, Niccolò Niccoli, that he sequestered Poggio’s copy, keeping it to himself for ten years. Indeed, the famous simile of the honey-smeared cup that was to resound so widely in the sixteenth century debate on the role of poetry can be taken as a token of Lucretius’ paradoxical fate in his second humanistic life. Just as the Church Fathers had already pointed out, poetry could more often than not be the pleasing veil for the poison of heresy, rather than the means to cure audiences of ill-formed opinions. So when Lucretius resurfaced in 1417, his poem, due to immensely changed circumstances, had in the meantime morphed from philosophical to atheistic, and his poetry, so enticing, was perceived as all the more dangerous and poisonous. This led to a schizophrenic kind of reception, where immediate success and circulation had however to confront suspicion and the possible material consequences of a misguided handling of the DRN. The results of this double bind in the poem’s reception led to a guarded, wary circulation of the poem among all categories of audience involved in the reading of Lucretius. If one point needs to be stressed, it is that Lucretius enjoyed universal acclaim, just as any other ancient master, and even more so, considering the comparatively far shorter time since his resurfacing. This speaks as much to the enormous force of Lucretius’ poetry as to the Italians’ capacity for circumventing Catholic strictures through a modicum of dissimulation. Niccolò Machiavelli was both a notorious early reader of the DRN and one of the most vocal critics of the crippling grip of the Catholic Church on the national character. Nevertheless, while on the one hand he famously wrote that the Church in Italy was to blame for making the Italians “sanza religione e cattivi”, on the other he never once named the Latin poet in his works or quoted from him: it takes the trained eye of Mario De Caro to uncover the threads that connect Machiavelli’s theory of free will with the Lucretian swerve. However, one must not be led into thinking, conversely, that Lucretius became the province of all-out heretics or outcasts. In fact, as Ada Palmer shows, there is a risk in today’s debate of over-simplifying Lucretius’ extensive and multifarious readership in terms of rebellion or subservience to a given set of values. This is far from being so. As Elena Nicoli illustrates, men of letters with no streak of rebellion in themselves, like the humanist Giovan Battista Pio and the physician Giovanni Nardi, worked extensively on Lucretius. So, for centuries, provided that authors proclaimed their rejection of Epicureanism, the circulation of Lucretius was allowed at almost all levels of Italian culture. But in the long run, as abiding by the dissimilatory code became more

Introduction  

and more burdensome for Italian authors, other countries engaged more freely with Lucretian thought and poetry. By the end of the seventeenth century printed editions were no longer published in Italy and commentaries to the DRN had lost every pretension to philosophical engagement. Authors reserved their continuing love for Lucretius mostly for the form of the private commentary, not intended for print (Andrea Ceccarelli, Mauro Sarnelli). And while throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries most ancient authors had reached wider audiences through vernacular translations, those of Lucretius were effectively suppressed (Valentina Prosperi). Also, while by the time of his second resurgence Lucretius had been all but erased from collective memory, his fame hung by the thread of his legend (“Lucrecio… che per amor se uccise” as a fourteenth century poet wrote without having read Lucretius and without even knowing whether he wrote in Latin or Greek), 4 as retold by St. Jerome. The dark tale of erotic madness and suicide not only made up for the absence of the text from late antiquity to 1417: it welded with the text, once it was unearthed again. Reading the DRN through Lucretius’ supposed biography, or conversely his biography through his poem became a fairly common exercise (Giuseppe Solaro, Stephen Harrison), justified by Jerome’s testimony that the poem had been written per intervalla insaniae – and one that lasted for the centuries to come. Fascination for the man reflected on the interest for the poet and the other way around: a specific iconography of the man Lucretius even took shape (Gavina Cherchi). On the other hand, coming back to modern philosophical thought in the European context, Lucretius’ influence is to be found in pivotal, groundbreaking thinkers like Leibniz, who – as Matteo Favaretti Camposampiero carefully shows – strongly refuses his denial of finalism, but is fascinated by the combinatorial strand of ancient atomism and somehow exploits it theoretically: of course, even through being critically discussed as a polemical target, an author or a text indirectly exerts their influence and remains an object of reception and transmission. This volume offers fresh perspectives in the study of Lucretian reception. Most importantly, it encourages readers to look for their own patterns and threads across the chapters. And while it has no claim to exhaustiveness, we are confident that it will offer an essential contribution to Lucretian studies for years to come.

 4 Giovanni Girolamo Nadal, Leandreride, ed. E. Lippi, Padova 1996.

  Valentina Prosperi, Diego Zucca, Philip Hardie Acknowledgement: This volume originates from a conference titled Lucretius Poet and Philosopher: Six Hundred Years from His Rediscovery, held in Alghero in June 2017 and co-organized by us. Our gratitude goes to all the participants of the original conference, for their contributions, remarks and stimulating conversations that made for a lively and successful conference. We would like to thank the Fondazione di Sardegna and the University of Sassari, whose joined financial support made this event possible. Thanks are due to the Department of History, Science and Education of the University of Sassari for its precious administrative help, as well as to the Department of Architecture for hosting the conference in its wonderful setting by the sea. Our friend and colleague Gabriele Meloni was of invaluable help in organizing the conference. We are also grateful to Serena Pirrotta, Anne Hiller and Katerina Zianna at De Gruyter for their advice and prompt support and to the anonymous reviewers for their feedback. V.P., D.Z, P.R.H.

| Part I: Lucretius and the Traditions of Ancient Philosophy

David Sedley

Lucretian Pleasures Abstract: This chapter’s main aim is to bring into focus Lucretius’ celebration of his own Epicurean pleasures. The DRN refers in its very first line to divine as well as human pleasures. It closes with the most frightful scene of bodily and mental pain, one that owing to the poem’s evident incompletion still lacks its Epicurean moral lesson about why even the most intense bodily pain need not be feared. In between those two extremities Lucretius offers a uniquely sensitive, and rarely appreciated, commentary on the meaning, boundaries and divine nature of true Epicurean pleasures, and on their intimate relationship to the study of physics, by one who can claim direct experience of their transformative effects. Keywords: Pleasure, Epicureanism, Lucretius, hedonism, gods

With its opening words the De Rerum Natura celebrates Venus as hominum divomque voluptas, “pleasure of humans and gods” (1.1). And a recurrent theme of the poem that follows will be the divine nature of true pleasures, presented as a paradigm to which humans too may nevertheless aspire if they follow Lucretius’ Epicurean path. Alongside this upward-looking aspiration, just a few lines further into book 1 pleasure, now in her very different guise as nature’s procreative force, will be seen pervading the entire animal kingdom. In his opening then Lucretius provides, virtually in the same breath, two utterly different introductions to the Epicurean summum bonum. At one extreme, pleasure is the great leveller, an innate motivator common to all animate beings; 1 at the other, it is a godlike reward attainable, even among the human race, only by converts to Epicurean philosophy. My primary focus in this paper will be on the latter kind, the godlike pleasures specific to Epicurean living, to which Lucretius is himself our most eloquent witness. The lower, animal pleasures may in the book 1 proem appear also to be divinized, in so far as they are the work of Venus, but in the proem to book 2 Lucretius carefully corrects any such impression. There he does again refer to the reproductive drive as “divine pleasure” (2.172 dia voluptas), referring to Venus’

 1 Cf. Cic., Fin. 1.30, omne animal, simul atque natum sit, voluptatem appetere eaque gaudere ut summo bono, dolorem aspernari ut summum malum et, quantum possit, a se repellere. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110673487-002

  David Sedley divinely bestowed perpetuation of the human race. But, importantly, this time he rejects it out of hand as theologically mistaken. 2 In Epicurean doctrine pleasures are divided into two kinds, the bodily and the mental; and within each of those two domains there are short-term “kinetic” pleasures, which lie primarily in hedonic processes such as eating or learning, and static (or “katastematic”) pleasures, which consist in the longer-term state of painlessness. Counter-intuitively, and notoriously, Epicureans insist that when all pain has gone and static pleasure has replaced it, the height of pleasure has already been reached. The added kinetic pleasures typically associated with luxurious living can, as they put it, ‘vary’ the static pleasure, but cannot increase it. As Lucretius says in his second proem (2.16–19), “there is nothing else that nature barks out for than that pain should be absent from the body, and that the mind should enjoy pleasurable sensation while insulated from anxiety and fear.” 3 And as we learn from him in the same proem and elsewhere, those who make the mistake of thinking that the pleasures of simple long-term painlessness can be further increased by heaping luxury upon luxury find that the reverse is true: not only do the luxuries fail to increase the sum total of pleasure, they actually detract from it by generating or intensifying desires that threaten to enslave us. Take the body first. How do you keep it free of pain? Lucretius dwells on the ease with which this goal can be achieved: not, that is, by luxurious living, but by the satisfaction of basic needs. In the proem to book 2 this ideal is encapsulated for us with the model of a simple pastoral existence consisting in relaxation on shady grass beside a stream. 4 Later, book 5’s reconstruction of human history (5.1390–1411) will teach us that the idyllic life portrayed in this tableau was once  2 2.167–76, at quidam contra haec, ignari materiai,/ naturam non posse deum sine numine reddunt/ tanto opere humanis rationibus atmoderate/ tempora mutare annorum frugesque creare/ et iam cetera, mortalis quae suadet adire/ ipsaque deducit dux vitae dia voluptas/ et res per Veneris blanditur saecla propagent,/ ne genus occidat humanum. quorum omnia causa constituisse deos cum fingunt, omnibus rebus/ magno opere a vera lapsi ratione videntur. 3 nonne videre/ nihil aliud sibi naturam latrare, nisi ut qui/ corpore seiunctus dolor absit, mente fruatur/ iucundo sensu cura semota metuque? 4 2.20–36, ergo corpoream ad naturam pauca videmus/ esse opus omnino: quae demant cumque dolorem,/ delicias quoque uti multas substernere possint/ gratius interdum, neque natura ipsa requirit,/ si non aurea sunt iuvenum simulacra per aedes/ lampadas igniferas manibus retinentia dextris,/ lumina nocturnis epulis ut suppeditentur,/ nec domus argento fulget auroque renidet/ nec citharae reboant laqueata aurataque templa,/ cum tamen inter se prostrati in gramine molli/ propter aquae rivum sub ramis arboris altae/ non magnis opibus iucunde corpora curant,/ praesertim cum tempestas adridet et anni/ tempora conspergunt viridantis floribus herbas./ nec calidae citius decedunt corpore febres,/ textilibus si in picturis ostroque rubenti/ iacteris, quam si in plebeia veste cubandum est.

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upon a time the reality of the human condition – before, that is, we threw it away by developing extravagant desires, deprived as we were at that time of the insight that the limit of bodily pleasure had already been reached. In the sixth and final proem we learn that only the intervention of Epicurus, when it finally came, was able to halt and reverse this downward spiral of the human condition. But the recommendation of pastoral simplicity is only half of the story. Epicureanism does not pretend that anyone, however frugally they live, can be sure that illness or injury will not sooner or later make intense bodily pain inescapable – other, that is, than by death. That pain can be tolerated on certain conditions is an important Epicurean lesson, and one that Lucretius in the book 6 proem encourages us to expect, 5 but nowhere delivers, even in that same book’s concluding account of frightful sufferings in the great Athenian plague. Yet without confident security from the threat of intolerable bodily pain we would also lack the required mental pleasure, that of freedom from anxiety. It is this gap in Lucretius’ otherwise immaculate presentation of Epicurean ethics that convinces me that at the time of his death the end of book 6 still awaited revision. 6 For although the DRN is a poem devoted to the physical universe, Lucretius’ mastery of Epicurean ethics is if anything even more remarkable than his expertise in physics. His ethical commentary has not featured as much as it deserves in modern reconstructions of Epicurean ethics. Let me give one example. Scholars of Epicureanism have detected and debated a crucial unclarity in the surviving evidence for Epicurean ethics. Was Epicurus a psychological hedonist – that is, did he claim the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain to be an innate and ineradicable feature of human and animal psychology? 7 If so, adults who profess to pursue honour or virtue and to shun pleasure are simply mistaken: whether consciously or unconsciously, they want the honour or the virtue not for its own sake but for the sake of pleasure they expect to result. Alternatively was Epicurus, as others have maintained, an evaluative hedonist? 8 On this latter hypothesis, he regarded pleasure as the only genuine and natural good capable of making a life a happy one, but allowed that many, perhaps most, human beings have been diverted into pursuing an alternative goal that society imposes, such as wealth, power or the possession of virtue

 5 6.29–32 [Epicurus showed] quidve mali foret in rebus mortalibus passim,/ quod fieret naturali varieque volaret/ seu casu seu vi, quod sic natura parasset,/ et quibus e portis occurri cuique deceret. 6 I defend this view in Sedley 1998, 160–165. 7 This widespread interpretation is defended by Woolf (cf. Woolf 2004). 8 As defended by Cooper 1999.

  David Sedley for its own sake. Merely saying, as Epicurus is regularly reported as saying, that pleasure is our innate goal and summum bonum does not in itself help decide between the competing psychological and evaluative options. But Lucretius, curiously overlooked in the modern interpretative debate, has a very clear answer. In the book 6 proem his praise of Epicurus includes the following (26-8): 9 “[H]e explained what was the highest good (summum bonum) for which we are all aiming, 10 and showed the way by which we could strive straight towards it, along a narrow track.” Uniquely among our Epicurean informants, Lucretius has recognized and eliminated the ambiguity, pronouncing in favour of psychological hedonism: we are already – all of us (omnes) – aiming for pleasure as our highest good; hence Epicurus’ contribution was to teach us, by the arts of hedonic calculation and desire-management, the precise means (the “narrow track”, tramite parvo, 27) by which we can aspire to achieve the thing we all already want. One ground on which Epicurean ethics has faced severe criticism, at least since the time of Cicero, is its equation of pleasure with the absence of pain – expressed as an insistence that the state of painlessness, once reached, is not only already a pleasure, but the highest pleasure: further indulgences, such as an extra course at dinner, may vary the pleasure, but they do not increase it. Unfortunately the debate, ancient and modern alike, has revolved too much around the example of bodily pleasures. These do of course provide the most accessible cases for analysis; but Lucretius shares the regular Epicurean view that mental pleasures are far greater in power and scope than bodily ones, so it is almost certainly on these that we should be concentrating. Here are the steps we need to go through. If pleasure is lack of pain, critics have asked, won’t it be possessed even by a corpse or a stone? To this Lucretius’ first response would no doubt be a return to his formula for our natural goal, as set out in the second proem (2.16–19, p. 12 above): it is “that pain should be absent from the body, and that the mind should enjoy pleasurable perception while insulated from anxiety and fear.” Pleasure is available only to actively sentient beings: hence Lucretius’ qualification iucundo sensu (2.19), and before him Epicurus’ insistence (Letter to Menoeceus 124) that

 9 exposuitque bonum summum, quo tendimus omnes,/ quid foret, atque viam monstravit, tramite parvo/ qua possemus ad id recto contendere cursu. 10 6.26, quo tendimus omnes, “for which we are all aiming”, and not (as in the 1975 Loeb translation of W.H.D. Rouse, rev. M.F. Smith) “to which we all move”, which Lucretius would vehemently deny.

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“all good and bad [i.e. all pleasure and pain] lie in perception (aisthēsis).” Pleasure, that is, consists not in mere lack of pain, but in perceiving in a painless way. When it comes to the specifically mental supreme pleasure, freedom from anxiety, then, its attainment will lie, not in the mere absence of worry, but in perceiving the world with an entirely tranquil and worry-free frame of mind. To find out what that is like, we must turn once again to Lucretius. The road to a proper answer must begin in the proem to book 1, and specifically in the passage (1.62–79) where Lucretius extols Epicurus’ pioneering mental breakthrough. 11 With the power of his thought, Epicurus defied and stared down the religious threats that seemed to come from above. Instead of being cowed by them, his intellect burst open the outer gates of the cosmos and explored the measureless space beyond. On that voyage of the mind Epicurus discovered, and duly reported back, the limits of what is physically possible. And it is his insight about those limits that can now protect us from our former religious terrors. Lucretius cannot be expected to spell out for us, so early in the poem, just what it was that Epicurus discovered about the limits of physical possibility. Instead he focuses his praise on the epic nature of Epicurus’ pioneering feat. Although he does not use the term here, Epicurus’ journey was what Lucretius, like Cicero (ND 1.53–4) 12 elsewhere calls an iniectus animi or animi iactus, corresponding to Epicurus’ epibolē tēs dianoias: a projection of the mind which enables it to see beyond the bounds of literal sight. For instance, the eyes cannot gaze upon the infinity of space, and the innumerable worlds that form and disintegrate again in it; but the mind can. In Lucretius’ view the key to eliminating oppressive creator gods from our vision of reality is to appreciate two things: (a) that mere atomic accident, operating as it must do on an infinite scale, necessarily produces worlds, both like  11 humana ante oculos foede cum vita iaceret/ in terris oppressa gravi sub religione,/ quae caput a caeli regionibus ostendebat/ horribili super aspectu mortalibus instans,/ primum Graius homo mortalis tollere contra/ est oculos ausus primusque obsistere contra;/ quem neque fama deum nec fulmina nec minitanti/ murmure compressit caelum, sed eo magis acrem/ inritat animi virtutem, effringere ut arta naturae primus portarum claustra cupiret./ ergo vivida vis animi pervicit et extra/ processit longe flammantia moenia mundi/ atque omne immensum peragravit mente animoque,/ unde refert nobis victor quid possit oriri,/ quid nequeat, finita potestas denique cuique/ quanam sit ratione atque alte terminus haerens./ quare religio pedibus subiecta vicissim/ opteritur, nos exaequat victoria caelo. 12 As Cicero’s Epicurean speaker Velleius explains to his Stoic opponent Balbus in the De natura deorum (1.53–4): “You would not be demanding this god’s handiwork if you saw the measureless magnitude of space, endless in all directions, by projecting and focusing itself (se iniciens… et intendens) into which the mind travels far and wide, seeing as a result no boundary of its extremities at which it could call a halt.”

  David Sedley and unlike our own, without the need for divine craftsmanship; and (b) that the infinite extent of the universe and its constituent worlds makes it impossible that even the most powerful divinity might control it (2.1090–1104; 6.58–67; cf. 5.87– 90). That in its turn requires us to see, by mental projection, what the universe’s infinity really means. The thought experiments, arguments and mental exercises by which this vision can be achieved are set out by Lucretius towards the ends of books 1 and 2. For example, we are invited to imagine going to some hypothetical boundary of the universe and throwing a spear past it. I have emphasized the nature of Epicurus’ intellectual leap, as described in the book 1 proem, because in the book 3 proem Lucretius will be in a way mirroring that same leap of understanding, and providing a powerful commentary on the pleasure that he experiences as he does so. However, Lucretius’ mental feat is not exactly Epicurus’ own. Epicurus, by his intellectual prowess, was able to force his way through the outer barriers of our world, the fiery heavens: 1.72–3 et extra / processit longe flammantia moenia mundi. Here extra at first looks like an adverb modifying processit: Epicurus forced the gates open and marched outside: extra / processit. But as we read on we realize that extra was in fact a preposition, governing the long-delayed object flammantia moenia mundi. By the time we have belatedly gone back and construed the sentence it feels as if the world’s boundary has been left far behind, as Epicurus’ mind accelerates into the measureless space beyond. So much for the master. Contrast the pupil. According to the book 3 proem, 13 when Lucretius reads or hears Epicurus’ golden words, “the walls of the world” simply “part” of their own accord (3.16–17, moenia mundi / discedunt). Where Epicurus’ breakthrough was dynamic, Lucretius’ role is essentially static. Lucretius’ intellect does not actually go anywhere. When the walls of the world open, that is not his own active breakthrough, because Epicurus has already done the work. Through the gap that Epicurus opened up Lucretius simply sees what lies beyond. He sees the laws of nature at work everywhere (17), and he sees the abodes of the gods laid bare (18). That he has not had to travel anywhere to see these things is  13 3.14–30, nam simul ac ratio tua coepit vociferari/ naturam rerum divina mente coorta/ diffugiunt animi terrores, moenia mundi/ discedunt. totum video per inane geri res./ apparet divum numen sedesque quietae,/ quas neque concutiunt venti nec nubila nimbis/ aspergunt neque nix acri concreta pruina/ cana cadens violat semper[que] innubilus aether/ integit et large diffuso lumine ridet:/ omnia suppeditat porro natura neque ulla/ res animi pacem delibat tempore in ullo./ at contra nusquam apparent Acherusia templa,/ nec tellus obstat quin omnia dispiciantur,/ sub pedibus quaecumque infra per inane geruntur./ his ibi me rebus quaedam divina voluptas/ percipit atque horror, quod sic natura tua vi/ tam manifesta patens ex omni parte retecta est.

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confirmed at 3.25–7, when he turns his mental gaze downwards from Olympus to the region below his feet (sub pedibus), seeing through a now transparent earth to the regions below, and revelling in the absence of any kind of Tartarus. It is clear from sub pedibus that, intellectually speaking, he is not out travelling the universe, but is still enclosed and orientated by the internal structure of the cosmos. Thanks to Epicurus’ pioneering voyage, he need do no more than direct his mental gaze this way and that. It would be mistaken to judge Lucretius’ intellectual pleasure inferior to that previously enjoyed by Epicurus on his voyage of exploration. For the static enjoyment of this panorama is on the contrary a supreme and godlike pleasure, as Lucretius tells Epicurus at 3.28–30: “At these things I am seized by a kind of divine pleasure and thrill (quaedam divina voluptas atque horror), because by your power nature is thus uncovered and laid bare in every direction”. We need be in no doubt that this godlike pleasure is a ‘static pleasure’, in the technical Epicurean sense of hēdonē katastēmatikē. Epicurus himself, if he enjoyed his voyage of discovery as we must assume he did, will have been enjoying a mental kinetic pleasure, the process of freeing himself from his previously painful fear and incomprehension about what the universe might threaten. Lucretius is silent about that kinetic pleasure of discovery, and sticks instead to a single Epicurean tenet: it is not the kinetic thrill of eliminating pain, but the resultant stable pleasure of peace of mind, that can make our own state fully equal to that of the gods. Lucretius’ mental projection is not then a voyage of discovery. But neither, as I remarked earlier, is it a purely passive experience. It is the activity of perceiving one’s surroundings in an entirely tranquil frame of mind. In some other cases the surroundings perceived without perturbation might be very local, for example one’s social, domestic or political environment, provided only that one views it without empty fears or desires. But in the present case, where he reaps the benefit of the iniectus animi that Epicurus pioneered, it is the entire measureless universe that Lucretius, equipped as he is with intellectual x-ray vision, is able to gaze upon without the least anxiety. And this divina voluptas, we must take it, is the kind of pleasure that was already foreshadowed in the poem’s opening line, the pleasure that gods themselves enjoy. What then is this pleasure’s cognitive content, and what makes it divine? First, the pleasure is taken in an insight such as only a divine intellect like Epicurus’ own could have taught us (3.15, “[the nature of things], brought to light by your divine mind”, divina mente coortam). Lucretius is privileged to share his master’s divine discoveries, but what their ‘divinity’ consists in remains at this stage unclear. Later, the proem to book 5 will declare Epicurus a god on the grounds, not simply of his great benefaction, but specifically of his conferral

  David Sedley upon the human race of peace of mind, a quintessentially godlike blessing, including a correct understanding of the gods themselves – that is, of our moral paradigm. Here too, in the book 3 proem, by a curious reflexivity, Lucretius’ divine pleasure is his own pleasure at seeing the gods’ enjoyment of their divine pleasures (3.18–24). For one of the sights on which his intellect feasts itself is that of the Olympian gods as described in Odyssey 6.41–6, 14 lines which Lucretius virtually translates at 3.18–24. As he gazes out, his mind’s eye falls upon … the gods’ tranquil abodes, which winds do not shake, clouds do not sprinkle with rain, and falling white snow hardened by bitter frost does not assault. It is forever covered with cloudless aether, which smiles with widely spread light. What is more, nature provides all their needs, nor does anything ever diminish their peace of mind.

Although Homer is no philosophical authority in Epicurean eyes, Lucretius is justified in treating the Homeric passage as if it did have a special epistemic status. Compare DRN 5.1169–82), according to which early humans’ awareness of gods embodied their correct intuition that the essential characteristics of divinity are imperishability and a blissful freedom from fear. This intuition was largely played out in dreams where our ancestors pictured the gods’ lives in terms no doubt dictated by their own culture, for example scenes in which these superhuman beings performed feats of indomitable strength (5.1177–82) – hardly part of Lucretius’ own picture of divinity, but still embodying, however primitively, the essential truth about the gods’ invulnerability. Essentially of the same kind is Homer’s description of the Olympians’ divine bliss, presenting it as if it were their enjoyment of a perfect weather system. For all its naivety, it too is, in Lucretius’ eyes, emblematic of a deep truth about divinity. Another reason for Lucretius’ endorsement of Homer’s Olympus is that benign weather does actually play a part in Lucretius’ own human paradigm of Epicurean pleasure. I mean book 2’s portrayal of an ideal human existence in the guise of a simple pastoral life, “especially”, he adds (2.32–3), 15 “when the weather smiles on them and the season sprinkles the greenery with flowers”. You don’t need constant good weather in order to live pleasantly, but the enjoyment of good weather, as distinct from, say, palatial dwellings, does epitomize the Epicurean

 14 ἡ μὲν ἄρ’ ὣς εἰποῦσ’ ἀπέβη γλαυκῶπις Ἀθήνη/ Οὔλυμπόνδ’, ὅθι φασὶ θεῶν ἕδος ἀσφαλὲς αἰεὶ/ ἔμμεναι· οὔτ’ ἀνέμοισι τινάσσεται οὔτε ποτ’ ὄμβρῳ/ δεύεται οὔτε χιὼν ἐπιπίλναται, ἀλλὰ μάλ’ αἴθρη/ πέπταται ἀννέφελος, λευκὴ δ’ ἐπιδέδρομεν αἴγλη·/ τῷ ἔνι τέρπονται μάκαρες θεοὶ ἤματα πάντα. 15 See note 4 above.

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brand of pleasure, a brand of which the gods themselves are the ultimate paradigms. However, another reason for Lucretius’ spotlighting the Homeric paradigm of divine pleasure lies, one may suspect, in Homer’s sheer antiquity. In DRN 5, that initial stage in human history at which the gods’ detached and invulnerable nature was correctly grasped by a sort of primitive intuition, was regrettably followed by a rational stage in which by a faulty inference those same gods were misconstrued as despotic overlords of the human race, in need of constant appeasement. Of course no records or cultural memories could survive from those very early times to confirm the historicity of either phase in the emergence of religion; but the very earliest witnesses upon whom Lucretius could call were Greek poets, above all Homer, whom he elsewhere (3.1037–8) praises as the king of poets, and hence as the ultimate master of Lucretius’ own profession. And just as in popular religious belief 16 the correct conception of the divine nature still exists, although obscured and contaminated by that fateful error about divine overlordship, so too it is with Homer. Maybe, that is, Homer does portray gods showing the attitudes of anger and favour that Epicureanism declared to be incompatible with the divine nature. The fact remains that Homer also possessed, and was able to express on occasion, the true conception of divinity. Lucretius’ meticulous rendition of the Odysseian Olympus turns Homer into the earliest and most kingly of witnesses to the pervasiveness of that correct human intuition. Homer’s description ends “There the blissful gods enjoy themselves day after day” (Od. 6.46, τῷ ἔνι τέρπονται μάκαρες θεοὶ ἤματα πάντα). Lucretius’ corresponding ending is (3.23–4) “What is more, nature provides all their needs, nor does anything ever diminish their peace of mind (animi pacem).” Thus Homer, in speaking of the gods’ blissful life, is interpreted by Lucretius as equating it with Epicurean peace of mind, and therefore also with the pastoral paradigm of pleasant living which Lucretius has himself advocated in the proem of the preceding book. Thus the two paradigms of bliss – the Homeric and the Lucretian – become one and the same. In addition, when Lucretius directs his mental spotlight first to the universal laws of nature, then up to the peaceful gods on Olympus, and finally down through the ground to where Tartarus would be if it existed, he is reminding himself of the very insights that have made his life as tranquil as that of the gods. I have presented Lucretius’ reassuring conspectus of the universe, viewed from within our own cosmos, as being superior in his eyes even to the joy of discovery that Epicurus must have experienced. On the other hand, there is no doubt  16 Cf. 5.82–8.

  David Sedley that Epicurus’ moments of philosophical discovery, typically in discussion with his closest colleagues, were kinetic pleasures which textured, or rather ‘varied’, his life’s tranquillity in a way that enabled him to enjoy them again and again in retrospect, reportedly even on his deathbed amidst intense bodily pain. 17 Does Lucretius have anything equivalent to report in his own life? It seems that he does. Not so much the joy of discovery, since that work has already been sufficiently done by Epicurus, but the joy of transmitting the Epicurean message to others. Altruism towards strangers, such as Lucretius’ readers may well be to him, is not prominent among Epicurean values. But altruism to friends lies at the very centre of Epicurean life; and from the start Memmius, the addressee of the DRN, is courted as a potential friend. Lucretius’ enjoyment of his benefaction to Memmius not only well exemplifies the pleasures of friendship, it also draws our attention to a frequently disregarded feature of Epicurean pleasures, namely that they are meant to be enjoyed as much in our dreams as in our waking hours. As Epicurus tells the addressee at the close of his Letter to Menoeceus (135), if you put into practice the foregoing tenets “you will never be disquieted, awake or in your dreams, but will live like a god among humans.” Epicurus’ excellent point, that a tranquil life depends on the absence of anxiety around the clock, whether awake or asleep, is one that Lucretius takes to heart. He twice notes for example (4.1018–19, 5.1151–60) that unjust people’s constant terror of giving away their guilty secrets continues in their sleeping hours too. And in cataloguing the phenomenon of nightmares (4.1011–25) he prominently includes some which continue the dreamers’ un-Epicurean daytime ambitions and fears, such as when kings dream about losing as well as winning battles. The passages I have just mentioned concern success or failure in preserving the static Epicurean pleasure of tranquility during sleep. But should we not suppose that Lucretius’ dreams too were enriched with memorable kinetic pleasures of the mind? Sadly, no. With regard to his waking hours, he does repeatedly emphasize the pleasure which rewards his twin task of simultaneously Latinizing and versifying the Epicurean message for Memmius’ benefit (1.136–45, 927–33, 2.730–1, 3.419–20). At night too he likes to stay up late (1.142, noctes vigilare serenas) to pursue the same poetic task. But Lucretius is also a witness to an all too

 17 DL 10.22. For the role of kinetic pleasures in the Epicurean conception of happiness, cf. Sedley 2017.

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familiar experience, that solutions to problems devised in dreams typically evaporate in the cold light of dawn. He has the honesty to claim no satisfaction for the illusory verse-composition he attempts in his dreams (4.962–72): 18 And more or less whatever pursuit each person is tied to, or whatever we have been spending much of our preceding time on with our mind especially concentrated on it, in sleep we seem mainly to be focusing on those same things. Lawyers seem to be arguing cases and formulating laws, generals to be fighting and focusing on battles, sailors to be conducting a declared war against the winds, whereas I seem to be doing what I am doing now, always tracking down the nature of things and, once I have found it, setting it forth written in our own language. In the same way the other pursuits and skills seem to retain their deceptive hold on people’s minds.

The emphasis here is entirely on illusory ‘seeming’. In a dream Lucretius may enjoy the brief illusion that he has discovered the perfect Latin hexameter to convey accurately this or that Greek Epicurean maxim. But if he does derive so much as a momentary kinetic pleasure from it, he does not say so. Instead he emphasizes the disappointing nature of the experience. 19 The fleeting illusion of success is clearly not among those kinetic pleasures that he expects to revisit in the future and to enjoy reliving. On the other hand – and this will be my closing thought – it is hard to doubt that the authentic waking experiences of constructing the De Rerum Natura line by line were kinetic pleasures that Lucretius constantly relived and cherished, perhaps even placing them on a par with his master’s own epic voyage of discovery.

References Cooper, John (1999), “Pleasure and desire in Epicurus”, in: id., Reason and Emotion. Essays on Ancient Moral Psychology and Ethical Theory, Princeton, 485–514. Rouse, William H.D./Smith, Martin F. (eds.) (1992), Lucretius: On the Nature of Things, Cambridge (Mass.)/London.

 18 et quo quisque fere studio devinctus adhaeret/ aut quibus in rebus multum sumus ante morati/ atque in ea ratione fuit contenta magis mens,/ in somnis eadem plerumque videmur obire:/ causidici causas agere et componere leges,/ induperatores pugnare ac proelia obire,/ nautae contractum cum ventis degere bellum,/ nos agere hoc autem et naturam quaerere rerum/ semper et inventam patriis exponere chartis./ cetera sic studia atque artes plerumque videntur/ in somnis animos hominum frustrata tenere. 19 In 4.972 frustrata, which I have translated “deceptive”, might also be rendered “disappointing”.

  David Sedley Sedley, David (1988), Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom, Cambridge. Sedley, David (2017), “Epicurean versus Cyrenaic happiness”, in: R. Seaford/J. Wilkins/ M. Wright (eds.), Selfhood and the Soul. Essays on Ancient Thought and Literature in Honour of Christopher Gill, Oxford, 89–106. Woolf, Raphael (2004), “What kind of hedonist was Epicurus?”, in: Phronesis 49, 303–22.

Diego Zucca

Lucretius and the Epicurean View That “All Perceptions are True” Abstract: The well-known and controversial thesis that “all perceptions are true” is endorsed by all Epicureans. At least three general interpretations of it have been provided by commentators and interpreters, based on respective meanings assigned to the predicate “true” (‘propositional’, ‘existential’, ‘factive’ meaning) as well as on the alleged objects/contents perception is thought to be of (eidola/ proximal stimula or environmental objects/distal stimula?). Starting from this puzzle, this paper will address the more general issues involved in the Epicurean theory of visual perception (theory of eidola/simulacra) and interpret the epistemological meaning of the ‘controversial thesis’ in the light of Lucretius’ treatment of vision, illusion and dreaming in DRN Book 4. It will turn out that Lucretius has a very sophisticated view on perceptual epistemology. 1 Keywords: Lucretius, epistemology, perception, Epicureanism, Ancient Philosophy of Mind

 Theaetetus’ Protagoras and the Epicureans on all perceptions being true The well-known Epicurean thesis that “all perceptions are true” (APT) 2 first appears in Plato’s Theaetetus as originally held by Protagoras. 3 Here, however, this view is couched in relativist and subjectivist terms: all that appears to me is trueto-me-now, and all that appears to you is true-to-you-now. Each subject’s appearance is infallible, but it is such precisely because it cannot be objectively (neither

 1 I wish to thank Francesco Verde for his precious critical advice on a first draft of this paper. 2 There is no error in sense-perception (Sext. Emp., M 8.9), as all the senses give a true report (Cic., DND 1.25, 70) and never lie (Cic., Luc. 28.82; see also 25, 79: “veraces sanos esse sensus dicis...”, and Fin. I 19, 54; Lucr. DRN 4.379, 499). 3 Theaet. 152c. See Vogt 2016 about the relation between APT in Plato’s Theaetetus and in the Epicurean tradition. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110673487-003

  Diego Zucca intersubjectively nor diachronically for the same subject) 4 true. Protagoras’ omnialethism is in fact a form of skepticism about knowledge of the external world, as his homo-mensura doctrine undermines any claim of an observer-independent truth. The Epicurean APT, despite its apparent similarity to Protagoras’ thesis, has an opposite meaning as it is aimed at grounding an objectivist epistemology on the infallibility of perception. It is thus a kind of de-subjectivized and de-relativized version of the first. It is perhaps more than a coincidence that the Epicurean APT, although literally appearing to be the same as Protagoras’ APT, is often put forward by Epicureans as a ground for an anti-skeptical move, and is the case for Lucretius 5 in addition to Epicurus himself. 6 What is the genuine meaning of APT in the Epicurean model, and to what extent could Lucretius’ account of APT in DRN help us better grasp this meaning? 7

 Epicurean Epistemology First, we should review the essential core of Epicurus’ epistemology or ‘canon’. 8 Perceptions and feelings make original content available for our cognition, and reiterated sensory inputs are the origins of ‘preconceptions’ (prolepseis), which are equally as evident. 9 Leaving feelings aside, as they are more relevant in ethical considerations, perception and preconceptions are criteria, or standards leading to truth when applied to something evident. Knowledge is a transition from  4 Plato associates APT with the idea that knowledge is perception and with the idea that everything is in flux, so there are neither persistent objects nor any persistent subject to whom perceptual information could be presented at different times. 5 DRN 4.469–521, see infra, Part 5 of this paper. 6 RS 23: “if you fight against all of your perceptions you will not have a standard against which to refer even those judgements which you pronounce false” (tr. Hicks). 7 Particularly if Sedley 1988 is right in seeing Lucretius as an ‘Epicurean fundamentalist’ who is almost pedantically faithful to Epicurus’ original doctrines and arguments (for a different view see Clay 1983, Montarese 2012, Schmidt 2016), clarifying Lucretius’ account of perception can shed light on the original model. In any case, there is no need to take a position about this querelle to value DNR as an interesting source – in fact the best-preserved source – that can be retrospectively (though cautiously) used. 8 I am aware that the Epicurus’ scholars will find this description dramatically rough and oversimplified: my aim is only that of introducing the basic commitments of Epicurus’ epistemology, so we can value the contribution of Lucretius. See Asmis 1984 for an accurate study, and Striker 1996. 9 Preconceptions originate from memory of what is often perceived (Diog. Laert., 10.33). On prolepsis see Long 1971, Manuwald 1972, Tsouna 2016, Verde 2016.

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the Visible to a) the Invisible 10 and b) ‘what is waiting’ (= a Visible that will come to be), 11 through the application of criteria. A belief can have different logical relations to a perception: it can be made true when ‘witnessed’ by a perception, or it can be made false if ‘counterwitnessed’. Perceptions can falsify or confirm beliefs, and not only empirical beliefs, but also those that posit what we would call ‘theoretical entities’ (the Invisible that is hypothesized to account for the Visible). 12 In this model, perceptions test inferential knowledge, but also preliminarily ‘feed’ our ‘preconceptions’ or notions from which those concepts are formed, which build the propositions to be confirmed or falsified. Thus, perceptions can work as i) original content-givers (also by ‘feeding’ preconceptions), ii) explananda (the Visible as a Given to be accounted for), iii) testbenches for theories concerning the Invisible (a hypothesis is confirmed insofar as it accounts for the Visible and the Visible can be derived from the hypothesized theoretical entities). 13 In particular, the theory of perception is a virtuously circular way of justifying its own origins, as the position of atomic eidola that continuously emanate from solid objects (which they are similar to and preserve specific properties of) 14 like films and impact our senses, simply accounts for the Visible (the manifest world and the way we experience it) and shows how and why the content of our perceptions (and mediately of our concepts) is objective and reliable. The theory of eidola fits with atomistic ontology and is the basis of the empiricist epistemology through which this very theory has initially been introduced. Atomism is in fact an explanation of the Visible in terms of the Invisible, so it is assumed that

 10 Ep. Hrdt. § 38. 11 A natural explanation or account will exhibit predictive power: if atoms, void etc. are essentially invisible, “what is to be expected” is invisible de facto but – if the theory is true – will become manifest in the future. 12 In case of beliefs concerning the Invisible (adelon) – or the not-evident – they are true if not counterwitnessed by perception, and false if counterwitnessed. One may object that two beliefs of this kind could be both ‘not counterwitnessed’ but incompatible: but I leave aside this issue here. 13 To a certain extent, this model recalls the Aristotelian one: we start from phainomena (the ‘first for us’), we posit a hypothetical ‘deep structure’ X (a nature or an essence) of the considered phainomena, if we can derive or infer the phainomena from the hypothesized X, X is established as the ‘first per se’ (see Phys. 1.1). Within both models, the original wonder associated to phainomena is eliminated as soon as they are explained away. On the epistemological value of wonder in Aristotle and Epicurus, see Milanese 2020. 14 On eidola in Epicurus’ On Nature Book II, see Leone 2012 and 2015; eidola preserve morphe and schema of their solid sources: as Corti 2015 shows, ‘schema’ denotes the inner structure of the solid body and ‘morphe’ denotes the external form. See also Ep. Hrdt. §§ 46, 48, 49 (on which, see Verde 2010, ad loc.). According to Sext. Emp. (M 7.207) colour is also preserved.

  Diego Zucca the Visible is not an area of deceit. That “all perceptions are true” – whatever “true” may mean here – is a requirement for our concepts to be non-‘spurious’ or contentless, for our theories to explain something real and to be controlled by reliable ‘confirmers’ or falsifiers. We may take APT as pragmatically assumed at a first step 15 and theoretically confirmed (circularly, though not in a vicious way) 16 by the theory of eidola, which is an explanation of how it is that all perceptions are ‘true’ and therefore ab origine epistemologically reliable. Given this framework, how are we to read APT? Particularly, what does the predicate ‘true’ mean in APT?

 APT and its Readings Before considering the predicate “true” in APT, we should note that “perceptions” in APT have a broader extension than we may at first think. The term does not only refer to illusions, which we also take to be inaccurate perceptions, as hallucinations, dreams and similar perception-like experiences are also credited with truth by APT: indeed it is part of the very theory underlying APT that such appearances (phantasiai) of a sensory kind (with a sensory phenomenology) in fact are perceptions, and it is only insofar as they are such that they are true. Thus, a “dream” is true, what we term optical illusions (like a stick looking bent when partially underwater) are true, and conflicting appearances at different times (a tower looking round from a distance and square when nearer) 17 are both true, as are hallucinations like the Centaur or the Furies that appear to Orestes. 18 Now, the puzzle is that either we take APT as a thesis à la Protagoras so we understand why all ‘perceptions’ are true but do not understand how on earth they

 15 This is Asmis’ suggestion (Asmis 1984). 16 Gavran Miloš 2015, 168 writes that “appearances are not considered as genuine pieces of knowledge since they do not reveal the truth, but just the contrary, they misrepresent the real atomistic nature of things”; I disagree: the gap between appearances and atomic structures is not an opposition, as appearances are neutral about the fine-grained nature of appearing objects, rather than contradicting it. The gap needs to be inferentially filled, but no misrepresentation is involved in perception: on the contrary, the atomistic theory accounts for how and why things appear as they do. 17 That of conflicting appearances is considered a fundamental issue by Epicureans: see Sext. Emp., M 7.208; Plutarch, Adv. Col. 25; Sen., NQ I 3. 9., Lucr., DRN 4.353–363 and 500–506, Tert., De anim. 17. 18 See DRN 4.728–744 for the Centaur example, and Sext. Emp., M 8.63 for the Fury example.

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could ground our knowledge of an objective world in addition to our subjectivities, or we take perceptions to be genuine relations to mind-independent worldly objects so we make sense of this empiricist epistemology as a whole, but then we do not make sense of why illusions, conflicting appearances, dreams, and hallucinations should be equally true! Disregarding the other more detailed differences between scholars’ views, we can sketchy distinguish three main ways of reading APT, depending on the way the predicate “true” is interpreted, and I will propose adding a fourth option, which seems to me consistent with the primary and secondary sources, and which may let us better grasp the evidential role of perception in Epicurean epistemology.

. Propositional Reading (PR) According to PR, 19 all perceptions are true, just as a proposition can be true or false, but they always have the same truth-value and they cannot be false, like beliefs can. As perceptions are not propositions, the idea is to distinguish a propositional counterpart for a given perception, which makes its content explicit. Thus, what is the proposition which can express the content of a given perception, so that the perception itself can become truth-evaluable? According to one reading of PR, if I see a round object, the proposition that expresses the content of my perception is something like “this object looks round to me now”. 20 This may be read as a type of subjectivist view of the propositional reading, insofar as the proposition does not report on the environment that is supposedly experienced, but about how the environment looks to the subject of the experience. What is true is that a certain perception represents O as F to me, not that “O is F”. This reading accounts for the ‘truth’ of dreams, hallucinations, experiences of madmen, and for the conflicting appearances concerning the same object (for example, seen at a distance and then from nearby). However, in this case, what epistemological importance will APT have? It is part of the very concept of “looking” that something can look as it is not, so a subject can have many true beliefs based on his/her perceptions concerning the ways things look to him/her, according to his/her experience. But if anything can be different from the way it looks to S, then S is not in a position to know anything about the environment if all S can rely on are true propositions expressing how things look to

 19 See Striker 1977, 90. 20 Striker 1977.

  Diego Zucca him/her. Thus, it becomes clear why all experiences (including hallucinations, dreams and so on) are ‘true’, but it becomes unclear why APT should ground any knowledge of the world, so APT would be epistemologically trivialized. I can know my experiences, but not whether they are accurate vis-à-vis the objective world: in the same way I know which beliefs I have but this does not at all guarantee that such beliefs are all true. In addition, APT is often stated as a claim against skepticism, and this reading would perfectly align with skepticism about the external world (all I perceptually know are my experiences: how things look to me now). 21 A stronger and more promising propositional reading would take APT to mean that all perceptions are true just as beliefs are, i.e., they represent obtaining states of affairs (made out of objects and their properties/relations) in the world: 22 this would make APT epistemologically robust, but then it would again be problematic to explain why Epicureans also call “true” hallucinations, illusions and dreams. In any case, perception, says Diogenes Laertius, is considered “a-rational” (alogos) by Epicureans, 23 and thus is conflicting with the idea that “true” in APT is propositional: a proposition is truth-evaluable only insofar as it is a logos.

. Existential Reading (ER) An existential reading of APT suggests that “true” means “real” and “existent”: all perceptions are real/existent. But what is credited with existence according to APT? From one perspective of ER, APT would suggest that any perception is a real

 21 In fact, this is rather the Cyrenaic view, as well as the skeptical Pyrrhonist view. 22 See Striker 1990, 90ff., Everson 1990, 168. Striker renders APT as follows: “all propositions expressing no more nor less that the content of a given sense impression, are true” (142). 23 Diog. Laert., 10.31 “All sensation, he says, is a-rational (alogos) and does not accommodate memory. For neither is moved by itself, nor when moved by something else is it able to add or subtract anything” (tr. LS). Gavran Miloš 2015 effectively argues that Epicurean perceptions are credited with non-conceptual content. Bown 2015 proposes to distinguish perceptual truth from doxastic truth (propositional) as involving a “predicative complex” made out of an object and a property (ex: tower, round): a perception is true if the object has the property, but unfortunately this ingenious maneuver is not witnessed by any source and thus faces the same problem as the propositional reading: if perception is “alogos”, its content cannot have such a semantically structured nature; moreover, as perception does not involve memory, it cannot include any cognitively ‘thick’ kind of “seeing-as”, such as seeing a tower as round would be.

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affection, an existent event in the act of sensing. 24 Again, this conception of APT accounts for illusions, hallucinations and dreams but not for the epistemological role APT is credited with by the Epicureans. Every perception, as an act of sensing, is existent, but this may well be compatible with our perceptual experience being radically deceptive and unable to ground any knowledge of the external world. We cannot be asked to trust our perceptions simply because they exist, just as we cannot be asked to trust our beliefs simply because they exist. Moreover, “true” is usually contrasted with “false”, not with “inexistent”. 25 The notion that every perception exists is so trivial that it cannot express the controversial, provocative thesis the Epicureans themselves and also their critics take APT to be. 26

 24 Long 1971, Rist 1972, De Witt 1943, 1954; See also O’Keefe 2010. Sextus also attributes such an equivalence between “true”, “real” and “existent” (as referred to aistheta) to Epicureans in M 8.9; but he then explains that for them “‘true’ is what is in the way it is said to be, ‘false’ is what is not in the way it is said to be” and “since perception is capable of grasping what it is presented with, without adding or subtracting anything as it is a-rational, it is absolutely truthful and it grasps what it is in the way this (object) is in its nature. While all sensibles (aistheta) are true, all things-that-are-believed (doxasta) are different: some are true, some are false” (see also M 7.210). The explanation makes clear that what we perceive is not “true” and “existent” because our perceptions exist but because they somehow represent their object the way it is, without adding or subtracting anything to the information received. Thus, perceptions are accurate, and their content is always instantiated: this is more than just existing, and is also more than just having an object, as it is accurately representing the object. Diog. Laert., 10.32 attributes to Epicureans the idea that “seeing and hearing are as real as feeling pain”: the comparison with pleasure and pain prima facie fits very well with the existential reading, but we need to consider that pains and pleasures carry information about the environment and are not regarded as simply internal phenomenal states. 25 Everson 1990, 167; Striker 1996, 81. Cicero, Plutarch and Lucretius never speak of true as opposed to inexistent. 26 Plutarch (Adv. Col. 1121B–D) says that Epicureans are like Cyrenaics who think that we only perceive our own internal affections, but this source does not at all support the existential reading, as Plutarch also adds that Epicureans do not want to admit this. The subjectivist (therefore skeptic) consequences of their theory is, according to Plutarch’s criticism, an unavoidable but undesired consequence, therefore he is aware that Epicureans’ intention is not that of limiting APT to the sphere of perceptions meant as just ‘real affections’. In any case, we cannot rule out that Plutarch misunderstood the genuine epistemological meaning of APT.

  Diego Zucca

. Factivity Reading (FR) A more fruitful and plausible view is that APT means that all perceptions are brought about by something existent, i.e., by eidola. 27 They are “real” in the sense that they always have a real object in the eidola, which are objective, 28 worldly items we are presented with, even in case of dreaming, hallucinating, and the like. 29 This option does justice to the objective implication of perception, and thus to its epistemological significance: we are always confronted with real objects when perceiving, as the films our senses come in contact with. This view is articulated by Vogt who terms it “factivity reading”. 30 Factivity is a property of certain propositional attitudes such as knowledge: if S knows P, P is true, and indeed you cannot ever know P unless P is true, because you cannot know false propositions (if anything, you can know that P is false, so you know the true proposition P1: “P is false”). Similarly, APT claims that perceptions are of what is, so they are true. What is real is not just the perception itself (‘simple’ existential reading) but its object, which is also its genuine cause. The analogy with factivity is that any perception must necessarily have an object as its cause. The direct objects or causes of perception are atomic images. Thus, it is clear why perceptions are true and cannot be false even if their “truth” is not incommensurable with that of belief (this is similar to the truth of justified beliefs, which makes them knowledge). However, a basic problem remains: how can I rule out the possibility that I am not confronted with a dream or a hallucination now? Even these types of experiences are certainly of something (floating and coincidentally combined eidola that do not emanate from a solid object near to the perceiver), but how can the subject distinguish the eidola that come from solid objects from those that only remotely originate from environmental objects, after undergoing modifications and ‘fusions’? Infallibility and objectivity are involved here, but the object is the proximal eidolon, not its distal source. In any case, if all there is to the evidential role of a perception is the same as that of a hallucination or a dream – the

 27 Asmis, 2009, 94–95. FR seems to fit well with Sextus (M 8.63) and Diogenes (Diog. Laert., 8.32): both emphasize that what moves the sense are existent eidola, therefore all sensations are true. 28 This fits well with Sextus’ formulation as “all aistheta are true” (rather than “all aistheseis”) (the same is to be found in Demetrius Lacon, PHerc. 1012: see Verde 2018, 89–90: like Sextus, Demetrius makes the equivalence true = existent). 29 By externalizing any perceptual content, Epicureans want to rule out any informational modification of the percept inside the mind: this accounts for their somehow counterintuitive objectivist account of dreams and hallucinations. 30 The Factivity Reading is shared by Vogt 2015 and Gavran Miloš 2015.

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presence of a proximal object, i.e., eidola – the empiricist epistemology is in trouble and the skeptical challenge cannot be avoided. The ‘distal’ reality remains perceptually unreachable, which is not a helpful consequence if we regard prolepseis and beliefs, and thus all human cognitive effort, as ultimately based on perception.

. Truth-Conduciveness Reading (TCR) I now propose a fourth reading of APT along the following lines: perceptions are truth-conducive insofar as they are bona fide ways to truth. “True” in APT does not refer to the mere existence of perceptual states, or to the truth-value of propositions expressing how things look to a subject, nor does it simply mean “having a real object”, as in the factivity reading. The ‘truth’ of a criterion – unlike the truth of a belief obtained through the application of the criterion itself – is its capacity to make us come to believe true propositions, and thus its reliable truthconduciveness. 31 Criteria are truth-conducive par excellence, and perception is a criterion (the most basic one). 32 Perception leads to objective truth concerning steremnia, or the distal objects: it does so in virtue of the subject being in real contact with the eidola emanating from solid objects and exhibiting a structural similarity to them (sympatheia). 33 Thus, the factivity of perception does hold, but it is that in virtue of which perceptions are truth-conducive, insofar as the eidola carry genuine information about their sources, but knowledge and truth are about the sources rather than about the eidola. Each subject has its own eidola (proximal stimula/objects) to which he/she is in proximal contact, but distal sources are shared by all subjects who perceive them. Perceptions are “true” – i.e., truth-conducive – because the  31 The advocates of the Existential Reading argue that the Greek use of “alethes” to mean “real”, “existent” is not at all extravagant (besides being explicitly attributed to Epicureans by Sextus, Diogenes and Demetrius Lacon), but this also holds for “truth-conducive”: for example, in Aristotle’s Metaphysics 5.29 – usually called lexicon as it is a philosophical dictionary which also draws on common usages – one meaning of “false” is: something real, but from which false appearances derive (1024b21–26), and another is: something (or someone) that produce false notions in people” (1025a1–6); in the same vein, it is plausible that “true” could also mean: something that gives rise to/produce/conduces or leads to true appearances or representations: for example, to true beliefs. 32 Of course, perception is alogos and does not deliver propositionally structured information: it enables us to form true beliefs only insofar as we are also endowed with conceptual, propositional and inferential abilities (prolepsis, dianoia, logismos). 33 See Diog. Laert., 10.50; Ep. Hrdt. §§ 46–48, § 50.

  Diego Zucca propositions we come to believe through them are reliably true, so they are pieces of knowledge. Our knowledge is of reality, not simply of eidola (a small piece of reality) or, worse, of those eidola we happen to come in contact with: 34 if perception is a grounding criterion and thus secures knowledge, it cannot only concern nearby eidola, it must be about solid distal objects. What about the alleged truth of dreams, hallucinations, conflicting appearances then? How can we make sense of these cases within TCR?

 The Proper Object of Perception: Distal, Proximal and Disjunctive views The readings of APT depend on what we take the object of perception to be: is it the eidola impinging on our sensory organs or the solid objects the eidola come from? The proximal/distal distinction can be applied to the various readings of APT. APT could involve the truth of propositions about perceptual states, 35 or about proximal stimuli (eidola) or about things themselves; 36 it could involve factivity as always having a proximal object (eidola) 37 or a distal object; 38 or it could more generally refer to the existence of a proximal object. 39 As discussed, the proximal view appears to be promising in accounting for the truth of conflicting appearances (these concern different eidola that are as they appear, so there is no genuine conflict), hallucinations and dreams (these concern real though nonsolid objects, the floating eidola that ‘arrive’ to us), illusions (the tower’s eidolon is round when we are at a distance from the solid tower), and prima facie the view seems to fit better with some of the relevant sources. However, this too obviously leads to scepticism about knowledge of the external world, in addition to conflicting with other sources: although genuine knowledge would be guaranteed in this view, it would not be knowledge of the right things!

 34 The Proximal Reading is shared by Everson 1980, Gavran Miloš, Vogt, Taylor 1980; Císař 2001, among others. 35 See Striker 1977. 36 See Striker 1990. She holds that the exclusion of distant things from the field of perception is a doctrine added by late Epicureans. 37 See Vogt 2015 and Gavran Miloš 2015. 38 See Asmis 2009. The ‘extreme’ existential reading as “something is happening in me” is indifferent to the proximal/distal difference. 39 Taylor 1980, Tsouna 1998, 118–119, Everson 1990, 176–177.

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The distal view 40 can meet the epistemological desiderata of a consistent theory of knowledge and is supported by other sources, 41 but seems incapable of doing justice of the truth of hallucinations, dreams, conflicting appearances and illusions. Here, distal objects are not existent or are different from the way they appear or cannot simultaneously be all the ways they appear (e.g., round or square). My proposal is to embed the distal view in a disjunctivist framework as follows. Standard perceptions are about distal objects, the eidola and their isomorphism with their sources are that in virtue of which we perceive the objects in the environment; eidola physically account for our perceptions of distal objects as truth-conducive, producing true empirical beliefs that are not (only) about eidola. Hallucinations and dreams do not have proper distal objects, i.e. there are no solid particulars nearby, from which these eidola come from: in these cases, perceptions are about the eidola themselves, as there is no solid distal object that these eidola carry information about. We must resist the generalization that suggests that if in some cases the perceptual objects are proximal eidola, then the latter must always be the perceptual object. 42 The case of conflicting appearances is different, and can be explained through the reading of “true” as “truth-conducive” (TCR): the tower is square, but it looks round at a distance because it is the way square towers look at a distance, and distance is also perceived. 43 We have the phenomenological resources to distinguish a near round tower from a far square one that “looks” round; if we take the far tower to be round, we are going beyond our perception, which presents us with a far tower the way far towers are typically presented to us. The “round-looking” tower experience is as truth-con-

 40 See Asmis 1984. 41 In proposing TCR I am not denying that “true” is also used by Epicurus to mean “existent” or “real”, I am denying that this is the only and ultimate sense of APT. Below in Part VI I assess to what extent Lucretius shows to hold TRC (see infra). 42 See Sext. Emp., M 7.205–7: “it is not the body that is seen, but the color of the solid body. Sometimes the color is right on the solid body, some other times it is in the space adjacent to it […]”: this passage only prima facie speaks in favor of the proximal view, as on the contrary, it is well compatible with the disjunctive view: stricto sensu, we see the body’s surfaces, which are distal objects; sometimes we see eidola detached from the solid surface; some other times we see floating ‘artificial’ eidola (Centaurs, Furies and the like): Sextus (M 8.63) remarks that in the last cases the mistake is believing that they are solid bodies (not that they come from solid bodies), which entails that in the standard cases it is not a mistake to believe that what you are perceiving is the solid body. 43 See LS 1987, 85.

  Diego Zucca ducive as the square tower experience, and it is up to our belief-system to appreciate such a truth-conduciveness and form the right beliefs. 44 A stick that is partially underwater just looks as sticks partially immersed underwater look: the water makes it look this way, and nothing is false or inaccurate. You simply need to truly believe that water has certain objective properties that make the stick look bent, and the perception is truth-conducive. All perception is passive, but what is given needs to be cognitively used, and this is how your exposure to error comes into play: your cognitive use of perceptual inputs is not a priori safe. An opinion becomes true in virtue of its method of validation, but we also call “true” the method itself just because it is truth-conducive; likewise, a perception is true because perception is a ‘canon’: a reliable (truth-conducive) criterion that allows us to have true empirical beliefs. In summary, APT states that all perceptions are truth-conducive (they all put us in a position to form true empirical beliefs about the world), and they typically have distal solids as their proper objects, 45 even though we perceive such objects in virtue of getting in touch with their information-carrying eidola. 46 However, in some cases (hallucinations, dreams) we perceive the eidola themselves, as there

 44 A precious passage by Diogenes Laertius (Diog. Laert., 10.33–34) makes clear that a belief about the tower becomes true insofar as it is “witnessed” by perception: “what is expected” (to prosmenon) is exemplified by the case in which we learn the tower to be square as soon as we get nearer: from a distance, the perception does not represent the tower as objectively round but as experienced in such a way that we need further information to obtain its precise shape. So, the perception is incomplete, but it is still truth-conducive. 45 In Ep. Hrdt. § 48 it is stated that “we see and think the forms in virtue of something of the external objects coming to us […]”: the forms we see, and think are not the eidola but the properties of the solid objects themselves, of the external things (ta exo): Epicurus says in § 46 that images are “far surpassing the phainomena”, which probably entails that phainomena must be solids rather than images. Everson 1989, 181 finds Epicurus “inconsistent” here, but the passage would be inconsistent only with Everson’s proximal view (but perhaps one could argue that the single eidolon surpasses ta phainomena but the latter are groups of images rather than solid objects). 46 Another option is that of rejecting the very proximal/distal distinction insofar as eidola are the object (Verde 2016, 59; Verde 2018, 100–101): after all, they are part of the object but are continuously detaching from it. However, a) a part of an object is not the object, as an object is not identical with any of its parts, and b) eidola have different properties from the objects they come from: for example they are moving very fast, the respective object is not; they are many, the object is one; and they are not necessarily as big as the respective objects: I see a tower, my experience of it does not represent it as big as my eyes, even though the eidola impinging on my eyes are such. Being parts of the objects is not a sufficient condition for being the objects themselves: they are physical objects of course, but they are not what we perceive, rather they are that through which we perceive the solid objects from which they constantly emanate.

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is no object to be perceived, but even these experiences are truth-conducive in a sense. They inform us about their objects, the eidola (which, again, does not necessarily mean that all perceptions only inform us only about the eidola!), and when our reason is working well and our senses are awake, we are not misled by them as their phenomenology is not just like that of the experiences concerning solid objects. Furies, Centaurs and the like would appear quite differently if they were bona fide solids. 47

 Lucretius on APT Let us assess our reading by examining Lucretius’ treatment and use of APT, assuming that Lucretius is a reliable source on the original spirit of Epicurus’ APT. Lucretius first introduces simulacra and their properties (their existence, fineness, rapidity, and the ‘spontaneity’ of some of them: 48 54–109), and then presents their gnoseological role. They affect our eyes (corpora quae feriunt oculos visumque lacessant, IV 217) and enable vision: Esse in imaginibus quapropter causa videtur cernundi neque posse sine his res ulla videri. (237–8)

Images are the cause of visual discrimination and that-without-which things could not be seen. Lucretius clearly regards the object of vision not to be the images but the things themselves (res ulla videri), and the images are rather the cause and enabling condition for vision, as in the distal view. This becomes clearer in what follows: Et quantum quaeque ab nobis res absit, imago Efficit ut videamus et internoscere curat. (244–5)

 47 ‘Mental’ eidola are finer than perceptual eidola (DRN 4.722–761: see infra; see Bailey 1947, 1268; 1928, 414). Diog. Laert., 10.50–51 distinguishes phantasiai of the mind and of the senses (both are physical atomic aggregates, as mind is a body just as senses are). Whether the Lucretian idea of the existence of two kinds of simulacra is Epicurean or not, is a controversial point, on which see Masi 2015. However, it is worth saying that APT as a principle holds independently on such physiological explanations, as these explanations are obtained only in virtue of APT itself. 48 A very good analysis of DRN 4 about sensation and simulacra is Repici 2011. See also Císař 2001. Godwin 1986, 7–9 defends the unity of the book. I will consider only the part concerning APT and simulacra.

  Diego Zucca Again, images make it possible that we see both the res and how far it is from us (absit). Certainly, we do not need to evaluate how distant the simulacra our eyes receive are from us (Propterea fit ut videamus quam procul absit, 250). Then it is explained how the simulacrum pushes the air, in such a way that the more air is moved before us (and the longer the time that it lasts), the more distant the thing appears to be (tam procul esse magis res quaeque remota videtur, 253). Next, Lucretius even states that we cannot see the single incoming simulacra (ea quae feriant oculos simulacra videri/singula cum nequeant) but that we directly perceive things themselves (res ipsae perspiciantur, 257–8). 49 In a further passage (353–63) the tower example, and thus the issue of conflicting appearances, is examined. Lucretius explains that the tower looks round from a distance because the simulacra get smoothed by the air due to their long trip, 50 and adds that it looks round but not in the way (actual) round towers look from near: Non tamen ut coram quae sunt vereque rotunda, sed quasi adumbratim paulum simulata videntur. (362–3)

A physical explanation is provided for the tower looking round (the smoothing of the simulacra), but a point is also added about the phenomenal difference between round towers seen from near and square towers looking round from a distance, which look paulum simulata, quasi adumbratim. In seeing the far tower, we are in a position to distinguish our experience from the experience of a real round tower, despite the phenomenal similarities. If I appreciate such a difference – and it has been previously argued that distance is perceived (250–3) – then I do not form the belief that that tower is round. If I did, I would deceive myself rather than being deceived by my perception, the mistake would be (as it is said later concerning other examples of alleged optical illusions) a doxastic one, due to reason (ratio animi, 384): 51 Proinde animi vitium hoc oculis adfingere noli (386). We often take our experiences to be false, but what is actually false is only what we believe we have seen or perceived (pro visi ut sint quae non sunt sensibus visa, 465): we have not seen a round tower, even if this tower looked “roundish” before we got nearer. It did not look exactly as a round tower looks but it rather looked  49 Císař 2001, 24, holds a proximal view and says that this passage “cannot really say that we truly perceive the objects themselves” and it represents a “Lucretius’ inconsistency” (36). See also Bailey 1947, 1214. 50 See Sext. Emp., M 7.208; see also Ep. Hrdt. § 48: sometimes the eidolon gets blurred (sygkeomenes). 51 See Ep. Hrdt. § 50: error is not in perception but en to prosdoxazomeno.

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like square towers look far away, and my perception included information about the distance. Thus, phenomenologically, I already was in a position not to be deceived, so that my next perception from near does not deny the first but integrates it. In my view (TCR) the first perception is “true” neither because it exists, nor because it has a real object, nor because a proposition expressing what it represents is true, but because it is truth-conducive, even if less informative than the following perception, since more details can be gained from a nearer viewpoint. At 379 Lucretius’ APT is anticipated, Nec tamen hic oculos falli concedimus hilum, before being stated explicitly at 499: Proinde quod in quoquest his visum tempore, verumst. 52 Before this claim, a variety of examples of visual illusions are given (relative apparent movements, perspectival convergence, refraction and reflection, double vision when our eyes are pushed, the bent stick underwater 53 and others, including dreams) 54 and it is made clear that such experiences are not intrinsically deceptive, or they are such only propter opinatus animi quod addimus ipsi (465), due to what opinions we add to them. This model recovers the ‘doublefactor’ Platonic theory of appearance (phantasia) as a combination of perception and opinion. 55 Phenomenology of experience is such that for a subject it is the hardest job (Nihil aegrius est quam…) to tell apart perceptual information from the spontaneous and immediate doxastic integration of it (res secernere apertas/ ad dubiis, animus quas ab se protinus addit, 465). No perception is false-conducive, we – with our belief system – are responsible for our cognitive use of perception, even though it can understandably seem to us that we have been deceived by our senses. Perceptual information is often partial, so we integrate it with beliefs and mistake the outcome of this integration for the original perception, which never is to blame. Whenever our empirical beliefs are genuinely controlled by perception, they are true: perception provides factive environmental information 56 that is cognitively used on the basis of collateral knowledge. It is not responsible for representing the very the causal context in which we perceive:

 52 The past tense is also relevant for the tower example: not even ex post can I say that my previous perception was wrong. 53 4.353–461. 54 Dreams are analyzed in 453–61. On Lucretius’ account of dreams see Clay 1980, Asmis 1981, Masi 2017, Masi in this volume, Tsouna 2018, Güremen 2018. 55 See Soph. 264A–B: phantasia is a combination (summeixis) of perception and opinion. See also Tim. 52A. Recovering the Platonic theory is also an Epicurean move against Aristotle, who takes phantasia to be neither perception nor opinion nor a combination of the two (see De an. 3.3, 428a19–b8). 56 TCR is compatible with the factivity of perception, even if I contend that “factive” is not the most fundamental meaning of “true” in APT.

  Diego Zucca it is not its job to let us know that water’s refraction makes a straight stick look bent, or that we are moving on a ship so the environment appears to escape behind us, or that there is a finger pushing the eye which makes us see double. The absence of collateral knowledge or the presence of collateral false beliefs can make us get things wrong in terms of what we perceive, every time that we as rational thinkers are not capable of appreciating and exploiting the truth-conduciveness of any perceptual experience we enjoy. In DRN, APT underlies an antiskeptical move (469ff.): if you claim you do not know anything, you cannot even claim to know that nothing could be ever known (469–70). Even if we conceded to the skeptic that he knows that nothing can be known, as ex hypothesi he has never met anything true (cum in rebus nihil veri viderit ante, 474), how does he know what ‘knowing’ or ‘ignoring’ are, where did his notion of truth (notitia veri) come from? Moreover, how can he prove that certainty and uncertainty differ (476–7)? Notitia veri – which probably denotes Epicurean prolepsis – must have come from senses in the first place, and senses thus cannot be refuted (478–9): what is sensorily evident and perceptually present works as a paradigmatic instance of truth, so it exhibits what “true” means. For a proleptic disposition towards F to be acquired, you need to be exposed to many bona fide instantiations of F, otherwise your prolepsis would be contentless and you would not be able to even recognize that F is never instantiated. Rational denial of sensory knowledge 57 rests on a reason that paradoxically denies its own conditions of possibility. A reason originated by deceptive senses would be deceptive (484–5), and thus deprived of any refuting force (qui nisi sunt veri, ratio quoque falsa fit omnis, 485). Nothing could refute a sensation, not even another sensation (whether of the same sensory modality or not, 486–99), as each sensation is worthy of aequa fides (498), 58 that is indeed a prima fides (505). Just after characterizing APT Lucretius goes back to the tower example and says: if reason cannot adequately account for 59 square things’ appearing round when seen from

 57 Skepticism challenges any knowledge, but Lucretius is interested in the rejection of sensory knowledge here. 58 The Parity Argument (on which see Vogt 2015) is to be found in Plato’s Theaetetus (157e– 160d) and Aristotle’s Metaphysics (5.5, 1009a30ff.): Epicureans transform a common skeptical objection into the ground for an optimistic epistemology. On Epicureans and the skeptic challenge, see Fowler 1984 and Stoneman in this volume. 59 Dissolvere causam: as said, the issue of conflicting appearances for the Epicureans was an aporia to be solved. Intra-subjective diachronic conflict is apparent, as what is in conflict are contents at least one of which is unduly integrated by belief; but even intersubjective synchronic conflicts can be treated the same way: if what appears to me and what appears to you are incompatible, it is because either one of us or both of us have a ‘belief-loaded’ appearance.

Lucretius and the Epicurean View That “All Perceptions are True”  

a distance, better to mistakenly explain this than to violate trust of our senses and so upset the very basis of life itself (500–6). First, let us remark that what is taken to be seen round or square is the distal object, the tower itself (ea quae fuerint iuxtim quadrata, procul sint visa rotunda); second, the explanation provided earlier (simulacra’s angles being smoothed by the air) was hypothetical, and trust on both perceptions does not need to depend on our physical explanation of this phenomenon: even if it was left unexplained, we should not mistrust our senses, so the trust on senses is original. The rational process is derived from the first and even the idea that simulacra come to our eyes and can be modified must not be taken as the reason why we should trust both of our sensations in this case. Third, trust on senses is connected with life and survival in the environment: 60 what threatens or promotes our life is the distal environment, and certainly not the proximal simulacra, which are what enables our sensory system to cope with the distal environment. In my view, the passage makes clear that the reason why the ‘round’ experience is true and trustworthy is not that its objects are round simulacra (that we are in contact with round simulacra is true or at least a good hypothesis), but that senses are also an original, primitive criterion for rational-inferential knowledge, as they are truth-conducive: 61 the “adumbrated” phenomenology of the tower seen from a distance even enables the roundish look to provide information on the real tower, as distant and (perhaps) squared. In fact, in the experience the tower did not look to be round: it looks to be round to us – videtur or phainetai as “looks” in a not merely sensory but also doxastic sense, according to the Platonic double-factor view of appearing – insofar as we provided a wrong opinion of the perceptual information. Now I know the tower is square, so I can go back and realize that my experience did not present me with a round object but with a square object seen from a distance. 62 The first experience was truth 60 If our sensory system were not efficacious in representing environmental properties, we would be all dead (this anticipates the anti-teleological commitments in the last part of book 4). Everson 1989, 171 holds that APT needs to be read ‘pragmatically’ as saying that we should treat all sensations as if they were true: but this innocent idea does not fit with the way all the sources characterize APT. 61 Everson 1990, 177 points out that only the Proximal View accounts for why sensations do not refute each other; but I submit that the tower-experiences do not refute each other even if they are of the same (distal) object, the tower itself: the idea is that the wrong belief that the tower is round is not merely grounded on the perception at a distance, which does not represent the tower as really round but as a tower (perhaps round perhaps square) seen from a distance. 62 Demetrius Laco (PHerc. 1013 col. XX 1–9) defends Epicurean APT from the charge of skeptical consequences: the opponent says: “if everything which appears also is, then the Sun, that appears still, is standing still”, Demetrius replies that the Sun “does not appear standing still (but it is judged to be such)”: he does not says that it is not the Sun but the eidolon, that appears (and

  Diego Zucca conducive, and I lost an epistemic occasion by forming a wrong belief about what I was seeing. If even a single perception was not truth-conducive, we would be lost and incapable of trusting anything, and thus perception could not sustain the building of knowledge as it would be a defective rule with which all measures are taken wrongly so that the resulting construction is unstable (513–21). 63 The image of a rule clearly recalls the criterial or ‘canonical’ role of perception. A rule is “true” because it reliably produces true measures, and thus it is a stable and solid basis. After characterizing each of the five senses (522–722), Lucretius comes back to the cases of dreams and hallucinations (722–776). Some floating simulacra, finer than those affecting the senses, impact the mind (728–31): they can fuse and mesh in the air thus forming inexistent figures such as Centaurs, as a consequence of the mesh between human and equine floating images which occurs by coincidence (casu, 741); 64 they can impinge on mind (animus) with a single impact, differently from the perceptual simulacra that cannot be perceived singillatim (105) but only as continuously and copiously flowing from a solid object. Thus, hallucinations are receptions of ‘mental’ simulacra, which are also phenomenally different from ‘perceptual’ simulacra: again, in this case there is no solid object out there, but we as subjects of experience are in a position to discriminate hallucinations from perceptions of solid objects. Therefore, even hallucinations are not false-conducive, they are rather truth-conducive if we take them at face value, without adding beliefs, and believe what we see: non-solid objects or simulacra. When dreaming, our mind remains awake (mens animi vigilat, 758), but our senses are inactive, which is why we wrongly believe that dreamed contents consist of solid objects. Again, senses are truth-conducive, which is why dreams mislead us when senses cannot control our beliefs. 65 However, in a way even dreams are in themselves true and truth-conducive: they have an object, simulacra, and we would be in a position to take this object as simply a non-solid image were our senses awake. However, as they are not, a fortiori they are not to blame for such delusional beliefs.

 is) still, but that the Sun does not appear still. The eidolon, inter alia, is not still. On this passage, see Güremen 2018. 63 Diog. Laert., 10.146–7: abandoning perceptual evidence leaves us in the dark; Ep. Hrdt § 52: if we do not stick to the criteria grounded on evidence, the error would upset everything. 64 See Ep. Hrdt § 48. 65 It is worth remarking that this is a type of inversion of the Aristotelian explanation of dreams, according to which a function of sensibility, phantasia, is active but reason (dianoia) is inactive, so it cannot enable us to distrust such phantasmata (see De Ins. throughout).

Lucretius and the Epicurean View That “All Perceptions are True”  

Thus, Lucretius’ account of APT and simulacra supports the following view: all sensations (dreams and hallucinations included) are truth-conducive (TCR), and their object is typically distal. Illusion about distal objects is never stricto sensu perceptual but depends on the informational integration by our doxastic activity; only in hallucinations and dreams is the object not a solid but the very floating simulacra (distal view plus disjunctivism), but this does not undermine truth-conduciveness, because the difference between solid and non-solid objects is phenomenologically appreciable, except when dreaming. However, even in this last circumstance it is not the case that dreamed contents are not truth-conducive, as it is their very truth-conduciveness that cannot be appreciated due to the inactivity of senses, so APT is safe and consistently grounds an objectivist epistemology.

References Asmis, Elisabeth (1981), “Lucretius’ Explanation of Moving Figures at 4.768–776”, in: American Journal of Philology 104, 36–66. Asmis, Elizabeth (1984), Epicurus’ Scientific Method, Ithaca (NY)/London. Asmis, Elizabeth (2009), “Epicurean Empiricism”, in: James Warren (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Epicureanism, Cambridge, 84–104. Bailey, Cyril (1928), The Greek Atomists and Epicurus, Oxford. Bailey, Cyril (1947), Titi Lucreti Cari De Rerum Natura Libri Sex, 3 vols., Oxford. [=DRN] Bown, Alexander (2016), “Epicurus on Truth and Falsehood”, in: Phronesis 61 (4), 463–503. Císař, Karel (2001), “Epicurean Epistemology in Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura IV 1–822”, in: Listy filologické, CXXIV (1–2), 1–54 Clay, Diskin (1980), “An Epicurean Interpretation of Dreams”, in: American Journal of Philology 101, 342–362. Corti, Aurora (2015), “OMOIOCXHEMΩN e OMOIOMORΦOC. Alcune riflessioni sulle proprietà degli EIΔΩLA nella dottrina di Epicuro”, in: Francesca Guadalupe Masi/Stefano Maso (eds.), Peri phuseos Book II. Update, proposals, and discussions, Amsterdam, 84–105. DeWitt, Norman W. (1943), “Epicurus: All Sensations are True”, in Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, Vol. 74 (1943), pp. 19–32. Everson, Stephen (1990), “Epicurus on the Truth of Senses”, in: Stephen Everson (ed.), Epistemology, Companions to Ancient Thought 1, Cambridge, 161–183. Fowler, Don Paul (1984), “Sceptics and Epicureans”, in: Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, II, 237–267. Gavran Miloš, Ana (2015), “Epicurean Perceptual Content”, in: Prolegomena 14, 167–191. Godwin, John (ed.), Lucretius De rerum natura IV, Warmister. Güremen, Refik (2018), “Diogenes of Oenoanda and the Epicurean Epistemology of Dreams”, in: Jürgen Hammerstaedt/Pierre-Marie Morel/Refik Güremen (eds.), Diogenes of Oenoanda/ Diogène d’Oenoanda. Epicureanism and Philosophical Debates/Épicurisme et controverses, Leuven, 187–205.

  Diego Zucca Leone, Giuliana (ed.) (2012), Epicuro: Sulla natura, Libro II, Napoli. Long, Anthony (1971), “Aisthesis, Prolepsis and Linguistic Theory in Epicurus”, in: Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 18 (1), 114–133. Long, Antony/Sedley, David (eds. and transl.) (1987), The Hellenistic Philosophers (Vol. I), Cambridge. [=LS]. Masi, Francesca (2015), “Dagli occhi alla mente: il cammino tortuoso degli eidola”, in: Francesca Guadalupe Masi/Stefano Maso (eds.), Peri phuseos Book II. Update, Proposals, and Discussions, Amsterdam, 107–134. Masi, Francesca (2017), “Sognare oggetti nascosti: la teoria onirica epicurea”, in: Francesca Alesse/Arianna Fermani/Stefano Maso (eds.), Studi su ellenismo e filosofia romana, Roma, 74–106. Manuwald, Anke (1972), Die Prolepsislehere Epikurs, Bonn. Milanese, Guido (2017), “The Wonder of non Wondering. From Plato to Lucretius”, in: F. Buglioni Knox/J. Reek (eds.), Poetry, Philosophy and Theology in Conversation, London, 16– 28. Montarese, Francesco (2012), Lucretius and His Sources, Berlin. O’Keefe, Tim (2010), Epicureanism, Acumen. Repici, Luciana (2011), “La sensazione in Lucrezio”, in: Antiquorum Philosophia 5, 51–82. Rist, John M. (1972), Epicurus: An Introduction, Cambridge. Schmidt, Jürgen (1990), Lukrez, der Kepos und die Stoiker: Untersuchungen zur Schule Epikurs und zu den Quellen von „De rerum natura“, Bern. Sedley, David (1988), Lucretius and the Transformation of the Greek Wisdom, Cambridge. Striker, Gisela (1977), “Epicurus on the Truth of Sense-Impressions”, in: Archiv für die Geschichte der Philosophie 59, 125–142. Striker, Gisela (1996), Essays on Hellenistic Epistemology and Ethics, Cambridge, 1996. Taylor, Charles C.W. (1980), “All Perceptions are True”, in: Malcolm Schofield/Myles Burnyeat/ Jonathan Barnes (eds.), Doubt and Dogmatism: Studies in Hellenistic Epistemology, Oxford, 105–124. Tsouna, Voula (2016), “Epicurean Preconceptions”, in: Phronesis 61, 160–221. Tsouna, Voula (2018), “Epicurean Dreams”, in: Elenchos 39 (2), 231–256. Verde, Francesco (ed.) (2010), Epicuro: Epistola a Erodoto, Introd. di E. Spinelli, Roma. Verde, Francesco (2016), “Percezione, errore e residuo percettivo in Aristotele, Epicuro e Alessandro di Afrodisia”, in: Giornale Critico della Filosofia Italiana 97, 44–62. Verde, Francesco (2018), “Ancora sullo statuto veritativo della sensazione in Epicuro”, in: Lexicon Philosophicum (Special Issue 2018: F. Verde/M. Catapano (eds.), Hellenistic Theories of Knowledge), 79–104. Vogt, Katja M. (2016), “All Perceptions Are True: Epicurean Responses to Skepticism and Relativism” in: Jaques Lezra/Liza Blake (eds.), Lucretius and Modernity: Epicurean Encounters Across Time and Disciplines, New York, 145–159.

Francesca Masi

Lucretius and the Mind-Body Relation: the Case of Dreams Abstract: In the third book of DRN, Lucretius argues in favor of mortality of the soul and removes the fear of a life after death: in so doing he conceives a soulbody model able to guarantee a strict functional interdependence of the two natures. Moreover, in the fourth book he deals with psychicness in all possible articulations on the basis of this very soul-body model. Through this analysis, Lucretius realizes a double purpose. First, he shows that human psychicness is the outcome of an active and voluntary interaction of the human being with the environment. Second, he supports the thesis of the veracity of sensation from a physiological perspective. A very puzzling case for Lucretius’ account is that of dreaming. While sleeping, the dreamer can interface with realities that are no longer present or are totally reduced to perception, such as absent or dead people or gods; the dreamer can also deceptively believe that the dreamt object is the object itself: he/she may become deeply disturbed about such an object and not realize this as a mistake. While sleeping, the normal psychosomatic interaction breaks down and some psychological functions, such as sensation and memory – fundamental in order to verify the reliability of mental representations – are missing. The case of dreams, therefore, could be exploited to confute the whole Epicurean theory of the soul. The aim of the present essay is to show that Lucretius is able to justify the consistency of Epicurean psychology and epistemology through the analysis of the peculiar interaction between the soul and the body during sleep: although the condition of the soul within the body radically changes during sleep, nevertheless dreams are the outcome of the soul-body interrelation; the nature of their interaction with the environment guarantees the veracity of the dreamlike representation, namely the correlation of the mental image with the external object; their mutual dependence helps to explain the origin of deception in dreams as well as the pathological affections that can derive from it. Keywords: Lucretius, mind – body relation, sleep, dreams, deceptiveness

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110673487-004

  Francesca Masi

 Introduction In Book 3 of the De Rerum Natura, Lucretius sets out to dispel the idea that “that fear of Acheron […] which troubles the life of man from its deepest depths, suffuses all with the blackness of death, and leaves no delight clean and pure” (3.37– 40). In order to do so, he outlines a rigorously materialist and unitary soul-body model, so as to ensure a close vital and functional interrelation between the two natures, based on the specific atomic composition of the soul and its place within the body. 1 Then in Book 4, on the basis of the soul-body model he has just outlined, the poet examines the way in which the human psyche unfolds in all of its possible articulations. Through this analysis, Lucretius pursues two goals. The first is to show that all human psychic activity is the outcome of man’s active and voluntary interaction with the environment. The second goal is to establish the thesis of the veracity of sense-perception from a physiological perspective. 2 Dreams, however, constitute a particularly problematic case for Lucretius’ psychological and epistemological explanation. In sleep, a dreamer may interact with entities no longer present to his perception, such as dead people who were once dear to him; he may fallaciously believe that the object he is dreaming of is the object itself, be deeply unsettled by it, and fail to realise his error. Sleep marks a break in the ordinary interaction between soul and body, whereby certain psychic functions that are crucial for judging the veracity of representations, such as sense-perception and memory, no longer operate. The case of dreams, therefore, might even be used to undermine the soundness of the psychological doctrine as a whole. 3 The aim of the present contribution is to show how Lucretius is instead able to reassert the coherence of Epicurean psychology and epistemology through an analysis of the interaction between soul and body, and of the relation between the psychosomatic compound and the environment in the particular context of sleep. I will proceed as follows. First, I will briefly illustrate the psychological theory expounded in Book 3 of the DRN. Then, on the basis of Lucretius’ analysis in Book 4, I will explain what psycho-physical changes take place in sleep. Finally, I will show how dreaming occurs by virtue of such changes.  1 For an overall introduction to Epicurean psychology, see Diano 1974, Everson 1999, Gill 2009, Kerferd 1971, Lathière 1972, Masi/Verde 2018, Repici 2008, Verde 2010, 187–199, Verde 2015. 2 See Godwin 1986, 7. 3 On the Epicurean dream theory see Masi 2017 and 2018, Tsouna 2018.

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 The Nature of the Soul and its Relation to the Body In Book 3, just after the opening proem, Lucretius sets out to dispel the fear of death. He states that he wishes to clarify the nature of body and soul, on the basis of his previous explanation of the principles of all things (3.31–36). Lucretius’ psychology is developed in several stages, according to an approach and logical order that find no parallel in surviving texts by Epicurus. Therefore, a succinct overview may be in order. Lucretius’ starting point is what he regards as a wellknown assumption that will only be explicitly illustrated later on, 4 namely the distinction between anima and animus: the former is the vital, kinetic and sensitive principle, the latter the rational, intellective and emotional principle of the human organism. So right from the beginning of the exposition, the soul emerges as an articulated and complex entity. In the light of this distinction, the poet then sets out to show – against the champions of the theory of harmony or of the soul as the vital part of the body – that the animus, which is to say the soul conceived specifically in term of its hegemonic and intellective function, is a part of the human organism “no less than hands and feet and eyes are parts of the whole living being” (3.69–97). After having justified this assumption, Lucretius explains that anima and animus have the same nature and that the distinction between the two is justified in spatial and functional terms (3.136–160). Having established as much, Lucretius first shows that the soul as a whole is corporeal and examines the nature of its composition in detail (3.161–322); then he analyses the soul's interaction with the other part constituting the human organism, namely the body. This extensive and highly detailed examination of the relation between soul and body allows Lucretius to show that the soul cannot exist or operate outside the body, and that the body cannot endure or perceive anything without the soul (3.323–829). On the basis of this conclusion, Lucretius can finally investigate and refute the false beliefs responsible for the fear of death, along with the desires that such fear can inspire and fuel (3.830–1094). Here I cannot examine the detailed analysis provided by the poet throughout the book. Rather, I will outline his conception of the nature of the soul, which is to say of its atomic composition and internal structure, as well as of its relation with the body, in order then better to clarify what structural and functional alterations occur during sleep. “The nature of mind and spirit is bodily” (3.161–162). Lucretius adduces two proofs of the corporeality of the soul that revolve around its capacity to act and  4 On this aspect of Epicurean psychology, I will refer to Masi/Verde 2018, 243–246.

  Francesca Masi to suffer (cf. Epic., Ep. Hrdt. 67). Both these arguments rest on the assumption that movement and change are only possible by virtue of the mutual contact of corporeal entities and therefore that they can only fully be explained within the framework of an explicit materialistic theory. According to the first argument, the soul is corporeal insofar as it has the power to move the body, something which is only possible through physical contact (3.162–167). According to the second argument, the soul partakes in the suffering of the body, and vice versa: when the soul suffers, so does the body. Given that pain can only pass from one body to another, the soul too must be corporeal (3.152–162, 170–176). Once the corporeal nature of the soul has been established, it is a matter for Lucretius of explaining “what kind of body this mind is, and of what it is formed” (3.177–178). With regard to this, the poet first of all argues that a body such as the soul, which is characterised by mobility and reactiveness (3.181–188), must be very fine – with a consistency similar to that of water or air (3.189–198) – and hence be made up of particularly minute, smooth and round elements, capable of moving swiftly “when touched by a small living power” (3.188). The specific density of the structure of the soul is relevant for understanding its peculiar relation to the body. Lucretius immediately refers to this condition, arguing that the soul is “interlaced through veins, flesh, and sinews, since, when the soul has already departed from all of the body, nevertheless the outward contour of the limbs presents itself undiminished, nor is one jot of the weight lacking” (3.216– 220). The reference here to the interlacing between the soul and the rest of the organism helps establish the fact that the soul can be conceived as a body within another body, precisely by virtue of its extreme fineness, which translates into its having practically no specific weight at all. 5 Later on the poet will return to this question from a different perspective, explaining that the soul’s location within the body prevents it from becoming dissipated and allows it to participate in its vital movements. The quantitatively, formally and morphologically homogeneous nature of the atoms that make up the soul should not lead us to conclude that it possesses a simple nature: For a kind of thin breath mixed with heat leaves the dying, and the heat, moreover, draws air with it. Nor is there any heat which is not mixed with air; for since its nature is rarefied, many first beginnings of air must be moving through it. Already, therefore, the nature of the mind is found to be threefold; yet all these three together are not enough to produce feeling, since the mind cannot admit that any of these can produce sense-bringing motions and the thoughts which it itself revolves. A fourth nature must therefore be added to these;  5 On this paradox see Verde 2010, 188.

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this is entirely without name; nothing exists which is more easily moved and thinner than this, or made of elements smaller and smoother; and this first distributes the sense giving motions through the limbs. (DRN 3.232–245 tr. W.H.D. Rouse)

The soul, therefore, is the result of a mixture; in other words – judging from what we known about the Epicurean notion of mixis – it stems from the breakdown of different elements into their original atomic constituents and their recombination into an original synthesis that possesses a different causal efficacy compared to that of its individual components: breath, heat, air, and a nameless substance that stands out from the rest on account of its fineness and smoothness. 6 Lucretius’ doctrine of the four elements constituting the soul is used to explain the different properties of the living organism. The first three elements (heat, breath, and air) are invoked to justify breathing (3.231–234), movement and rest, bodily temperature, and finally the temperament and character of animals and human beings (3.288–307). The fourth, nameless nature is instead explicitly introduced in order to account for the sensitive capacity of the soul. 7 The atoms originally belonging to the fourth element, being finer and smoother, are the first to react to external stimuli; they perform movements that engender sensation and transmit them to the other atoms constituting the soul and, through them, to those constituting the body, according to their degree of fineness (cf. 3.246–251). The fineness of the soul, its almost liquid or even gaseous density, and its ‘graded’ atomic composition, so to speak, determine its particular location within the body and the interaction between the two. As already anticipated, the soul requires a more solid and firmer framework, capable of preserving it against dispersion. Lucretius uses two images to illustrate the connection between soul and body: on the one hand, that of an interlacement, which highlights the close interconnection between the two; on the other hand, that of a vase which emphasises the containing and protective function of the body with respect to the soul. Moreover, Lucretius develops his explanation of the spatial relation between soul and body in polemical contrast to the Democritean doctrine, according to which the atoms of the soul are arranged in the living organism in alternation with those of the body, one after another. The poet notes that, with a similar distribution of the constitutive elements of the human organism, each movement made by the  6 On the Epicurean notion of mixture, see Alex. Aphr., De mixt., 140 = 290 Usener, Keferd 1971, Masi 2006, 64, Gill 2009, 130, Masi/Verde 2018, 238. 7 The nature of this fourth element and the reason why it is not given a name have been a matter of debate since Antiquity. For an overview of this debate, which lies beyond the scope of this paper, I will refer to Masi/Verde 2018, 239.

  Francesca Masi corporeal atoms would automatically be transmitted to those of the soul. But in fact – Lucretius notes – living beings cannot always perceive the impact of objects touching their body. In the light of this, the poet hypothesises that the atoms constituting the soul are separated by intervals larger than those posited by Democritus and which may be measured according to the number of particles constituting the smallest perceivable object (3.370–390). Lucretius’ argument, however, is not enough to elucidate the nature of the connection between soul and body. In order to explain how the soul adheres to the rest of the organism, Bailey suggests we focus on the composition of the latter. Lucretius (3.566–568, 691–695, 788) describes the human body as a complex whole consisting of different parts, such as the blood, veins, organs, nerves, bones, that vary in terms of compactness and solidity: bones are formed by tight-knit atoms, whereas blood, veins, organs and nerves are constituted by finer and smoother atoms, which are therefore bound together in a looser way. In all parts, however, pores are to be found between one set of atoms and the next (3.255, 702, 707). According to Bailey, it is through these passages that the atoms of the soul penetrate “into every part, yet constantly shifting with their own atomic motion and the changes of the surrounding structure caused by the movement of the body atoms”. 8 The idea of a close adherence of the soul to the body has two implications. First, the soul is born and develops together with the body (3.445–454). Secondly, by virtue of its close spatial interrelation with the body, it is capable of producing sense-bringing motions. For the soul derives most of its sensitive capacity from its particular disposition within the human organism and from the activity which it performs by virtue of this disposition. Briefly put, sense perception stems from the convergence and coexistence of soul and body. In one respect, the soul is more responsible for sense-perception since what accounts for this is the soul’s composition and movement; in another respect, however, the soul is not the only cause of sense-perception, since without the participation of the body, the living organism would not perceive anything at all. Sensation is not something that intrinsically belongs to either the soul or the body, but is rather the result of their union (3.892–896). Sense-perception, then, comes about through direct interaction with elements from the environment or through changes undergone by the body (3.246–251, 566–572). This mechanism lies at the basis of almost all other psychic functions and constitutes a prerequisite for exercising them. For the perceptual, intellectual, affective and emotional life of a living being greatly depends on the reception and assimilation of elements (such as smells, sounds, images) from the environment and on their interaction with the soul-body complex.  8 Bailey 1929, 397.

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As we shall see, a similar mechanism also lies at the basis of dreaming, which nonetheless presents certain anomalies. Before we discuss dreams, however, it is necessary to address briefly one last question, namely what justifies the distinction between anima and animus, given their absolute structural identity. This distinction is crucial in order to explain dreaming. Lucretius presents the internal structure of the soul in functional and spatial terms: Next, I say that mind and spirit (animum atque animam) are held in conjunction together and compound one nature in common (unam natura), but that the head so to speak, and lord over the whole body is the understanding (consilium) which we call mind and intelligence (animum mentemque). And this has its abiding-place in the middle region of the breast (media regione in pectoris). For in this place throbs terror and fear (pavor ac metus), hereabouts is melting joy (laetitiae mulcent): here therefore is the intelligence and the mind. The rest of the spirit (cetera pars animae), dispersed (dissita) abroad through the whole body, obeys and is moved according to the will (numen) and working (momenque) of the intelligence. (DNR 3.136–144, tr. W.H.D. Rouse)

Lucretius, therefore, stresses the idea that animus and anima are conjoined (cf. 3.398–401, where the soul is described as the ‘companion’ of the animus) and constitute a single nature, that of the soul, distinct from the aggregate of the body (yet just as material). The animus or rational part of the soul, which Lucretius conceives of as ‘the understanding’ (consilium), in turn defined as mens, not only governs the body, but also operates at a higher level than the soul. The latter obeys the animus/mens and moves in accordance to its order. Moreover, the animus resides in the thorax, at the center of the chest, and hence in the heart, where anxiety fear and joy come from, whereas the anima is dispersed throughout the rest of the body, since it is responsible for sense-perception. The bipartition outlined by Lucretius must therefore be understood in functional spatial terms rather than ontological ones. In other words, by residing in a specific part of the body and having a certain arrangement, the animus, which has the same composition as the rest of the soul, exercises specific functions that the anima, distributed as it is throughout the organism and conditioned by its movements, cannot exercise. 9 To sum up, then, the soul, comprising spherical, smooth and round atoms – which make it a mobile and reactive body similar to a liquid or even a gas – is  9 On this see See Bailey 1929, 402–403, Diano 1974, 145, and Masi/Verde, 243–246. For a more extensive and detailed discussion of the problem of the distinction between anima and animus, see Verde 2018.

  Francesca Masi homogeneously suffused throughout the body, which is to say through the empty pores and passages of the body, which is constituted of more or less compact parts. The soul is therefore perfectly enclosed and protected by the rest of the organism, and together with it forms a unitary functioning system. Depending on the specific conditions in which it finds itself, the soul exercises different functions and distinguishes itself into anima and animus or mens: the soul, which is suffused throughout the rest of the body, exercises a sensitive and kinetic function, whereas the animus or mens, concentrated in the breast, exercises a noetic, dianoetic and even emotive function. In sleep, the usual interaction between soul and body no longer applies; consequently, the activity of the soul is partly altered. In the next section I will examine the structural and functional changes that affect the soul-body complex in this state and what causes them.

 The Soul and the Body during Sleep In Book 4 of the DRN, Lucretius provides a detailed description of the particular physical process that affects the soul-body complex during sleep. His analysis is structured in two parts. In the first part, the poet examines the changed condition of the soul within the body during sleep and the consequent suspension of its ordinary sensory activity, which experiences a sudden limitation, albeit not an irreversible interruption such as that which occurs at death. In the second part of his exposition, the poet explains the causes for this alteration. Lucretius argues that in sleep the soul loses the unity that usually characterises it in its wakeful state, becoming divided and almost torn. Part of the soul leaves the body and part of it withdraws into its innermost depths, in such a way that what remains of the soul becomes even more thinned out and dispersed throughout the rest of the organism: “In the first place sleep comes on when the power of spirit is drawn apart through the body, when the part being cast forth has gone away, and the part more crowded together has retreated into the depths” (4.916–918). Lucretius is also quite explicit in attributing this twofold process of dispersion and withdrawal to the influence of an external agent upon the soul: the soul is pushed (eiecta) and squashed (contrusa). Before considering what this agent might be, it is important to note that the state of the soul affects that of the body and hence the overall psychic functionality of the organism: “for only then the limbs loosen and become flaccid. For there is no doubt that this feeling in us comes about by action of the soul, and when sleep hinders the feeling so that there is none, then we must suppose that the soul has been disordered and cast forth without”

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(4.919–922). Without the soul to fill the spaces left empty by the structures that make up the body, the latter’s constitution too is altered. The relaxation of the limbs may be conceived as a sliding of the atoms that constitute it into those gaps left by the atoms that make up the soul. This loosening of the various body parts helps explain the phenomenon of dreaming. For the moment, however, I wish to bring into focus the direct consequences of this new interaction between soul and body. The fact that in sleep the sensitive capacity of the organism temporarily ceases to operate is due to the turbulence that affects the soul. As already noted, sense-perception results from the motions that the atoms of the soul perform on account of their interaction with appropriate external elements, but also of their particular arrangement within specific bodily structures, namely the organs: the atoms are forced to move about by virtue of their being arranged in a particular way. Once the setting has radically changed, the soul is no longer capable of performing the same activity, and without its contribution the organs are incapable of perceiving anything. Furthermore, owing to the withdrawal and increased rarefaction of the soul within the body, the former can no longer convey a kinetic impulse to the latter, which loses its support and firmness, growing heavier and weaker: Next, part of the mind comes to be cast forth, and a part recedes within and is hidden; a part again, being drawn abroad through the frame, cannot remain in conjunction or perform a combined motion; for nature shuts off the communications and paths; therefore sensation buries itself deep when the motions are changed. And since there is nothing as it were to prop up the limbs, the body becomes weak and all the members are languid, arms and eyelids fall, the hams often at the moment of lying down, give way beneath you and lose their strength. (DRN 4.944–953, tr. W.H.D. Rouse)

However, this condition of inertia is temporary and reversible: it should not be confused with the complete cessation of all psychic functions brought about by death. Lucretius confirms that, in sleep, not all the soul is expelled from the body, “for then the body would lie pervaded with the everlasting cold of death” (4.923– 924). He notes that part of the soul remains hidden and active in the depths, “like fire covered in a heap of ashes” (926), so that sensation can be rekindled like “a flame from the hidden fire” (928). Moreover, Lucretius informs us that in sleep the animus remains active by virtue of its concentration in the breast, which evidently prevents it from withdrawing even more into the depths or indeed of flowing out from the thorax. This already emerges in the discussion in Book 3, where Lucretius argues in favour of a mereological view of the soul. To prove that the mind is clearly a distinct part of the organism, the poet points to the fact that it

  Francesca Masi continues to be agitated and to experience emotions even in sleep: “when the frame is given over to soft sleep, and the body lies spread out, heavy and without sensation, there is yet something in us which at that time is agitated in many ways, and admits into itself all the motions of joy and cares of the heart which have no meaning” (3.112–116). The same idea, as will be explained in greater detail later on, is more explicitly confirmed in the discussion on dreaming, where Lucretius states that “the mind’s intelligence is awake, when sleep has relaxed the limbs” (3.757–758). Later on in the poem, the author more clearly explains that the overall functionality of the soul during sleep and the subsistence of part of the soul within the rest of the body lie at the basis of dreaming, of its emotional component, and of the involuntary motions of the sleeping body. Before turning to examine these aspects, in order to complete our analysis of dreaming, it is worth at least briefly considering the causes of the structural and functional alterations of the soul-body complex. Lucretius invokes two causes: air and food. The whip-like blows that air delivers to the body both from the outside and, through breathing, from within, disrupt the arrangement and motions of the atoms that make up the body and the soul: it is necessary that since the body is touched by the breezes of the neighbouring air, the outer part of the body must be thumped and buffeted by the frequent blows of the air; and that is why nearly all things are protected by skins, or even shells, or a callosity or bark. This same air beats the inner part also when we breathe: as it is drawn in and blow back. Therefore, since the body is beaten on both parts, and also blows coming in through the tiny passages penetrate to the primary particles and elements of our bodies, by degrees there comes about as it were a collapse all through the limbs. For the positions of the firstbeginnings of both body and mind are disordered. (DRN 4.932–944, tr. W.H.D. Rouse)

Food too will produce shifts and disruptions similar to those caused by air – indeed, even more numerous and intense ones: Again, sleep follows after food, because food has exactly the same effect as the air, while it is being distributed abroad into the veins. And much the heaviest sleep is that which you take when replete or weary, because then the greatest number of elements are disordered, being dulled by long effort. (DRN 4.954–958, tr. W.H.D. Rouse)

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Having outlined the condition in which soul and body find themselves during sleep, 10 it is now a matter of understanding whether and in what way, despite these radical alterations, the interaction between the two may account for dreaming in a way that, on the one hand, is consistent with the psychology outlined in Book 3 and, on the other, safeguards the epistemological principles extensively discussed in Book 4.

 Dreams as the Outcome of the Interaction between Body and Soul Lucretius devotes many lines to an analysis of dreaming. This is a noteworthy topic for a number of reasons. In sleep, the subject may: visualise the image of an object or of a state of affairs that he has already experienced, but which is either no longer present (as in the case of a deceased person, or of a war, a trial, a theatrical play, or a sexual intercourse) or totally removed from perception (as in the case of a god); distort objects of experience (e.g. he may dream of a person he knows, but as having a different eye colour); believe that the content of his dreams does not merely have a counterpart in reality, but actually coincides with the object or state of affairs in question (e.g. he may think that the deceased person in his dream is truly interacting with him); rouse passions akin to those caused by the actual experience of the particular object or state in question (e.g. the sleeper might be moved by the beloved one he is dreaming of); produce bodily movements of this or that magnitude during rest. Dreaming, therefore, insofar as it entails a weakening of the usual correlation between image and object, risks disproving the thesis of the veracity of all mental representations and raises a serious difficulty for Epicurean epistemology. By allowing one to interact with entities that escape perception, it can nourish false beliefs, such as those connected to the fear of death, and hence undermine the whole framework of Epicurean psychology. Finally, by causing strong perturbations, it may interfere with the pursuit of tranquillity and constitute a significant ethical obstacle. Aware of the potential unwelcome implications of dreaming at the ethical, psychological and epistemological level, Lucretius sets out to develop a detailed physiology of dreaming capable, on the one hand, of reasserting the coherence  10 The process of sleeping is also explained – albeit in terms that are not entirely clear – in a scholium to Epic., Ep. Hrdt. § 66, on which see Lapini 2015, 93 and Masi 2017, 67–69. On this see also Schrijvers 1976, Gigandet 2015.

  Francesca Masi and efficacy of his soul-body model and, on the other hand, of fully accounting for the complexity of the phenomenon. Here I will endeavour to illustrate how the particular relation established between body and soul in sleep explains three fundamental aspects of this experience: the formation of dream representations; the deceptiveness of dreams; and the emotional and practical consequences of dreams for the dreaming subject. First of all, the interaction between body and soul that comes into play during sleep is crucial in order to explain the mode of reception of the image that stands at the basis of the formation of dream representations. It is important to bear in mind here that Lucretius has an exogenous, visual and physical conception of dreams. Like other forms of imagination, dreaming is shaped by the impact upon our mind of one or more simulacra stemming from external objects (4.30–41). Moreover, according to Lucretius the simulacrum, which constitutes the external film of the object from which it originates, has a very thin texture, comparable to that of the soul (Verde 2018): hollow and about as thick as an atom, it is capable of reproducing the morphological and structural – yet not psychic – characteristics of the object it originates from (on the Epicurean notion of simulacra, see Leone 2012, 78–80 and 2015, 40ff). The simulacra which engender mental representations are, generally speaking, simulacra that travel through the air and have different origins: some come from objects perceivable in the daytime; others are simulacra that have continued to travel through the air even in the absence of the objects they stem from; others still derive from the combination of several simulacra of different origin that, like spider webs, mix in the air and give rise to images of non-existent objects. The simulacra that flow into the mind are finer than those that strike the eyes. Lucretius repeatedly stresses this feature, which distinguishes the simulacra responsible for mental vision from those responsible for eyesight. In one of these passages he also explains the precise reason for this greater fineness: “in truth these are much more thin in texture than those which take the eyes and assail the vision, since these penetrate through the interstices of the body and awake the thin substance of the mind and assail the sense” (4.728–731). Lucretius associates the greater fineness of images stimulating the mind compared to those entering the eyes with the journey the former must make through the body. This observation is particularly relevant because it helps clarify in what way the specific relation established between body and soul in sleep can influence the formation of dream representations. It seems as though the peculiar place of the mind within the body plays a crucial role in this process. As already noted, the mind is enclosed within the thorax and situated in the heart, far away from the more peripheral areas of the body where the sense-organs are

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located. This suggests that, in order to reach the mind, the simulacra must travel a tortuous route through corporeal structures with different degrees of compactness; and while these structures have pores and gaps that allow the passage of the simulacra, they may offer some resistance, causing the simulacra to deteriorate. This deterioration, in turn, might take the form of a thinning down of the simulacra that allows them to retain a degree of structural, if not morphological, similarity with the object from which they originate. Simulacra can travel through more or less dense and compact structures, altering their contours yet still transmitting the permanent and typological characteristics of their objects. 11 The capacity for inner contraction of the simulacra enables them to grow smaller and finer, so as to pass through more compact structures. Instead, the inner cohesion of every simulacrum allows the atoms that make up its texture to preserve or reestablish – by virtue of their movements and arrangement – their original position within the compound even after collision with an external body. 12 Therefore, what seems to lie at the basis of the refinement of the images that produce mental representations is this process whereby simulacra make their way through the various structures that make up the body. During sleep, by virtue of the particular psychophysical conditions at work, the mechanism in question might even be more pronounced, since – as already noted – the soul withdraws and the space it formally occupied is filled by the rest of the organism, as the body relaxes. Hence, whereas during our waking hours an image that strikes our mind might in theory pass through the passages left open by the soul – which, as we have seen, has a looser consistency compared to the body – during dreaming such access routes are blocked by our limbs. This might explain why dreams, while still representing external reality, tend to blur its contours, altering reality without completely distorting it. 13 Lucretius’ explanation for the finer texture of mental images can also fruitfully be connected to his illustration of the actual process of dreaming. The explanation provided here revolves around two points. Lucretius focuses first on the formation of dream representations and then on the origin of the deceptiveness of dreams. In both cases, what once again plays a crucial role is the peculiar interaction that emerges between body and soul. Lucretius states:

 11 On the difference between morphological homogeneity and structural one of the simulacrum with respect to the external object, see Corti 2015. 12 Cf. Epic., Ep. Nat. II coll 102–106, Leone 2012, 443–453, 608–609. 13 For a different explanation of the finer structure of the simulacra that strike the mind see Avotins 1980, 441, Nemeth 2017, 29 Tsouna 2018, 236. For a deeper discussion of this point cf. Masi 2015, 109–113.

  Francesca Masi Since this is like that – what we see with the mind like what we see with the eye – it must come about in a like way. Now therefore, since I have shown that I perceive a lion, it may be, by means of images which in such case assail the eyes, we may be sure that the mind is moved in a like way, by means of the images of lions and of all else it sees, equally and no less than the eyes, except that it perceives what is more thin. Nor is there any other reason why the mind’s intelligence is awake, when sleep has relaxed the limbs, except that the same images assails our minds as when we wake, and to such a degree, that we seem surely to see him who has left his life, and of whom now death and dust are masters. This nature compels to happen, for the reason that all our senses are obstructed and quiet throughout the frame, and unable to refute the false by the true. Besides, in sleep memory lies inactive and is relaxed, and does not urge in contradiction that he has long since been in the power of death and destruction whom the mind believes itself to see alive. (DRN 4.750–767, tr. W.H.D. Rouse)

Lucretius’ explanation of the formation of dream representations may be understood in three different ways. According to the first interpretation, dream representations, like actual visions of things moving through the eyes, are caused by simulacra originating from the same objects that lie behind perception. These simulacra are in the air and flow directly into the mind at night, even if the objects they originate from are no longer present. According to the second interpretation, dream representations are caused exactly by the same simulacra that had produced visions in the waking hours; hence, they are delayed reflections of daytime perceptions. Finally, according to the third interpretation, dream representations result from the combination of the two previous mechanisms. This is further confirmed by another passage, in which Lucretius clearly argues that daytime perception paves the way for dreaming: And whatever be the pursuit to which one clings with devotion, whatever the things on which we have been occupied much in the past, the mind being thus more intent upon the pursuit, it is generally the same things that we seem to encounter in dreams: pleaders to plead their cause and collate laws, generals to contend and engage battle, sailors to fight out their war already begun with the winds, I myself to ply my own task, always seeking the nature of things and, when found, setting it forth in our own mother tongue. Thus too all other pursuits and arts usually seem in sleep to hold fast men’s minds with their delusions. And whenever men have given constant attention to the games through many days on end, we usually see that, when they have now ceased to observe all this with their senses, yet certain passages are left open in the mind by which the images of these things can come in. For many days then these same things are moving before their eyes, so that even while awake they seem to perceive dancers swaying their supple limbs, to hear in their ears the lyre’s rippling tune and its speaking strings, to behold the same assemblage and with it the diverse glories of the stage in their brightness. (DRN 4.962–983, tr. W.H.D. Rouse)

Lucretius and the mind-body relation: the case of dreams  

The passage of simulacra stemming from perceptible objects that cause vision and thought paves the way for the subsequent passage of simulacra stemming from the same object, even if this is no longer present. Lucretius, moreover, suggests that prolonged exposure to a given daytime experience will cause an individual to retain in his sense organs the elements he has perceived in his waking hours (images and dreams), which at a subsequent stage will enter deeper into him. Dream representations, therefore, may originate from simulacra that travel through the air and flow into the mind at night by making their way through the passageways left open by perception; alternatively, they may originate from a perceptual residue that is transmitted at a stage subsequent to the sensory experience itself, almost through a mechanism of peristalsis. 14 Lucretius, furthermore, is quite clear as to the nature and origin of the deceptiveness of dreams. The error lies in believing that the image of the object dreamed of is the object itself: for instance, that the person one has dreamed of coincides with the actual person. This belief one harbours when dreaming cannot be disproved and may give rise to considerable emotional turmoil. Owing to his psychophysical condition, the dreamer lacks the criterion of sense-perception which would allow him to disprove his erroneous belief, and he does not remember things: in other words, he is incapable of tracing his representation back to the external object and of judging whether it is still present or not. 15 What remains to be clarified, therefore, is how Lucretius is able to draw upon the soul-body model just outlined, i.e. in the altered version that applies to sleep, in order to account for the passions that dream representations can stir in the dreamer. The DRN offers some compelling examples to illustrate how dreams can produce affections, emotions and even bodily movements in the sleeping subject: in sleep, kings continue to wage battles, prisoners scream in fear of being slaughtered, and many people struggle and shriek as though they were really being devoured by a panther; others admit their most secret guilt, while others still perceive themselves falling off a cliff and end up on the floor, in a state of fright; “those into the choppy tides of whose youth the seed is first penetrating, when time has duly produced it in the frame, meet with images from some chance body that fly abroad, bringing news of a lovely face and beautiful bloom, which excites and irritates the parts swelling with seed, so that, as if the whole business had been done, they often pour forth a great flood and stain their clothes” (4.1030–

 14 On the idea of a perceptual residue that is transmitted to the mind see De Witt 1939, Bailey 1926, 196–197, Lapini 2015, Masi 2015, 129–130, Verde 2016. 15 On this see also Tsouna 2018, 239ff.

  Francesca Masi 1036). These last verses, in particular, help us to grasp the physiological mechanism at the basis of oneiric perturbations and to explain why dreaming remains an intimate and unique experience, even though it has an exogenous and objective dimension. Lucretius explicitly refers to the action exerted by simulacra as they pass into the body. The flowing images, which have a corporeal nature and can exercise an actual causal power via contact, 16 reactivate in the dreamer pleasant or painful affections connected to the perception of the objects from which they stem. These bodily affections of pleasurable or painful character are then combined with the beliefs – often nourished by prejudices and superstitions – which emerge in the mind that has remained awake concerning the nature of the objects at the basis of the dream experience and of the passions aroused by it. This, in turn, may trigger violent emotions such as joy, desire, anger and fear that leave the dreamer, who lacks any criterion for evaluation, in a state of profound turmoil. This passion-induced disruption may also translate into an involuntary movement of the whole body. In order to better explain how this occurs, it is worth briefly recalling how, according to Lucretius, the mind gives rise to this movement. During waking hours, the process generally unfolds as follows: through the influx of simulacra, a representation of the act about to be performed is formed in the mind which triggers the desire to perform it. At this stage, the mind’s impulse to move is transmitted to the soul which, being suffused throughout the organism and closely connected to it, sets the whole body in motion (cf. 4.877–891). This process is partly reproduced in sleep. For while in this state the soul has withdrawn and is incapable of exercising its kinetic function, which is to say of transmitting motion from the mind to the body, the mind remains active and is therefore still capable of communicating with the whole organism in some way and of transmitting the impulse. This can clearly be inferred from those verses in which Lucretius describes children who, “when held fast in sleep, if they think they are lifting up their garments beside a basin or low pot, pour forth all the filtered liquid of their body, drenching the Babylonian coverlets in all their magnificence” (4.1026–1029). On the one hand, therefore, we have the simulacra that lie at the origin of dream representations: these flow through the body and, by virtue of their material nature, interact with it, stimulating the reproduction of affections and movements connected to sensible experience. On the other hand, we have the mind, which even during sleep is capable of engendering extensive and substantial movements. In this case too, then, in order to illustrate the effects  16 On this point, see Epic., Letter to His Mother = 72 Arr.; Diog. Oen. Fr. 10 Smith and, for a more in-depth discussion, Gourinat 2017, 172–174; Güremen 2017, 194; Masi 2018, 274–275.

Lucretius and the mind-body relation: the case of dreams  

of dreaming on the sleeping subject, Lucretius – consistently with his doctrine – invokes the interplay between the psychophysical condition that emerges during sleep and the action of simulacra reproducing the characteristics of external objects.

 Conclusions In the present article it has been shown that: a) even though the condition of the soul within the body undergoes profound changes in sleep, dreams are still the outcome of the atomic constitution and the interdependence of these two elements; b) the nature of their interaction with the environment is enough to justify the veracity of dream representations, that is to say, to ensure a correlation between the mental image of the dreamed object and the object itself; c) this explains the origin of any deception in sleep, along with the pathological and emotional effects and involuntary movements of the body that sleep may give rise to. Through his detailed analysis and extensive examples, Lucretius is able to show that dreaming does not constitute a mysterious and worrying phenomenon capable of compromising and undermining the whole psychological framework of Epicurean epistemology and ethics; rather, dreaming is one of those particularly complex psychic experiences of man which the atomistic soul-body model can coherently explain, thereby confirming its own scientific adequacy.

References Avotins, Ivars (1980), “Alexander of Aphrodisias on Vision in the Atomists”, in: Classical Quarterly 33, 429–454. Bailey, Cyril (1926), Epicurus. The Extant Remains, edited by C. Bailey, Oxford, Oxford Clarendon Press [rist. Hildesheim-New York, Olms 1970]. Corti, Aurora (2015), “Ὁμοιοσχήμων e ὁμοιόμορφος. Alcune riflessioni sulle proprietà degli εἴδωλα”, in: Masi/Maso 2015, 83–105. DeWitt, Norman W. (1939), “Epicurus, Πϵρὶ Φαντασίας”, in Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, Vol. 70, 414–427. Diano, Carlo (1974), “La psicologia d’Epicuro e la teoria delle passioni”, in: Id., Scritti epicurei, Firenze, Olschki, 129–280.

  Francesca Masi Everson, Stephen (1999), “Epicurean Psychology”, in: K. Algra/J. Barnes/J. Mansfeld/ M. Schofield (eds.), The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy, Cambridge, 542–559. Gigandet, Alain (2015), “L’âme défaite: la théorie du sommeil dans l’Épicurisme”, in: V. Leroux/ N. Palmieri/C. Pigne (eds.), Le sommeil, Approches philosophiques et médicales de l’Antiquité à la Renaissance, Paris, 85–96. Godwin, John (1986), Lucretius, De Rerum Natura IV (Edited with Translation and Commentary), Warminster. Gourinat, Jean-Baptiste (2017), “La critique des stoïciens dans l’inscription d’Œnoanda”, in: Hammerstaedt/Morel/Güremen 2017, 165–185. Hammerstaedt, J./Morel, P.M./Güremen, R. (2017), Diogenes of Oinoanda: Epicureanism and Philosophical Debates, Leuven. Kerferd, George B. (1971), “Epicurus’ Doctrine of the Soul”, in: Phronesis 16, 80–96. Lapini, Walter (2015), L’Epistola a Erodoto e il Bios di Epicuro in Diogene Laerzio. Note testuali, esegetiche e metodologiche, Rome. Lathière, Anne-Marie (1972), “Lucrèce Traducteur d’Épicure: Animus, Anima dans les Livres 3 et 4 du De rerum natura”, in: Phoenix 26, 123–133. Leone, Giuliana (2012), Epicuro, ’Sulla natura’: libro II, Naples. Masi, Francesca (2015), “Dagli occhi alla mente: il cammino tortuoso degli εἴδωλα”, in: Masi/ Maso 2015, 107–134. Ead. (2017), “Sognare oggetti nascosti. La teoria onirica epicurea”, in: F. Alesse/A. Fermani/ S. Maso, Studi su Ellenismo e Filosofia Romana, Rome. Ead. (2018), “Passione e immaginazione in Lucrezio: il caso dell’inganno onirico”, in: Elenchos 39 (2), 257–279. Masi, Francesca Guadalupe/Maso, Stefano (eds.) (2015), Epicurus on Eidola, Peri Physeos, Book II. Updates, Proposals, and Discussions, Amsterdam. Masi, Francesca Guadalupe/Verde, Francesco (2018), “Mind in an Atomistic World”, in: J. Sisko (ed.), Philosophy of Mind in Antiquity, The History of the philosophy of mind, Vol. 1, New York, 236–257. Németh, Attila (2017), Epicurus on the Self, New York. Repici, Luciana (2008), Il pensiero dell’anima in Epicuro e Lucrezio, in: F. Alesse/F. Aronadio/ M.C. Dalfino/L. Simeoni/E. Spinelli (eds.), Anthropine Sophia: Studi di filologia e storiografia filosofica in memoria di Gabriele Giannantoni, Naples, 379–406. Schrijvers, Petrus Hermanus (1976), “La pensée d’Épicure et Lucrèce sur le sommeil (DRN, IV, 907–961, Scolie ad Épicure, Ep. ad Her. 66): un chapitre des Parva Naturalia épicuriens”, in: J. Bollack/A. Laks (eds.), Études sur l’Épicurisme antique, Cahiers de Philologie 1, 229– 59. Smith, Martin Ferguson (1993), Diogenes of Oinoanda. The Epicurean Inscription, Naples. Verde, Francesco (2015), “Monismo psicologico e dottrina dell’anima in Epicuro e Lucrezio”, in: E. Canone, (ed.), Anima-corpo alla luce dell’etica. Antichi e Moderni, Florence, 49–64. Tsouna, Voula (2018), “Epicurean Dreams”, in: Elenchos 39 (2), 231–256.

Richard Stoneman

Can You Believe your Eyes? Scepticism and the Evidence of the Senses in Lucretius, De Rerum Natura 4. 237–521 Abstract: This paper proposes (a) that the debate between Epicureans and Sceptics over the validity of sense-perception goes back to the time of Epicurus and his immediate followers (e.g. Colotes), and (b) that the Epicurean doctrine is formulated in order to avoid dependence on inference, which Sceptics argued could never be relied on; but Epicurus found himself unable to do without inference because his doctrine required assent to facts (e.g. the existence of atoms) presented as dogma. The argument is developed in part by drawing parallels with the Buddhist and Lokayata schools of Indian philosophy, which may have influenced the earliest generation of Sceptics: Lokayata thinkers rejected all forms of inference except the a priori. The paper considers several problems with the Epicurean theory of direct perception, which have been posed by both ancient and modern thinkers. These include dreams and hallucinations, ‘perceptions’ of nonexistent beings such as Centaurs, and illusions. The conundrum about the square tower that appears round, and the startling Epicurean assertion about the size of the sun, are also considered. Keywords: Lucretius, Scepticism, Epicurus, Indian philosophy, perception

Part 1. Forms of Scepticism Lucretius is vehement in his attack on scepticism in book 4 of the De Rerum Natura. He begins his discussion at 468 as follows: Anyone who thinks that nothing is known is also incapable of knowing whether his ignorance is known either, since he admits to knowing nothing. I shall therefore refrain from pleading my case against this man, who has taken up a position with his own footprints on his head. Yet were I to grant that he does know his own ignorance, I would still press

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110673487-005

  Richard Stoneman this very question: how does he know what knowledge and ignorance are, since he has never seen anything true in the material world? 1

Lucretius goes on to argue vigorously for this primacy of the senses in forming our conceptions, and to discuss some problems arising from the Epicurean doctrine that all sense-perceptions are true. 2 As Cicero succinctly expressed the Epicurean position, si ullum sensus visum falsum est, nihil potest percipi. 3 Why does Lucretius take such a hard line with the sceptical position? And what exactly is the position that Lucretius rejects? Many scholars have seen these lines as an attack on the fully-fledged scepticism of Lucretius’ own day, 4 others as an attack devised by Epicurus on his own contemporaries. For example, in his 1648 edition of the DRN, Giovanni Nardi asserted that Lucretius is here attacking Metrodorus, the fourth century Democritean and teacher of Pyrrho: Cachinantem Metrodorum Chium pertaesus Lucretius, irruit in hominem, primoque impetus prosternit illius Sophisma, quo evincere studebat, nil sciri posse: “disgusted by the babbling of Metrodorus of Chios, Lucretius lays into the man, and at the first onslaught lays low his sophism, in which he attempted to maintain that nothing can be known”. 5 David Sedley has argued that the different levels of scepticism, which he calls reflexive and non-reflexive, had not reached clear definition at the time of Epicurus and Metrodorus: he writes “this self-refutation argument is most likely to be one which was constructed before the reflexive and non-reflexive versions of scepticism had been explicitly formulated and differentiated”. 6 Marcello Gigante, on the other hand, finds much evidence of the developed sceptic position already in the time of Epicurus, for example in Colotes’ assertion that epoche, suspension of judgment, is a trap for the young, and sees this as a period in which

 1 Lucr., 4. 469–475, tr. John Godwin. The absolutism of the sceptical demand “is a priori and hence trivial… there is no absolute science that offers an absolute view of the world”: Matilal 2016, 39. 2 The process envisaged is that repeated sense-impressions form a prolepsis, in Latin notitia. This explained e.g. by Gale ad Lucr., 5. 1169–71. 3 Cic., Luc. 161; see Maso 2015, 113. 4 Schrijvers 1992=1999 and cf. Carlos Levy 1997. 5 Nardi 1648, 295. Thomas Creech, similarly, in 1700, 44–46, writes “he that would establish a criterion, is certain to have the Sceptick for his enemy…. Contradictory animals, who have no other reason to deny the clear light of science, but because some men’s eyes are too weak to look steddy upon it”. 6 Sedley 1998, 86.

Can You Believe your Eyes?  

the two schools were energetically disentangling themselves from one another. 7 By the time of Philodemus it is clear that the Pyrrhonist sceptical argument was fully developed – they shed doubt on the existence of a thing by arguing that it cannot even be conceived of 8 – but it is not clear whether Lucretius is taking on the criticism in its contemporary form. In what follows I would like, while accepting Sedley’s position that Lucretius represents unchanged a form of the debate as it was carried on in the fourth century BC, to look a little more closely at the historical setting in which both Epicureanism and Scepticism emerged, and to suggest that what Sedley regards as the later refinements of scepticism were already emerging at this time. Sedley’s view is that Epicurus, as it were, forced the sceptics into the open (87); surely we can observe this process in the arguments Lucretius presents? If this is so, we need not suppose that Lucretius had read Aenesidemus, or even was aware of the contemporary debate between Epicureans and Academic Sceptics. 9 Let us begin by defining the two forms of scepticism involved. It will be as well to get clear what is meant by scepticism in the form in which Lucretius attacks it. There is a kind of soft scepticism (Sedley’s non-reflexive scepticism) which frees the mind from rules and dogmas and enables speculative thought. This is the scepticism characteristic of the Renaissance: of Montaigne 10 and of Hume, and perhaps also of Democritus. 11 Scepticism thus comes close to experimental science, to empiricism, and it is notable to what extent later Hellenistic Scepticism developed in interaction with empirical medicine. Sextus Empiricus was a physician, hence his name. Hard scepticism, or Pyrrhonism (Sedley’s reflexive scepticism), is quite different, a radical rejection of the possibility of knowledge. It takes the form of denying that we can know anything, even whether or not we know or do not know anything. Many philosophers have had no time for it. Wittgenstein wrote pithily:

 7 Gigante 1981, 66. Cf. ibid 32 on the ‘manifesto’ in KD 24. And 170: “è evidente che la polemica attestataci da Demetrio era già viva nel III sec.” Cf. also Fowler 1984, 255, who sees the schools ‘crystallizing’ around 270 BC. 8 Asmis 1984, 55, drawing on Philodemus de signis cols. 5.1–4 and 18. 3–10 De Lacy. 9 Such is proposed by Schrijvers 1992/1999, and Levy 1997, 122. 10 Montaigne, no doubt following Lucretius’ lead, explicitly rejects extreme Pyrrhonism: “When they pronounce, ‘I know not, or doubt’, they say that this proposition transports itself together with the rest, even as the rhubarb doth”; Apology of Raymond Sebond 159; but he seems to backtrack later, 185. 11 Gigante 1981, 51. Grayling 2016, 229, characterises Descartes as a ‘methodological’ not a ‘problematic’ sceptic.

  Richard Stoneman “Scepticism is not irrefutable but obviously nonsensical”. 12 Hume, more oratorically, wrote “It is certain, that no man ever met with any such absurd creature, or conversed with a man, who had no opinion concerning any subject, either of action or speculation”. 13 This latter does however appear to be the form of scepticism advocated and practised by Pyrrho (ca 365–275), the founding father of Scepticism, who, according to Diogenes Laertius, had often to be prevented by his friends from wandering over precipices, and who, when on board a storm-tossed ship, pointed to a pig that was also on board, paying no attention to the commotion around it. 14 The recommendation of a porcine attitude puts one in mind of the Epicurean devotion to the pig, and some sources indicate that Epicurus began by modelling his lifestyle on that of Pyrrho. 15 These were not the only Hellenistic philosophers to take an animal as a model, presumably at least in part because of its inability to put two and two together. (The Cynics are another such group). Giacomo Leopardi however mordantly observed that “one major difference between tuis comparison and our case is that the animal in question was not aware of its danger in the slightest, whereas the courageous man has to understand it fully and esteem it accurately but without caring about it any more than that animal did”. 16 Both Epicureans and Pyrrhonians professed a similar moral aim, namely tranquillity or ataraxia, to be attained by what Martha Nussbaum (1994) has called the ‘therapy of desire’. 17 Like Epicurus, Pyrrho was virtually canonized by his followers: Timon said

 12 Tractatus 6.51. But he continues “…when it tries to raise doubts where no questions can be asked”, which may suggest that he is actually referring to soft scepticism and to what is beyond speech. Cf. Montaigne, op. cit. 153: “if they prove that nothing is known, it is very well; if they cannot prove it, it is good alike”. 13 ECHU XII.1, 2., and Burnyeat’s discussion in Schofield Burnyreat and Barnes 1980. See also Gokhale 38 on Lokāyata scepticism and Nāgārjuna’s response. 14 Diog. Laert., 9.68. 15 Gigante 1981, 31, Sedley in Schofield, Burnyeat and Barnes (eds.) 1980, 8. Scepticism is perhaps a stage the sage goes through on the way to certainty: Plutarch (adv. Colotem 1117f) asserts that Epicurus said “none but the sage is unalterably convinced of anything”. Plutarch, an Academic Sceptic, sneers that Colotes behaves ‘as if’ he knew wolves and floods to be dangerous, even though he is not a sage. Plutarch also makes clear that absolute suspension of judgment was professed also by Cyrenaics and the Academy of Arcesilaus, in Colotes’ own generation. Cicero saw Epicurus’ position as a reaction to Sceptics: DND 1.70. 16 Leopardi, Zibaldone 3534–5. 17 Gigante 1982, 13 notes that Hegel observed this similarity of aim, and (20) finds it also in Farrington: “ma non fu solo lotta”. Garfield 1990 emphasises the therapeutic aspect of scepticism.

Can You Believe your Eyes?  

This, O Pyrrho, my heart yearns to hear, how on earth you, though a man, act most easily and calmly, never taking thought and consistently undisturbed, heedless of the whirling motions and sweet voice of wisdom? 18

Epicurus’ aim of tranquillity, ataraxia, is easily exemplified. 19 Anaxarchus, too, was known as ὁ εὐδαιμονικός, a man who had mastered the art of happiness. 20 It is important that, for Epicurus, the moral aim is primary; though the doctrine of atomism is not to be controverted, he is not interested in scientific explanations for everything in the universe, as long as aim of ataraxia is achieved: it is enough to know that an explanation is available if required. “There is nothing in the knowledge of risings and settings and solstices and eclipses and all kindred subjects that contributes to our happiness… those who are well-informed about such matters … feel quite as much fear as those who have no such special information”. 21 In this, Epicurus’ attitude is intriguingly similar to that of the Buddha, for whom scientific explanations were ultimately less important than the abolition of desire and fear. As the Buddha puts it, “among humans who are restless do we dwell without restlessness”. 22 For the Buddha, scepticism was a route to liberation from fear and desire, through the recognition of ‘emptiness’ and the doctrine of ‘no self’. Sutta 63 of the Majjhima-Nikāya is a long interchange with a disciple, Malunkyaputta, refusing to embark on a metaphysical discourse, on the grounds that ‘that person would die, Malunkyaputta, before the Tathāgāta had ever explained this to him’. 23 Later Buddhist philosophers, notably Nāgārjuna, press scepticism to an absolute position, contending that no statement at all has svabhāva (‘self-being’). 24

 18 Diog. Laert., 9.65, Sext. Emp., M 11.1: “in this way each of us will live, as Timon says, with the greatest ease and tranquillity, always heedless and uniformly unmoved”, tr. Long and Sedley 1987, 19; Sext. Emp., M 11. 112–114, “all unhappiness comes about because of some disturbance”, tr. R. Bett 1997; see Annas and Barnes 166–71; also Annas and Barnes 17–18: “scepticism, in Sextus’ view, leads to a tranquillity of spirit, and in such tranquillity human happiness is to be found”. 19 Epic., Ep. Hrdt 82, Pyth. 85, cf. KD., 5; 21; Diog. Oen., F. 2; cf. M.F. Smith 1992, 431. 20 Diog. Laert., 9.60. 21 Letter to Herodotus, Diog. Laert., 10. 79. 22 Dhammapada 15.199. 23 Cited from Burtt 1955, 33–35. 24 Matilal 1986, 48–9 contends that Nāgārjuna’s denial of svabhāva is radically incoherent, in similar terms to Lucretius’.

  Richard Stoneman Suspension of judgment leads to peace of mind. 25 While Buddha emphasises the problem of desire or craving – perhaps best conceived as thirst, which can scarcely be eliminated altogether while alive except by satisfying it simply – Lucretius and Epicurus are more focussed on fear, notably the fear of death. Why then should Epicurus, unlike the Buddha and Pyrrho, be so hostile to sceptical suspension of judgment? Both radical scepticism and ‘hedonism’ emerge from the same source, and are mutually supportive, in Buddha. Why not for Epicurus? I should offer some justification for bringing in the Indian parallel for the Hellenistic philosophers under discussion. Indeed, the philosophical parallels and the different solutions offered to similar problems are worth discussing in their own right; but there is a further reason for bringing the Indian philosophers into the account. It has often been argued, and I am persuaded by the arguments, that Pyrrho, who travelled with Alexander to India, and had the opportunity to spend some months in the company of Calanus, the naked philosopher who attached himself to Alexander’s court from the time of their meeting in spring 326 until his self-immolation in Persepolis in February 324, took an interest in Indian forms of argument, notably the tetralemma, and philosophical practice: he seems to have practised meditation, for example. 26 I find it hard to resist the idea that, during the long months voyaging down the Indus, from November 326 to spring 325, both Pyrrho and Anaxarchus profited from the presence at court of Calanus to discuss philosophy. We know that Anaxarchus sometimes spoke in Alexander’s presence about philosophical matters, since when he spoke of the doctrine of infinite worlds, the king expressed sorrow that he had not yet managed to conquer even one of them. 27 We do not know when this exchange took place, but the retreat from India might have been a good occasion for Alexander to make this melancholy remark. Whenever he made it, it indicates that Anaxarchus could be relied on to profess standard elements of Democritean atomism clearly and forcefully. Pyrrho was, according to Diogenes Laertius, a pupil of Metrodorus, and therefore steeped in the Democritean scepticism that, according to tradition, Metrodorus had already developed into the position that “we know nothing, nor do we even know just this, that we know nothing”. 28 Anaxarchus said the same: he  25 So also Gokhale 2015, 46. 26 Flintoff 1980, Kuzminski 2008, Beckwith 2015; against, Bett 2000. Judgment suspended: Nussbaum, 1994, Long and Sedley 1987, et al. 27 On the infinity of worlds, Lucr., 2. 1085–6, 5. 1344; cf. Gigante 1981, 61 n. 71. 28 Sext. Emp., M 7. 87–8 = Long and Sedley 1987, 1D, p. 14; Sedley in Schofield, Burnyeat and Barnes (eds) 1980, 10. According to Colotes, Democritus already professed the doctrine οὐ μᾶλλον τοῖον ἢ τοῖον: Gigante 1981, 68.

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“used to declare that he knew nothing, not even that he knew nothing”. 29 Anaxarchus’ scepticism appears in the same passage as taking the form of an assertion that everything that exists is comparable to stage-painting, and “like experiences that occur in sleep or insanity”: that is, apparently, that the world consists of appearances or illusions. 30 These positions can all be interestingly paralleled in Buddhist philosophy. Not only is the expressed aim that of ataraxia, closely comparable to the Buddhist goal of release from attachment and craving, but the arguments deployed resemble those put forward by the Buddha and later Buddhist philosophers. The main arguments for Buddhist influence on Pyrrho have been expounded most recently by Christopher Beckwith in his book, Greek Buddha (2015). First, Pyrrho is described as engaging in certain practices that look remarkably like meditation: he would withdraw from the world and live in solitude, he would mumble incomprehensibly to himself (mantras?), and would give long discourses whether or not he had an audience. Secondly, he is said to have employed the form of argument known as the tetralemma, which is highly characteristic of Buddhist philosophy: it takes the form “Everything is real and is not real, both real and not real, neither real nor not real.” 31 To quote the Buddha: “I do not say ‘it is this way’, nor ‘it is that way’, nor ‘it is otherwise’. I do not say ‘it is not so’ nor do I say ‘it is not not so’.” 32 The later expositor of Buddhist philosophy, Nāgārjuna (C2 CE), applied the argument to the Buddha himself. 33 “Having passed into Nirvana, the Victorious Conqueror is neither said to be existent, nor said to be non-existent, neither both nor neither are said”. 34 Finally, Pyrrho describes his philosophy as a “struggle against pragmata”, which Beckwith would interpret as a version of the Buddha’s rejection of the reality of things, dharmas. For our purposes the deployment of the tetralemma is the most important, since it is difficult not to interpret it as a statement of radical scepticism. I think it likely that Pyrrho was already learning to employ this form of argument in the

 29 Diog. Laert., 9.58. 30 Both Metrodorus and perhaps Anaxarchus are also insistent on the primacy of pleasure: Plut. Adv. Col. 1125B, thus combining Epicurean and Sceptic imperatives. 31 Mulamadhyakakārikā 18. 8. 32 Sāmaññaphala Sutta, 1.31. 33 Mūlamadhyamakakārikā 18.8.49; see Kuzminski 2008, 83. 34 Mūlamadhyakakārikā 25. 17. It is ubiquitous in his work: Garfield 1995, 249–51, 205, 280, 281, 324, 349, etc.

  Richard Stoneman last decades of the fourth century, through his debates with Calanus and Anaxarchus as well as his teacher Metrodorus. 35 There is thus some reason to suppose that Indian ideas crept into Hellenistic philosophy, and furthermore that the later development of Indian philosophy may have received some input from the Greeks. While there is no question of Lucretius or any of his contemporaries having any direct awareness of Indian philosophy, it may be that the Indian thinkers gave a kick-start to certain Greek ideas, and furthermore it may be useful to see how both traditions deal with similar problems. The form the debate takes between Epicureans and Sceptics suggests that Indian arguments established some of its terms.

Part 2. The Nature of the Controversy What is the argument between Epicurus and the early sceptics (Pyrrho) about? Epicurus is committed to belief in the reliability of the senses, 36 while Pyrrho regards all sense-data as profoundly unreliable. For Epicurus, as remarked above, the senses have to be reliable because they are our only source of data; without them, we should have access to nothing. 37 For Pyrrho, the senses cannot be relied on and should therefore be ignored, or at the most one should act ‘as if’ they were valid. 38 How do the Pyrrhonians come by the idea that the senses are unreliable?

 35 I thus completely disagree with R. Bett (2000, 176–8) who thinks it inconceivable that an idea as ‘abstruse’ as the tetralemma could have been conveyed from an Indian to a Greek in what he envisages as a single afternoon under the trees in Taxila. 36 The senses are the beginning and end of human knowledge: Lucr., 4.478–9, 482–3; cf. Montaigne, op. cit. 167. But later Montaigne rejects this position as inadequate because of the ‘round tower’ argument. Asmis 1984, 19–80 is an exhaustive discussion of this Epicurean principle. 37 KD 23, Long and Sedley 1987, 80. 38 The story about the precipices makes a good anecdote, but as Martha Nussbaum points out (292–3), it is perfectly possible to act without assent, to act ‘as if’ there were a precipice in front of you and change direction. Asmis 1984, 181–2 notes that Pyrrhonists accept ὑπομνηστικόν signs, signs based on previous similar experiences, for practical purposes. Any such radical scepticism demands a measure of ‘acting as if’. See e.g. Diog. Laert., 9. 106, Sext. Emp., PH 1.21. Cicero is happy to accept ‘the plausible’ as a criterion: Acad. 32, 104, 100, cf. Sext. Emp., M 7.175. A. Panaioti 2013, 224 explores the role of acting ‘as if’ in discussing the apparent incompatibility between the Buddha’s quietism and his compassion: “sick types are like deluded actors… healthy types go on acting without this delusion”. Plutarch explains this in adv. Col. 1122ef: the Sceptic can find the door because it looks like a door: that is, it is a ὑπομνηστικόν sign. Cf. Garfield 1900, 300, on ‘explanatorily useful regularities’.

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Their arguments were later developed into the ten ‘modes’ of Scepticism, interestingly analogous to Buddha’s ten ‘modes’ of perplexity. 39 Schrijvers finds the modes present in Lucretius in some detail, but it appears to me that the examples he gives are not there for any argumentative purpose; Lucretius has picked up examples that were ‘in the air’ in contemporary philosophical discussions and used them to add poetic colour to his verse. For example, the passage in 5.1087– 90 on the ‘speech’ of animals does not develop more than a passing point. An example discussed by Lucretius (4.354–9) is that of seeing in the distance a tower which appears to be round; but when one comes closer, the tower turns out to be square in cross-section. This example was evidently already used by Colotes, as was that of the stick that looks bent in water. 40 Lucretius (4.379ff.) insists that the eyes are not deceived in this: for it is their function to see the places where light and shadow are. For Lucretius the eyes are a kind of camera. (It is easy to see, however, that human seeing is different from that of a camera). 41 Compare Berkeley’s dictum, ‘the senses make no inferences’. 42 For the Pyrrhonian, both perceptions are relative to the place of the observer, and therefore (apparently) neither can be regarded as true. 43 So “we shall be forced to arrive at suspension of judgment by these modes too”. By implication, my understanding of what I see is an interpretation, an inference, and that inference is regarded as unjustifiable. The dispute seems parallel to that between Austin and Ayer, in which Ayer insists that the observers actually see different things, while Austin presents the common-sense view that two observers see the same thing in different ways. 44 This is the way in which such perceptions are treated by the materialist Lokāyata school of Indian philosophy. This is said to have originated in the teaching and writings of Bṛhaspati, perhaps a mythical person. Whenever the school originated, its arguments are frequently discussed in Buddhist (and Jain) philosophy. 45 “Bṛhaspati’s aphorisms have a clear implication of extreme empiricism;

 39 Kuzminski 2008, ch. 3. 40 Plut., Adv. Col. 1121 c.; Cf. Sext. Emp., PH 1.32, M 7. 208, 414. 41 Hockney 2001, 200: the camera sees lines, and surfaces, not space. 42 Austin 1952, 136. 43 This is Democritus’ view: honey is neither sweet nor bitter: DKA 134. See Sext. Emp., PH I. 118 and 213–4, Annas and Barnes p. 99. The relativist view: also Plut., Adv. Col. 1109 bc. 44 Austin 1952, 59. Philodemus (ca 40 BC) developed a theory of empirical inference from signs, but his target is Stoic opponents, with their insistence that only a priori inference is valid, not Sceptic suspension of judgment. 45 And the Lokāyata is referred to in the Arthaśastra. There is a full discussion of Indian scepticism in Matilal 1986, 46–69.

  Richard Stoneman they do not intend to accept inference as a subordinate means to knowledge”. 46 The example commonly used is one that appears frequently in Indian philosophy, including the Buddha, when the observer sees a coiled rope and mistakes it for a snake. The problem here is clearly one of inference. The error is not in seeing but in ‘seeing as’. 47 For the Buddha, objects have no essence, they are skandhas, fleeting phenomena subject to continual change. This in itself is quite an Epicurean idea: Karl Marx expounds the atomist doctrine as a “continual annihilation of the world of appearance”; appearances are subjective because they appear and then pass away. 48 So the rope-snake is an example of erroneous cognition. 49 For Lokāyata, on the other hand, it is a matter of erroneous inference. 50 Lokāyata makes a great deal of arguments about inference, arguing that inferences can never be reliable. Even in the case of the common inference that if there is smoke there is fire, there is no necessary connection. There could be smoke, or an appearance of smoke, without fire. At best the connection is empirical. For Lokāyata, only analytic inferences are valid, as for the Stoics. Epicureans wish to insist that such empirical inference is reliable, or as Philodemus puts it, that there is a necessary relation between the sign and the thing. 51 Thus there is no smoke without fire. 52 In fact Epicureans have to accept inference, and chains of causation, if they are to believe in the existence of non-perceptible objects such as atoms – which is a dogma. 53 By contrast, Buddha managed without causes: all causation is self-causation, as the seed is the cause of the sprout. 54 However, Indian atomism is very undeveloped in comparison with Epicurean atomism, and never addresses causation. 55

 46 Gokhale 2015, 18. 47 Gokhale 2015, 84. Matilal 1986, 181, 202, discusses the rope-snake problem, and at 289 questions whether it is a perception at all. 48 Marx–Engels 1975, 62, 65. Gigante 1981, 30. Cf. Montaigne, Apology of Raymond Sebond, 185: “there is no constant existence, neither of our being nor of the objects. And we, and our judgment, and all mortal things do uncessantly roll, turn, and pass away. Thus can nothing be certainly established, nor of the one nor of the other, both the judging and the judged being in continual alteration and motion”. 49 Matilal 2005, 103: “it will be consistent for the Buddhist to say that the object of an erroneous cognition (or of a dream cognition) is ‘unreal’.” It will be an ‘unreal object’ like a Centaur. 50 Matilal 2005, 103–4. 51 De Lacy 156. Demetrius Lacon (100 BC) also lectured on inference, and was a source for Philodemus. 52 Philodemus, On Signs 53, cf. Sext. Emp., M 8. 151–2. 53 Gigante 1981, 161. So also Asmis 1984, 79–80. 54 Garfield 1995, 105. 55 Ganguli 1980.

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Epicurus wishes to avoid the trap that Sceptical arguments set for the believer in inference, and therefore he ‘pretends’ that inference is not involved and perception is direct. But inference keeps creeping in by the back door. 56 C.C.W. Taylor illuminates this problem by emphasising the forensic metaphor present in Epicurus’ insistence on the need for a criterion: the sense-data, aistheseis, are witnesses, they give evidence. 57 But it is not enough to know that a witness is real, a judgment is required to know whether his evidence is true. 58 Is it simply the case that Epicurus is confusing the meanings of alethes as ‘real’ and ‘true’? This seems too glib a solution, 59 yet one is drawn to Taylor’s conclusion that there is a fault here in Epicurus’ thinking. Striker reaches a similar conclusion. Epicurus begins from the empiricist principle that knowledge must be based on perceptions/propositions we know to be true, but the problem is that this can lead to the sceptical thesis as well as to the Epicurean one. 60 The problem of inference is one that Lucretius also addresses. He calls it ‘reason’: If reason proves incapable of disentangling the reason whereby things which were square when seen close to look round from a distance, it is still preferable to render explanations for the two shapes untruthfully through lack of reason rather than at any point to let the clearly graspable slip from our grasp and thus to break faith at the most basic level and to tear up the entire foundations on which our life and safety depend. 61

And at 386 he says “Do not arraign the eyes with what is a fault of the mind”. 62 He acknowledges inference 63 and, like a Lokāyata, suspends judgment about its reliability. This argument seems to be cognisant of the Sceptical model of perception. However, the solution to the tower problem offered by a hypothetical Epicurean in Plutarch’s Against Colotes (1121 e), that one should go and have a closer

 56 Lehoux 2013, 133 insists that error for Epicurus is not a problem of the senses but of judgment. This is stated clearly at Diog. Laert., 10.50, “falsehood and error always depend on the intrusion of opinion”: τὸ ψεῦδος καὶ τὸ διημαρτημένον ἐν τῳ δοξαζομένῳ ἀεί ἐστιν. 57 Taylor in Schofield, Burnyeat and Barnes 1980, 109. 58 Cf. Sext. Emp., M 7.20, aisthesis does not discriminate. 59 Striker 1977 rejects it. 60 Striker 1977, 137. 61 Lucr., 4. 500–506. 62 “Then fix not on the eye the failures of the mind”– Creech. Cf. Montaigne, Raymond Sebond 171. 63 Unless ratio is to be interpreted as a translation of epilogismos, which as Tsouna 2007, 55 argues is not inference. Even if it is not, ratio looks very like it here.

  Richard Stoneman look, does not seem to meet the Sceptical objection. Why should a Sceptic regard the closer look as more reliable than the distant? 64 Lucretius’ answer to the problem may seem rather unsatisfactory, though it is in line with the Epicurean insistence that the moral aim of his philosophy takes precedence over detailed explanations of phenomena. “Knowledge of celestial phenomena… has no other end in view than peace of mind and firm conviction”. 65 The Buddhist view is similar: ‘Whether one holds the view that the world is finite or the view that it is infinite, there is still birth, ageing, death, grief, despair, pain and unhappiness – and it is the destruction of these here and now that I declare’. 66 The Epicurean model (‘I am a camera’) 67 resembles the ‘realist’ position, which is that we have direct perception of objects. 68 No inference is involved. In such a model, when I see a square table, I see a square table. But the Epicurean position is more radical than the realist (or Fish’s ‘naïve realist’). The content of the perception is the external object, delivered by means of films of eidola to the sense organ. 69 In such a case, false perception is simply eliminated. (See below). Yet a perception, if not false, can still mislead. The inferentialist says that I see a square rectangle in my field of vision which I infer to be a table. This is the Nyāya position: 70 you see the front of the object and infer the rest. The Buddhist calls this synthetic awareness. (Though the Nyāyikas are atomists, they do not hold a doctrine like Epicurus’ of atomic eidola as an explanation of perception). The ‘naïve realist’ (as represented by William Fish) 71 solves the problem of the round or square tower by attributing the error to the fact that our eyes are not, as it were, angelic ones; our eyesight may be faulty, or impeded by atmospheric conditions. But for Epicurus, the fact that one has faulty eyesight simply means

 64 Fowler 1984, 266–7 asks why Epicurus did not defend himself against the sceptics with the argument that the simulacra have to be square to be true; but he could not do so, because all such properties are νόμῳ, by convention. 65 Ep. Pyth. 85, cf. 79; and see Gale 2009, 10. See also Hankinson 2013, 75f. and 90: Ep. Hrdt. 79.10–80.12 and Ep. Pyth 85.9–87.3: any explanation will do for the purpose of achieving happiness. 66 Cūla-Mālinkya-Sutta 430, in Gethin 2008, 171. 67 Christopher Isherwood, Goodbye to Berlin, 1: “I am a camera, with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking”. 68 Champions of realism include J.L. Austin 1962 and William Fish 2009. 69 Asmis 1984, 139. 70 Matilal 1986, 272. 71 Fish 2009, 59.

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that one has a different true perception, not that the perception is impeded. Then it is the job of reason 72 to decide whether the man with perfect eyesight or the one with faulty eyesight sees the world as it is. Nonetheless, the impression remains that Lucretius is simply evading the problem, refusing to discuss it and leaving it to ‘reason’ to sort out the difficulties. In fact in a number of other passages he seems to turn away from a model of direct perception of objects by the senses to one that requires inference in some form. Both he and Epicurus seem to admit the need of judgment to interpret sense-data. Pathē and sense-data together provide the basis of inference to what is not observed. 73 Philip Mitsis writes: For Epicurus, the pathe provide a standard of truth and a criterion by which to judge actions. They therefore have the same kind of foundational role to play in our moral life that sensation does in grounding the pursuit of knowledge. Both serve to give us infallible, casual contact with the world. Yet both are alogon… They must be sorted out and fitted together by further judgments, or prolêpseis, if they are to guide our epistemological or moral judgments reliably. 74

Though opinion may introduce mistakes, “presentations are the foundation of all inference”. 75 Buddhist philosophy offers a similar thought expressed in a different way: “Knowledge is of particulars by perception, and of universals by inference”. 76 That is, one sees a brown rectangle, but inference is required to recognise it as a table. For the Buddhist, pure perception is indubitable, and it is the involvement of concepts – concept-loaded awareness – that makes perceptions dubitable and corrigible. 77 Nonetheless, Epicurus goes on insisting that one should not generalise, not infer: “what need is there”, he asks, “to generalize that wine is heating?”. 78 Lucretius’ position can be clearly traced in earlier Epicurean thought. For example, Demetrius Lacon in a passage criticising Empedocles overtly, but directed at an unidentified sceptic, dismisses Empedocles’ argument that reason is necessary to assess the data of the senses, and also asserts that it is impossible that two senses can be in conflict with one another – so that the argument about ‘having  72 Fish 2009, 53–4. 73 Asmis 984, 168–9. 74 Mitsis 1988, 43. 75 Asmis 1984, 95, citing Sext. Emp., M 7.203. 76 Gangopadhyaya 168–9. 77 Matilal 1986, 341; However, Udayana, a non-Buddhist philosopher, denies that pure perception is possible. 78 Plut., Adv. Col. 1109 f.

  Richard Stoneman a closer look’, or touching what you cannot see well, would be invalidated. 79 As Striker observes, 80 ‘having a closer look’ seems like a simple get-out clause for the Epicurean, but in fact it subverts the whole structure! 81 Here, then, Lucretius is patently in tune with a controversy that belongs to the period of Epicurus or a generation or two after (depending on the date assigned to Demetrius, perhaps 100 BC). Similar questions are also under discussion in a third century optical treatise of which fragments survive on papyrus. They were edited and discussed by Liliana Denon in 1947, and the author discusses colours, the apparent size of distant objects, and the fact that motion is invisible at a distance. These questions had been alive in Greek philosophy at least since Socrates induced Theaetetus to admit that “the mind itself, by means of itself, considers the things which apply in common to everything” [i.e. qualities]. 82

Part 3. False Perception The problem for a purely realist theory of perception, and for the view that all sense-data are true, comes when we begin to consider various types of false perception, including illusions, hallucinations, dream-visions and perceptions of non-existent objects such as centaurs. Arcesilaus added the example of identical twins. 83 Here Lucretius and Epicurus seem to be in need of some form of inference. 84 At 4.724 ff. Lucretius argues that Centaurs, for example, are the result of simulacra from two or more objects becoming mixed together in the air as they travel towards our eyes. 85 At 5.878–882 Lucretius argues against the existence of Centaurs for persuasive physiological reasons. However, at 5.1169–1174 he uses a similar argument about drifting images to explain the origin of belief in gods,  79 Dem. Lacon, F 57, LVII and LVIII in Puglia 1988, versus Emp. CTXT 8 Inwood. 80 Striker 1977, 142. 81 Cf. Fowler 1984, 265 and 267. The Epicureans found it really hard to disentangle themselves from Pyrrhonism. 82 Pl., Tht. 185e. 83 Cic., Acad. 2.77. 84 Mirror images also need explaining, though that does not pose much difficulty, since the Epicurean theory of films emanating from the surface of objects will deal with it; the films bounce off the mirror to reach our eyes. This is outlined by Lucretius at 4. 29 ff = Ep. Hrdt. 46–53. For the alternative Platonic view see Pease on Cic., DND 1.105, Campbell 2003, 141. 85 Cf. Campbell 2003, 140–2; Asmis 1984, 73–8 on the foundation of ideas of the gods.

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whose existence he does accept though he regards them as having nothing to do with human affairs. These images enter our consciousness through dreams and waking visions, as explained at 4.722–822, and form a prolepsis/notitia of the gods. Gods, when seen, must be real, since there are no motus animi inanes, 86 but at a later stage of human development false ideas began to be attached to them. 87 It is difficult to see, on these arguments, how gods are in any way different from centaurs, as Sextus pointed out. 88 Plutarch attacks the idea that because senseimpressions are real, and we perceive centaurs, therefore centaurs exist: 89 this is a misunderstanding of Epicurus, but one has some sympathy with Plutarch. Lucretius’ arguments maintain the principle of the absolute veracity of senseperceptions. It is the data themselves that have got mixed up, in Epicurus’ view: it is not something that goes on in our minds that produces the confusion. The important thing is not to reject sense-data. Εἴ τιν’ ἐκβαλεῖς ἁπλῶς αἴσθησιν καὶ μὴ διαιρήσεις τὸ δοξαζόμενον κατὰ τὸ προσμένον καὶ τὸ πάρον ἤδη κατὰ τὴν αἴσθησιν καὶ τὰ πάθη καὶ πᾶσαν φανταστικὴν ἐπιβολὴν τῆς διανοίας, συνταράξεις καὶ τὰς λοιπὰς αἰσθήσεις τῇ ματαίῳ δόξῃ, ὥστε τὸ κριτήριον ἅπαν ἐκβαλεῖς. If you are going to reject any sensation absolutely, and not distinguish opinions reliant on evidence yet awaited from what is already present through sensation, through feelings, and through every focusing of thought into an impression, you will confound all your other sensations with empty opinion and consequently reject the criterion [i.e. sense-data] in its entirety. 90

However, Epicurus’ own example of Orestes’ vision of the Furies does not seem to fit this position well: 91 in this case, the seeing is ‘true’ but Orestes’ imagination is false. This looks like an admission of inference, and would therefore work for Centaurs too. Godwin (92) suggests that Lucretius is writing inconsistently because he is trying to have it both ways, to refute Scepticism and extreme empiricism: the latter would insist that if we see centaurs, they exist. Plutarch insists that Epicureans have to accept the Furies are real because they are seen; therefore

 86 Cic., DND 1. 105–6, Maso 2016, 100–1. 87 Campbell 2003, 16. 88 Long and Sedley 1987, 23F, p. 143. Sext. Emp., M 8.65 holds that if the phantasiai from solid objects are indistinguishable from those form an image, Epicurus’ theory is vitiated. See further Gigante 1981, 159 with Fowler’s criticism, 1984, 250. 89 Adv. Col., 1123 b. 90 KD 24, text as emended by Long and Sedley 1987, 17B, p. 87. On the meanining of ‘criterion’ here, Asmis 1984, 93–4. 91 Sext. Emp., M 8.63, Long and Sedley p. 81–2.

  Richard Stoneman the same would apply to centaurs. This, he says, is to live by madness and whimsy (μανικοῖς καἰ ἀτόποις ...φάσμασιν). 92 Dream visions are another case where the direct perception model does not seem to work well. Lucretius claims that we perceive visions of the dead, and of gods, in dreams, because the films that emanate from them are floating around; but this does not explain why we do not see them while waking, nor does it consider what organ of perception the films encounter when the senses are dulled in sleep. It would seem that the images are arriving somehow in the mind while bypassing the eyes. In fact Lucretius says (4.757–767) that the sense organs are blocked during sleep, and hence unable to ‘refute’ what they see, nec possunt falsum veris convincere rebus (764): again, this refutation sounds like a mental process, though he says it is performed by the organs, not the mind. However, it is not clear that an inferential model would help here either. Dreams, like hallucinations, may in the end be events in the mind without relation to external data. Diogenes of Oenoanda (fr. 9 cf. fr. 10) says that dream visions are caused as follows: “the soul, which is still wide awake,… on receiving the images that approach it, conceives an untested and false opinion concerning them, as if it were actually apprehending the solid nature of true realities”. This sounds very like the proposal of another realist philosopher, William Fish, that hallucinations are “a ghost created by belief”. 93 Again, the intervention of ‘opinion’ in the formation of the dream perception seems to contradict the insistence on direct apprehension. Illusions pose an interesting challenge to the theory of direct perception. They are also the best evidence for Schrijvers’ case that Lucretius is aware of the Modes of Scepticism, 94 though I would agree with Sedley (1998, 89) that the Modes largely make use of examples that had been current in Greek philosophy since the Presocratics. Illusions may range from J.L. Austin’s example of the bar of soap that looks exactly like a lemon (1952, 50), and the Lokāyata rope mistaken for a snake, to William Blake’s observation that the sun seems to be about the size of a guinea. When the sun rises, do you not see a round disc of fire somewhat like a guinea? O no, no, I see an innumerable company of the heavenly host crying Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty.

 92 Adv. Col., 1123bd. 93 Cf. Fish 98. The Nyāya position is that a hallucination is a seeing of a “remembered physical object”: Matilal 1986, 286. 94 Schrijvers 1992/1999.

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The latter brings us directly to Epicurus, who notoriously insists that the sun and the heavenly bodies are the size that they appear to be: the evidence of the senses must be believed. Both Heraclitus and Aristotle stated, reasonably, that the sun appears to be about a foot across, which is the reverse of saying that it is so. 95 Epicurus’ belief flies in the face of common sense: a standard work on the psychology of perception states If an observer is asked to judge the size of an object at a considerable distance away from him, his judgment will not normally conform to the size of the image projected on his retina, but to the size of the object he would see if it were at the distance at which such an object is usually viewed…. It is only at greater distances (than about a quarter of a mile) that objects begin gradually to look smaller. 96

In effect, judgment intervenes to correct the impression that the sun is no bigger than a large coin. This is the argument too of Dionysius, which is rejected by Philodemus, On Inference 14: his explanation is as follows: All things evident to us are observed to be diminished in colour at a distance because they are seen to exhibit a shadowy colouring. But the sun, with its intense brilliance, being exempt from the principle that for the most part distance decreases magnitudes… differs in this respect also from all things evident to us.

The case is a complicated one, but Jonardon Ganeri insists that this is not an illusion as such: An observation that the sun and moon appear the same size is objective… but positional (dependent on the observer’s having a certain position in space, on the earth’s surface). It would be quite wrong to describe it as an illusion. 97

(This is a version of the Sceptical argument from relativism, but without the negative conclusion.) In the end, the Epicurean position about the size of the sun seems to be an article of faith that is not susceptible of rational exposition. The perception of the size of the sun is a true perception; but is there a confusion here of two types of truth, of the perception and of the object? Sextus (AM 7.203) says that colour, shape and sound are just as they appear to be, but judgment may introduce a mistake. 98 So you might miscalculate the size of the sun, perhaps.  95 Austin 1952, 93 remarks that the question “what size does that star appear to be?” is unanswerable. Demetrius Lacon reproduces Epicurus’ view: Gigante 1981, 91 n.9. 96 Vernon 1962, 67. 97 Ganeri 2012, 171. 98 Asmis 1984, 95.

  Richard Stoneman An interesting case of illusion is raised by William Fish (151–4). If I see a red car at night-time under street-lighting, it will appear orange. My perception of its colour is orange. Some philosophers will insist that the change of colour is real, others would say that to regard the car as orange is a false belief. And yet the orange colour is an actual phenomenon. Fish’s answer seems to be that colour is not an intrinsic property, and actually does change according to circumstances. 99 The Sceptic makes a very different use of a phenomenon like this. Sextus has an analogous example in PH 44, “people with jaundice say that what appears white to us is yellow, and people with a blood-suffusion in the eye say that it is bloodred”. In fact people with jaundice do not see things with a yellowish cast, though for centuries the opinion reigned that they do. The example does perhaps indicate the importance of empirical medicine in the development of sceptical thought, even if this particular datum is in fact false. The use the Sceptic makes of this supposed fact is to produce an argument from relativism: since different observers see the same colour differently, there is no objective way of saying that something has a particular colour. (This may not follow: I see turquoise as a shade of blue, my wife sees it as a shade of green, but I think we both recognise what is turquoise). Lucretius 4.332 also alludes to this supposed phenomenon and concludes (379) “we do not grant that the eyes are deceived in any way in all this”. He accepts the relativist premises but not the sceptical conclusion. At 630–672 he offers an explicitly relativist account of the sense of taste, and gives a purely physiological explanation of people’s different reactions to flavours. The Sceptic, on the other hand, will use this as an example of the First or Second Mode. Let us return to the example of the square tower that appears round, which Lucretius wished to leave to reason to sort out. The Epicurean treatise On the Senses, which is commonly regarded as being by Philodemus, though Long and Sedley prefer to treat it as anonymous, states. The most peculiar characteristic of vision as compared to the other senses, apart from the discrimination of colours and the things related to them, is the perception of shapes at a distance, together with sensory recognition of the interval between itself and them. 100 This author, then, regards the perception of distance as an integral part of the faculty of vision. But it does not address the problem of the false perception

 99 Cf. Democritus, in Plut., Adv. Col. 1110 e: colour is by convention. Atoms are not coloured in Greek thought, though they are in Indian. This is an example of a ‘situational’ error, according to the Nyāya explanation: Matilal 1986, 208–210. 100 Herc. Pap. 19, 698, 5. Long and Sedley 16C, p. 80.

Can You Believe your Eyes?  

of the square tower as round, which is often explained as caused by the degradation of the images in transit from the object to the eye. 101 Such an explanation does indeed explain the perception the viewer has, and allows a ‘true’ perception to be of something that is not the case. This seems to be the Epicurean position, as summarised by Sextus Empiricus; but anyone who spends a lot of time looking at square towers at a distance will have got wise to this, and will discount the evidence of his eyes until he gets a closer look. “Falsehood and error are always located in the opinion which we add”, says Epicurus. 102 Martha Nussbaum puts it a rather different way. 103 A realist causal theory of perception is compatible with the claim that many perceptual experiences are delusory or misleading. Perceptions are not all veridical, and perception also requires attention, which sounds like another version of interpretation. 104 To summarise this part of the discussion, it looks as if Lucretius, following Epicurus, while insisting on a model of direct perception by the senses, in fact continually has to allow an element of inference to creep into his explanations. Why are both philosophers so reluctant to admit this? Lucretius’ contemporary Philodemus devoted a whole treatise to Inference, so it was not a taboo subject for Epicureans. But both seem to be extremely wary of allowing inference much part in their philosophy, and this may be because they are alarmed by the sceptical arguments against inference and do not wish to get caught up in them. Epicureans and Sceptics had a similar philosophical aim, and such debates must have been internal to both schools, just as similar debates about inference appear in both Buddhist and Lokāyata schools. Democritus, as well as Metrodorus and Anaxarchus, were much more attached to sceptical positions than Epicurus will admit. 105 However, most sceptical arguments focus on inference about facts or actions rather than about the nature of perceptions. Such cases seem to be of little interest to Epicurus and Lucretius, who confine their interest to the perception of objects – things not facts. An everyday inference of the latter kind takes the form ‘there is no smoke without fire’, and this argument occurs both in Greek and Indian philosophy. Philodemus (On inference from signs 53) states ‘we contend that

 101 Sext. Emp., M 7. 206–10 = Long and Sedley 16E, p. 81. 102 Ep. Hrdt. 50, Long and Sedley 15A 10, p. 73. M. Conche ad loc. is of the opinion that this sentence is an intrusive marginal gloss: Epicure, Lettres et Maximes (PUF 1987). 103 Nussbaum 1994, 164–6. 104 See also Asmis 1984, 121 on the importance of attention in perception 105 See Long and Sedley 1987, 83, suggesting that the debate is to be located here, and not between Epicurus and Pyrrho.

  Richard Stoneman smoke should be denied, when there is or has been no fire, because of the observation that in all cases without fail smoke has been observed to be given off by fire’. 106 Philodemus is using this empirical argument as an inductive proof, and arguing against a Stoic position that there is no necessary connection between smoke and fire. The latter is also a favourite Lokāyata argument. They “do not deny that inference can sometimes give us true cognition… What they are denying is that there is a ‘necessity’ by which one ‘must’ find the fire there. ‘Wherever there is smoke, there is fire’ may be a fact of the limited, observed world, a fact which we have observed so far, but it cannot be established as universal or necessary truth”. 107 Inference is not a source of reliable knowledge (pramana in Sanskrit). Sceptical thought had a long history in Greek philosophy, despite its obvious difficulties: Plutarch in Colotem notes that it makes not only philosophy, but life itself, quite hard to pursue. 108 Pyrrho may have believed that his Sceptical pig had the right attitude, ignoring everything that went on around him and continuing to munch his swill; but Epicurean pigs were dedicated to the belief that understanding the nature of the universe could remove anxiety and distress. Epicurus would be opposed to anything that put difficulties in the way of the untroubled life. I see no difficulty in supposing that the germ of sceptical difficulties had already been proposed by Indian-influenced contemporaries of Epicurus – hence Colotes’ loyal opposition to them – , and that Lucretius loyally and eloquently reproduces the main features of the debate that exercised the philosophers at the end of the fourth century and the beginning of the third, which include above all the place of inference in perception. The Epicurean claim is as absolute as the sceptical one, while the Buddhists make no absolute claims about reality.

References Algra, K.A./Koenen, M.H./Schrijvers, P.H. (eds.) (1997), Lucretius and his Intellectual Background, Amsterdam/Oxford. Asmis, Elizabeth (1984), Epicurus’ Scientific Method, Ithaca, NY. Austin, John Langshaw (1952), Sense and Sensibilia, Oxford. Beckwith, Christopher (2015), Greek Buddha, Princeton. Bett, Richard (2000), Pyrrho, his antecedents and his legacy, Oxford.

 106 Cf. Sext. Emp., M 8.151–2. 107 Gokhale 2015, 53. 108 Cf. also his treatise Non posse suaviter vivi secundum Epicurum.

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Burtt, Edwin Arthur (1955), The Teachings of the Compassionate Buddha, New York. Campbell, Gordon (2003), Lucretius on Creation and Evolution: a commentary on De rerum natura five, lines 772–1104, Oxford. Conche, Marcel (1987), Epicure, Lettres et Maximes, Paris. De Lacy, Philip Howard/De Lacy, Estelle Allen (1978), Philodemus: On Methods of Inference, Naples. Denon, Liliana (1947), “Frammento di un testo greco di argomento ottico”, in: Athenaeum 25, 35–54. Fish, William (2009), Perception, Hallucination and Illusion, Oxford. Flintoff, Everard (1980), “Pyrrho and India”, in: Phronesis 25, 88–108. Fowler, Don Paul (1984), “Sceptics and Epicureans”, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy II, 237–267. Ganeri, Jonardon (2012), The Concealed Art of the Soul. Theories of Self and Practices of Truth in Indian Ethics and Epistemology, Oxford. Ganguli, Mrinal Kanti 1980. Indian Atomism: History and Sources, Calcutta. Garfield, Jay Lazard (1990), “Epoché and Śūnyatā: scepticism east and west”, in: Philosophy East and West 40, 285–308. Garfield, Jay Lazard (1995). The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way, Nagarjuna’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā. Translation and commentary, Oxford. Gethin, Rupert (2008), Sayings of the Buddha. Oxford World’s Classics. Gigante, Marcello (1981). Scetticismo e Epicureismo, Naples. Gokhale, Pradeep P. (2015), Lokāyata/Cārvāka. A Philosophical Inquiry. New Delhi/Oxford. Grayling, Anthony (2016), The Age of Genius: the seventeenth century and the birth of the modern mind, London. Hankinson, Robert J. (2013), “Lucretius, Epicurus and the Logic of Multiple Explanations”, in: Lehoux/Morrison/Sharrock 2013, 69–97. Hockney, David (2001), Secret Knowledge, London: Thames and Hudson. Kuzminski, Adrian (2008), Pyrrhonism. How the Greeks reinvented Buddhism, Plymouth. Lehoux, D./A.D. Morrison/A. Sharrock (eds.) (2013), Lucretius: Poetry, Philosophy, Science, Oxford. Lehoux, Daryn (2013), “Seeing and Unseeing, Seen and Unseen” in: Lehoux/Morrison/Sharrock (eds.), 131–151. Levy, Carlos (1997), “Lucrèce avait-il lu Enésidème?”, in: Algra/Koenen/Schrijvers 1997. Long, Antony A. (1966), “Thinking and Sense-Perception in Empedocles: Mysticism or Materialism?”, in: CQ 16, 256–276. Long, A.A./Sedley, D. (1987), The Hellenistic Philosophers, Cambridge. Marx, Karl/Engels, Friedrich (1975), Collected Works, vol. I. (Karl Marx 1835–1843), London. Maso, Stefano (2015), Grasp and Dissent: Cicero and Epicurean Philosophy, Turnhout. Matilal, Bhimal Krishna (1986), Perception. An Essay on Classical Indian Theories of Knowledge, Oxford. Matilal, Bimal Krishna (2005), Epistemology, Logic, and Grammar in Indian Philosophical Analysis, New Delhi. Mitsis, Philip (1988), Epicurus’ Ethical Theory, Ithaca. Nussbaum, Martha (1994), The Therapy of Desire. Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics, Princeton. Panaioti, Antoine (2013), Nietzsche and Buddhist Philosophy, Cambridge.

  Richard Stoneman Puglia, Enzo (1988), Demetrio Lacone. Aporie testuali ed esegetiche in Epicuro. (Scuola di Epicuro 8), Naples. Schofield, M./M. Burnyeat/J. Barnes (eds.) (1980), Doubt and Dogmatism. Studies in Hellenistic Epistemology, Oxford. Schrijvers, Piet H. (1992/1999), “Philosophie et paraphrase: Lucrèce et les sceptiques”, in: La langue latine, langue de la philosophie, Ecole francaise à Rome 1999, 125–40; reprinted in Lucrèce et les sciences de la vie (Mnemosyne Supplement 186), 167–182. Sedley, David (1998), Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom, Cambridge. Smith, Martin Ferguson (1992), Diogenes of Oenoanda: The Epicurean Inscription, Naples. Striker, Gisela (1977), “Epicurus on the Truth of Sense Impressions”, Archiv für Geschichte der in: Philosophie 59, 125–142. Taylor, Christopher Charles Whiston (1980), “All Perceptions Are True”, in: M. Schofield/ M. Burnyeat/J. Barnes (eds.) 1980, 105–124. Tsouna, Voula (2007), The Ethics of Philodemus, Oxford. Vernon, Magdalen D. (1962), The Psychology of Perception, Harmondsworth.

Francesco Verde

Epicurean Meteorology, Lucretius, and the Aetna Abstract: The paper will focus mainly on the Lucretian reception of Epicurean meteorology, and in particular on the method of multiple explanations (pleonachos tropos). I will deal with two specific points: (1) I will examine how in Books 5–6 of the De Rerum Natura Lucretius uses the method of multiple causes or explanations presented in Epicurus’ Letter to Pythocles in order to examine the analogies and differences between the two authors; (2) I will analyse from a historical-philosophical perspective the contents of the Aetna, a short, anonymous poem preserved by the Appendix Vergiliana, in order to verify what kind of dissemination the scientific methodology and the pleonachos tropos of Epicurus and Lucretius had in the first centuries of the Roman Empire. Much of the paper will be devoted to the Quellenforschung of the Aetna in order to support the hypothesis of a likely relationship between the pseudo-Virgilian poem and Theophrastus’ (lost) work on Sicilian lava (Diog. Laert., V 49), among other possible sources for the poem. Keywords: Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura, Epicurus’ Letter to Pythocles, multiple explanations, ancient meteorology, Aetna, Theophrastus

 Foreword The purpose of this contribution is twofold: (1) to examine how Lucretius in the fifth and sixth books of De Rerum Natura uses the method of multiple causes or explanations (pleonachos tropos) from Epicurus’ Letter to Pythocles in order to evaluate similarities and differences between the two authors; (2) to briefly analyze the content of the Aetna, a short, anonymous poem included in the Appendix Vergiliana, in order to verify what kind of dissemination the scientific methodology and the pleonachos tropos of Epicurus and Lucretius had in the first centuries of the Imperial Age. For this reason, this essay will be divided into two distinct  I am sincerely grateful to Frederik Bakker for his detailed and valuable written comments. I am also grateful to Myrto Garani and David Sedley for their suggestions, which I have taken into account. For a broader and more detailed version of this study (especially about the Aetna) see Verde 2018a. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110673487-006

  Francesco Verde sections dedicated respectively to Lucretius and the Aetna. Finally, a section of the contribution will be devoted to the Quellenforschung of the Aetna to support the hypothesis of a relationship between the pseudo–Virgilian poem and the (lost) writing of Theophrastus on Sicilian lava (cf. Diog. Laert., 5.49: Περὶ ῥύακος τοῦ ἐν Σικελίᾳ), whose role among the other possible sources of the poem should be emphasized.

 Lucretius’ Multiple Explanations At the end of the Letter to Herodotus (78–80) and at the beginning of the Letter to Pythocles (85–88) Epicurus introduces the topic of the meteora and their specific method of investigation. For Epicurus ta meteora include both what we would call meteorological phenomena and more strictly astronomical ones. Aristotle had clearly distinguished the two, dedicating the De caelo to celestial phenomena (materially constituted by the first – or fifth – element, namely ether) and the Meteorologica to meteorological phenomena (which are less regular than celestial phenomena). 1 Meteora, therefore, occur in the sublunary region of the cosmos and belong to the four elements, with the exception of ether. Epicurus does not adopt this distinction but considers the meteora to be both meteorological and astronomical phenomena, also because the principles that govern the whole cosmos are in any case the atoms and the void. Epicurus is perfectly aware of the fact that the meteora are difficult phenomena to investigate and yet their causes must be examined and known with scientific accuracy (akribeia; cf. Hrdt. 78) to avoid fears arising from the lack of understanding of the causes generating these phenomena (and induced in particular by religio). On the basis of Sextus Empiricus’ distinction (M VIII 318–319) between φύσει ἄδηλα and τῷ γένει ἄδηλα, one can conclude that to Epicurus the meteora are not adela in the absolute sense (or φύσει), since, in that case, they could not be investigated. The meteora are, rather, phenomena far from us (such as, for example, solar or lunar eclipses: cf. Pyth. 96) or at any rate ones whose causes are difficult to examine (as in the case of the formation of clouds – cf. Pyth. 99 – or thunder – cf. Pyth. 100). According to Sextus, knowledge of τῷ γένει ἄδηλα is obtainable through signs or demonstrations (διὰ δὲ σημείων ἢ ἀποδείξεων); Epicurus, who

 1 Cf. Aristot., Meteor. 1.1.338a.26–339a.4; see Wilson 2013, 93–98 on the teleological aspects of the Aristotelian explanation of the meteora; see too Falcon 2015, 2–13.

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had no particular regard for demonstrations (and made limited use of them), 2 adopted a ‘semiotic method’: the signs (σημεῖα) of the meteora are given by some φαινόμενα occurring παρ᾽ ἡμῖν (Pyth. 87). So, since it is impossible to directly experience how τὰ μετέωρα occur, it is necessary to take into account those phenomena that happen παρ᾽ ἡμῖν in order to (analogically) infer from them the different ways in which celestial phenomena occur. In § 86 of the Letter to Pythocles Epicurus adds that celestial phenomena, unlike other phenomena, have multiple causes of generation (πλεοναχὴν [...] τῆς γενέσεως αἰτίαν) and multiple determinations/explanations of their essence (τῆς οὐσίας [...] κατηγορίαν) in accordance with perceptions (ταῖς αἰσθήσεσι σύμφωνον). There is, therefore, no single general cause capable of explaining the meteora; rather, materially/ontologically there are many causes for their physical formation. Therefore, (1) the causes of these phenomena must always be in agreement with sense-perception; (2) the method of multiple causes/explanations (pleonachos tropos) must be based on what could be defined as the monachos tropos: that is, the causes of the meteora must be compatible with the fundamental principles of Epicurean physiology (atoms and void). This means that, although such phenomena are difficult to examine, the pleonachos tropos should be understood as a rigorous scientific method and not as the necessary outcome of an epistemological deficit in meteorological investigation, as is often claimed. 3 On the basis of a seminal study by A. Wasserstein, 4 recently F.A. Bakker 5 has argued that the incompatibility of some explanations is solved once we bear in mind not only the fact that the pleonachos tropos (as well as all Epicurean physiology) has an ethical rather than scientific aim (i.e. the attainment of ataraxia), 6 but especially the fact that according to Epicurus the cosmos consists of a set of unrelated phenomena that must be explained separately in accordance with sense-perception. One example of the incompatibility of explanations concerns the rising and setting of the sun (Pyth. 92) which can occur through its lighting or extinguishing; shortly afterwards (Pyth. 94–95) Epicurus states that the moon can either have its own light or receive it from the sun. It is evident that if the sunset occurred by extinguishment, the moon could not shine of that light received from the sun. This is an extremely delicate point which violates the rigorous scientific  2 See however Morel 2015. 3 See for example Garani 2007, 97, and Algra 2018, 420, who, in relation to the Epicurean pleonachos tropos, speaks of “a kind of limited and regionalised skepticism: in some areas we simply cannot know for sure what is really going on”. 4 Wasserstein 1978. 5 Bakker 2016, 263. 6 Wasserstein 1978, 494. See more in general De Sanctis 2012.

  Francesco Verde nature of the explanatory method. It seems to me that there are two drastic solutions: either what we have is an oversight on Epicurus’ part (which, in theory, cannot be excluded), or the philosopher was not interested in building a truly unitary physical system such as Aristotle’s one, for example. This might account for his rejection of astronomical science and his strict criticism of the use of astronomical tools (organa), also attested in Book 11 of the Peri physeos. 7 However, if the second hypothesis is valid, that criterion of scientificity sustaining the physics of the meteora (and, with it, imperturbability) is lacking. Leaving aside the possibility of an oversight, I would contend that a ‘third way’ is open, considering that the meteora, by their very nature, have multiple causes: the explanations must be compatible both with sense-perception and with the fundamental principles of atomism; but, if two causal explanations concerning, e.g. two mutually related phenomena are incompatible, one becomes necessary (in terms of conditional/hypothetical necessity), while the other remains unnecessary. To clarify this point, let us consider the case of the sun and the moon: if the cause of the sunset is due to the extinguishing of the sun, inevitably the moon will have to shine with its own light, while it will be able 8 to reflect the light of the sun as long as there is another cause for the sunset apart from extinguishment, which is granted by Epicurus. Indeed, the philosopher does not rule out that the rising and setting of the sun, moon and stars may also occur “by appearance above the earth or by occultation; for this too is not ruled out by any phenomena” (Pyth. 92: κατ’ ἐκφάνειάν τε ὑπὲρ γῆς καὶ πάλιν ἐπιπροσθέτησιν τὸ προειρημένον δύναιτ’ ἂν συντελεῖσθαι· οὐδὲ γάρ τι τῶν φαινομένων ἀντιμαρτυρεῖ; transl. Mensch 2018, slightly modified). According to this explanation – regardless of whether it might strike us as naive – the sun simply disappears from the earth, which means that it remains lit and, in that case, that the moon could shine with reflected light. Moreover, we should not forget a crucial point: Epicurus (Pyth. 90) stresses that one should not believe that the sun, the moon and the other celestial bodies originated separately; the formation of these stars is intrinsically connected, so the causes of these bodies must somehow also be connected. Finally, Epicurus admits that knowledge of the meteora can be acquired either in connection with other celestial phenomena or independently (Pyth. 85: ἐκ τῆς περὶ μετεώρων

 7 Bakker 2016, 32–34. On Epicurus’ rejection of the astronomy of his times, see the opposing interpretations by Giannantoni 1984, 61–64, and Isnardi Parente 1987, 286–287. 8 Indeed, it cannot be ruled out that the moon shines with its own light, if the sunset is not due to the extinguishing of the sun.

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γνώσεως εἴτε κατὰ συναφὴν λεγομένων εἴτε αὐτοτελῶς): 9 the causal explanations given are valid whether one takes the meteora in relation to the other celestial phenomena or not; therefore, Epicurus admitted the possibility that the causal explanations could be related to each other. This implies their compatibility. No such solution is offered in the texts, but a hypothesis of this kind seems to me to be the only one that can preserve the scientific coherence of the system. Obviously, we must assume that some phenomena are connected and that the explanations for them are also objectively/really possible, but this should not be very problematic in an atomistic system. It seems rather strange to me that, as in the case of the sun and the moon illustrated above, Epicurus would fall into such a contradiction in the Letter to Pythocles. However, the possibility remains open that the doxographic source (or handbook) which Epicurus drew upon contained this inconsistency or that a different source was used for each explanation: in the latter case, the philosopher would have merged two (or more) different traditions, so to speak. With the formulation of the so-called principle of plenitude Lucretius raises the problem of the compatibility of multiple explanations; a formulation of this principle is to be found in the De Rerum Natura Book 5 (526–533): For which of these causes holds in our world it is difficult to say for certain; but what may be done and is done through the whole universe in the various worlds made in various ways, that is what I teach, proceeding to set forth several causes which may account for the movements of the stars throughout the whole universe; one of which, however, must be that which gives force to the movement of the signs in our world also; but which may be the true one, is not his to lay down who proceeds step by step. 10

This text is part of a broader discussion of the movements of the stars, for which Lucretius had previously suggested various causes; the short digression on the pleonachos tropos is of enormous importance for several reasons. First of all, Lucretius clearly points out that a cause operating in this world does not necessarily operate in the other infinite worlds and that he is merely providing a series of causal explanations that operate in variis mundis varia ratione creatis (5.528) and, therefore, in the universe (per omne: 5.530). Moreover, the poet highlights how difficile it is (5.526) to establish with certainty what causes are active in our world;

 9 I do not agree with the remarks by Bollack/Laks 1978, 188 that “les deux expressions [scil: κατὰ συναφήν e αὐτοτελῶς] semblent ne pas devoir être rapportées à l’opposition entre étude compréhensive ou séparée des phénomènes du ciel”. 10 The Latin text and the English translation of the DRN are by Rouse/Smith 1992.

  Francesco Verde despite this, it is necessary that one of the many possible causes be the cause (5.531: una […] causa necessest) that explains the movement of the stars in this world. But it does not really behoove the philosopher who proceeds step by step to assert which of these causes it might be. Lucretius presents himself, therefore, as a progrediens 11 and not as a proficiens: 12 consistently with the occurrence of the verb doceo at v. 529, the philosopher and poet proceeds shrewdly/confidently along the path of natural investigation. 13 However, Lucretius, as a progrediens, does not establish a precise cause for the movement of the stars; it has been said that he does not seem to exclude that it might be identified one day. 14 Nevertheless, for Lucretius what matters is not to establish with certainty the actual cause of a ἄδηλον, but to propose several causes, all of which are plausible. 15 In the Letter to Pythocles the pleonachos tropos is not presented in the same terms as Lucretius presents it. 16 Epicurus does not distinguish between the causality operating in this world and that at work in other worlds; nor does he state that only one cause can account for the movement of the stars. 17 Certainly, he does not say what the cause that actually lies behind a certain phenomenon might be; yet he avoids making any such claim, not because in his view it is not up to the progrediens to affirm such things, but because he believes that not just one but all the causes mentioned are concretely at work (albeit at different moments and in different conditions). Epicurus lists three causes for astral movements (cf. Pyth. 92) and does not go any further: this confirms that astral kinetics is by no means an exceptional phenomenon. It is evident that not all causes can simultaneously account for an individual phenomenon. However, as far as the movements of the stars are concerned, on the basis of the Letter to Pythocles it is not possible to admit one and only one cause always operating in the same way within our world: this, from a certain point of view, would even contradict the pleonachos tropos, at least as it is described in Pythocles. The Lucretian verses are helpful for understanding what the principle of plenitude is; on the basis of this principle, the causal explanations of celestial phenomena are not only possible but also all true, given the infinity of the worlds,  11 See Schiesaro 1989. 12 See Erler 2009. 13 Cf. too Sen., Ep. 52.3 (= 192 Usener): Quosdam ait Epicurus ad veritatem sine ullius adiutorio exisse, fecisse sibi ipsos viam; hos maxime laudat quibus ex se impetus fuit, qui se ipsi protulerunt. (emphasis my own). 14 See Ernout/Robin 1962, 71. 15 See Schiesaro 1989, 288. 16 For a different position see Acerbi 2018, 22. 17 See Bakker 2016, 29.

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which depends on the infinity of the atoms and void. 18 However, the range of explanatory causes cannot be endless: although the worlds are infinite, the forms and the environmental conditions within each world are limited. 19 This is explained by the fact that, owing to the (limited) number and disposition of the socalled minimal parts (ta elachista), the atoms have limited forms (and hence limited magnitudes and weights). Therefore, also the number of (possible) explanations of celestial phenomena in the infinite worlds will necessarily be limited. Above all, it will not be so different from the number and the types of causes of the meteora occurring in our world. The second passage in which Lucretius deals with the method of multiple explanations comes from Book 6 (vv. 703–711). It occurs immediately after the section dedicated to the incandescent and vast furnaces of Mount Etna, to which we will return later on, and immediately before the verses devoted to the Nile: There are also a number of things for which it is not enough to name one cause, but many, one of mention which is nevertheless the true cause: just as if you should yourself see some man’s body lying lifeless when one at a distance, you may perhaps think proper to name all the causes of death in order that the one true cause of the man’s death may be named. For you could not prove that steel or cold had been the death of him, or disease, or it may be poison, but we know that what has happened to him is something of this sort. Even so in many cases we have the like to say.

The content of these verses is not only compatible with the passage of Book 5 mentioned above but adds more information. First of all, it seems possible to conclude that the fact of positing more than one cause for the same phenomenon essentially depends on our epistemological inability. To exemplify this point, Lucretius uses the ‘metaphor’ of a lifeless human body 20 that is seen by a distant

 18 Bakker 2016, 21–22. 19 See Sedley 2007, 155–166; on the minimal parts see Verde 2013a, 17–107. See too Hankinson 2013, 90–93. 20 With regard to this example, the reader should bear in mind the observations made by Bakker 2016, 23 and 30–31. Bakker stresses that the Lucretian example would seem to be both inappropriate and correct. It is inappropriate, because the meteora concern distant phenomena (while the lifeless body of an individual can be approached and carefully examined); it is appropriate, if the phenomena in question fall within the epistemological ‘category’ of ta prosmenonta, “what awaits confirmation” (cf. Diog. Laert., 10.34). In the case of the floods of the Nile, for example, one can go directly to Egypt and verify whether the floods of the river are connected to the different causal explanations given by Lucretius. Since the text under examination (6.703–711) immediately precedes the treatment of the Nile, Lucretius’ example might seem appropriate. Nevertheless, I would like to underline two points: (1) that celestial phenomena (such as winds,

  Francesco Verde observer (procul: 6.705) – just as in the case of the meteora (which are far from us). While the death of an individual may be due to several causes, before approaching the body to see it up close and get a clear picture of what happened, the observer cannot rule out any cause of death; for this reason he will provide several causal explanations (a sword, cold, disease, poison, etc.). However, according to Lucretius, a single cause will be the cause that actually brought about the death of the individual. Interestingly, the poet points out that it is impossible to prove 21 (vincere: 6.708) what the cause of death is before approaching the lifeless body; but the only thing we know for sure (scimus: 6.711) is that one of the causes listed will be the right one (while the others will necessarily be wrong). 22 Also in this case it seems difficult to me not to find some inconsistencies in the pleonachos tropos of the Letter to Pythocles (assuming that this letter is not spurious). Epicurus does not speak of a single correct cause among those presented and, above all, it is not necessarily true that for each celestial phenomenon only one cause will always be operating; in this perspective the Lucretian example might be appropriate, since the same phenomenon (death) can be produced by several causes. According to Lucretius, it is not important (or even possible) to establish which is the (particular) cause producing the given phenomenon. What matters is (1) to posit multiple causal explanations that are compatible with perceptual evidence and with the principles of Epicurean atomism, and which exclude divine intervention; and (2) to know that, only one of the causes/explanations listed is the true one. The Letter to Pythocles does not state that it is always the same cause that produces a phenomenon but, rather, that each individual meteoron ontologically possesses more (equally true) causes for its physical generation.

 earthquakes and eclipses) do not seem to belong to ta prosmenonta; (2) that in this passage Lucretius does not seem to reach the conclusion that, once we have approached a corpse, it will be possible for us to establish what the cause of death was. Lucretius, instead, is interested in enumerating many causes that are all equally/objectively possible without any need to assert which is the correct one. 21 For this translation see Bailey 1947, 1662 (ad loc.). 22 For example, in this way the use of forsan (6.729) or forsitan (6.735) in the enunciation of the different causes of the Nilotic floods (therefore, a particular case) is justified; the use of similar adverbs is not found in Pythocles, which is extremely significant, but is found in Theophrastus (cf. e.g. De lapid. 2.21; De vent. 15.52), as proof of the clear theoretical difference between Epicurus’ pleonachos tropos and the method employed by Theophrastus. The Theophrastean use of τάχα or ἴσως in some explanations of natural phenomena might refer to εἰκοτολογία, the etiology of the ‘plausible’ in the investigation of the meteora, perhaps attributable to the philosopher from Eresus on the basis of a Proclus passage (In Plat. Tim. 2.120.29–121.7 Diehl = 159 FHS&G).

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In a recent and excellent monograph on Epicurean meteorology, 23 Bakker examines Fr. 13 col. III Smith of Diogenes of Oenoanda, 24 in which Diogenes argues that, although all explanations are possible, “this one” will be more plausible than “that one” (9–13: τὸ μέντοι/λέγειν πάντας μὲν ἐνδε–/χομένους, πιθανώτερον / δ’ εἶναι τόνδε τοῦδε ὀρθῶς / ἔχει). Diogenes thus establishes a different degree of plausibility between the explanations listed, which is not found in either Epicurus or Lucretius. Bakker hypothesizes that this is due to the fact that Diogenes is attempting to reconcile his Epicurean orthodoxy with the astronomical discoveries of his day which, evidently, he could not afford to ignore. Bakker concludes that “Diogenes of Oenoanda’s claim that some explanations are more plausible than others is a departure from Epicurus and Lucretius for whom all alternative explanations have the same truth-value”. 25 In my opinion Bakker is right but only about the truth-value of the explanations: for neither Epicurus nor Lucretius consider – as Diogenes of Oenoanda does – one explanation more plausible than the others, since this would completely contradict the pleonachos tropos. Nevertheless, I believe that not only Diogenes of Oenoanda’s philosophical stance on the multiple explanations, but also Lucretius’ one, cannot be identified with the pleonachos tropos of the Letter to Pythocles. A wide range of hypotheses can be put forward to justify this claim. We could: (1) deny the authenticity of the letter (which seems wrong to me); (2) maintain that Pythocles is a compendium in which Epicurus did not go into the epistemological details of his method; 26 (3) affirm that Lucretius did not fully understand the pleoanchos tropos, (4) or that his treatment depends on a lost book of Epicurus’ Peri physeos (or some other work), whose contents differed from Pythocles; (5) argue that it is a personal elaboration by Lucretius (6) or that the poet derived his treatment from an Epicurean philosopher (either belonging to the first generation or later than Epicurus). It is difficult to take a position on the matter (as it is with regard to the fragment of Diogenes of Oinoanda). However (as for Diogenes), I would not ex-

 23 See my review: Verde 2017. 24 Bakker 2016, 37–42. 25 Bakker 2016, 74. Leone 2017, 99 has recently attempted to trace the use of the ‘criterion’ of the pythanotes back to Epicurus (Hrdt. 80, Nat. 14 col. XXXV.13–15 Leone, as well as Nat. 11 [24] [44] Arrighetti2, with the integration of [πιθανώτε]|ρον in l. 1), levelling out the methodological differences with Diogenes of Oinoanda. 26 It should be recalled, however, that the literary form of the compendium cannot alter the basic core of the doctrine developed in more detailed works; hence, perhaps, the polemic of Demetrius Lacon against Philonides of Laodicea (cf. PHerc. 1012, col. LI Puglia). On Pythocles as an epitome see Tulli 2014.

  Francesco Verde clude that Lucretius’ position on the pleonachos tropos might be a personal interpretation or that it is a misunderstanding. What seems most significant to me is that certainly Diogenes, but probably also Lucretius, is moving away from the Letter to Pythocles (either deliberately or not). Ultimately, this means not only that the method of multiple explanations did not remain the same over the course of the history of the Epicurean Kepos, but also that the right interpretation of this method was the object of a philosophical debate within Epicurus’ school (partly provoked, perhaps, by polemical attacks from other schools).

 Multiple Explanations in the Aetna It is not possible here to exhaustively discuss the many issues related to the Aetna and, more specifically, its author and dating. 27 Identifying the author of the work is, I think, an almost desperate task, at least according to our current state of knowledge. There are also many doubts about the dating of this poem. However, considering its strong indebtedness to the De Rerum Natura, it seems plausible to chronologically place it after Lucretius. It is an unquestionable fact that the anonymous author knew Lucretius. The terminus ante quem almost unanimously accepted is AD 79, the year of the Vesuvian eruption. While many more or less recent several studies have examined the close relation between this text and other works of Latin literature, 28 few contributions have analyzed the contents of the Aetna from a strictly historical-philosophical point of view. It is worth recalling the contrasting positions of S. Sudhaus and A. Rostagni. The former considered the work to be deeply influenced by Stoicism (in particular by Posidonius, as regards the more strictly ‘volcanological’ section of the text). 29 According to the latter, the philosophical coloring of the Aetna is intrinsically Epicurean and its author should be sought only in the post-Lucretian Epicurean environment. 30 In a study significantly entitled The Philosophy of the Aetna (1943), P. De Lacy not only avoided formulating any serious criticism of the method of analysis used by Sudhaus and Rostagni to reach their respective conclusions. In his article De Lacy claimed that the author of the Aetna undoubtedly accepted some fundamental principles of Epicureanism, without claiming that the poem was exclusively Epicurean. It remains certain that the Aetna is the only  27 For an initial overview see Volk 2005, Taub 2009, Santelia 2012, and Iodice 2013. 28 See Vessereau 1923, 45–82. 29 Sudhaus 1898, 71–80. 30 Rostagni 1961, 283–334.

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didactic-scientific poem on the Sicilian volcano to survive in its entirety. In his treatment of Sicily, Strabo provides an important testimony on Mount Etna by Posidonius (6.2.3 = 234 Edelstein–Kidd). After mentioning the legend of the brothers Amphinomus and Anapia (which seems to be almost a literary topos closely connected to the Sicilian volcano), Strabo quotes Posidonius, according to whom lava is a misfortune when it comes but then turns into something beneficial for the countryside because it makes the land fertile, and this is especially useful for the cultivation of the vine. Finally, Posidonius briefly deals with the λίθος μυλίας, that is the lapis molaris of the Aetna, the rock that, once cooled after liquefaction, becomes solid and is used as a stone mill. Strabo’s testimony confirms Posidonius’ deep interest not only in volcanism in general, 31 but also in Sicily, 32 which is one of the reasons why Sudhaus considered the Aetna a Stoic poem. In an extremely balanced article, F.A.D. Goodyear, the author of the latest critical edition of the Aetna, 33 underlined the close relationship between the poem and Seneca’s Naturales Quaestiones, reaching a rather articulated conclusion: 34 (1) it is probable that the Aetna and Seneca share a common source; (2) however, this does not exclude a (direct) influence of Seneca on the author of the poem; (3) it is probable – yet far from certain – that, as first suggested by Sudhaus, Posidonius is to be identified as the “major source” (352). In the same study Goodyear does not rule out that the poet also used “subsidiary sources” (355); this seems to me to be the most relevant point also for the present research. I believe that it would be completely wrong to point to a single source for the Aetna; it is more likely that the anonymous author consulted many sources and depends on several traditions. It seems to me that in all likelihood one of these sources is Theophrastus’ text on Mount Etna, which has largely been ignored by the recent secondary literature. From Diogenes Laertius (5.49) we know that Theophrastus wrote a book Περὶ ῥύακος τοῦ ἐν Σικελίᾳ, now completely lost. Thanks to the rich (and dated, albeit still decisive) study by R. Hildebrandt, 35 in this work Theophrastus probably investigated lava and its lithic and mineralogical qualities more than the Etna crater. The content of this book is not known but it seems unlikely that here the philosopher did not deal with the lapis molaris, which was (probably) also examined by Theophrastus in De lapidibus 22,

 31 Cf. Strab. 6.2.11 (227 Edelstein–Kidd), and Sen., NQ 2.26.4–7 (228 Edelstein–Kidd). 32 Cf. Strab. 6.2.1 (249 Edelstein–Kidd) and 7 (250 Edelstein–Kidd). 33 Goodyear 1965. 34 Goodyear 1984, 350–355. 35 Hildebrandt 1894; on the (possible) content of the Περὶ ῥύακος τοῦ ἐν Σικελίᾳ, see esp. 53 and 55.

  Francesco Verde where, in the wider context of the analysis of pumice stones, the flow of lava on Mount Etna is explicitly mentioned. 36 Without adequate textual support, it is impossible to prove what in my view remains a particularly fruitful hypothesis. In the aforementioned volume (125–127), 37 Bakker argued that the verses of Book 6 of the De Rerum Natura (608–1286) on so-called mirabilia/miracula (παράδοξα/θαυμάσια/θαύματα) – such as Mount Etna (6.639–702), the Nile (6.712–737) and places linked to Avernus (6.738–839) – do not derive from Epicurus (after all, such topics find no parallel in the Letter to Pythocles), but are the result of a Lucretian elaboration on the paradoxographical literature which the poet consulted. Still, Bakker does not reject the hypothesis that Lucretius drew upon an Epicurean source intermediate between him and Epicurus (159). 38 I believe that Bakker’s position is both very well argued and very plausible; I would leave open the possibility that, at least for Mount Etna and the Nile, Lucretius primarily derived his information (either directly or indirectly) from Theophrastus who, in turn, could be the source for part of the paradoxographical literature. Here I will not examine the vexatissima quaestio of the (possibly Theophrastean) authorship of the doctrine of multiple explanations, having dealt with it elsewhere. 39 In my opinion, the model of this method of scientific investigation first emerged within the Peripatos, partially with Aristotle and especially with Theophrastus, 40 but the philosophical development and integral reformulation of the pleonachos tropos (to use Epicurean terminology) are attributable only to Epicurus. 41 As far as I know, it has not been adequately underlined that in the Aetna there are some interesting examples of multiple explanations. 42 Almost at the beginning of the poem the author concentrates on the earth, which loosened into tiny channels, does not all unite compactly or into narrow compass. Or maybe the cause of it is indeed ancient, though the formation is not coeval with its origin; or some  36 See Verde 2019. 37 See already Ernout/Robin 1962, 305. 38 With regard to the Lucretian verses on Mount Etna, Lück 1932, 126–127 hypothesizes that Lucretius drew upon an anonymous later Epicurean (i.e. not one of the first generation), who would have read and known the Posidonian teachings about volcanoes. It is known that the thesis of a neo-Epicurean source plays an important role in the reconstruction of Lucretius’ sources suggested by Schmidt 1990. 39 See Verde 2018b. 40 See Bakker 2016, 67–70. 41 Pace Podolak 2010, 65. On the pleonachos tropos more in general, see at least Bénatouïl 2003, Verde 2013b, and Masi 2014. 42 Recent exceptions are Taub 2008, 49, Garani 2009, 106, and G. Mosconi (in Iodice 2009, 153).

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air enters unchecked and works a road as it escapes; or water has eaten away the ground with the mud it perpetually makes and stealthily softens what blocks its course. Or again hot vapours cribbed and confined have overcome solidity and fire has sought a path for itself; or all these forces may have striven in their assigned places. No cause is here for mourning our ignorance, so long as the working of the true cause stands assured. 43 […] (vv. 109–117) 44

That the nature of Mount Etna is hollow and that in all caves there is wind and air is also allowed by Lucretius (6.680–684). Already Aristotle, when dealing with earthquakes, had mentioned Sicily (along with Hellespont, Achaea and Euboea) as an ὕπαντρος land, i.e. one rich in cavities (Meteor. 2.8.366a.23–27). To introduce his different explanations, the anonymous author uses both sive/seu 45 and aut, like Lucretius. 46 There is no doubt that in order to describe the reason for the presence of caves on the mountain, the author identifies several causes basically linked to the activity of wind and water. Note that in De ventis (29) Theophrastus had clarified that the vehemence and strength of winds depend on whether they blow in a narrow or open space; it is evident that the wind that causes earthquakes or the eruption of volcanic fire blows through very narrow underground caverns. 47 The second example of pleonachos tropos is related to water and the underground rivers of Mount Etna: Moreover, rivers running with broad currents have found their own places of sinking. Either an abyss has snatched them headlong down and buried them in its fateful jaws, or they flow unseen, Moreover, rivers running with broad currents have found their own places of sinking. Either an abyss has snatched them headlong down and buried them in its fateful jaws, or they flow unseen, overarched by closed caverns, then, coming to light far away, renew their unexpected course, then, coming to light far away, renew their unexpected course. (vv. 123–127)

The question concerns the existence of underground rivers and, more specifically, their disappearance either inside a chasm or inside a cave, through which they pass, later to resurface somewhere else. In this case, there are two reasons for the phenomenon. The third example of multiple explanations concerns the blowing of wind inside the volcano:

 43 On vv. 116–117 see p. 98. 44 The English translation (here slightly modified) is by Duff/Duff, 1934. 45 See Goodyear 1965, 128. 46 Cf. e.g. 5.519, 522; however, Lucretius seems to prefer using aut: cf. e.g. 5.651, 654, 658, 660. 47 See Coutant/Eichenlaub 1975, XLVII, and Mayhew 2018, 227–231.

  Francesco Verde their [scil. of the winds] furies deeply increase, whether it chance that caverns deep down or the very inlets conserve them or that the earth, porous by reason of its minute openings, draws off into itself thin draughts of air (and this in fuller measure because , rising with its stiff peak, is exposed on this side and on that to hostile winds and of necessity admits gales all round from different quarters and their concert brings more strength to their league), or whether they are driven inwards by clouds and the cloud-laden South Wind, or whether they have gallantly encircled the summit and sweep on behind; then the water from the clouds, streaming down with headlong noise, presses on the sluggish air-currents, drives them before it, and with its buffeting condenses. (vv. 282–292; transl. slightly modified)

As will become clear further on (vv. 358–365), (underground) wind is the main cause of the increase of the volcanic fire, which is fed by the strong friction caused by the violence of the wind. In these hexameters the author focuses on the way in which winds enter the volcano. For this phenomenon four explanations are enumerated: the caves absorb such winds; these enter through minute holes in the earth; the clouds drive the winds into the volcano; the rains drive the air currents in. The last example of pleonachos tropos I wish to examine also concerns the winds: But perhaps you may be at variance with me in your belief that winds rise from other causes. It is undoubted (I claim) that there are rocks and deep caverns beneath the earth like those we see above ground which fall forward with enormous crash, and that their fall disperses and sets in motion air-currents hard by: hence the gathering of winds. Again, fogs with their ample vapour pour out air, as they commonly do in plains and fields watered by a river. (vv. 306–312; transl. slightly modified)

The proposed twofold explanation concerns the origin of the winds and, more specifically, their ‘internal’ or ‘external’ cause (see v. 358: sive peregrinis igitur propriisue […]). The winds might be generated ‘internally’ by the rocks and underground caves, which create huge air currents through their collapse (it is stressed that these rocks and caves are similar to those we see, cernimus, outside, i.e. παρ᾽ ἡμῖν – a highly significant observation as far as the relationship of the Aetna with the Epicurean tradition is concerned). Alternatively, the winds might be generated ‘externally’ because of humidity and foggy air. That the winds blowing through the underground cavities are so strong as to cause earthquakes was a rather common explanation (cf. Sen., NQ 6.12.1); it is found, for example, in Aristotle (Meteor. 2.8.366b.7–367a.2) and in the so-called Syriac-Arab Meteorology, a text generally (but not unanimously) considered Theophrastean (cf. [15.] 10–11

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Daiber [1992]). 48 It is also interesting to draw a comparison with § 105 of the Letter to Pythocles, in which Epicurus explains earthquakes by referring to the wind that – just as we read in the Aetna passage – can come from outside or be caused by the fall of huge clods of earth into cavernous places.

Conclusions There can be no doubt as to the use of the method of multiple explanations in the Aetna, which is further indication of the fact that the overall approach of the poem is essentially (but not exclusively) Epicurean. Unlike Lucretius, the Aetna does not provide any theoretical justification for the use of this investigative method. After excluding that the gods may be causes of natural phenomena such as volcanic ones (vv. 32–35), the author states that the purpose of the poem is to reach the truth (vv. 91–93 and 518–519). This can be acquired through argumenta (v. 143), i.e. reasoning (v. 144: animo duce), and especially through direct vision of the phenomena (vv. 135–136, 548). The poet’s main concern is to know nature (vv. 251–253) and its causes (vv. 144–145 and 226).49 The use of the pleonachos tropos is linked to phenomena that are difficult to explain: hence the frequent recourse to the (true) evidence of the senses. Nowhere in the poem, however, are we told why we should use precisely this method and not any other one. 50 If we could read Theophrastus’ writing on Etna, we could verify (1) whether in this work Theophrastus used several explanations for the same phenomenon and (2) whether a close relationship with the Aetna is likely. With the usual caution, I would argue that, either directly or indirectly, the anonymous author had this Theophrasthean work in mind, 51 since it was one of the very few scientific reports (if not the only one) entirely devoted to the eruptive activity of Mount Etna. As suggested by H.M. Hine, we should bear in mind that while seismic activity was a common focus of scientific investigation in ancient times (because it was more frequent), volcanic activity was less widely investigated, for the simple reason that there were few active volcanoes in the known and explored lands. Thus, one

 48 See e.g. Mayhew 2018, 1 and n. 6. See the plausible remarks by Bakker 2016, 145–158, who does not rule out a strong (albeit not exclusive) Epicurean influence on the text of the SyriacArab Meteorology. 49 See De Lacy 1943, 172–177. 50 See below p. 98. 51 See Reitzenstein 1924, 62, and Steinmetz 1964, 213.

  Francesco Verde can explain why works of this kind, entirely devoted to eruptive phenomena, were rare, with the exception of Theophrastus’ treatise and the Aetna. 52 To conclude: in some points of the Aetna, different explanations are given for the same natural phenomenon, without the author leaning towards any one of these explanations. This might indicate that the causes listed were regarded as being equally valid. In this regard, an interesting point is made at vv. 116–117 (see above p. 94–95), where the anonymous author states that the precise cause of a given phenomenon should not be explained (non est hic causa docenda) while its effect endures (dum stet opus causae). This claim seems to refer to the fact that it is essentially useless (albeit not impossible) to identify the specific cause of a phenomenon while it is taking place: the important thing is to take care of the effect produced by the cause. The problem is to understand if it is possible to trace the effect back to a single cause or not. But if this were possible, it would be difficult to understand why the author enumerates several causes for a single natural event. This passage, then, is rather problematic within the more general argumentative context of the Aetna, in which the study of causes constitutes the foundation of all natural investigations (cf. e.g. v. 144). Moreover, these verses would seem to imply (through the use of the singular form causa) that only one of the various causes presented is actually at work within a phenomenon: in this respect, the position of the Aetna would not be all that far from Lucretius’ use of the pleonachos tropos. The case of the Aetna allows us to affirm that the scientific methodology used by Epicurus and Lucretius for meteorology was successful and widespread. As most of the preserved works by the philosopher of Eresus suggest, it is plausible to assume that in the Περὶ ῥύακος τοῦ ἐν Σικελίᾳ Theophrastus too made moderate use of the method of multiple explanations. Nevertheless, I believe that the intermediary role played by Lucretius was absolutely decisive. It has already been observed that several clues suggest that the overall structure of the Aetna is Epicurean. I am inclined to believe that the pleonachos tropos of this work presupposes the same method used by Lucretius, which would further prove the success not only of the De Rerum Natura (which is hardly surprising) 53 but also – and especially – of a specific scientific method of investigation, as already demonstrated by P. Hardie. Finally, although this only remains a hypothesis, I have stressed the possibility that the anonymous author knew Theophrastus’ Περὶ ῥύακος τοῦ ἐν Σικελίᾳ (either directly or indirectly), obviously along with other traditions (in addition  52 See Hine 2002, 58. 53 See Hardie 2007.

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to Lucretius, probably Posidonius et alii). It is likely that some elements of this Theophrasthean work are to be found in the Aetna (for example, the section concerning the qualities of the lapis molaris, which is not mentioned in Lucretius): if confirmed, this would show the significant role played especially by Theophrastus’ physical opuscula in Rome during the Imperial age. 54

References Acerbi, Fabio (2018), Concetto ed uso dei modelli nella scienza greca antica, Pistoia. Algra, Keimpe (2018), “Hellenistic Philosophy”, in: Lorenzo Perilli/Daniela Patrizia Taormina (eds.), Ancient Philosophy: Textual Paths and Historical Explorations, Abingdon/New York, 409–494. Bailey, Cyril (ed.) (1947), Titi Lucreti Cari De Rerum Natura Libri sex, Volume III: Commentary, Book IV–VI, Addenda, Indexes, Bibliography, Oxford. Bakker, Frederik A. (2016), Epicurean Meteorology: Sources, Method, Scope and Organization, Leiden/Boston. Bénatouïl, Thomas (2003), “La méthode épicurienne des explications multiples”, in: Id./Valéry Laurand/Arnaud Macé (eds.), L’épicurisme antique, Les Cahiers Philosophiques de Strasbourg 15, 15–47. Bollack, Jean/Laks, André (eds.) (1978), Epicure à Pythoclès: Sur la cosmologie et les phénomènes météorologiques, Villeneuve d’Ascq. Coutant, Victor/Eichenlaub, Val V. (eds.) (1975), Theophrastus: De ventis, Notre Dame/London. Daiber, Hans (1992), “The Meteorology of Theophrastus in Syriac and Arabic Translation”, in: William W. Fortenbaugh/Dimitri Gutas (eds.), Theophrastus: His Psychological, Doxographical, and Scientific Writings, New Brunswick/London, 166–293. De Lacy, Phillip (1943), “The Philosophy of the Aetna”, in: Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 74, 169–178. De Sanctis, Dino (2012), “Utile al singolo, utile a molti: Il proemio dell’Epistola a Pitocle”, in: Cronache Ercolanesi 42, 95–109. Duff, John W./Duff, Arnold M. (eds.) (1934), Minor Latin Poets, London/Cambridge (Mass.). Erler, Michael (2009), “La felicità del proficiens in Platone e negli Epicurei”, in: Piergiorgio Donatelli/Emidio Spinelli (eds.), Il senso della virtù, Rome, 49–60. Ernout, Alfred/Robin, Léon (eds.) (1962), Lucrèce, De Rerum Natura: Commentaire exégétique et critique, Tome troisième, Livres V et VI, Deuxieme edition, Paris. Falcon, Andrea (2005), Aristotle and the Science of Nature: Unity without Uniformity, Cambridge. Garani, Myrto (2007), Empedocles Redivivus: Poetry and Analogy in Lucretius, London/New York. Garani, Myrto (2009), “Going with the Wind: Visualizing Volcanic Eruptions in the PseudoVergilian Aetna”, in: Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 52, 103–121.

 54 Cf. Hardie 2009. It is significant that, when Ovid talks about Mount Etna in the Metamorphoses (15.340–355), he uses the method of multiple explanations.

  Francesco Verde Giannantoni, Gabriele (1984), “Su alcuni problemi circa i rapporti tra scienza e filosofia nell’età ellenistica”, in: Id./M. Vegetti (eds.), La scienza ellenistica, Atti delle tre giornate di studio tenutesi a Pavia dal 14 al 16 aprile 1982, Naples, 39–71. Goodyear, Francis Richard D. (ed.) (1965), Incerti auctoris Aetna, Cambridge. Goodyear, Francis Richard D. (1984), “The ‘Aetna’: Thought, Antecedents, and Style”, Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II 32.1, 344–363. Hankinson, Robert J. (2013), “Lucretius, Epicurus, and the Logic of Multiple Explanations”, in: Daryn Lehoux/Andrew D. Morrison/Alison Sharrock (eds.), Lucretius: Poetry, Philosophy, Science, Oxford/New York, 69–97. Hardie, Philip (2007), “Lucretius and Later Latin Literature in Antiquity”, in: Stuart Gillespie/ Philip Hardie (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Lucretius, Cambridge, 111–127. Hardie, Philip (2009), Lucretian Receptions: History, The Sublime, Knowledge, Cambridge. Hildebrandt, Richard (1894), “Περὶ ῥύακος τοῦ ἐν Σικελίᾳ”, in: Griechische Studien Hermann Lipsius zum sechzigsten Geburtstag dargebracht, Leipzig, 52–63. Hine, Harry M. (2002), “Seismology and Vulcanology in Antiquity?”, in: Christopher J. Tuplin/ Tracey E. Rihll (eds.), Science and Mathematics in Ancient Greek Culture, With a Foreword by Lewis Wolpert, Oxford, 56–75. Iodice, Maria Grazia (ed.) (2009), Appendix Vergiliana, Prefazione di Luca Canali, Note di Gianfranco Mosconi e Maria Vittoria Truini, Edizione riveduta e aggiornata, Milan. Iodice, Maria Grazia (2013), “L’Aetna dello Pseudovirgilio: Un poema scientifico”, in: Emanuele Paratore/Rossella Belluso (eds.), Valori naturali, dimensioni culturali, percorsi di ricerca geografica: Studi in onore di Cosimo Palagiano, Rome, 669–679. Isnardi Parente, Margherita (1987), “La scienza ellenistica: Discussione su un libro recente”, in: Rivista di Storia della Filosofia 42, 273–295. Leone, Giuliana (2017), “Diogène d’Œenoanda et la polémique sur les meteora”, in: Jürgen Hammerstaedt/Pierre-Marie Morel/Refik Güremen (eds.), Diogenes of Oinoanda: Epicureanism and Philosophical Debates/Diogène d’Œnoanda Épicurisme et controverses, Leuven, 89–110. Lück, Werner (1932), Die Quellenfrage im 5. und 6. Buch des Lukrez, Diss. Breslau. Masi, Francesca G. (2014), “The Method of Multiple Explanations: Epicurus and the Notion of Causal Possibility”, in: Carlo Natali/Cristina Viano (eds.), AITIA II, Avec ou sans Aristote: Le débat sur les causes à l’âge hellénistique et impérial, Louvain-la-Neuve, 37–63. Mayhew, Robert (ed.) (2018), Theophrastus of Eresus: On Winds, Leiden/Boston. Mensch, Pamela (2018) (transl. by), Diogenes Laertius: Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, Edited by James Miller, Oxford. Morel, Pierre-Marie (2015), “Esperienza e dimostrazione in Epicuro”, in: Dino De Sanctis/Emidio Spinelli/Mauro Tulli/Francesco Verde (eds.), Questioni epicuree, Sankt Augustin, 131– 147. Podolak, Pietro (2010), “Questioni Pitoclee”, in: Würzburger Jahrbücher für Altertumswissenschaft 34, 39–80. Reitzenstein, Erich (1924), Theophrast bei Epikur und Lucrez, Heidelberg. Rostagni, Augusto (1961), Virgilio minore: Saggio sullo svolgimento della poesia virgiliana, Rome. Rouse, William H.D./Smith, Martin F. (eds.) (1992), Lucretius: On the Nature of Things, Cambridge (Mass.)/London. Santelia, Stefania, (2012), “L’Aetna (App. Verg.): scienza ed etica”, in: Vanna Maraglino (ed.), Scienza antica in età moderna: Teoria ed immagini, Bari, 375–387.

Epicurean Meteorology, Lucretius, and the Aetna  

Schiesaro, Alessandro (1989), “Pedetemptin progredientis (Lucr. 5, 533)”, in: Rivista di Filologia e di Istruzione Classica 117, 286–296. Schmidt, Jürgen (1990), Lukrez, der Kepos und die Stoiker, Frankfurt am Main. Sedley, David (2007), Creationism and Its Critics in Antiquity, Berkeley/Los Angeles/London. Steinmetz, Peter (1964), Die Physik des Theophrastos von Eresos, Bad Homburg/Berlin/Zürich. Sudhaus, Siegfried (ed.) (1898), Aetna, Leipzig. Taub, Liba (2008), Aetna and the Moon: Explaining Nature in Ancient Greece and Rome, Corvallis, OR. Taub, Liba (2009), “Explaining a Volcano Naturally: Aetna and the Choice of Poetry”, in: Ead./Aude Doody (eds.), Authorial Voices in Greco-Roman Technical Writing, Trier, 125– 141. Tulli, Mauro (2014), “Epicuro a Pitocle: la forma didattica del testo”, in: Id. (ed.), Φιλία: Dieci contributi per Gabriele Burzacchini, Bologna, 67–78. Verde, Francesco (2013a), Elachista: La dottrina dei minimi nell’Epicureismo, Leuven. Verde, Francesco (2013b), “Cause epicuree”, in: Antiquorum Philosophia 7, 127–142. Verde, Francesco (2017), “Review of Bakker (2016)”, Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2017.06.38: https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2017/2017.06.38. [17.03.2020]. Verde, Francesco (2018a), “Fenomeni fisici e spiegazioni multiple in Lucrezio e nell’Aetna pseudovirgiliano”, in: Giornale Critico della Filosofia Italiana 99/3, 523–544. Verde, Francesco (2018b), “L’empirismo di Teofrasto e la meteorologia epicurea”, in: Rivista di Filosofia Neo-Scolastica 90/4, 889–910. Verde, Francesco (2019), “De lapidibus 22: Teofrasto e l’Aetna”, in: Studi Italiani di Filologia Classica 112, 255–264. Vessereau, Jules (ed.) (1923), L’Etna: Poème, Paris. Volk, Katharina (2005), “Aetna oder Wie man ein Lehrgedicht schreibt”, in: Niklas Holzberg (ed.), Die Appendix Vergiliana: Pseudepigraphen im literarischen Kontext, Tübingen, 68– 90. Wasserstein, Abraham (1978), “Epicurean Science”, in: Hermes 106, 484–494. Wilson, Malcolm (2013), Structure and Method in Aristotle’s Meteorologica: A More Disorderly Nature, Cambridge/New York.



Part II: Ancient Receptions

Myrto Garani

Seneca as Lucretius’ Sublime Reader (Naturales Quaestiones 3 praef.) Abstract: Book 3 of Seneca’s Natural Questions, in which the philosopher investigates the nature and causes of terrestrial waters, is usually considered by recent scholarship to have been originally the first in Seneca’s natural philosophical project. In line with this view, in this paper I discuss the way in which the prologue to Book 3, being the prologue to the whole work, is programmatic in both philosophical and poetic terms. Taking as my starting point Gareth Williams’ claim that “The sublime aspect in Senecan prose is fundamentally conditioned by Latin poetic mechanisms, with Lucretius a key influence” [Williams, G.D. (2016): “Minding the Gap: Seneca, the Self, and the Sublime”, in G.D. Williams and K. Volk (eds.): Roman Reflections: Studies in Latin Philosophy (Oxford): 172–191, p. 190], I will mainly focus upon two figures in Seneca’s prologue, one mythological and one historical, i.e. Phaethon and Hannibal correspondingly. My examination of this pair will show Seneca’s intertextual engagement with Lucretius, since both figures exemplify – even if with different doctrinal objectives – what Williams defines as “Lucretius’ binary mechanism of positive and negative sublimities” [Williams 2016, 174–175]. In this process of Seneca’s appropriation of the Lucretian notion of sublimity, both Ovid in his Metamorphoses and Livy are revealed to be the key intertextual intermediaries. Keywords: sublime, Phaethon, Hannibal, exempla, vates

Book 3 of Seneca’s Natural Questions, in which the philosopher investigates the nature and causes of terrestrial waters, is usually considered by recent scholarship to have been originally the first in Seneca’s natural philosophical project. In line with this view, in this paper I will discuss the way in which the prologue to Book 3, being the prologue to the whole work, is programmatic in both philosophical and poetic terms. Taking as my starting point Gareth Williams’ claim that “The sublime aspect in Senecan prose is fundamentally conditioned by Latin poetic mechanisms, with Lucretius a key influence”, 1 I mainly focus upon two figures in Seneca’s prologue, one mythological and one historical, i.e. Phaethon and

 1 Williams 2016, 190. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110673487-007

  Myrto Garani Hannibal correspondingly. My examination of this pair will show Seneca’s intertextual engagement with Lucretius, since both figures exemplify – even if with different doctrinal objectives – what Williams defines as “Lucretius’ binary mechanism of positive and negative sublimities”. 2 In this process of Seneca’s appropriation of the Lucretian notion of sublimity, both Ovid in his Metamorphoses and Livy are revealed to be the key intertextual intermediaries. 3 In his turn, Seneca uses these exempla as didactic tools, so as to initiate his addressee into Stoic truth. 4 But before we proceed, let us take a first look at the way in which Seneca appears to perceive the notion of sublimity. In this respect, his Epistle 41 (3–5, transl. Gummere) is particularly instructive: Si tibi occurrerit vetustis arboribus et solitam altitudinem egressis frequens lucus et conspectum caeli ramorum aliorum alios protegentium summovens obtentu, illa proceritas silvae et secretum loci et admiratio umbrae in aperto tam densae atque continuae fidem tibi numinis faciet. Si quis specus saxis penitus exesis montem suspenderit, non manu factus, sed naturalibus causis in tantam laxitatem excavatus, animum tuum quadam religionis suspicione percutiet. Magnorum fluminum capita veneramur; subita ex abdito vasti amnis eruptio aras habet; coluntur aquarum calentium fontes, et stagna quaedam vel opacitas vel inmensa altitudo sacravit. Si hominem videris interritum periculis, intactum cupiditatibus, inter adversa felicem, in mediis tempestatibus placidum, ex superiore loco homines videntem, ex aequo deos, non subibit te veneratio eius? Non dices: “Ista res maior est altiorque quam ut credi similis huic, in quo est, corpusculo possit? Vis isto divina descendit.” Animum excellentem, moderatum, omnia tamquam minora transeuntem, quicquid timemus optamusque ridentem, caelestis potentia agitat. Non potest res tanta sine adminiculo numinis stare. Itaque maiore sui parte illic est, unde descendit. If ever you have come upon a grove that is full of ancient trees which have grown to an unusual height, shutting out a view of the sky by a veil of pleached and intertwining branches, then the loftiness of the forest, the seclusion of the spot, and your marvel at the thick unbroken shade in the midst of the open spaces, will prove to you the presence of deity. Or if a cave, made by the deep crumbling of the rocks, holds up a mountain on its arch, a place not built with hands but hollowed out into such spaciousness by natural causes, your soul will be deeply moved by a certain intimation of the existence of God. We

 2 Torre 2003; Williams 2016, 174–175. See also Schiesaro 2015, 249. 3 For the idea of sublimity in Lucretius see Schrijvers 1970, 264–65; Conte 1994; Porter 2007; see also Hardie 2009; Schiesaro 2015; Williams 2016. See especially Hardie 2009, 81–88, 93–116 for “markers of sublimity”. For Seneca’s idea of sublime in general see Mazzoli 1990 and Gunderson 2015. For a thorough discussion of the history of sublime in antiquity see Porter 2016. 4 Cf. Sen., Ep. 6.5. For the use of examples see Roller 2001, 88–102; Barchiesi 2009. See also Long (2009, 28) about the utility of role models and exemplary figures. For Seneca’s instructions about how to make the most of exempla see e.g. Ep. 94; Ep. 120.

Seneca as Lucretius’ sublime reader  

worship the sources of mighty rivers; we erect altars at places where great streams burst suddenly from hidden sources; we adore springs of hot water as divine, and consecrate certain pools because of their dark waters or their immeasurable depth. If you see a man who is unterrified in the midst of dangers, untouched by desires, happy in adversity, peaceful amid the storm, who looks down upon men from a higher plane, and views the gods on a footing of equality, will not a feeling of reverence for him steal over you? Will you not say: “This quality is too great and too lofty to be regarded as resembling this petty body in which it dwells? A divine power has descended upon that man.” When a soul rises superior to other souls, when it is under control, when it passes through every experience as if it were of small account, when it smiles at our fears and at our prayers, it is stirred by a force from heaven. A thing like this cannot stand upright unless it be propped by the divine. Therefore, a greater part of it abides in that place from whence it came down to earth.

Seneca transfers what is called “the natural sublime”, i.e. the feelings of wonder and fear stirred up by imposing natural phenomena, such as an ancient forest and subterranean caves, to that of moral greatness of the Stoic Sage. 5

Seneca’s Phaethon In this section I will argue that by introducing Phaethon into his prologue to QNat. 3 as a pivotal figure, Seneca creates a double intertextual allusion to both Ovid’s Phaethon and Lucretius’ Epicurus, treating them both as positive sublimities, to which he himself aspires. From the very first words of his prologue, Seneca acknowledges that he is laying the foundations of a great project (magnarum rerum fundamenta, QNat. 3 Praef. 1), in the framework of which he is about to survey the universe (mundum circumire, QNat. 3 Praef. 1) and untangle its causes and secrets. Seneca identifies himself as a proficiens, who strives to reach Stoic truth by means of his studies in natural philosophy. While he presents himself metaphorically as the craftsman of his textual universe, he assimilates his role of a writer to that of the divine creator, whose cosmic edifice he intends to explore and expound in detail. At the same time, he introduces his addressee, Lucilius, thereby pointing to the didactic character of his work. Hence, he establishes a two-fold goal for his project, defining its generic identity: by means of his didactic natural philosophical prose not only is he about to disclose the universal secrets, but also to transmit all this crucial knowledge to others (QNat. 3 Praef. 1 aliis noscenda prodere; cf. below QNat. 3 Praef. 7 quaerere ac docere).

 5 Schrijvers 2006, 101. Cf. Sen., Vit. beat. 9.4, Ira 1.20.3, Tranq. 17.11.

  Myrto Garani Seneca resorts to the common metaphor of a journey, to describe the exploration of the universe as a mental journey through space and himself as a privileged spectator of the world, a traveller through the universe and explorer of its mysteries. Being a cosmic traveller, then, the Stoic sapiens places himself in the long line of natural philosophers who are said to have embarked upon similar intellectual expeditions. 6 I will refrain for a moment from identifying with more precision Seneca’s intertextual extraterrestrial fellow travellers, so as to underscore Williams’ remark that “Seneca [similarly] exploits this vertical axis, reapplying the familiar Greco-Roman flight-of-mind topos, but with stress on the gaping distance between high and low or between the cosmic and the terrestrial viewpoints”. 7 In the introductory lines of his prologue, Seneca also employs the key-verb “circumire” (QNat. 3 Praef. 1), thus signaling that his venture will differ considerably from those of his predecessors: instead of a vague linear motion upwards, his journey through the universe is going to be a circular one, so explicitly replicating the course of the planets (cf. QNat. 1 Praef. 18). 8 At the same time, it is significant that Seneca uses the verb eruere (QNat. 3 Praef. 1), whose literal meaning suggests a violent action, to describe the process of unveiling the arcane universal causes: compelled to do so by his adherence to Stoicism, the philosopher intends both to disclose the causes of the universe, but eradicate them too, which will enable him to substitute for the various causes he is about to discuss the only truth, i.e. God and Fate. When describing the difficulty of his task, Seneca stresses that his old age (senectus, QNat. 3 Praef. 2) might be regarded as a hindrance to his literary and scientific ambitions and thus asks for the addressee’s indulgence towards the result; still his old age may serve him as a stimulus, so as to accelerate his efforts and complete them before the end of his life. In line with this statement, Seneca quotes two verses which probably derive from the now-lost poem Phaethon of Vagellius, about whom we know nearly nothing (Sen. QNat. 3 praef. 3, transl. Corcoran; cf. fr. 2 Courtney): 9 Libet igitur mihi exclamare illum poetae incliti versum: Tollimus ingentes animos et maxima parvo Tempore molimur.

 6 Cf. Lucr., DRN 1.74 peragravit; Ov., Met. 15.147 ire, 149 vehi; Man., Astr. 1.13–15 ire. See Schiesaro (2014, 74) about the quest for extra terrestrial knowledge. Cf. Jones 1926 for Posidonius and the flight of mind. 7 Williams 2016, 175. This image of sublimity echoes what we read in Seneca’s Ep. 58.27. 8 Armisen-Marchetti 1995; Edwards 2014 especially 325. 9 For Phaethon in Naturales Quaestiones see Berno 2003, 261f.

Seneca as Lucretius’ sublime reader  

“Let me recite these well-known lines of the famous poet: We arouse our minds to greatness and we strive for grand accomplishments in the little time left.”

The figure of Phaethon within the prologue to QNat. 3 turns out to be emblematic. According to the myth the hero ascended to the heavens in his search for the truth about his father, Helios; despite his father’s instructions to the contrary, he embarks upon a catastrophic ride, thanks to which the world would have been incinerated, but for Jupiter’s intervention, while Phaethon himself is eventually killed by Jupiter’s thunderbolt. In QNat. 6 Seneca again quotes from Vagellius’ poem, in the context of his consolatory argumentation regarding earthquakes. Given the fact that death is inescapable, Seneca claims that to breathe your last in an earthquake is a more imposing way of dying and thus preferable (QNat. 6.2.8–9, transl. Corcoran): Egregie Vagellius meus in illo inclito carmine: inquit, Si cadendum est, E caelo cecidisse velim. Idem mihi licet dicere: si cadendum est, cadam orbe concusso, non quia fas est optare publicam cladem, sed quia ingens mortis solacium est terram quoque videre mortalem. My friend Vagellius expresses it well in that famous poem of his: If I must fall, he says, I would prefer to fall from heaven. I might say the same thing: if I must fall, let me fall with the world shattered, not because it is right to hope for a public disaster but because it is a great solace in dying to see that the earth, too, is mortal.

Seneca’s quotation here may have been drawn from some attempt by Phaethon to win his father’s permission to drive the chariot of the sun, totally disregarding the fatal outcome of his action. Scholars comment upon the fact that within Seneca’s prose works, the myth of Phaethon in its Ovidian version has already acquired specific heroic associations. In his De providentia (5.10–11, transl. Basore), Seneca recontextualizes several verses from those that the Ovidian Helios addresses towards his progeny (Met. 2.63–69, 2.79–81): Vide quam alte escendere debeat virtus; scies illi non per secura vadendum: Ardua prima via est et quam vix mane recentes enituntur equi; medio est altissima caelo, unde mare et terras ipsi mihi saepe videre sit timor et pavida trepidet formidine pectus. ultima prona via est et eget moderamine certo; tunc etiam quae me subiectis excipit undis, ne ferar in praeceps, Tethys solet ima vereri. Haec cum audisset ille generosus adulescens: “Placet,” inquit, “via; escendo. Est tanti per ista ire casuro.” Non desinit acrem animum metu territare:

  Myrto Garani Utque viam teneas nulloque errore traharis, per tamen adversi gradieris cornua tauri Haemoniosque arcus violentique ora leonis. Post haec ait: “Iunge datos currus! His quibus deterreri me putas incitor. Libet illic stare ubi ipse Sol trepidat.” Humilis et inertis est tuta sectari; per alta virtus it. See to what a height virtue must climb! You will find that it has no safe road to tread: The way is steep at first, and the coursers strain To climb it, fresh in the early morn. They gain The crest of heaven at noon; from here I gaze Adown on land and sea with dread amaze, And oft my heart will beat in panic fear. The roadway ends in sharp descent—keep here A sure control; ’twill happen even so That Tethys, stretching out her waves below, Will often, while she welcomes, be affright To see me speeding downward from the height. Having heard the words, that noble youth replied, “I like the road, I shall mount; even though I fall, it will be worth while to travel through such sights.” But the other did not cease from trying to strike his bold heart with fear: And though you may not miss the beaten track, Nor, led to wander, leave the zodiac, Yet through the Bull’s fierce horns, the Centaur’s bow And raging Lion’s jaws you still must go. In reply to this he said, “Harness the chariot you offered; the very things that you think affright me urge me on. I long to stand aloft where even the Sun-god quakes with fear.” The groveller and the coward will follow the safe path: virtue seeks the heights.

By means of inverting the Ovidian implications, whose ultimate aim is to dissuade Phaethon from his fatal decision, the philosopher argues that a virtuous man willingly embraces his fate and explains how Stoic virtus seeks the heights. Thus Seneca shifts the focus from the outcome of Phaethon’s fatal ride to the grandiosity of his celestial ambitions. Along the same lines, in the treatise De vita beata 20.5 Seneca quotes an Ovidian verse (Met. 2.328 Magnis tamen excidit ausis. “Yet fails in a high emprise”) which forms part of Phaethon’s epitaph (Met. 2.327– 8): 10 In doing so, Seneca introduces the Stoic notion of the magnitude of the soul and of sublimity, with reference to his privileged place as a result of his philosophical knowledge of physical phenomena. 11 If we take into consideration Seneca’s intense intertextual dialogue with Ovid’s Metamorphoses throughout his QNat. book 3 – one need only recall for example, Seneca’s multiple quotations from Pythagoras’ speech in Metamorphoses 15 and his selection from the Ovidian list on mirabilia aquarum (in QNat. 3.20– 21 and 25–26 to which we will come back in the next chapter) –, we can claim that  10 Cf. Ov., Met. 2.327–8. 11 Cf. Sen., Constant. 26.6–7.

Seneca as Lucretius’ sublime reader  

in presenting himself as Phaethon in the prologue to Book 3, Seneca plausibly intends us to recall the Ovidian narration of the episode of Phaethon in Metamorphoses 1–2 (Met. 1.747–2.400). Along these lines, and in connection with Seneca’s reception of Ovid’s Phaethon in his philosophical treatises, Mazzoli links together the two quotations from Vagellius’ Phaethon that we read in the third and sixth book of QNat. and rightly thinks that they both point to the Stoic notions of μεγαλοψυχία (magnanimitas) and to μεγαλοφροσύνη (magnitudo ingenii) “contributing to the same supreme ethico-aesthetic goal, the sublime”. 12 In fact, such an unmistakable intertextual allusion to his literary predecessor should be considered in itself as a means of achieving sublimity. 13 While the Ovidian Phaethon provokes his doom and threatens to destroy the world, the poet comments upon the nature of the relationship of humans with the divine: not only do gods exist, but they also regulate the order of the universe. In connection with this, in a seminal article on this passage Schiesaro points to “the paralyzing, rather than liberating effect of the privileged viewpoint that Phaethon attains”. 14 Even more significantly, Ovid’s Phaethon who according to the poet “was once speaking proudly” (quondam magna loquentem, Met. 1.751; cf. Met. 2.111 magnanimus Phaethon miratur; Lucretius’ magnanimus Phaethon in DRN 5.400), looks back above all to Lucretius’ Epicurus (DRN 1.62–79), the first mortal who dared to face monstrous-headed religion (DRN 1.64) and to stare upwards back at it into the celestial regions without fear of thunderbolts. In his actions Epicurus resembles to an epic hero, in that he breaks “the confining bars of nature’s gates” (DRN 1.71 naturae… portarum claustra), wanders through the universe (DRN 1.74 peragravit) to return victorious, having shaken off the burden of religious superstitions. As a result of his sublime vision of the universe, Epicurus figures as “the great freedom fighter”, to use Hardie’s phrase (DRN 1.62–79). 15

 12 Mazzoli 1970, 48; see also Littlewood 2004, 122–126; Williams 2012, 229. 13 Cf. Longinus, 13.2, according to whom it is with this objective of attaining sublimity that a poet resorts to imitation and emulation (13.2 μίμησις and ζήλωσις) of his models, from whom he thus draws an all-pervading inspiration, this process being in a way analogous to the divine afflatus that possesses the Pythia. See Schiesaro 2003, 127–132. Cf. also Michel 1969. For a thorough discussion of Manilius’ intertextual dialogue with Ovid’s Phaethon in poetic and philosophical terms, regarding the attainment of knowledge as opposed to passive ignorance (which may bring admiration and fear) and the conflict between the novum and the solitum, with Lucretius being Manilius’ significant intertextual target see now Kyriakidis 2018. Seneca’s possible reception of Manilius’ Phaethon deserves further exploration, which, however, I cannot pursue here any further due to the length restrictions of this paper. 14 Schiesaro 2014, 83. 15 Hardie 2009, 133.

  Myrto Garani Whereas in his other philosophical treatises Seneca is selective in his treatment of Phaethon’s character, given the fact that he mainly highlights its philosophical aspect, we should bear in mind for the discussion to follow that in addition to Ovid’s presentation of the Phaethon myth, in Ovid’s predecessors as well the actual myth is widely perceived to have been heavily burdened with metapoetic connotations. 16 In his treatise On Sublime, when quoting verses from Euripides’ Phaethon (fr. 779 N. = 168–77 Diggle), Ps.-Longinus highlights Phaethon’s attempt at sublimity (ch. 15). With Phaethon’s multifaceted character in mind, in connection specifically with the Ovidian narration along with its Lucretian intertextual ramifications, Schiesaro rightly remarks: “Phaethon’s journey towards the sky should be comprehensively read as a probing comment on Epicurus’ metaphoric flight, and by extension on Lucretius’ poetic and philosophical project […]. Ovid’s commentary on Phaethon’s hubristic – and sublime – attempt at reaching a divine level of knowledge should be read as a specific critique of the Lucretian sublime, which is at the same time an epistemic, aesthetic and ideological strategy [my emphasis].” 17 In his turn, while Seneca introduces Phaethon in his prologue to QNat. 3 as a key figure, he looks back intertextually to both Ovid’s Phaethon and Lucretius’ Epicurus, both viewed as positive sublimities. Likewise, in his De Otio Seneca personifies human thought, which – very much like Epicurus himself – is liberated by breaking through the worlds’ ramparts (Dial. 8.5.6 caeli munimenta perrumpit), and so being able to contemplate the cosmic immensity. 18 While I will come back – in the second part of this chapter in connection with Hannibal – to Seneca’s response to Lucretius’ poetics, here I would like to claim that by alluding to the Ovidian narration of Phaethon, Seneca replies to Ovid’s remythologization of Lucretius’ atomic universe: despite the fact that Seneca agrees with Ovid that gods exist and regulate the natural order, thanks to his privileged vatic viewpoint, instead of becoming mesmerized – as the Ovidian Phaethon did –, the Stoic sapiens in a way follows in Epicurus’ vestigia, appropriates what Philip Hardie calls “Lucretian visionary zeal” (QNat. 3 Praef. 1 occulta perspiciam; QNat. 3 Praef. 10 animo omnia vidisse) and manages to liberate his soul. 19

 16 Hardie 2009, 216. 17 Schiesaro 2014, 75. For inconsistencies in Lucretius’ account see Giussani 1896–8, 4.43; Schiesaro 2014, 95. 18 Williams 2003 ad loc. 19 Hardie 2007, 119. In Lucretius “the philosophical ‘action’ is repeatedly focalized through viewing and spectating figures”. For Seneca following in Lucretius’ footprints see Lana 1955, 12– 19.

Seneca as Lucretius’ sublime reader  

In other words, Ovid’s remythologization of Lucretius paves the way for Seneca’s sublime.

Historiography and Historical Exempla (Philip, Alexander, Hannibal) Let us now turn to the second part of the prologue (QNat. 3 Praef. 5, transl. Corcoran): Consumpsere se quidam, dum acta regum externorum componunt quaeque passi invicem ausique sunt populi. Quanto satius est sua mala extinguere quam aliena posteris tradere? Quanto potius deorum opera celebrare quam Philippi aut Alexandri latrocinia ceterorumque qui exitio gentium clari non minores fuere pestes mortalium quam inundatio qua planum omne perfusum est, quam conflagratio qua magna pars animantium exaruit? Some writers have exhausted themselves narrating the actions of foreign kings and the misfortunes nations have suffered or inflicted on others in turn. Surely it is better to eliminate one’s own ills than to report to posterity the ills of others. It is much better to celebrate the works of the gods than the robberies of a Philip, or of an Alexander, or of others who were no less famous for the destruction of the human race than a flood that inundated every plain or a conflagration that burned up the majority of living creatures.

Seneca picks up the verb consumpsere from the first lines of the preface (cf. QNat. 3 Praef. 2 consumptos), in order to resume his discussion on the squandering of time; in this context, he puts forward a special case, that of narrating the actions of foreign kings and the misfortunes that nations have suffered or inflicted on others. Although he recognizes the power and the destructive impact of these foreign kings (acta regum externorum), he seems to be establishing a contrast between, on the one hand, one’s own ills and one’s efforts at self-improvement on which one should focus, and, on the other, the misfortunes of others (sua mala extinguere quam aliena posteris tradere). The passions are metaphorically described as fire (cf. the use of the verb extinguere), which the teacher is called upon to quench by means of his philosophical therapeutic tools. These lines have been taken as proof of Seneca’s programmatic statement against historiography. 20

 20 For Seneca’s turning against historiography late in his life see Hine 2006; Williams 2012. For Seneca and historiography see also Kühnen 1962; Bogun 1968 especially 168–208 passim, 210– 212, 244; Armisen-Marchetti 1995; Costa 2013; see also Star 2012, 24.

  Myrto Garani In line with his initial claim regarding foreign kings, Seneca presents us with a list of three non-Roman historical examples (Philip, Alexander, Hannibal) as exempla fugienda. Whereas such a triad of exempla was typical in rhetorical schools, let us have a closer look at Seneca’s choice of individuals and consider whether these examples might somehow be interconnected. 21 The deeds of Philip and Alexander are termed mere robberies (latrocinia), likened to a plague (peste mortalium). The first two historical exempla stand apart, since they are viewed from the standpoint of their destructive impact, the importance of which is downgraded, when viewed against larger scale catastrophes, such as flood and conflagration. 22 By pointing to the final destruction, Seneca looks forward to the end of QNat. Book 3 (QNat. 3.27–30), in which he narrates how a cosmic deluge will destroy the world. While Seneca places both human actions and physical destructions within the larger cosmic framework, 23 he associates secular history with cosmic history, on the basis of the Stoic notion of συμπάθεια. In doing so, Seneca seems to look back to the last book of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Met. 15.1–484), in which Pythagoras undertakes to teach Numa, the second king of Rome about natural law (Met. 15.6 quae sit rerum natura, requirit “he seeks to know what is Nature’s general law”). Pythagoras who is said to have approached the gods with his mind (Met. 15.63 mente deos adiit) is presented as a sublime figure with vivid vatic traits (Met. 15.143–152). Pythagoras, therefore, is associated intra-textually with the Ovidian Phaethon (cf. Ov. Met. 2.76–7 concipias animo, 1.777 concipit aethera mente) and intertextually with both Lucretius’ Epicurus and Lucretius himself, who assumes a corresponding vatic role in DRN, in his attempt to initiate his pupil, Memmius, into the mysteries of nature. 24  21 For the crescendo structure in the Senecan list see Mayer 1991, 155–157. For Seneca’s use of examples see Roller, 2015. 22 For Philip see also QNat. 5.15 with Williams 2016, 177. For Alexander as exemplum fugiendum see also Sen., Ep. 94.62–63. For Seneca’s stance towards Alexander see also Lassandro 1984; Spencer 2006; Spencer 2010. See also Dick 1969, especially 241–242 for Seneca’s choice of the specific examples in association with Juvenal. For the Stoics’ stance towards Alexander see Fears 1974. See also Buchheit (1971, translated 2007), who draws our attention to the close relation between Alexander encomia and eulogies for Epicurus, which he discusses in connection with Lucretius. 23 Limburg (2007, 133) quotes Florus 4.2.3 for a comparison of catastrophic human beings with natural catastrophes of inundation and conflagration. 24 Hardie 2009; Garani 2014, 130–133. For further echoes of Lucretius in Ovid’s Pythagorean speech see e.g. Bömer 1986 ad Met. 15.6; Galinsky 1998, 328–330. For further discussion about Ovid’s Pythagoras account see Stephens 1957, 62–77; Little 1970; Myers 1994, 133–166; Setaioli 1999; Beagon 2009; Hardie 2015. For arguments for the parodical or satirical character of the speech see Segal 1969; Holleman 1969; Galinsky 1975, 104–107.

Seneca as Lucretius’ sublime reader  

In this vein, Pythagoras delivers a long speech, in the first part of which he attacks meat-eating and sacrifice (Met. 15.75–142) and explicates his doctrine of metempsychosis (Met. 15.158–172). Pythagoras, then, goes on to reveal by means of various examples the principle of unremitting cosmic transformation and natural wonders (Met. 15.176–459). He first refers to the change from land into sea (Met. 15.262–269) and thus unmistakably calls to mind the flood Ovid describes in his Book 1. He then explains various mirabilia aquarum, concerning mainly rivers and springs, a passage from which Seneca extensively quotes Met. 15.270– 336). In connection with these matters, Pythagoras also gives us a long list of the transformation of kings and cities (Met. 15.418–430). 25 Ovid’s Pythagoras, however, objects to Lucretius’ approach to history. As Philip Hardie has discussed at length, when Lucretius argues that even the most terrible historical events, such as the Punic Wars, do not have any effect on the present and thus are nothing to us (DRN 3.830–869), he first employs an epicstyle description to offer a sublime vision of history, which is then deflated by his anti-climactic conclusion (DRN 3.830–842). 26 In doing so, as Nethercut has persuasively argued, Lucretius intertextually echoes the corresponding Punic War narrative from Ennius’ Annales (cf. DRN 3.834–835 with Ennius’ Annales fr. 309 Skutsch: Africa terribili tremit horrida terra tumultu “Trembled Africa, land rough and rude, with a terrible tumult”), in order to reject both the great esteem in which Romans held historical exempla and – particularly in connection with Ennius – the value of traditional historiography: 27 in contrast to Lucretius’ detached approach to historical events, the Ovidian Pythagoras turns back to Ennius’ Empedoclean vision of the world and reconnects the Lucretian sublime with Roman history; in other words, he re-historicizes it – and in this Vergil certainly paved him the way. 28 Thus, I would say that, although at first sight Seneca seems to undermine the value of history, his stance is actually consonant with Ovid’s intertextual response to Lucretius. What in fact Seneca himself minimizes is the value of single historical events, not because past is nothing to us, but because these events form part of the broader cosmic framework. After briefly mentioning Philip’s and Alexander’s plundering, Seneca creates a crescendo by turning to the example of Hannibal, a historical figure who, although like Philip and Alexander was considered a threat arisen from the east,

 25 Torre 2007; Berno 2012. 26 Hardie 2009, 126; see also 129–131. 27 Nethercut 2014, 443. See also idem 444–446 about Lucretius’ allusion to Ennius’ Scipio (DRN 3.1034–1035) with Enn., Ann. 312–313 Sk. 28 Hardie 2009 about Vergil and history.

  Myrto Garani was more closely associated with Roman history than these two (QNat. 3 Praef. 6): 29 Quemadmodum Hannibal Alpes superiecerit scribunt; quemadmodum confirmatum Hispaniae cladibus bellum Italiae inopinatus intulerit They write how Hannibal crossed the Alps, how he unexpectedly carried to Italy a war supported by disasters in Spain.

Seneca first brings up a momentous episode from the Second Carthaginian war, Hannibal’s crossing of the Alps. 30 In doing so, Seneca plausibly alludes to Livy’s corresponding narration in his Book 21 (Urb. Cond. 21.35.4, transl. Foster): Nono die in iugum Alpium perventum est per invia pleraque et errores, quos aut ducentium fraus aut, ubi fides iis non esset, temere initae valles a coniectantibus iter faciebant On the ninth day they arrived at the summit of the Alps, having come for the most part over trackless wastes and by roundabout routes, owing either to the dishonesty of their guides, or — when they would not trust the guides — to their blindly entering some valley, guessing at the way.

More significantly, according to Feldherr’s persuasive interpretation, while the troops of Livy’s Hannibal wander in the trackless regions of high mountains (invia pleraque et errores), Hannibal recalls Epicurus’ triumphant and hence sublime cosmic wandering in Lucretius’ DRN. Very much like Epicurus, Hannibal strives to overcome his soldiers’ fear (liberandumque orbem terrarum, Urb. Cond. 21.30.3) and literally transgresses natural boundaries which are later described as the walls of Italy and Rome (moeniaque eos tum transcendere non Italiae modo sed etiam urbis Romanae, “he told them that they were now scaling the ramparts not only of Italy, but of Rome itself;” Urb. Cond. 21.35.4). His physical endurance and his satisfaction of only natural and necessary desires are reminiscent of Epicurean qualities (Urb. Cond. 21.4.6). More importantly, in challenging the limits between human and divine, Hannibal shows disregard for gods and religion (Urb. Cond. 21.4.9) and thus conjures up Epicurus’ “piety of impietas” towards traditional religion. 31 On the other hand, Livy underlines Hannibal’s un-Epicurean goals, such as his devotion to war, the pursuit of glory and revenge.  29 For Seneca’s use of Hannibal as exemplum in Epistle 51 in reply to Cicero see Gowing 2013, 241–242. See also Sen., Ira 2.5.4 for Hannibal as an exemplum of the mutation of fortune. For Alexander in Elder Seneca’s Suasoriae see 1.9 and 1.10 with Feddern 2013 ad loc. 30 For Livy on Hannibal’s crossing the Alps see Levene 2010, 17–18, 141–145, 152–155. 31 I borrow the expression from Kronenberg 2005.

Seneca as Lucretius’ sublime reader  

So, to turn back to Seneca, in juxtaposing Phaethon with Hannibal the “Theomach”, the philosopher introduces into his prologue another “marker of sublimity”, to use Hardie’s phrase. 32 This time, however, – following in Livy’s stance –, Seneca presents Hannibal as a failed, or negative in Williams’ definition, sublime figure and hence rejects him. In response to Hannibal’s hybris, Seneca focuses upon the Stoic conversatio divinorum, i.e. perfect union with god (QNat. 3 Praef. 11). In his negative appropriation of Livy’s Hannibal as an anti-sublime figure, Seneca seems to be mirroring Lucretius’ somewhat analogous reaction to Ennius’ Pyrrhus. At this point, we should recall that the phrase Graius homo, by means of which Lucretius refers to Epicurus (DRN 1.66), echoes Ennius’ description of Pyrrhus in his Annales (Ann. 165 Sk. Navus repertus homo, Graio patre Graius homo, rex. “A man of deeds was found, a Greek son of a Greek father, a king.” transl. Warmington). In the verbal guise of an epic hero, Epicurus is put forward as a philosophical hero, ready to invade Italy not by force of arms, but rather by his philosophical doctrine. 33 Nethercut discusses Lucretius’ denunciation of Ennius’ Pyrrhus, in connection with the discussion of the origins of religio in DRN Book 5, in the context of which a general carrying elephants prays to the gods, when his fleet is taken by a storm (DRN 5.1226–1235). Thus, in both Lucretius’ DRN and Seneca’s prologue that we are examining, two historical exempla, Pyrrhus and Hannibal, are shown to be failed sublime characters due to similar if contrasting causes. Whereas Lucretius condemns Ennius’ Pyrrhus for his superstitious character, Seneca objects to Livy’s Hannibal for being a “Τheomach”. In both cases alike, what is castigated and thus dismissed is their entirely mistaken relationship to the divine. At the same time, through his historical examples Seneca demonstrates the power of Fate (Fortuna), thanks to which we are all compelled to move upwards and downwards on a vertical axis, without being able to foresee the direction in which we will travel (QNat. 3 Praef. 9). In connection with this statement, it is particularly noteworthy that in Ennius’ Annales Hannibal plausibly addresses Scipio before the battle of Zama in similar words (frs. 312–313 mortalem summum Fortuna repente / reddidit †summo regno †ut† famul oltimus esset, “Fortune on a  32 For Hannibal as Theomach in Silius Italicus’ Punica 3.512–17 see Chaudhuri 2014, especially 234–240. For sublime in Flavian epic see Hardie 2013. 33 Nethercut 2014, 451–452. Cf. also the proem in DRN 5, a proem that extols Epicurus’ gifts to humanity, with a line that closely resembles the opening of Annales 6 and that expresses the difficulty of doing justice to the war with Pyrrhus (Enn. Ann. 164 Sk.). For Lucretius’ Epicurus as an epic hero see Murley 1947, 342–343 , West 1969, 57–60, Hardie 1986, 194–195, Gale 1994a, 118 and 2000, 235–236

  Myrto Garani sudden casts down the highest mortal from the height of his sway, to become the lowliest thrall.” transl. Warmington). More to the point, Lucretius seems to be alluding to this Ennian fragment at DRN 3.1034–1035, so as to suggest that even the most famous protagonists of history like Scipio, the thunderbolt of war and terror of Carthage, eventually died (Scipiadas, belli fulmen, Carthaginis horror, / ossa dedit terrae proinde ac famul infimus esset, “The son of the house of Scipio, thunderbolt of war, terror of Carthage, gave his bones to the earth as though he had been the humblest menial.” transl. Rouse, revised by Smith). 34 If we follow the intertextual trajectory from Ennius’ positive evaluation of the historical examples to their downgrading by Lucretius, we witness once again a striking inversion. Seneca, in his turn, when describing the changes of fortune (regna ex infimo coorta supra imperantes constiterunt, vetera imperia in ipso flore ceciderunt, “Dynasties have risen from the lowest level of society and become established above the ruling classes; ancient empires have fallen at the very peak of their power”, QNat. 3 Praef. 9), is plausibly looking back directly to both Ennius’ Hannibal and to Lucretius’ Scipio. Unlike the Epicurean universe in which atoms collide by chance due to their clinamen and so bring about dissolution and atomic death, Seneca restores Fate to her Ennian regulatory role, in that he explicitly regards the Stoic God as the agent of such unexpected alternations. Despite this, Seneca encourages his addressee to raise his mind above the threats and promises of fortune (erigere animum supra minas et promissa fortunae, QNat. 3 Praef. 11), to learn how to make his fortune, not merely wait for it (qui sciat fortunam non expectare sed facere, QNat. 3 Praef. 13), “to lift his spirits high above chance occurrences” (altos supra fortuita spiritus tollere, QNat. 3 Praef. 15), in a word to embrace the Stoic precepts so as to attain sublimity.

Hannibal, Alexander and the Aesthetics of Natural Philosophical Prose Following a different line of thought, Nethercut remarks that Lucretius’ substitution of Epicurus for Ennius’ Pyrrhus should be seen within the more general framework of Lucretius’ broader re-evaluation of Ennian historiography, which correspondingly gives way to natural historiography. Likewise, in Feldherr’s view, in his response to Lucretius’ philosophical epic poem, Livy’s stress on Hannibal’s wanderings in the “trackless regions” of the Alps (errores: Urb. Cond.  34 Nethercut 2014, 444–446.

Seneca as Lucretius’ sublime reader  

21.35.4) looks back to Lucretius’ own untrodden paths in his Callimachean prologue to DRN 4 (Avia Pieridum peragro loca nullius ante | trita solo, DRN 4.1; cf. 1.926–27). 35 While Lucretius here touches upon the notion of treading new literary ground in terms of the originality of his subject matter which is articulated in hexameter verses, this intertextual appropriation also allows Livy to make his own claim on originality. Although such a “generic codeswitching”, to borrow Feldherr’s phrase, 36 may seem rather awkward, Seneca himself appears to be willing to accept Livy’s intertextual dialogue with Lucretius’ philosophical poetry (Sen. Ep. 100.9, transl. Gummere): 37 Nomina adhuc T. Livium, scripsit enim et dialogos, quos non magis philosophiae adnumerare possis quam historiae, et ex professo philosophiam continentis libros; huic quoque dabo locum. You may also include Livy; for Livy wrote both dialogues (which should be ranked as history no less than as philosophy), and works which professedly deal with philosophy. I shall yield in the case of Livy also.

In fact, Livy appears to be a strong candidate as Seneca’s precedent in terms of the latter’s intertextual dialogue of prose with poetry. Bearing these significant intertexts in mind, we now turn to Seneca’s reference to Hannibal’s old age after his defeat in the Carthaginian war (QNat. 3 Praef. 6–7, transl. Corcoran): fractisque rebus, etiam post Carthaginem pertinax, reges pererraverit contra Romanos ducem promittens, exercitum petens; quemadmodum non desierit omnibus angulis bellum senex quaerere; adeo sine patria pati poterat, sine hoste non poterat. Quanto satius est quid faciendum sit quam quid factum quaerere, ac docere eos qui sua permisere fortunae nihil stabile ab illa datum esse, eius omnia aura fluere mobilius! Nescit enim quiescere; gaudet laetis tristia substituere, utique miscere. Itaque secundis nemo confidat, adversis nemo deficiat: alternae sunt vices rerum. and how even when his fortunes were dashed to pieces after Carthage he was still obstinate and wandered [pererraverit] among kings begging for an army and promising to be a general against the Romans; and how as an old man he did not stop searching for war in every corner of the world. So, he could endure being without a country, but he could not stand being without an enemy.

 35 For the proem to DRN 4 see Gale 1994b; Kyriakidis 2006. 36 Feldherr 2009. 37 For Livy and philosophy see Schindel 1983.

  Myrto Garani It is far better to investigate what ought to be one rather than what has been done, and to teach those who have entrusted their affairs to fortune that nothing given by fortune is stable, and all her gifts flow away more fleetingly than air. For fortune does not know how to be inactive; she enjoys substituting sorrow for happiness, or at least mixing the two. So, no one should be confident in times of success, nor give up in times of adversity. The changes of fortune alternate.

Seneca compares himself to Hannibal, both in being old (senex) and in the process of searching (quaerere). Seneca repeats the verb quaerere, thus resuming the metaphor of the journey from the opening lines of the prologue, so as to contrast the cosmic journey of the philosopher with the vain and erroneous quest of both historians (quaerere quid factum) and his own historic examples (Hannibal: pererraverit … quaerere; see below Alexander: errasse in oceano ignota quaerentem). In the following lines, as Seneca asks and again “what is important” (quid est praecipuum), he resumes the same travel imagery, this time however with specific reference to the conquest of the Red Sea by fleets and to voyages to the Ocean in search of the unknown (QNat. 3 Praef. 10, transl. Corcoran): Magna ista, quia parvi sumus, credimus; multis rebus non ex natura sua sed ex humilitate nostra magnitudo est. Quid praecipuum in rebus humanis est? Non classibus maria complesse nec in Rubri maris litore signa fixisse nec, deficiente ad iniurias terra, errasse in oceano ignota quaerentem, sed animo omne vidisse et, qua maior nulla victoria est, vitia domuisse. Innumerabiles sunt qui populos, qui urbes habuerunt in potestate; paucissimi qui se. We believe these affairs of ours are great because we are small. In many instances, size is derived from our own littleness, not from the actual reality. What is important in human existence? Not to have filled the seas with ships, nor to have fixed a flag on the shore of the Red Sea, not to have wandered over the ocean seeking the unknown when known land has been exhausted for wrongdoing. Rather to have seen the universe in your mind and to have subdued to your vices –no victory is greater than this. Innumerable are those who have had peoples and cities under their control; very few have had themselves under control.

Here Seneca unmistakably evokes the figure of Alexander, briefly mentioned in the initial triad of examples. 38 I would like to suggest that through his choice of  38 In fact, in his Epistles (Ep. 119.7–8) Seneca explicitly brings up the example of Alexander in similar vocabulary (Quaerit, quod suum faciat, scrutatur maria ignota, in oceanum classes novas mittit et ipsa, ut ita dicam, mundi claustra perrumpit. “He seeks something which he can really make his own, exploring unknown seas, sending new fleets over the Ocean, and, so to speak, breaking down the very bars of the universe.”). Along the same lines, we read about Philip in Seneca’s QNat. 5.15, about the subterranean depths to which the king sent his men so as to search for precious metals. See Williams 2016, 177.

Seneca as Lucretius’ sublime reader  

both Alexander and Hannibal as members of his triad, Seneca is plausibly alluding to a very specific episode from Livy’ history, which took place prior to the war with Antiochus the Great, when Roman delegates travelled to Ephesus. There, according to Livy’s narration, Scipio Africanus, supposedly present at the meetings with the Roman commissioner, has a discussion with Hannibal, who a few years after his defeat in the Second Punic War at Zama had left his homeland for the East and was then serving as an advisor to Antiochus the Great. When Scipio asks Hannibal’s opinion about who was the greatest general ever, Hannibal appears to be praising Alexander (Urb. Cond. 35.14, transl. Yardley): 39 quaerenti Africano, quem fuisse, maximum imperatorem Hannibal crederet, respondisse Alexandrum Macedonum regem, quod parva manu innumerabiles exercitus fudisset quodque ultimas oras, quas visere supra spem humanam esset, peragrasset. Quaerenti deinde quem secundum poneret, Pyrrhum dixisse; castra metari primum docuisse; ad hoc neminem elegantius loca cepisse, praesidia disposuisse; artem etiam conciliandi sibi homines eam habuisse, ut Italicae gentes regis externi quam populi Romani, tam diu principis in ea terra, imperium esse mallent. Exsequenti quem tertium duceret, haud dubie semet ipsum dixisse. Africanus asked who Hannibal thought had been the greatest general, and Hannibal replied that it was King Alexander of Macedon because, with a small force, he had defeated countless armies, and because he had penetrated to the ends of the earth, visiting which lay beyond the hope of human beings. When Scipio then asked whom Hannibal would put second, he said that it was Pyrrhus: it was Pyrrhus who first taught the technique of laying out a camp and, in addition, no one had selected his terrain and deployed his troops with more finesse. He also had a way of gaining men’s support so that the peoples of Italy preferred to be ruled by a foreign king than by the Roman people, despite their long hegemony in the land. Scipio went on to ask whom he considered third, and Hannibal replied that it was clearly himself.

By approximating himself to Alexander, Livy’s Hannibal invites us to re-read Seneca’s Alexander, who shares similar qualities with Hannibal. Of course, one should not miss Livy’s reference to Pyrrhus either, whose latent intertextual presence in Seneca’s prologue we have been just discussed. At the same time, to turn back to Seneca, there is a further contrast that rests upon the imagery of journey, that between Alexander’s investigation of the external words and Stoic examination of the inner, which later leads to the dominion over our passions (vitia domuisse). But, for now let us reconsider the wanderings of Hannibal and Alexander down unknown paths now set against Epicurus’ flight of the mind (DRN  39 For the passage in Livy and the questionable authenticity of the story see Briscoe 1981, 165– 166.

  Myrto Garani 1.74 atque omne immensum peragravit mente animoque) and especially set against Lucretius’ hitherto untrodden poetic paths. In replying to Livy’s claim on originality in connection with historiographical writing, Seneca revisits here the issue of literary identity, first touched upon at the beginning of the prologue through Seneca’s allusion to the Ovidian Phaethon, which looks back to the “unknown regions of the air”, in which the horses of the Ovidian hero roamed and the “uncharted ways” through which they snatched their chariot within their original textual space (Met. 2.167 ruunt tritumque relinquunt; 2.201–202 per auras / ignotae regionis; 2.205 rapiuntque per avia currum; Cf. also DRN 5.397–398: avia cum Phaethonta rapax vis solis equorum / aethere raptavit toto terrasque per omnis “when far from his course the furious might of the sun’s horses whirled Phaëthon throughout the sky and over all the earth”). Thus, Seneca’s natural philosophical prose stands against Livy’s historiography, Ovid’s mythological epic poetry, Ennius’ historiοgraphical epic, last but not least against Lucretius’ philosophical epic poetry.

Conclusions To sum up, in the prologue to QNat. 3, Seneca’s mythological and historical exempla prove to be indispensable cognitive tools, which assist his addressee in perceiving various aspects of the cosmic truth and conceptualizing Stoic virtus. While Seneca engages with both philosophical and aesthetic ideas, albeit writing in prose, he offers his Stoic version of didactic natural “poetry” and thus places himself within the lineage of philosophical poets; in other words, he presents himself as a sublime imperial vates, i.e. a philosophical poet, with specific Stoic credentials and his own literary aspirations, whose ultimate aim is moral improvement and a dynamic association with the divinity. In doing so, he responds to the sublime figure of Lucretius’ Epicurus through the intertextual lens of both Ovid’s Phaethon and Livy’ Hannibal. In the other way round, Seneca’s prologue to QNat. 3, with its intricate intertextual implications vividly exemplifies the way in which Lucretius’ versatile notion of sublimity was powerfully diffused and left its comprehensive imprint, albeit decisively transformed, in later Latin literature.

Seneca as Lucretius’ sublime reader  

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  Myrto Garani Foster, Benjamin Oliver (1929), Livy. History of Rome, Volume V: Books 21–22. Translated by B. O. Foster (Loeb Classical Library 233. Cambridge, MA). Gale, Monica R. (1994a), Myth and Poetry in Lucretius, Cambridge. Gale, Monica R. (1994b), “Lucretius 4.1–25 and the Proems of the De Rerum Natura”, in: PCPhS 40, 1–17. Gale, Monica R. (2000), Virgil on the Nature of Things: The Georgics, Lucretius and the Didactic Tradition, Cambridge. Galinsky, Karl G. (1975), Ovid’s Metamorphoses: An Introduction to the Basic Aspects, Berkeley/Los Angeles. Galinsky, Karl G. (1998), “The Speech of Pythagoras at Ovid Metamorphoses 15.75–478”, in: PLLS 10, 313–336. Garani, Myrto (2014), “Numa in Ovid’s Fasti”, in: Myrto Garani/David Konstan (eds.), The Philosophizing Muse: The Influence of Greek Philosophy on Roman Poetry (3rd cent. B.C. – 1st A.D.) (Pierides III. Newcastle upon Tyne), 128–160. Giussani, Carlo (1896–98), Titi Lucreti Cari De rerum natura libri sex, 4 vols, Turin. Gowing, Alain M. (2013), “Tully’s boat: Responses to Cicero in the imperial period”, in: Catherine Steel (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Cicero, Cambridge, 233–250. Gummere, Richard M. (1917), Seneca. Epistles, Volume I: Epistles 1–65. Translated by Richard M. Gummere (Loeb Classical Library 75. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Gummere, Richard M. (1925), Seneca. Epistles, Volume III: Epistles 93–124. Translated by Richard M. Gummere (Loeb Classical Library 77. Cambridge, MA). Gunderson, Erik (2015), The Sublime Seneca: Ethics, Literature, Metaphysics, Cambridge. Hardie, Philip R. (1986), Virgil’s Aeneid: Cosmos and Imperium, Oxford. Hardie, Philip R. (1995), “The Speech of Pythagoras in Ovid Metamorphoses 15: Empedoclean Epos”, CQ n.s. 45, 204–214. Now revised in: Philip Hardie (2009) (ed.), Lucretian Receptions: History, the Sublime, Knowledge, Cambridge, 136–152. Hardie, Philip R. (2007), “Lucretius and later Latin literature in antiquity”, in: Stuart Gillespie/ Philip Hardie (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Lucretius, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 111–128. Hardie, Philip R. (2009), Lucretian Receptions: History, The Sublime, Knowledge, Cambridge. Hardie, Philip R. (2013), “Flavian Epic and the Sublime”, in: Gesine Manuwald/Astrid Voigt (eds.), Flavian Epic Interactions, Berlin, 125–138. Hardie, Philip R. (2015), Ovidio Metamorfosi, vol. vi, libri xiii–xv, Rome. Hine, Harry M. (2006), “Rome, the Cosmos, and the Emperor in Seneca’s “Natural Questions’”, in: JRS 96, 42–72. Holleman, A.W.J. (1969), “Ovidii Metamorphoseon Liber XV 622–870 (Carmen et error?)”, in: Latomus 28, 42–60. Jones, Roger Miller (1926), “Posidonius and the Flight of the Mind through the Universe”, in: Classical Philology 21, 97–113. Kronenberg, Leah (2005), “Mezentius the Epicurean”, in: TAPhA 135, 403–431. Kühnen, Franz Josef (1962), Seneca und die römische Geschichte (diss. Köln; Munich). Kyriakidis, Stratis (2006), “Lucretius’ DRN 1.926–50 and the Proem to Book 4”, in: CQ n.s. 56, 606–610. Kyriakidis, Stratis (2018), “Deflexus solito cursu: Phaethon between Ovid and Manilius”, in: Myrtia 33, 109–153. Lana, Italo (1955), Lucio Anneo Seneca, Turin; repr. Bologna 2010.

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Philip Hardie

Lucretius in Late Antique Poetry: Paulinus of Nola, Claudian, Prudentius Abstract: The paper explores the uses of Lucretius in late antique poetry, with a particular emphasis on the engagement in Christian didactic and narrative poetry with the Lucretian materialist vision of the world and man’s place therein. Polemical refutation is combined with the re-appropriation of Lucretian material in the service of Christian providentialism, a pattern that finds precedent in the prose works of Arnobius and Lactantius. Allusion to Lucretius forms an integral part of the complex negotiations of the famous verse correspondence between Ausonius (Epistulae 21–24 Green) and Paulinus of Nola (Carmina 10–11). Claudian uses Lucretian language in doxographical accounts of Epicureanism, and, in paradoxographical mode, playfully reworks Lucretius’ dealings with mythology. Prudentius engages extensively with the De Rerum Natura in his didactic and epic poetry, in particular the Hamartigenia and the Psychomachia: the generic combination in the De Rerum Natura of epic and didactic is itself a model for Prudentius. Keywords: Paulinus of Nola, Claudian, Prudentius, Christianity, providentialism

From the evidence of the responses in late antique literature, Lucretius was still being read intensively and widely until at least the early fifth century. Engagement with the De Rerum Natura is both polemical and respectful. In many cases it might be better to say, both polemical and respectful: Lucretius’ teachings are criticized, but his language is re-directed in the service of a true doctrine. This kind of corrective imitation is itself thoroughly in the manner of Lucretius: Lucretius praises Ennius as a poet but rejects Ennius’ teaching in the matter of the posthumous survival of the soul; he pays homage to the divine power of Empedocles’ intellect while correcting the Empedoclean doctrine that the four elements are the ultimate principles of the universe. This mixed reception of Lucretius can be traced back as far as Augustan poetry: it is, after all, an important aspect of the responses to Lucretius of Virgil, Horace, Ovid and Manilius. It is also found in the polemicizing of Church Fathers of the late third and early fourth centuries. 1 Arnobius attacks the pagans and lists the benefactions for which Christ may properly be considered divine, in terms

 1 Hagendahl 1958; Gatzemeier 2013, ch. 5; Schmid 1984, 228–64 “Epikur und die Christen”. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110673487-008

  Philip Hardie that echo Lucretius’ comparison of the (figuratively) ‘divine’ benefactions of Epicurus with the less useful benefactions of the traditional gods, Bacchus, Ceres, Hercules (Contra nationes 1.38). Arnobius’ pupil, Lactantius, frequently quotes Lucretius, sometimes to enlist him in his own attacks on traditional religious practice and superstition, but more often to lambast the folly of the Epicurean world-view. Lactantius quotes Lucretius’ description of Epicurus as a guide to the summum bonum (Lucr. 6.24–8) and applies them to the Christian God (Div. Inst. 7.27.6, quoniam solus, ut ait Lucretius ...). In this paper I focus on three major late antique Latin poets writing at the very end of the fourth and beginning of the fifth centuries AD, Paulinus of Nola, Claudian, and Prudentius. I do not have space to take the story further down in time to Boethius. 2 Paulinus of Nola Carmen 22 is a protreptikon urging Jovius to turn from pagan subjects to writing Christian poetry. Jovius should take Moses as his source for singing of the origin of the world, lest he be led astray by the dreams of Epicurus, 22.35–41: nosse moues causas rerum et primordia mundi: ne uagus innumeros, Epicuri somnia, 3 mundos, quos atomis demens per inane parentibus edit, inritus in uacuum spatiato pectore quaeras. legifer antiquo uenerandus nomine Moyses, compositum prima referens ab origine mundum instituente deo, curas tibi soluet inanes 4 ... You seek to discover the causes of creation and the beginnings of the universe. Do not search aimlessly for the innumerable worlds of which Epicurus idly dreamt, which that lunatic posits as originating from parent-atoms in the void; your heart would be fruitlessly journeying into vacuity. Moses the lawbringer, that revered figure of ancient fame who tells of the formation of the world from its beginning at God’s creation, will clear away for you your empty worries.

 2 On Lucretius in late antique biblical poetry see Deufert 2009; Weber; 2013; Hardie 2016. On Boethius and Lucretius see Milanese 1983; O’Daly 1991, index s.v. ‘Lucretius’. For further bibliography on Lucretius in late antiquity see Rücker 2013, 18 n. 24. 3 Cf. Lucr., 1.105 somnia, quae uitae rationes uertere possint. 4 Cf. Lucr., 3.116 laetitiae motus et curas cordis inanis.

Lucretius in Late Antique Poetry: Paulinus of Nola, Claudian, Prudentius  

demens per inane and in uacuum spatiato pectore satirize the empty pretension of Lucretius’ Epicurus to have travelled through the void in his flight of the mind. 5 Later in the poem Paulinus uses Lucretian language more positively to describe the omnipotence of the Christian God, 146–7 nonne potestatem propriam satis indicat auctor | qui solus naturam omnem uitamque gubernat “it is clear that the maker who alone guides all nature and all life sufficiently reveals his peculiar power”, reworking De Rerum Natura 1.21–3 quae quoniam rerum naturam sola gubernas | nec sine te quicquam dias in luminis oras | exoritur “since you alone guide the nature of things, and nothing comes forth into the bright coasts of light without your aid.” Earlier on, Lucretian allusion had been used in a serious game of intertextuality in the epistolary exchange between Paulinus and his former teacher Ausonius, in which Paulinus resists Ausonius’ appeals to return from his new dedication to an austerely Christian life-style to his former life in the service of the Muses. 6 Lucretius is enlisted by both Ausonius and Paulinus. 7 In reproaching Paulinus for his silence, Ausonius asserts (Ep. 21.17 Green) “nature made nothing dumb” (nil mutum natura dedit), and then gives a list of the different sounds made by the beasts of air land and sea, alluding to a long list of the sounds made by different animals at De Rerum Natura 5.1056–90. That passage ends 1087–90 ergo si uarii sensus animalia cogunt, | muta tamen cum sint, uarias emittere uoces, | quanto mortalis magis aequumst tum potuisse | dissimilis alia atque alia res uoce notare! “Therefore if different sensations compel creatures, dumb thought they be to utter different sounds, how much more natural it is that mortal men should at that time have been able to denote dissimilar things by different words!” If Paulinus recognises the allusion, he will feel the force of Lucretius’ a fortiori argument. Lucretius’ vivid and noisy depiction of the procession of the Magna Mater (Lucr. 2.618–20) is one of the sources for Ausonius’ own alliterative evocation of the noise of cymbals and drums (20–1). Against an Epicurean natura Paulinus, for his part, asserts the presence and power of the Christian God, but in language that echoes the beginning of Lucretius’ materialist explanation of the thunderbolt in De Rerum Natura 6. With Paulinus Carmen 10.120 qui tonitru summi quatit ignea culmina caeli “he who shakes

 5 For a transference of the motif to a Christian flight of the mind cf. Paul. Nol. Carm. 15.190–2 spatiante polum qui mente peragrat, | seque ipsum, uincto quamuis in corpore, liber | spiritus anteuolat summi in penetralia Christi ... 6 The following three paragraphs are included in a longer study of this exchange of letters in Hardie 2019, 31–3. 7 Rücker 2013 focuses in particular on Aus. Ep. 21.7–28.

  Philip Hardie the fiery summit of high heaven with thunder” compare Lucretius 6.96 principio tonitru quatiuntur caerula caeli “In the first place the blue of heaven is shaken with thunder”. Paulinus continues a tradition of using Lucretian language in the service of a non-Lucretian message that goes back to the first part of the Speech of Anchises in Aeneid 6, where Virgil diverts the vocabulary of Epicurean materialism to the service of a Platonic-Stoic theology. 8 In the next line, 121 qui trifido igne micat nec inania murmura miscet “who flashes forth His three-forked flame, stirring up no empty rumblings”, Paulinus alludes to another passage in the Aeneid that itself alludes to Lucretius, but in which the Epicurean doctrine of a noninterventionist divinity is disproved. nec inania murmura miscet negates the terms of the complaint by Dido’s jealous African suitor Iarbas that his father Jupiter is paying no attention to what is going on on earth (the liaison of Dido and Aeneas), and that his thunderbolts are not directed at wrongdoers, Aeneid 4.209– 10 caecique in nubibus ignes | terrificant animos et inania murmura miscent “the flames in the clouds that terrify men’s minds have no aim and stir up empty rumblings”. 9 But the Virgilian Jupiter is listening, and he does intervene – at least in the epic fiction that is the world of the Aeneid. In Paulinus’ world the Christian god is no fiction, and he is universally present and engaged. 10 At Carmen 11.30–48 Paulinus answers Ausonius’ charge that he has thrown off the yoke under which the two men have for a long time travelled harmoniously. To formulate both the disparity in talents that, so Paulinus asserts, divides the two men, and the mutuality of affection that unites them, Paulinus weaves a dense Virgilian and Ciceronian web of allusion. 11 But a closer parallel for the underlying situation is Lucretius’ confession at the beginning of De Rerum Natura 3 that he is a mere follower of Epicurus, quite unable to compete on equal terms with his teacher and ‘father’, from whom he is yet inseparable “because of his love” (propter amorem, Lucr. 3.5). Just so, in the matter of “learned pursuits” (doctis … studiis, 11.30–1) Paulinus is unequal to his elder and better, but inseparable from him in a yoke of love (39 iungar amore), an eternal bond of sweet friendship,  8 See Austin 1977 on Aen. 6.724 ff. 9 On the Lucretian allusion in these lines, and more widely in Aeneid 4, see Hardie 2009, 72–3. 10 123–4 (Deus) in omni totus ubique, | omnibus infuso rebus regit omnia Christo is one of the many Christian adaptations of Anchises’ account of the cosmic spirit at Aen. 6.726–7 spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus | mens agitat molem et magno se corpore miscet. 11 Notably 37 aequas uiburna cupressis ~ Verg. Ecl. 1.24–5 uerum haec tantum alias inter caput extulit urbes | quantum lenta solent inter uiburna cupressi; 43 paribus … redamandi legibus uses the word redamare coined by Cic. De amicitia 49 to translate ἀντιφιλεῖν. At 38–9 Paulinus flatters Ausonius, uix Tullius et Maro tecum | sustineant aequale iugum, doubtless aware that his friend will recognize his own intertextual rivalry with those greats of Latin literature.

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that will last for a true eternity, unlike the Catullan “eternal bond of friendship” (aeternum … foedus amicitiae, Cat. 109.6) to which Paulinus alludes in line 42 dulcis amicitia aeterno mihi foedere tecum. 12 Like Lucretius, Paulinus uses examples from the world of animals and birds to exemplify the claimed unequalness of the two men. Claudian, writing from a non-Christian perspective, also attacks Epicurean materialism, but in other places uses Lucretian themes and language in more constructive ways. An attack on Epicureanism is part of the rhetorical strategy of the invective In Rufinum. 13 Claudian opens with a dubitatio as to whether the world is governed by providential gods or by chance. Contemplation of the natural world, the foedera mundi (1.4), encourages the poet to believe in the argument from design, whereas the spectacle of human affairs, wrapped in fog (1.12 tanta caligine uolui), and where the guilty flourish and the pious suffer, forces him to subscribe to the “other philosophy” (15–16 causae ... alterius) which holds that atoms travel in an aimless motion, that new forms are shaped by fortune not design, and that either there are no gods or that they take no thought for us humans. But the downfall and punishment of Rufinus has resolved this uncertainty for Claudian. As Alan Cameron points out, Claudian’s immediate source for this opposition between the claim for a world ruled by fortune and chance, and a world in which there are gods, is a passage in Juvenal, 13.86 ff., 14 but the detailed account of the Epicurean materialist universe at In Rufinum 1.12–19 draws directly on Lucretian language, in part filtered through other texts: sed cum res hominum tanta caligine 15 uolui adspicerem laetosque diu florere nocentes uexarique pios, 16 rursus labefacta cadebat religio 17 causaeque uiam non sponte sequebar

 12 I follow Keul-Deutscher 1998, 353–6. 13 Cf. also the impartial account of Epicureanism, using Lucretian language, in a survey of different philosophical accounts of the physical world at Claud. Cons. Manl. Theod. 79–83 ille ferox unoque tegi non passus Olympo | immensum per inane uolat finemque perosus | parturit innumeros angusto pectore mundos. | hi uaga collidunt caecis primordia plagis. | numina constituent alii casusque relegant: on the presence of Lucretius in this poem see Sánchez-Ostiz 2013, 103–6. 14 Cameron 1968. See also Cameron 1970, 327–31 taking issue with the claim by Gennaro 1958 that Claudian is strongly influenced by Epicureanism. 15 caligo x 12 in Lucretius, but always in the sense of literal ‘darkness’; here in the sense of Lucretius’ mental tenebrae. 16 Cf. Lucr. 2.1103–4 the non-existent deity who saeuiat exercens telum quod saepe nocentis | praeterit exanimatque indignos inque merentis. 17 labefacta cadebat religio: in a very different sense from the dethroning of Religio in Lucretius.

  Philip Hardie alterius, uacuo quae currere semina motu affirmat magnumque nouas per inane figura fortuna non arte regi, quae numina sensu ambiguo uel nulla putat uel nescia nostri. 18 But when I saw the impenetrable mist which surrounds human affairs, the wicked happy and long prosperous and the good discomforted, then in turn my belief in God was weakened and failed, and even against mine own will I embraced the tenets of that other philosophy which teaches that atoms drift in purposeless motion and that new forms throughout the vast void are shaped by chance and not design — that philosophy which believes in God in an ambiguous sense, or holds that there be no gods, or that they are careless of our doings.

Claudian reworks Lucretian material in one of his carmina minora (29) on paradoxographical mirabilia, on the magnet. 19 The power of the magnet is illustrated through the attraction for each other of two statuettes, an iron figure of Mars and a loadstone in the shape of Venus. Claudian alludes both to Lucretius’ allegorical tableau of Venus’ embrace of Mars at the beginning of the De Rerum Natura, and to Lucretius’ own very long account of the phenomenon of magnetism, in which Lucretius removes the element of the marvellous from the magnet through an atomistic explanation (6.906–1089). 20 Claudian reinstates the marvelous (noua … miracula saxi (13)), and combines the ‘love’ of the magnet for the loadstone with allusion to the tableau of Mars in the lap of Venus at the beginning of the De Rerum Natura; Claudian is of course aware of the repeated tellings of the adulterous

 18 Cf. Minucius Felix, Octavius 19.8 Epicurus ille, qui deos aut otiosos fingit aut nullos. 19 On Claudian carmina minora 29 see Gennaro 1957; Cristante 2001/02; Cristante 2004; Fuoco 2004; Guipponi-Gineste 2008; Guipponi-Gineste 2010, 257–66. Verbal parallels between Claudian c.m. 29 and Lucretius: 21 uenasque sitis consumit apertas ~ Lucr. 5.812 et sucum uenis cogebat fundere apertis; 23 et Venus, humanas quae laxat in otia curas; 41–2 quae duras iungit concordia mentes? | flagrat anhela silex et amicam saucia sentit | materiem placidosque chalybs cognoscit amores ~ Lucr. 1.34 aeterno deuictus uulnere amoris; 44–5 sic Venus horrificum belli compescere regem | et uultum mollire solet; 49–50 pax animo tranquilla datur, pugnasque calentes | deserit et rutilas declinat in oscula cristas ~ Lucr. 1.31 ff. nam tu sola potes tranquilla pace iuuare ... There is an analogy with, and perhaps imitation of, Ovid’s reworking of Lucretian atomic doctrines in the myth of Narcissus. Cf. also Reposianus De concubitu Martis et Veneris (perhaps a direct source for Claudian), 23–32 … indice sub Phoebo captam gessisse catenas. | illa manu duros nexus tulit, illa mariti | ferrea uincla sui. quae uis fuit ista doloris? | an fortem faciebat amor? quid, saeue, laboras? | cur nodos Veneri Cyclopia flamma parauit? | de roseis conecte manus, Vulcane, catenis! | nec tu deinde liges, sed blandus uincla Cupido, | ne palmas duro nodus cum uulnere laedat. 20 6.910 hunc homines lapidem mirantur, 1056 illud in his rebus mirari mitte.

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liaison of Ares and Aphrodite going back to Odyssey 8. One effect of the combination of the two Lucretian passages is to give fresh force to the erotic language that Lucretius applies to the phenomenon of the magnet in De Rerum Natura 6 precisely in order to reduce a mystical view of magnetism as a kind of desire to basic materialist terms (as he does with human sexual desire). 21 The concordia of bride and groom is a conventional topic of the epithalamium; 22 here (41) it is also the concordia of Empedocles’ cosmic Strife and Love, or, to give them their divine names, Ares and Aphrodite (Mars and Venus), whose daughter is Harmonia/ Concordia (Heraclit. Hom. Probl. 74.10). Claudian highlights the equivalence of Lucretian pax with concordia, a recurrent obsession of Claudian as well as of other late antique poets. 23 Concordia is a central value for Prudentius, above all concord in the Christian community, safe from the discordia of heresy. 24 Discordia’s attack on Concordia forms the climactic encounter in the Psychomachia, an unexpected attack since it comes after the apparently conclusive defeat of the Vices by the Virtues, whereupon alma Pax (631–2) banishes war and the troops of the Virtues put off their arms. The epithet alma may remind us of alma Venus in the second line of the De Rerum Natura: in Lucretius, Venus will soon appear in the role of bestower of tranquilla pax on mankind through her erotic subjugation of Mars (1.29–40). There is perhaps a hint of a textual epiphany of Venus a few lines later in Prudentius when we read of the Virtues as they disarm (634): uestis ad usque pedes descendens defluit imos. This alludes to the self-revelation of the Virgilian, not the Lucretian, Venus at Aeneid 1.404–5 pedes uestis defluxit ad imos, | et uera incessu patuit dea. But the return of fair weather once the dust of battle has settled can be compared to the bright spring weather that heralds the advent of Venus in the hymn at the beginning of the De Rerum Natura: Psychom. 637–9 sedato et puluere campi | suda redit facies liquidae sine nube diei, | purpuream uideas caeli clarescere caelum.

 21 Cf. Lucr., 6.906–1089, e.g. 1001 causa … quae ferri pelliciat uim; 1016 caecisque in eo compagibus haesit (cf. 4.1205 ualidis Veneris compagibus haerent). 22 Cf. Claudian, Epithal. Hon. 202–3 tu festas, Hymenaeae, faces, tu, Gratia, flores | elige, tu geminas, Concordia, necte coronas; c. m. 25.130–1 Venus’ address to groom and bride: uiuite concordes et nostrum discite munus. 23 concordia occurs x 2 in Lucretius, 1.456–7; 5.1024–5 (of early human family life, i.e. the origins of marital concordia) nec tamen omnimodis poterat concordia gigni, | sed bona magnaque pars seruabat foedera casta. On concordia in late antique Latin poetry see Hardie 2019, ch. 4. 24 concor* occurs x 12 in Prudentius, including concordia x 8 in the Psychomachia; concor* x 3 in contra Symmachum; Cathem. 9.109–11 te senes et te iuuentus, paruulorum te chorus, | turba matrum uirginumque, simplices puellulae | uoce concordes pudicis perstrepant concentibus.

  Philip Hardie The De Rerum Natura will have had a particular appeal for Prudentius, since a substantial part of his œuvre can be classified as didactic, or quasi-didactic, in particular the four long hexameter poems: the Apotheosis, on the divinity of Christ; the Hamartigenia, on the origin of sin; the Psychomachia, the battle in the soul between Virtues and Vices; and the Contra Symmachum, in two books. 25 Taken together, these poems constitute what Walther Ludwig calls “eine Summa der christlichen Lehre”. 26 They describe the place of mankind within a Christian universe, and within a Christian history that reaches from Creation to Revelation. Emmanuele Rapisarda goes so far as to amend a prevailing view that Prudentius is the Christian Horace (or the Virgil and Horace of the Christians, Christianorum Maro et Flaccus, in Richard Bentley’s phrase), and claim him as “il Lucrezio Cristiano, giacché la visione della vita universale, l’abitudine di trovare rapporti tra l’uomo e la vita universale, e sopratutto l’anelito di dare conforto a sé e ai mortali contro l’angoscioso terrore della morte, l’architettura e i vari procedimenti letterari richiamano in modo inconfutabile il poema lucreziano.” 27 “Lucrezio Cristiano” perhaps overstates it, but there are some significant Lucretian moments. The Psychomachia, the central poem of Ludwig’s five-book Christian ‘summa’ is an epic, of a highly Virgilian kind, but an epic with a strongly didactic impulse. It opens with a prayer to Christ asking for instruction on how to expel sins from our breast, 5–6 dissere, rex noster, quo milite pellere culpas | mens armata queat nostri de pectoris antro “say, our king, with what fighting force the soul is furnished and enabled to expel the sins from the cave of our breast”: the interrogative quo (milite) is a generic signal of didactic: compare the opening of the Georgics, Quid faciat laetas segetes, quo sidere terram | uertere ... Prudentius’ closing thanksgiving to Christ addresses him as ‘teacher’, 888–9 reddimus aeternas, indulgentissime doctor, | grates, Christe, tibi. dissero is a verb used by Lucretius of his teaching. 28 The Psychomachia is an epic with pronounced didactic features; the De Rerum Natura is a didactic poem with pronounced epic features. For the basic idea of a war in the soul there are a variety of parallels, and perhaps sources, in classical and patristic literature, but Lucretius offers one

 25 On the structure of these five books of hexameters as ‘ein christliches Supergedicht’ see Ludwig 1977. 26 Ludwig 1977, 313. 27 Rapisarda 1950, 48. 28 1.54–5 nam tibi de summa caeli ratione deumque | disserere incipiam et rerum primordia pandam, 6.940.

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model in the prologue to book 5, which allegorises the monster-slayings of Hercules as fights against monsters in the human breast, 5.43–51: 29 at nisi purgatumst 30 pectus, quae proelia nobis atque pericula tumst ingratis insinuandum! quantae tum scindunt hominem cuppedinis acres sollicitum curae quantique perinde timores! quidue superbia spurcitia ac petulantia? quantas efficiunt clades! quid luxus desidiaeque? haec igitur qui cuncta subegerit ex animoque expulerit dictis, non armis, nonne decebit hunc hominem numero diuom dignarier esse? But unless the heart is cleansed, what battles and perils must we unwillingly then enter into! What sharp pangs of passion then rend the troubled man, and what fears besides? What of pride, filthiness and wantonness? How much havoc do they work! What of luxury and sloth? He then who has subdued all these and driven them from the mind with words, not weapons, will this man not rightly be found worthy to rank among the gods?

For Lucretius, Epicurus replaces Hercules as the truly divine man. For Prudentius Christ replaces Apollo as the true god of wisdom: this emerges from the first line of the Psychomachia, Christe, graues hominum semper miserate labores ‘Christ, who has always taken pity on men’s oppressive sufferings’, which rewrites the first line of Aeneas’ prayer to Apollo in his interview with the Sibyl at Cumae, Aeneid 6.56, Phoebe, grauis Troiae semper miserate labores. The Kontrastimitation is clear: Christ, the Sun of Righteousness (Malachi 4:2), 31 replaces the pagan sungod Apollo. The first of the encounters in the Psychomachia is between Fides and Veterum Cultura Deorum. The Virgilian model for the manner of the vice’s death is the fight between Hercules and Cacus in Aeneid 8, narrated by Evander. Fides throttles Veterum Cultura Deorum, Psychomachia 31–5: ora cruore de pecudum satiata solo applicat et pede calcat elisos in morte oculos, animamque malignam fracta intercepti commercia gutturis artant, difficilemque obitum suspiria longa fatigant.

 29 For classical and patristic examples see Lavarenne 1992, 20–4. Smolak 2001, 128–9 draws attention to the importance of this Lucretian passage. 30 Cf. Prud., Psych. 97 ut purgata suo seruentur corpora regi; 818 purgati corporis urbem. 31 For extended solar imagery applied to Christ see above all Cathem. 5.

  Philip Hardie ... and tramples the eyes under foot, squeezing them out in death. The throat is choked and the scant breath confined by the stopping of its passage, and long gasps make a hard and agonising death.

Compare Aeneid 8.259–61, hic Cacum in tenebris incendia uana uomentem | corripit in nodum complexus, et angit inhaerens| elisos oculos et siccum sanguine guttur ‘There, as Cacus vainly belched his fire in the darkness, Hercules caught him in a grip and held him, forcing his eyes out of their sockets and squeezing his throat till the blood was dry in it.’ Evander claims that the recently instituted worship of Hercules is not unmindful of the old gods, Aen. 8.185–88 ‘non haec sollemnia nobis, | has ex more dapes, hanc tanti numinis aram | uana superstitio ueterumque ignara deorum | imposuit’ ‘This annual rite, this set feast and this altar to a great divinity have not been imposed upon us by any vain superstition working in ignorance of our ancient gods.’ In fact, in killing Cacus, Hercules has put paid to an embodiment of uana superstitio: 32 as Ingo Gildenhard has shown Hercules’ defeat of Cacus in Aeneid 8 is a replay of the Lucretian Epicurus’ defeat of the monster Religio or Superstitio. 33 From a Christian point of view superstition goes by the name of Veterum Cultura Deorum. Prudentius collapses Evander’s opposition between uana superstitio and the worship ueterum ... deorum. By putting Veterum Cultura Deorum in the role of Cacus, Prudentius sets an absolute divide between the old pagan religion and the new Christian religion, in a manner that reverts to the Lucretian saviour Epicurus’ uncompromising destruction of the previous religious regime. 34 The detail of Fides trampling underfoot her opponent, 32 pede calcat, does not come from the Hercules and Cacus narrative, and here I would see an allusion to the conclusion of Epicurus’ contest with Religio, Lucr. 1.78–9 quare religio pedibus subiecta uicissim | obteritur. The Lucretian inversion whereby super-stitio ends up being trampled underfoot is a model for the typical Prudentian punishment of a vice through lex talionis or as contrappasso. 35 But, if a version of Lucretius’ Religio is comprehensively destroyed in the first of the Prudentian encounters, after the final encounter (or what seems the final encounter) between Auaritia and Operatio ‘Good works’,

 32 uana superstitio is used elsewhere by Prudentius at Apoth. 510 (in the context of Christ’s conquest of simulacra deum Tarpeia), Symm. 1.198; cf. also Symm. 1.39 utque superstitio ueterum procul absit auorum. 33 Gildenhard 2004, picked up by Hardie 2009, 171–2. 34 Smolak 2001, 129 n. 2, in the context of Lucretian models for Prudentius, notes the parallel between the replacement of Apollo by Christ in the first line of Psychom. and the replacement of Hercules by Epicurus in the proem to DRN 5. 35 Gnilka 1963, ch. 3.

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Prudentius instals his own, Christian, version of Superstitio in the heavens at 640–3, just after the, possibly Lucretian, description of the fair weather that heralds the conclusion of hostilities, which I have suggested may allude to the fair weather that heralds the advent of Venus in the opening hymn of the De Rerum Natura: agmina casta super uultum sensere Tonantis adridere hilares pulso certamine turmae, et Christum gaudere suis uictoribus arce aetheris ac patrium famulis aperire profundum. The squadrons, happy at the ending of the contest, see the face of the Thunderer smiling from above on their chaste forces, and they see Christ in the height of the sky, rejoicing in his victorious troops, and opening to his servants the deep of his Father’s home.

Unlike the hostile and menacing thunderings of the imaginary Religio which oppresses mankind from the heavens in Lucretius (1.64–5 quae caput a caeli regionibus ostendebat | horribili super aspectu mortalibus instans “which showed her face from the regions of the sky, lowering from above on mortals with dreadful appearance”, where superstitio is etymologized in super … instans), this Christian version of Iuppiter Tonans smiles from above (super) on his followers. Prudentius’ choice of the pagan Tonans to refer to the Christian supreme god reminds us that fulmina inspire the religious dread from which Epicurus frees mankind (DRN 1.68–9 quem neque fama deum nec fulmina nec minitanti | murmure compressit caelum “him neither stories of the gods nor thunderbolts checked, nor the sky with its threatening roar”). But the new, Christian, sky religion welcomes mankind to the heavens, rather than keeping it in oppression on earth: DRN 1.79 nos exaequat uictoria caelo “our victory raises us to heaven” is indeed the message of the Psychomachia. Christ’s opening to his servants of the deep of his Father’s home (patrium famulis aperire profundum) alludes to Aen. 8.681 patriumque aperitur uertice sidus, of the sidus Iulium opening above (or at) the head of Augustus at Actium: false pagan beliefs in apotheosis are superseded by a true Christian path to the heavens. aperire profundum also alludes to the passage of the Red Sea a few lines later. One might also think of the opening up of the immensities of Epicurean space in response to the vociferations of Epicurus in the proem to De Rerum Natura 3: Lucretius uses profundus repeatedly of the boundless void (1.957, 1.1002, 1.1108, 2.222, 2.1051, 2.1054, 2.1095, 5.370, 6.485).

  Philip Hardie I turn now to a more strictly didactic poem of Prudentius, the Hamartigenia. 36 The poem includes a long satirical attack on the vices of luxury, the effects of sin, which has induced men to pervert the five senses with which a divinely created nature has endowed us. The passage concludes with a makarismos of the man who knows how to use the riches of nature in moderation, Hamartigenia 330–6: felix qui indultis potuit mediocriter uti muneribus parcumque modum seruare fruendi, quem locuples mundi species et amoena uenustas et nitidis fallens circumflua copia rebus non capit, ut puerum, nec inepto addicit amori, qui sub adumbrata dulcedine triste uenenum deprendit latitare boni mendacis operto. Happy the man who has been able to use with temperance the gifts granted him, and to keep frugal measure in his enjoyment of them, whom the world’s rich display with its pleasant attraction and its flowing abundance of lying baubles does not charm like a child, nor enslave to a foolish love, who detects the deadly poison lurking under the feigned sweetness, in concealment under what falsely claims to be good!

The makarismos felix qui ... potuit ... alludes to Geo. 2.490 felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas “happy the man who was able to know the causes of things”, whom I see no reason not to identify with Lucretius. Here the happy man is one who knows how to observe a Horatian modus, that is also a Lucretian moderation of appetite to the satisfaction of natural and necessary desires (cf. De Rerum Natura 2.20 ff.; 5.1117–19 [after describing the corrupting effects of the discovery of gold] quod siquis uera uitam ratione gubernet, | diuitiae grandes homini sunt uiuere parce | aequo animo; neque enim est penuria parui “Yet if a man should steer his life by true reasoning, it is great riches to a man to live thriftily with calm mind; for never can he lack for a little”). 37 Lines 334–6 allude to the famous Lucretian

 36 On further Lucretian allusion in the Hamartigenia see Malamud 2011, 121–2; index s.v. Lucretius; Dykes 2011, 181–90, 234–38, 238–41. 37 uti and fruendi at consecutive line-ends may remind us of the legal concept of usufructus, to which Lucretius alludes at 3.971 uitaque mancipio nulli datur, omnibus usu (see Kenney 2014 ad loc.).

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simile of the honeyed cup (1.936–42), 38 but invert it by making the feigned 39 sweetness conceal bitter poison, not medicine. 40 Two of the most frequently imitated passages in Lucretius in any period are, firstly, the account of the flight of Epicurus’ mind at the beginning of book one of the De Rerum Natura, and secondly the description of the revelatory effects of the voice of Epicurus’ ratio at the beginning of book three. Prudentius draws on both passages in an account of the visual power of disembodied souls at the end of the Hamartigenia, when the souls of the virtuous go to heaven, and the souls of the sinful go to hell. In a curious passage Prudentius teaches that the joys of the blessed and the tortures of the damned are increased by the fact that both are able to see, respectively, the pains and the pleasures of the other, despite the vast space that separates heaven from the centre of the earth, where hell is located. The disembodied eye is free of the glassy barrier of the cornea and the vitreous humour which clog the vision of the physical eye. By contrast, of the vision of disembodied souls we read, Hamartigenia 874–8: illis uiua acies, nec pupula 41 parua, sed ignis traiector nebulae uasti et penetrator operti est. nil ferrugineum solidumue tuentibus obstat, nocturnae cedunt nebulae, nigrantia cedunt nubila, praetenti cedit teres area mundi. Theirs is a lively vision; they have not a small pupil but a fire that can pierce the mists and penetrate the waste of darkness. Nothing obscure or material blocks their gaze; the mists of night give way to them, as do black clouds and the whole round extent of the universe that spreads before them.

uasti penetrator operti is reminiscent of the power of Epicurus’ mind to penetrate vast distances: penetro is not in fact used by Lucretius of mental penetration, but

 38 On the honeyed cup simile and its reception see Prosperi 2004; 19–20 for a negative application of the topos in a letter of Jerome; 64–5 on Lactant. Div. Inst. 5.1.10–11 nam et in hoc philosophi et oratores et poetae perniciosi sunt, quod incautos animos facile irretire possunt suauitate sermonis et carminum dulci modulatione currentium. mella sunt haec uenena tegentia. In the Renaissance the image was usually used to warn against the irresistible persuasive powers of poetry. 39 TLL s.v. adumbro 1.0.885.86 ff., adumbratus ‘fere q. fictus’; cf. Psychom. 556 artis adumbratae meruit ceu sedula laudem. 40 Cf. Lucr., 1.936–42, 941 deceptaque non capiatur; 943–4 quoniam haec ratio plerumque uidetur | tristior esse quibus non est tractata. 41 pupula in Lucr.: 2.811; 3.408–9 on the physiology of a damaged eye, still able to see si pupula mansit | incolumis, stat cernundi uiuata potestas.

  Philip Hardie penetro is a favourite Lucretian word. The ability to see through solid objects echoes the effect of the revelation of Epicurus in allowing Lucretius to see what lies beneath the earth, DRN 3.26 nec tellus obstat quin omnia dispiciantur “nor is earth a barrier to prevent all things being seen”. cedunt picks up on DRN 3.16–17 diffugiunt animi terrores, moenia mundi | discedunt, totum uideo per inane geri res “the terrors of the mind fly away, the walls of the world part, I see things moving on through all the void”; and in the threefold anaphora of cedunt ... cedunt ... cedit might be heard an echo of the threefold hymnic anaphora of te in the closely related description of the flight of winds and clouds at the epiphany of Venus at DRN 1.6–7 te, dea, te fugiunt uenti, te nubila caeli | aduentumque tuum “You, goddess, you the winds flee, you and your approach the clouds of the sky.” A little later in this same passage Prudentius uses as an a fortiori analogy for the power of disembodied vision to see through anything, the ability of the sleeping mind, although still housed in flesh, to see things far distant. This was also the visionary power of St John while he was still in the body, Hamartigenia 905– 14: obiacet interea tellus nec uisibus obstat. quin si stelligerum uultus conuertat ad axem, nil intercurrens obtutibus impedit ignem peruigilis animae, quamuis denseta grauentur nubila et opposito nigrescat uellere caelum. sic arcana uidet tacitis cooperta futuris corporeus Iohannis adhuc nec carne solutus, munere sed somni paulisper carne sequestra liber ad intuitum sensuque oculisque peragrans ordine dispositos uenturis solibus annos.

905

910

And all the while the earth stands in its way, yet does not impede its vision. Indeed should it turn its face towards the starry heavens, nothing coming in the way of its eyes checks the flame of the sleepless soul, even though thick-gathered clouds lower and the sky wear a blanket of darkness before it. It is thus that John sees mysteries hidden in the silence of the future while he is yet in the body and not delivered from the flesh but, by the grace of sleep through the medium of the flesh, free for a while to observe, and with discerning eyes travels through time in the settled order of years to come.

John has a divinely empowered version of the ability of the human mind in Lucretius, enlightened by Epicurean rerum natura, to travel in thought and internal vision through the boundless spaces of the universe: cf. Lucr. 3.26 nec tellus obstat quin omnia dispiciantur “nor is earth a barrier to prevent all things being seen”. With liber ad intuitum compare De Rerum Natura 2.1044–7 quaerit enim rationem animus, cum summa loci sit | infinita foris haec extra moenia mundi, | quid

Lucretius in Late Antique Poetry: Paulinus of Nola, Claudian, Prudentius  

sit ibi porro, quo prospicere usque uelit mens | atque animi iactus liber quo peruolet ipse “For our mind now seeks to reason, since the sum of space is boundless out beyond the walls of this world, what there is far out there, as far as the spirit desires to look forward, and whither the projection itself of our mind flies on freely.” Epicurus is replaced by St John as the master of truth who is able to wander freely (913 peragrans) not just in space, but also in time, in a vision of the end of the world set in a universe that is very different from the non-providential universe of Lucretius.

References Austin, Roland G. (1977), P. Vergili Maronis Aeneidos liber sextus, Oxford. Brakman, Cornelius (1920), “Quae ratio intercedat inter Lucretium et Prudentium”, in: Mnemos. 48, 434–48. Cameron, Alan (1968), “Notes on Claudian’s invectives”, in: CQ 18, 387–411. Cameron, Alan (1970), Claudian. Poetry and Propaganda at the Court of Honorius, Oxford. Cristante, Lucio (2001/02), “La calamita innamorata (Claud. carm. min. 29 Magnes; con un saggio di commento)”, in: Incontri triestini di filologia classica 1, 35–85. Cristante, Lucio (2004), “Ancora sulla calamita innamorata. A proposito del “Magnes” di Claudiano”, in: O. Bianchi/O. Thévenaz (eds.), Mirabilia. Conceptions et représentations de l’extraordinaire dans le monde antique (Actes du colloque international, Lausanne, 20–22 mars 2003), Bern etc., 131–7. Deufert, Marcus (2009), Lucretius, in: RLAC 23, 603–20; 184–93 ‘Die Alethia und Lukrez’. Dykes, Anthony (2011), Reading Sin in the World. The Hamartigenia of Prudentius and the Vocation of the Responsible Reader, Cambridge. Fuoco, Ornella (2004), “Gli amori del magnete”, in: Filologia antica e moderna 14 no. 27, 71– 106. Gatzemeier, Susanne (2013), Ut ait Lucretius. Die Lukrezrezeption in der lateinischen Prosa bis Laktanz, Göttingen. Gennaro, Salvatore (1957), “Lucrezio e l’apologetica latina in Claudiano”, in: Miscellanea di studi di letteratura cristiana antica 7, 5–60; also published separately as Lucrezio e l’apologetica latina in Claudiano (Catania 1958). Gildenhard, Ingo (2004), “Confronting the Beast – from Virgil’s Cacus to the Dragons of Cornelis van Haarlem”, in: PVS 25, 27–48. Gnilka, Christian (1963), Studien zur Psychomachie des Prudentius, Wiesbaden. Guipponi-Gineste, Marie-France (2011), “Pierres précieuses et pierres curieuses dans la poésie de Claudien”, in : F. Garambois-Vasquez (ed.), Claudien, histoire, mythe et science (Colloque du 6 novembre 2008, Saint-Etienne), St Etienne, 85–111. Guipponi-Gineste, Marie-France (2010), Claudien. Poète du monde à la cour d’occident, Paris. Hagendahl, Harald (1958), Latin Fathers and the Classics, Göteborg. Hardie, Philip (2009), Lucretian Receptions. History, the Sublime, Knowledge, Cambridge.

  Philip Hardie Hardie, Philip (2016), “Reflections of Lucretius in Late Antique and Early Modern Biblical and Scientific Poetry: Providence and the Sublime”, in: J. Lezra/L. Blake (eds.), Lucretius and Modernity. Epicurean Encounters across Time and Disciplines, Basingstoke, 187–202. Hardie, Philip (2019), Classicism and Christianity in Late Antique Latin Poetry, Berkeley/Los Angeles/London. Kenney, Edward John (2014), Lucretius De rerum natura book III, ed. 2, Cambridge. Keul-Deutscher, Meike (1998), “Die Rettung einer gefährdeten Freundschaft. Zu Lukrez-Reminiszenzen im Carmen 11 des Paulinus von Nola”, in: Hermes 126, 341–69. Lavarenne, Marie (1992) Prudence, tome iii Psychomachie, Contre Symmaque, ed. 3 revu, corrigé, augmenté J.L. Charlet, Paris. Ludwig, Walther (1977), “Die christliche Dichtung des Prudentius und die Transformation der klassischen Gattungen”, in: M. Fuhrmann (ed.), Christianisme et formes littéraires de l’antiquité tardive en Occident (Entret. Hardt 23), Geneva, 303–63. Malamud, Martha A. (2011), The Origin of Sin. An English Translation of the Hamartigenia, with an interpretive essay, Ithaca/London. Milanese, Guido (1983), “Il De Rerum Natura, i Topica e Boezio: due note alla Consolatio Philosophiae”, in: Maia 35, 137–56. O’Daly, Gerard (1991), The Poetry of Boethius, London. Prosperi, Valentina (2004), Di soavi licor gli orli del vaso. La fortuna di Lucrezio dall’Umanesimo alla Controriforma, Torino. Rapisarda, Emanuele (1950), “Influssi lucreziani in Prudenzio: un suo poema lucreziano e antiepicureo”, in: Vig. Christ. 4, 46–60. Rücker, Nils (2013), “Bukolische Szenen bei Ausonius und Lukrez im Vergleich”, in: V. ZimmerlPanagl (ed.) Dulce melos II. Akten des 5. internationalen Symposiums: lateinische und griechische Dichtung in Spätantike, Mittelalter und Neuzeit, Wien, 25.–27. November 2010, Pisa, 11–31. Sánchez-Ostiz, Álvaro (2013), “Lucretius, Cicero, Theodorus: Greek philosophy and Latin eloquence in Claudian’s encomiastic imagination”, in: Talanta 45, 97–114. Schmid, Wolfgang (1984), Ausgewählte philologische Schriften, Berlin. Schmid, Wolfgang (1960), “Christus als Naturphilosoph bei Arnobius”, in: Erkenntnis und Verantwortung, Festschr. Th. Litt, Düsseldorf, 264–84 [Ausgew. Schr. 562–83] Smolak, Kurt (1973), “Unentdeckte Lukrezspuren”, in: WS 86, 216–39. Smolak, Kurt (2001), “Die ‘Psicomachie’ des Prudentius als historisches Epos”, in: M. Salvadore (ed.), La poesia tardoantica e medievale (Atti del I Convegno Internazionale di Studi. Macerata, 4–5 maggio 1998), Alessandria, 125–48. Weber, Dorothea (2013), “Die Alethia des Claudius Marius Victorius und ihr Verhältnis zu Lukrez”, in: V. Zimmerl-Panagl (ed.), Dulce melos II. Akten des 5. internationalen Symposiums: lateinische und griechische Dichtung in Spätantike, Mittelalter und Neuzeit, Wien, 25.–27. November 2010, Pisa, 183–99.



Part III: Recovery: Early Modern Scholars, Readers and Translators

Valentina Prosperi

Lost in Translation. The Sixteenth Century Vernacular Lucretius Abstract: In the Renaissance admiration for Lucretius was widespread, but it nevertheless had to comply with a set of unwritten rules in order for the De Rerum Natura to be read and allowed into humanist culture. Spared from the index of forbidden books, humanists had to be particularly careful when handling this epicurean, materialistic, soul’s-immortality-denying poem. The key factor was probably the prohibition on translating the poem into the vernacular: the fate met by Alessandro Marchetti’s belated attempt is usually proof enough of the perils that awaited the transgressors. What became explicit in Marchetti’s case had implicitly been the rule since the poem’s unearthing: this only partially discouraged humanists enticed by the charm of Lucretius’ poetry. Not only did the DRN serve as model for vernacular or neo-Latin poetry in general, but also literal translations of Lucretian lines or groups of lines appear everywhere in Italian vernacular poetry of the time. Not surprisingly then, the scholarship keeps tenuous trace of not one but two complete, unpublished sixteenth-century vernacular translations of the DRN: one by Neapolitan aristocrat Giovan Francesco Muscettola, the other by professional letterato and philosopher Tito Giovanni Ganzarini from Scandiano. Nothing remains of either translation, but much can be inferred regarding their quality, relevance and circulation from the two authors’ circumstances, their epistolaries, their surviving writings. The aim of this paper is to outline this neglected but all-important episode within the history of Lucretius’ Renaissance reception. Keywords: Giovan Francesco Muscettola, Scandianese, Lucretian translation, censorship, Renaissance

In the Early Modern Italian Nachleben of Lucretius there is a major gap: the lack of a vernacular, poetical or otherwise, translation of the De Rerum Natura into Italian. Such a translation only came into being in the seventeenth century, and was only printed in the eighteenth century: not in Italy, to avoid censorship, but

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110673487-009

  Valentina Prosperi in London. 1 The translator was Italian scientist and well-versed classicist Alessandro Marchetti, 2 a professor at the University of Pisa. He set out to his task not unaware of the risks that awaited him, but certainly underestimating them. A good poet and an enthusiast of Lucretius, he completed his translation, but had his hopes crushed, when the Medici Duke of Tuscany refused to be the dedicatee of what he considered to be such an impious text and refused to allow it to be printed. Marchetti also roused the suspicions of the ecclesiastical authorities: the Inquisition archives contain records of the accusations his poetical versions from the classics earned him (besides Lucretius, Anacreon too, on a count of pederasty). 3 In Italy, even at the end of the seventeenth century, trying to extend the audience of the Epicurean poem to readers ignorant of Latin – the plebs and women – was bound to raise the Catholic hierarchies’ suspicion and fierce opposition. Consequently, Marchetti struggled all his life to see his Lucretius in print. He wrote and re-wrote ever stricter Christian-abiding prefaces to accompany the translation. He warned his readers about the immorality of Lucretian doctrines. But it was all to no avail, and he died before the text was printed. Later in his life, Marchetti even attempted to make amends for his Italian Lucretius by way of a didactic poem, possibly on the theme of creation, certainly apologetic in its purposes, whose first fragments he circulated among friends. The new enterprise earned him general acclaim and no small relief on the part of those who correctly read it as the palinode of his (in)famous Lucretian version. But the general indignation towards Marchetti for what had been perceived as an irreparable infraction to a long-standing taboo was still very much alive even in the 18th century. 4  1 Or, more likely, the book was printed in Italy with the false indication of London: Saccenti 1966. 2 On Marchetti’s Lucretian translation the classic reference work is Saccenti 1966; the fragment of Marchetti’s untitled Philosophical poem is printed in Saccenti 1966, 339–341. See also Preti 2007; Costa 2012. 3 Costa 2012. 4 Witness the case of former Jesuit Raffaele Pastore’s translation (Pastore 1778): despite buttressing his version with open denials of Lucretian tenets (starting with the title: La filosofia della natura di Tito Lucrezio Caro: e confutazione del suo deismo e materialismo) and counterbalancing the De Rerum Natura with an accompanying version of Paleario’s De immortalitate animorum, Pastore’s version incurred the wrath of the Inquisition as a vehicle of heresy: all the more so since several cases were recorded of readers turning themselves in to the Inquisition. Saccenti 1966, 131 n.; on Pastore’s critique of Marchetti’s translation: Delpiano 2017, 146, n. 50; see also Magnoni 2005, 425. The habit of neutralizing the DRN with an accompanying orthodox poem, Lucretian in form but not in content, established itself early on, primarily in Italy, but not only:

Lost in Translation. The Sixteenth Century Vernacular Lucretius  

Marchetti’s case was in keeping with what had been the fate of Lucretius in Italy ever since his rediscovery. The De Rerum Natura had been treading a very narrow path. One of the unspoken clauses that had allowed its circulation was an understanding on the part of humanists that the poem would not be translated into the vernacular and thus remain the province of elites. Complying with this implicit boundary was however only part of the question. In fact, the irresistible fascination that Lucretius exerted on Italian authors and men of letters as a model of poetry was a force that had to be reckoned with. Lucretius was subject to immediate, widespread admiration on the one hand, and immediate wariness and hostility on the other – more often than not in the same reader. In Italy, this double bind resolved itself in a peculiar fashion, and though we see Lucretian lines or passages on open display in the neo-Latin and vernacular poetry of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, they are almost invariably cleansed of any Epicurean, materialistic undertone. Indeed, eulogies of Epicurus, attacks on religio, hymns to Venus, were generally refashioned by Italian poets as eulogies of religion, attacks on atheists, prayers to the Virgin. 5 Many Neolatin poets went to the extreme lengths of engaging Lucretius in person as a demented fool – in perfectly formed, recognizable Lucretian hexameters. 6 A notable exception to this rule of reversed appropriation is the Hymn to Venus: universally admired and freely reworked into many a work of poetry of the time, to the point of becoming almost a set piece for Humanist and Renaissance poets. 7 Between 1535 and 1545 there was a flurry of neo-Latin didactic epics directly engaging with and, in varying degrees, contesting the De Rerum Natura. Besides Capece’s De principiis rerum – the last one to appear – these were Aonio Paleario’s De animorum immortalitate (before 1536); Marcello Palingenio Stellato’s Zodiacus vitae (Venice, B. Vitali, 1535–6?); and Lodovico Parisetti Junior’s De immortalitate animae (Reggio Emilia, Antonio Viotti, 1541). All of these works shared a deep involvement with Lucretius. The references were sometimes implicit, alluded to in reversals and reworkings of well-known Lucretian passages (as in Capece’s  Prosperi 2019; Palmer 2014, 207–208, records the case of a volume binding together Lucretius and Palearius in the 1530s in Basel, where the Christian poem would “serve as a direct companion or commentary, defusing the atheist potential” of Lucretius. 5 On poignant, programmatic reversals of Lucretian lines in Neo-Latin and vernacular Italian poetry of the Renaissance: Prosperi 2004, Prosperi 2007. 6 On the Lucretian model in Neo-Latin didactic epics of 16th century Italy: Goddard 1991, Goddard 1993, Haskell 1998, Haskell 2015, Schindler 2014. 7 An admiration shared by French poets, as a new volume (Chométy and Rosellini 2017) shows: the third part of the volume is an anthology of 16 versions of the Hymn by French poets: Troisième partie: Traduire l’Hymne à Vénus: un défi toujours nouveau (Anthologie), 297–360.

  Valentina Prosperi and Paleario’s case), and sometimes vocally explicit, with direct addresses and attacks on the man Lucretius, as being riddled with sins and impiety. 8 It should not come as a surprise, then, that not one but two vernacular translations of the DRN appeared, and just as quickly disappeared, exactly over this period of time, when Italian culture was brimming with the presence of Lucretius, challenged or otherwise. The scholarship on Lucretius has long since known about these two poetical versions that a combination of reasons erased from view. No mystery story here for the scholar, then: no stunning revelation to be had; rather, the gravity pull of a detective story, one where from very little evidence – or a single document – we must try to reconstruct an intellectual biography in one case, and a Renaissance cultural landscape where Lucretius played a primary role in both cases. Curiously, this story of the lost translation has received very little attention so far: recent scholarship regularly overlooks it to the point of doubting its reality at times. The evidence is certainly so scanty as to be disheartening and much speculation is called for. The names of the men in question are: Giovan Francesco Muscettola, a Neapolitan aristocrat, and Tito Giovanni Ganzarini (commonly known as Scandianese), a professional scholar and poet, who was active in Asolo and Scandiano. Behind these names lie two profoundly different men: with different upbringings, different personal and social circumstances, and from different geographical and cultural areas. Scandianese’s name and work would have survived to this day even without any reference to his Lucretian translation. 9 Not so for Muscettola. The fact that he translated the DRN is the only reason he is still remembered today: indeed it is the reason he has been, so to speak, called back from the dead. The inescapable reality is that both translations have disappeared; and although this was the outcome of very different circumstances, the common denominator is certainly to be traced back to the shared wariness and reluctance for any attempt at making the DRN more available than it was. Both disappearances were thus ultimately acts of self-censorship on the part of their authors and/or of their immediate milieu, a vanishing act so effectual it is actually astounding that  8 It is certainly true, as Yasmin Haskell remarks, that these poems differed widely in the scope of their anti-Lucretian stance and that, specifically, Capece’s poem did not stem from a desire to deny Lucretian theories. However, I suggest that we read them as instances of a collective quest for the Christian Lucretius, at a time when the Italian letterati’s urge to produce a Lucretius in Italian, an Italian Lucretius, was at its peak. This would also contribute to answering Haskell’s question as to why there were so many Lucretian Neo-Latin poems at the time. 9 Witness, first of all, the biographical entry in the Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani: Riccioni 1999.

Lost in Translation. The Sixteenth Century Vernacular Lucretius  

any trace at all of these works has been preserved in the scholarship. Their existence was first recorded by the founders of eighteenth-century Italian erudition: 10 Apostolo Zeno, Francesco Saverio Quadrio, Iacopo Maria Paitoni and Girolamo Tiraboschi (with Tiraboschi the only one to mention Muscettola). 11 From those extraordinary repositories of erudition, the information has trickled down into subsequent scholarship, if only in the form of mere survival. We probably owe it to Gordon’s still valuable bibliography if any awareness of these works has been preserved, however their existence is mentioned often just in passing and in dubitative form. 12 Let us start with Giovan Francesco Muscettola, a name so quickly forgotten even by his contemporaries that his ghostly presence in Lucretian studies is an exception to a fate of obscurity. Immediately after his death, documents started to conflate him with and mistake him for his father Giovanni Antonio, ambassador to the Emperor Charles V, amateur poet and intellectual of renown, and overall a much more dashing figure than his son. 13 At times, in today’s scholarship, the sheer existence of Muscettola as an individual or of his Lucretian translation are doubted, a notion easily dispelled by the one document discovered by Tiraboschi: a letter that the poet and literary theorist Antonio Sebastiani Minturno 14 wrote back to the young Muscettola, when the latter asked for his opinion about the Lucretian translation. It is the only document recording Muscettola’s translation and while exceedingly dry and disappointing in some respects, it is unwittingly revealing in other

 10 See the outline based on Gordon 1962 by Magnoni 2005, 424. Paitoni 1766, 238 only records Scandianese’s work. Quadrio 1749, vol. IV, 30, mentions Scandianese and Frachetta. 11 Tiraboschi 1824, t. VIII, part III, 1958, is the only one to mention Muscettola’s work, of which he deduces the existence from Minturno’s letter. In line with his method of integrating without repeating previous scholarship (Mari 1999, 162, 165, n. 164), Tiraboschi does not mention Scandianese. 12 Gordon 1962; other general outlines of Lucretius’ influence and survival, such as Fleischmann 1971 (with Palmer 2014) do not mention any vernacular translation prior to the one by Marolles; Magnoni correctly quotes Gordon on the matter; in Prosperi 2004 I overlooked early translations entirely, albeit noticing that Lucretian fragments in vernacular texts of poetry witnessed a widespread desire to translate the De Rerum Natura on the part of the Italians. 13 In retracing the footsteps of the elusive Muscettola and his entourage, I could count on the help of many distinguished scholars; I’m most grateful to Raffaele Girardi, Antonio Gisondi, Franco Pignatti, Marco Sgarbi, Gennaro Tallini, Tobia Raffaele Toscano for providing me with copies of their work and generous advice. There is no general treatment of Giovanni Antonio Muscettola, but Pignatti 2016 is the best starting point in outlining the man’s cultural profile, his role and his – unfulfilled – ambitions. 14 On Minturno: Tallini 2018.

  Valentina Prosperi ways, although it leaves us in the dark on one vital detail: how far he had actually got with the work under discussion. Nowhere in the letter is the scope of the translation mentioned: it is however doubtful that a young aristocrat at his first foray into poetry might have produced a complete versification of all of the six books of the Latin poet. More likely, Muscettola translated one book of the DRN, or a selection of passages, and sent his work over to Minturno in an unfinished, preliminary state to test his reaction and possibly receive some encouragement. Little did he foresee what was in store for him. But even if this were the case and the lost translation had only been partial, it would not detract from the importance and overall novelty of the enterprise: proof is the energy that Minturno displays in demolishing it. After a few perfunctory words of praise, Minturno directs harsh criticism on practically every aspect of Muscettola’s work. The good aspect is that in so doing he reveals something about the translation he had been reading. I shall not dwell on the gratitude that I owe to your lordship for showing your good consideration of me in charging me with a burden worthy of stronger arms. I shall just reaffirm my eternal obligation, given that your Lordship has esteemed me of sufficient discernment to revise and amend his writings: so rich of every grace and so worth of praise that no defect or blame is in them. 15

First there is the matter of the literality of the translation: according to Minturno, Muscettola’s vernacular version is too reminiscent of the Latin behind it. Damning with faint praise the text, Minturno ascribes this flaw to a too confident command of the Latin text on the part of Muscettola (“la interpretatione mi par si fida”). Even this weak compliment will be revoked by the end of the letter. The thought is high, and well-founded, and expressed with apt words: but the interpretation is so faithful that it trails after the Latin too closely, from particle to particle. 16

Another feature (and another butt for criticism) of Muscettola’s version was apparently the excessive word-for-word approach, aiming at a perfect syllabic correspondence but to the detriment of gracefulness (“leggiadria”).

 15 Minturno 1549, 81r: “Non entrerò io a render quelle gratie, ch’io debbo a V. S. di sì buona openione, la quale si dimostra haver di me con impormi soma da altri homeri che da miei. Ma solamente con questa le affermo ch’io le sono in obligo immortale, percio che m’ha riputato di tanto giudicio, che m’ha commesso il rivedere e l’amendare le sue scritture si ricche d’ogni ornamento, e si degne di laude, che in quelle non ha luogo difetto, ne biasimo alcuno.” 16 “Il pensiero è alto e ben fondato, et espresso con acconcie parole: ma la interpretatione mi par si fida, che va troppo appresso al dir latino di particella in particella.” (Minturno 1549, 81r).

Lost in Translation. The Sixteenth Century Vernacular Lucretius  

This leads sometimes to the verse being neither attractive nor graceful as it would be, if more care were spent in explaining the gist of the words in lines with the gracefulness required, rather than in conjuring up vernacular words with an equal number of syllables than the Latin ones. 17

Muscettola’s meter of choice is met with even harsher words: blank verse (endecasillabi sciolti) is not suited to translating from Latin. In Minturno’s opinion, such a choice of meter strips Lucretius’ lines of their ‘consonances’ without making them more palatable to the Italian ear by way of the rhyme. On the contrary, Minturno advocates for a freer rendering of the text, one to compensate for the lack of rhymes. This [recommendation] has to be observed when translating in any language, but in ours more than ever, compared to Greek or Latin, since [the Italian language] is lowlier and poorer than either, especially when writing in blank verse. The reason is that verses that are pleasing in a given language thanks to their consonances, once naked and stripped of them lose any reason to please. Hence, I would say, this kind of verse, that we call blank, has to be more carefully adorned than rhyme, while rhymes compensate for the lack of consonances and can be more freely employed in translating [poetry] than blank verse. 18

Minturno then recommends that Muscettola observe “le leggi degl’Intronati” without however giving in too much to their theories. What role the Intronati might have had in inspiring the Lucretian version we shall see. No one needs to instruct Your Lordship on what to avoid in the laws of the Intronati, and Your Lordship knows better than me how to avoid the rocks of the language that they warn us against. 19

Finally, the letter strikes a blow that nullifies even the weak opening praise:  17 “Il che fa qualche volta che ‘il verso non sia si vago ne si leggiadro, come sarebbe, se più s’attendesse a spiegare il sentimento delle parole in versi con leggiadria a quelli richiesta, ch’a trovar le voci volgari, che rispondano con altrettanto numero alle latine.” (Minturno 1549, 81r). 18 “Questo come che in ogni favella quando s’interpetra servar si debba; parmi che tanto piu in questa nostra, che nella Greca o nella Latina, quanto è più bassa e più povera de l’una e de l’altra, e spetialmente scrivendosi in rima sciolta. Percio che i versi che in questa lingua pareano che piacessero per le consonanze, fatti così ignudi, e senza quelle, se non si vestessero d’altro ornamento, non sarebbe in loro, perche dovessero piacere. Onde io direi più studio doversi porre in adornare questi versi, li quali chiamano sciolti, che le rime, e queste per ricompensare i legami delle consonanze, haver più libertà nell’altro, che quelli.” (Minturno 1549, 81r–v). 19 “Da le leggi de l’Intronati in che s’habbia a guardare; non è mistiere che altri l’ammonisca. Concio sia che V. S. sappia meglio di me tutte le vie da fuggire quelli scogli de la favella, da li quali comandano che ci guardiamo.” (Minturno 1549, 81v.). On the laws ruling the Intronati: Marcucci, Crevani 1988, 455.

  Valentina Prosperi Who would dare to say that Your Lordship is mistaken in his translation? More likely, it could be that, being Lucretius’ poem written in diverging ways in numerous passages, somebody reading from a different text might give a different interpretation than Your Lordship. I for one, having found your version somewhat different from what is written in my copy of Lucretius, thought that the only reason could be that in yours the text reads differently. 20

The last of Minturno’s criticisms plainly questions Muscettola’s grasp of Lucretius’ Latin. The plebeian Minturno could not afford to point out the blunders in the young aristocrat’s version: he then ascribes what he recognized as veritable mistakes to supposedly different lections in Muscettola’s original. Minturno’s thinly veiled critique of Muscettola’s version has however one small kernel of truth, in that Minturno did have his own copy of Lucretius; and he did harbor personal ideas as to how best translate it – as we shall see. His brusqueness about Muscettola’s endeavour however, is too extreme to be entirely motivated by scholarly disappointment in a pupil’s sloppy work: the reasons must be looked for elsewhere. And again it this one piece of evidence, the letter, that provides these reasons. The reason is in the date: 1542 was not just any year in Naples’ cultural landscape. In that year the viceroy Toledo suppressed the Accademia Pontaniana 21 and dismissed its president Scipione Capece. An ingrained mistrust for all forms of intellectual association as potential hotbeds of social upheaval guided the Spanish policy in Naples. 22 Such a cultural climate made it less than advisable to linger on the topic of the Epicurean Lucretius, especially in a written form. Although it would be simplistic to link the Pontaniana Academy’s suppression directly with the DRN, a pattern where Lucretius, as a vehicle of unbelief, is involved, is discernible in the untimely end of most Neapolitan Academies between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 23

 20 “Nello interpetrare chi sarà ardito a dire che V. S. s’inganna? Ma ben potrebbe avvenire, che trovandosi l’opera di Lucretio in più luoghi variamente scritta, chi leggesse altramente i versi di quel poeta, che non fa V. S. altramente l’interpetrasse. Perché havendo io trovata la interpetration sua diversa in qualche parte da quel ch’è scritto nel mio libbro, ho pensato non altro esserne cagione, se non che è scritto altramente nel suo.” (Minturno 1549, 81v.). 21 For a recent assessment of the Pontaniana: Furstenberg-Levi 2016. 22 Lopez 1974, 36–37. 23 On the cultural phenomenon of Italian Academies, most recently Everson, Reidy and Sampson 2016; Testa, 2015); an online census of Italian Academies is now also available: http:// www.bl. uk/catalogues/ItalianAcademies/About.aspx.

Lost in Translation. The Sixteenth Century Vernacular Lucretius  

Especially noticeable is the case of the Accademia degli Investiganti in Naples, a century later. Founded in 1650, the Academy, which flaunted the Lucretian motto vestigia lustrat, was suppressed in 1668 precisely because of its interest in the atomistic theories of Gassendi and Lucretius: the pains to distance themselves from the most controversial aspects of Lucretian doctrines did not save the Investiganti from close ecclesiastical scrutiny and critique. 24 In his account of the Investiganti’s quick demise, the seventeenth century historian and jurist Pietro Giannone highlights how the Academy’s main infraction in the eyes of the regime and the Inquisition was opening the way to Lucretius through Gassendi (not the other way around). These Academists were all Learned Men, and the brightest Genius’s of the City which gained them great Reputation amongst Men of Knowledge, and especially among the Youth, to whom it was an easy Matter to demonstrate the Errors and Dreams of the Monkish Philosophy. The Works of Petrus Gassendus had acquired great Fame in France, as well upon the Account of his great Learning and Eloquence, as for his having restored the Epicurean Philosophy, which, compar’d to that of Aristotle, and especially as taught in the Schools, had the Reputation of being more solid and true. These Books were brought to Naples, and when they were read there, the Youth was infinitely pleased with them, not only upon the Account of the Principles which they taught, but for the Variety of good Learning they contained: So that in a short Time they all became Gassendists; and this Philosophy was profess’d by the new Philosophers. And although Gassendus had adapted his Epicurean System to the Catholick Religion, which he himself professed, yet Titus Lucretius being the greatest Supporter of it. Many were induced to read that Poet, hitherto known but to very few; however, the Investiganti, as well as Gassendus, having discovered the Errors of Lucretius, made the Youth abhor them; and demonstrated, that his Philosophy was inconsistent with our Religion, and therefore ought not to be studied. What made them likewise afraid of it, was the Fate of Galileo de Galilei, who, notwithstanding his reverend grey Hairs, was obliged in Rome to abjure his Opinion concerning the Motion of the Earth. 25

Indeed, all along the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Catholic church in Italy lumped together ancient and modern authors in its distrust and rejection of intellectual freedom, so that Lucretius was considered a revolutionary, dangerous author, not as much the inspiration as the peer of modern thinkers: Gassendi in the seventeenth century, the philosophes, Voltaire and Rousseau, in the eighteenth. 26 Going back now to the Pontaniana, its most prominent members had cultivated a predilection for the DRN. I don’t need to retrace here the prominence of  24 Osbat 1974; Garin 1970; Torrini 1981. 25 Giannone 1731, vol. II, 575. 26 Delpiano 2017, 69, 136–140.

  Valentina Prosperi Lucretius in the work of Pontano, Marullo, Sannazaro. Instead what I want to focus on is the second period of the Pontaniana, the almost ten years spanning from the death of Sannazaro to the Academy’s suppression. In those years, the president of the Pontaniana was Scipione Capece: the Academy’s suppression was probably entangled with Capece’s personal traversies. Four years later, in 1546, Capece, now in self-imposed exile from Naples, published his neo-Latin didactic poem De principiis rerum that had him celebrated as a new, better Lucretius by Paolo Manuzio and Pietro Bembo. 27 The tantalizing detail here is that according to one source, none other than Giovan Francesco Muscettola had encouraged Capece to compose his Lucretian poem. 28 Muscettola’s father, Giovanni Antonio, had been a patron of the arts and a member of the Academy until his premature death at 47 years old in 1533. He had been a regular at Vittoria Colonna’s retreat in Ischia. Paolo Giovio features Giovanni Antonio Muscettola in one of his dialogues, alongside himself and Vittoria. Veronica Gambara asked his opinion on her sonnets for the death of Sannazaro; and the rather feeble play on words Muses-Musettola features in many a poem addressed to him. After the end of the Pontaniana, Giovan Francesco Muscettola founded another short-lived Academy in Naples, inspired by the Sienese Accademia degli Intronati, of which his father had been a member. This one too, known as the Accademia dei Sereni, was hastily suppressed by the viceroy. The reasons are unclear and, as one author put it at the time, “not to be written down in letters”. But in any case, the mistrust for all forms of intellectual organizations prevailed. And in truth, if we follow up the intellectual biographies of the participants, more than one ended up clashing with the Inquisitors. 29 This is no place to follow Muscettola in his later years. He presumably died in the early 1570s, 30 leaving behind a trail of documents that taken together compose the portrait of an amateur intellectual, at home on the literary scene of midcentury Naples, with a network of eminent literary friends. Always at the center  27 Capece 1546. 28 Borzelli 1942, 17, quotes Minturno as a source for the role of Muscettola in encouraging Capece’s poem. I owe it to Prof. Tobia Raffaele Toscano’s great learning and kindness that I could read this extremely rare opuscule. 29 Of special interest is the fate of one of the members of the Sereni, Giovan Francesco Brancaleone; he had written a treatise on the immortality of the soul, but underwent inquisitorial trial for possession of forbidden books (Erasmus mainly) and suspicious statements on the afterlife of the soul (Menchi 1988, Gisondi 2010, Sgarbi 2015, Gliozzi 1971). 30 An unpublished poem by a contemporary describes him in around 1572 as ailing and incapacitated to speak: cf. Colapietra 1999, 301–302.

Lost in Translation. The Sixteenth Century Vernacular Lucretius  

of the literary scene, we have letters to him, treatises and poems addressed to him, poems about him, mentions and sometimes extensive discussions of works (historiography) he’d been writing – but apparently never completed. He was clearly an intellectually brilliant, respected man in his circle. But it’s almost as if that early and categorical lambasting from Minturno had nipped in the bud any serious attempt at literary fame on his part. Significantly, all we have by him are two short, dry texts on technical matters related to duelling, 31 that give away nothing of his supposed wit and knowledge, however suggestive of his social standing. 32 A peek at his supposedly characteristic wit is however possible thanks to a later author, who depicted him in one of his short stories, where he features as a sharp-tongued haughty aristocrat. When the Prince of Salerno was out of Naples as an exile, because there were rumours that he was trying to rally the French army against the city, once, for some treatise that was being discussed, he came with the French king’s galleons near Salerno, wandering about the sea. Another nobleman, who was his rival and enemy, all of the sudden told Francesco Musettola, a sharp-tongued and free-spirited man, secretly loyal to the Prince: What do you think, Signor Francesco, of this Prince of yours? What will he ever be able to do, as an exile, against our King and myself? Most excellent Signore, Musettola retorted – what is your point? It is an undisputed fact that in case of necessity Your Lordship’s death would be of more advantage than the Prince’s life. – Thus alluding to the fact that a just ruler’s life is not as useful as a tyrant’s death. Musettola’s assuredness as much as his sneering remark left everybody astounded. 33

But to go back now to Minturno’s letter and the matter of translating Lucretius, the circumstances could not have been more unfavourable to any expansion of his audience via a translation. On the one hand, the loss of the letter with which  31 Muscettola 1563 and Muscettola 1544; this latter collection of “pareri” on duel is described in Levi and Gelli 1903, 223. 32 The importance of duels in Early modern Italy is brilliantly illustrated in Cavina 2005. 33 Costo 1989, 235–236: “Motto mordace del Musettola a un certo Signore: Quando il Principe di Salerno andava fuoruscito di Napoli, perché si diceva che cercava di travagliar la città col braccio di Francia, una volta, per un certo trattato che si fece, venne con le galee di quel Re sopra Salerno vagando per quel mare. Ora, un altro gran Signore suo emolo e nimico, parlando un tratto con Francesco Musettola, uomo non men pronto di lingua che libero di cuore, e che in segreto era affezzionato del Principe, ebbe a dire: – Che vi par egli, Sig. Francesco, di questo vostro Principe? Che potrà egli mai fare così fuoruscito contro al nostro Re, né contra di me? – Signore eccellentissimo – rispose il Musettola – che accade dir cotesto? Egli si sa bene che ad un bisogno gioverebbe più la persona di V. Eccellenza morta, che quella del Principe viva –, quasi alludendo a quel detto non giova tanto la vita d’un principe giusto, quanto la morte d’un tiranno. Fe’ maravigliar non meno la sicurtà, che il motto del Musettola.”

  Valentina Prosperi Muscettola had sent Minturno the translation, prevents us from knowing whether the young author had any perception at all of his work’s potentially subversive impact in Naples at the time. On the other hand, though, much can be read in the silence Minturno keeps on risks of heresy and atheism: discontent in his correspondent’s recklessness, unease, caution. The strictures of the dissimulatory code enveloping Lucretius’ circulation invested all levels of communication, even the private one of correspondence. Two humanist friends that admired and engaged with Lucretius, Pietro Vettori and Vincenzio Borghini, left conspicuous trace in their writings of how one couldn’t be too cautious when dealing with the poet. In a letter to Borghini of 1546, Vettori, even as he asks him for a manuscript of Lucretius, stresses the importance that his friend do not divulge this request: “Do not tell everyone that I sent to you for a Lucretius; I’m afraid I would be held as ill-advised”, 34 concluding in typical fashion that his interest for Lucretius stems from the conviction that “no book is so evil that some good cannot be extracted from it”: nullus tam malus liber. Nullus tam malus liber was the trench of last resistance for the DRN, which often veiled an admiration as strong as the wariness. Minturno, similar in this to Vettori, Borghini and the rest of his contemporaries, did read Lucretius, that is, he had his own copy of the poem, just as he had pointed out in the letter to Muscettola. In his letter to the naive young Muscettola, the wiser and older Minturno had been careful to say as little as possible about “the beastly Lucretius” to quote here another of Muscettola’s friends and correspondents. 35 But even he bowed to Lucretius as a poet, and like so many other authors in his day could not resist inserting a short excerpt of Lucretian translation in his works. Maybe Giovan Francesco’s clumsy work had given him a spur for reflecting; what is for sure is that when, as many had done before and after him, Minturno inserted a version of the Hymn to Venus into one of his works, he stayed true to his former opinion and

 34 Borghini 2001, Letter to Pietro Vettori, 9 october 1546, 241–242: “Io vi ringratio della brigha ch’havete presa per me in cercare del Lucretio et poi in mandarmelo con tanta diligentia. (…) Non dite però a ognuno che hebbi mandato a voi per un Lucretio, ché non so s’io mi fusse tenuto di pocho giuditio. Già mi avveddi io ch’io facevo una cosa un pocho strana et che aveva del σόλοικον; pure io so che d’ogni cosa si può cavar buon senso et nullus tam malus liber, diceva colui.” 35 Thus spoke the humanist Galeazzo Florimonte, in a letter of 1560: Delle lettere volgari di diversi nobilissimi huomini, et eccellentissimi ingegni scritti in diverse materie. Libro Terzo, Nuovamente mandato in luce. Aldus In Venetia MDLXVII (1567), 326–328.

Lost in Translation. The Sixteenth Century Vernacular Lucretius  

resorted to the typically Italian metrical form of canzone, with rhymes. 36 The result is a sing-song piece of poetry particularly incongruous with Lucretius’ solemn Hymn and such as to make the loss of Muscettola’s blank verse version even more regrettable. Instead of idly speculating on the respective merits of the two translations, it is important to stress that Muscettola’s metrical choice reveals a young poet extraordinarily au courant of the latest stylistic trends. At the time, the endecasillabo sciolto was just about affirming itself in Italian poetry. Authors of vernacular tragedies were turning to it for its recognizable rhythm, free of the stricture of rhymes, while its perceived similarity to the Latin hexameter made it the meter of choice for composing in antiquity-inspired genres as well as for translating from the classics. 37 In 1542, however, this process was very much in its early stages: only Trissino’s tragedy Sofonisba and Giovanni Rucellai’s short didactic poem Le api 38 had appeared in print, while Trissino’s failed experiment in Homeric epic, L’Italia liberata dai Gotti, in the making since the 1520s, only appeared in 1547. As for translations from the classics, Muscettola’s Lucretian version must be counted as among the first ones to (not) appear in this meter. Ganzarini’s lost Lucretian version dates from the mid 1550s; Niccolò Liburnio’s translation of Aeneid IV 39 was published in 1534 and a 1540 collective translation of the first half of the Aeneid by the Sienese Intronati 40 represents an interesting antecedent, given the ties of the Muscettola family with this Accademia. In the following decades, the meter was singled out as the most apt for vernacular didactic poetry, be it original or translated from the classics. When Alessandro Marchetti tended to his own blank verse version of the DRN, he had no

 36 Minturno 1569, 122: “Venere de’ mortali, et de li Dei/ Almo piacer, che dolcemente movi/ Il ciel di cerchio in cerchio, e gli elementi,/ Onde quel, che tu Dea nel mondo sei,/ Mostran diversi effetti antichi, e novi,/ Al tuo bel riso disiosi, e ‘ntenti,/ Tu sola acqueti le tempeste, e “venti,/ Per te s’appaga il mar, per te s’adorna/ Di fior la terra, e ‘l ciel si rasserena/Al fiammeggiar de’ begli occhi lucenti,/ Per te la dolce primavera torna,/ E le fiere, e gli augelli ad amar mena,/ E perche già con le tue sante leggi/ Il mondo tempri, e reggi,/ Senza le fiamme tue soave ardenti/ Cosa non è, né fu giamai, né fia,/ Né vaghezza d’amor, né leggiadria.” 37 On the practice of versi sciolti: Martelli 519–620 (esp. 530–543: L’epica: endecasillabo sciolto e ottava rima; 543–555: Le versioni poetiche e l’endecasillabo sciolto; 555–567: L’endecasillabo sciolto e la poesia didascalica); Steadman 1964. 38 On Rucellai: Simonetta 2017; Piquet 2004. 39 Liburnio 1534. 40 Virgil 1540; Virgil 2002.

  Valentina Prosperi awareness of past attempts, but could rely on a long tradition of vernacular didactic poetry in this meter; and when he tried his hand at an original didactic poem in vernacular, again he turned to the same meter. As a revered classic that was also a didactic poem, the DRN lent itself perfectly to being rendered in endecasillabi sciolti from the very beginning: and despite the loss of both early vernacular versions, we have a sample of how they might have looked through an early vernacular didactic poem that although Virgilian in its outline, showcases a Lucretian proem. Luigi Alamanni had started working on his poem La coltivazione in the 1530s, but the work was only printed in 1546, too late for Muscettola to see. Not simply allusive or reminiscent of the Hymn to Venus, the proem in La Coltivazione is a word-for-word translation of it, with the exception of the phrase Aeneadum genetrix, a signifier of epic genre that Alamanni evidently considered alien to his didactic poem. 41 Alamanni’s proem is however not only a suggestive template for the style of the lost sixteenth century Lucretian versions: rather, it testifies to what was at the time a collective aspiration to engage with the DRN on the part of the humanists, and that more often than not took the form of a translation per fragments. The number of Lucretian fragments in Italian vernacular literature, be it poetry or otherwise, had probably reached its peak by mid-century; a census of the quoted fragments combined would release an extensive approximation of the poem. Especially in some authors, the impression is that the translated fragment acted as a powerful token of the whole poem: the Lucretian passage, defused by the new context it was immersed in, but completely recognizable – not altered: translated – elicited the wider context of the forbidden poem. One significant example of this fascination with Lucretius only emerging in self-constrained bouts of quasi-translation comes from the Sienese philosopher Alessandro Piccolomini. A contemporary of Muscettola and Ganzarini, and a member of the Sienese Accademia degli Intronati, Piccolomini was fascinated by

 41 “Alma Ciprigna Dea, lucente stella/ De’ Mortai, de gli Dei vita e diletto;/ Tu fai l’aer seren, tu queti il mare,/ Tu dai frutto al terren, tu liete, e gai/ Fai le fere, e gli augei, che dal tuo raggio/ Tutto quel ch’è fra noi raddoppia il parto./ Al tuo santo apparir la nebbia e “l vento/ Parton veloci, e le campagne e i colli/ Veston nuovi color di ori e d’erbe,/ Tornan d’argento i ruscelletti e i fiumi./ Dal tuo sacro favor le piume spiega/ Zefiro intorno, e gli amorosi spirti,/ Ovunque teco vien, soave infonde/ La chiara Primavera, e ‘l tempo vago,/ Che le piante avverdisce, e pinge i prati,/ E quanto bene abbiam da te si chiame./ Deh fa, sacrata Dea, che in terra e in mare/ L’antico guerreggiar s’acqueti omai:/ Perché tu sola puoi tranquilla pace/ Portar nel mondo, che il feroce Marte/ Tutto acceso d’amor ti giace in grembo,/ E fermando ne’ tuoi gli ardenti lumi,/ In te vorria versar tutti i suoi spirti;/ Né può grazia negar che tu gli chieggia.” Martelli 1984, 555–57 underlines how Alamanni deliberately reserved blank verse for the didactic genre.

Lost in Translation. The Sixteenth Century Vernacular Lucretius  

the problem of translating from the ancients. He produced versions of both prose and poetry classical texts and took part in many collective literary experiments, one of which was the aforementioned blank verse version of the first six books of the Aeneid: as one of the translators wrote in the preface to this work, 42 and as Piccolomini himself reiterated in a later theoretical text, the versi sciolti did not detract from the gravitas of the Latin language and had therefore an advantage over rhymes, that rather “sweetened” the verse. 43 Piccolomini had also spent years in annotating the DRN, producing a commentary that he deliberately never circulated, concerned that it might “invigorate Epicurus’ most fallacious opinion regarding Providence”. It seems that Piccolomini’s Lucretian commentary survived in manuscript form for years in the family residence, until it went lost: 44 a fate strikingly similar to that of the other lost sixteenth century Lucretian translation, by Scandianese. Nonetheless, his reverence for the DRN is manifest in his writings. Many of Piccolomini’s sonnets resound with Lucretian memories, to the point of quasi-translation, as in sonnet 72, where Lucretius’ second proem is reworked in an address to fellow-philosopher Marcantonio Flaminio. Come quando “l mar gonfia, e negro il giorno Fan l’onde irate, ed altrui danno orrore, Gran piacer è veder dal porto fuore Navi ondeggiar, con quel periglio attorno; Così tu puoi d’alta dottrina adorno, Flaminio, il volgo immerso entro al furore D’ambizion, d’ignoranza, odio e timore, Mirar secur, che non pon farti scorno. O stolte menti, o ciechi petti umani! (Debbi tu dir) a pena un dì ci è dato Di vita, e van desio cel turba e fura. Non sentiam noi che esclama ognor Natura, Che poco vuol per far altrui beato? La mente pura, e i sensi intieri e sani. 45

 42 Virgil 1540, 3v.: Vincenzo della Persa, Prefatory letter: “Versi che noi diciamo sciolti, così egualmente bene ne punto sminuendo per quanto puossi, la gravità del Latino.” On the collective Virgilian translations: Zabughin 1923 vol. 2, pp. 361–62. 43 Piccolomini 1575. 44 Fabiani 1759, 45–46; Refini 2011, 261–62. 45 Piccolomini 1549, sonnet 72. As for Lucretian imitation in Piccolomini’s sonnets, but without mention of sonnet 72: Refini 2007.

  Valentina Prosperi Muscettola had a long-standing allegiance to the Sienese Accademia: his father Giovanni Antonio had been a member, while he himself produced and acted in a play written by the Intronati at the time of his own short-lived Accademia dei Sereni. All this, and the recommendation by Minturno, that Muscettola be wary of the “laws of the Intronati” might suggest that the choice of meter in the Lucretian version had to do with that cultural milieu. Unlike Muscettola’s aristocratic dilettante role, Tito Giovanni Ganzarini was from the lower ranks of society and was a professional teacher and scholar. He was also an accomplished classicist, and he edited and translated many classics for the famous Venetian printer Giolito. As a scholar, his multifarious interests spanned from poetry to philosophy and he stands out to this day as a humanist of rank. 46 Upon his death, Scandianese left a wealth of manuscripts, spanning from a piscatory didactic poem, to a biographical dictionary of ancient authors, to local history, to minor poetical works – they were all destined to dispersion and loss just like the Lucretian version and commentary. It is with some caution that the fate of his Lucretian works can be seen as any different from the rest of these works. However, the reticence tinged with pride, with which Scandianese himself hints at the existence of his soon-to-appear Lucretius is certainly singular. In his vernacular poem on the Phoenix (Venice 1555), 47 Scandianese speaks at length of his work on Lucretius as already completed and as a source of pride for himself, on a par with his treatise on poetics. In fact, if he has chosen to first print instead minor works such as the Phoenix, he says, it is out of modesty and to avoid his rivals’ envy. 48 In the letter to the dedicatee, Scandianese lists the men

 46 On Scandianese, Riccioni 1999. 47 The poem can now be read in Basile 2004. 48 Scandianese 1555, 6–7, dedicatory letter to Giovan Pietro Ancarani (my emphasis): “Egli è ben vero, che non poco ho dubbitato dare alle Stampe questo picciol parto, bramando prima mostrarne al mondo cose di piu lungo studio, e di maggior fatica, come la Poetica nostra, dove di tutte le sorti di compositioni si ragiona; e Lucretio tradotto, ampliato, et comentato da noi. Nella Poetica habbiamo precettori il Divino Platone, il re de’ Peripatetici, Aristotele, Hermogene, Cicerone, Horatio, Quintiliano, et altri. Ponendo nel mezzo gli esempi de’ piu degni Poeti, et Oratori. Nel Lucretio poi essendomi stato Conseglieri il Magnifico Virtuoso, et Honorato Signor Alberto Lollio. La Lucina l’infallibile Oracolo di tutte le scientie M. Gregorio Giraldi. Et l’Ostetrice l’Ingegnoso M. Iacopo Buono: mi sono affaticato nel Comento mostrar tutto quello, che dal mezzo de’ piu degni Filosofi si ha potuto raccogliere.”

Lost in Translation. The Sixteenth Century Vernacular Lucretius  

that have presided over the birth of his Lucretian work: Alberto Lollio, 49 Lilio Gregorio Giraldi 50 and Iacopo Buono, 51 a most distinguished group of men of letters, famous in their own right. In so doing, he was in a way putting up a line of defense for the day when his Lucretius would come out. Scandianese does this kind of testing the waters a lot in his published works. Again and again he refers to the commentary, but avoids actually quoting even a word from it or from the translation. We might even doubt of their existence, if it weren’t for other readers’ testimonies. In this respect, we have a crucial piece of evidence from a contemporary of Scandianese, the humanist – later Jesuit and made saint – Bernardino Realino da Carpi. 52 In his only surviving humanist work, 53 Realino records a learned conversation he had had about Lucretius with Scandianese, an authority on the subject, he writes, given his extensive commentaries on the DRN. Based on the printing date of the text, we can thus move the completion of Scandianese’s commentary backward to 1550. Again, it is in the Fenice that we find a crucial insight into Scandianese’s metrical choices. 54 In translating ancient authors, he says, he has deferred to different metrical forms. The aim is to keep readers interested: thus he has rendered Claudian’s Phoenix in blank verse, Ovid’s Metamorphoses in ottave, and his own poem in terza rima. But there is another reason – Scandianese adds – underlying this choice: Ovid’s poem deserves ottave for being an epic. In other words, Scandianese accepts the view, current at the time, that epics, the highest genre in Latin, should be in the highest perceived Italian meter, stanzas of hendecasyllables (ottave). Whereas minor genres, such as epyllion, satire, and didactic verse could be turned into blank verse, a more humble medium.

 49 On Lollio: Gallo 2005; a fragment of an unpublished preface by Lollio pertaining genre considerations is in Negrini 1838. 50 On Giraldi, the most eminent of the three: Foà 2001 for a general introduction. 51 Iacopo Antonio Buoni, or Buono: Ferrarese humanist, priest and medic, author of a treatise on earthquakes that quotes Lucretius among the authorities (Buoni 1571); a biographical outline in Cicognara-Baruffaldi 1811, 217–227. 52 On Bernardino Realino: Menchi 1967. 53 Realino 1551, 59: … accedente etiam Titi Ioannis Scandianensis autoritate, cui, cum ego, orto nuper inter nos super sublimis Lucretii poesim, in quam doctissimos ipse scripsit commentarios, familiari sermone, rem totam communicassem; laudavit, dubitantemque nunquid hisce admiscerem, consilio suo adiuvit. 54 Scandianese 1555, 42.

  Valentina Prosperi Finally, it is in the Fenice that we find an indication of what readers would find in the commentary to DRN book V: a discussion of the nature of the soul, and an allegory of the soul as phoenix. 55 Overall, if we didn’t know that he had authored a version and commentary of the DRN, Scandianese’s attitude towards the Lucretian poem as it emerges from his published writings are those of any humanist of his age: a strict abidance to the current code that imposed immediate refutation of Epicureanism upon quoting Lucretius; a display of familiarity with the text restricted to innocuous bits of poetical reworking. In the poem on hunting, La caccia, Scandianese testifies his knowledge and love of Lucretius through a conscious and declared display of poetical memory from the DRN. In a section of auto-commentary on the text where he lists the various classical authors that he imitated for his own composition, Lucretius is very conspicuous. 56 Unfortunately, the metre of La caccia being ottave, the Lucretian lines in the poem 57 cannot be indicative of the style pursued by Scandianese in his blank verse version of De Rerum Natura. As for the dissimulatory code, Scandianese never fails to accompany a mention of Lucretius and of his own work on the DRN with a refutal of Epicureanism, especially in more sensitive contexts, such as the philosophical treatise on the Dialettica (1563). 58 And it is in the Dialettica that Scandianese quotes one single line from his Lucretian version: a clumsy endecasillabo rendering DRN 1.305: Tangere enim et tangi, nis corpus nulla potest res, which in Scandianese’s words becomes: “corporea cosa sol tocca et vien tocca”. 59 The subsequent fate of Scandianese's Lucretian works is especially painful as it seems that it could actually have been avoided. On Scandianese’s death in 1582, his son Aurelio donated his father’s library and all of his manuscripts to the convent of Asolo. In 1745 only the sixth book, with the accompanying letter by Lollio, was still extant in Asolo’s library: Scandianese’s biographer Pietro Trieste, to whom we owe this piece of information and the list of all of Scandianese’s surviving manuscripts by that time, didn’t think it fit to copy at least some of it. He does fill us in on the meter, though, blank verse, and the original title chosen by  55 Scandianese 1555, 7–8. 56 Scandianese 1556 (final section Brieve dimostratione de luochi di alcuni greci e latini scrittori imitati da l’Autore ne i libri della Caccia: unnumbered pages). 57 Scandianese 1556, 26, 72 and passim. Another point of interest is that here and throughout his works Scandianese refers to the DRN with the name Urania, and this must have been the title he had conceived for his poem, given that even subsequent witnesses give this title. 58 Scandianese 1563, 91, 92. 59 Scandianese 1563, 91.

Lost in Translation. The Sixteenth Century Vernacular Lucretius  

Scandianese: Urania. In 1770, with the suppression of small conventual communities, the library was moved to Padua, but at that point most of Scandianese’s books had already been lost. In all likelihood, the first five books of the DRN never made it to Padua: Trieste surmises that they had been sent to Venice to be printed by Giolito and were then lost. Although Scandianese’s lost works included much more than the DRN, it is certainly significant that no heir or friend of his deemed it fit to see to its publication. Alberto Lollio, who had been the main advisor on this work and allegedly had even composed a prefatory letter to go with the poem, never mentions his role in it. However, being a man of letters himself, Lollio managed to quote Lucretius in one of his works: it’s a few lines in vernacular, and in blank verse. 60 …La qual cosa benissimo conoscendo Lucretio, si mosse a dire. O quanto è ben felice il contadino, Di picciol campicel contento, ond’egli Colle fatiche sue ritragga il vitto! Tal’hor al suon de’ limpidetti rivi, Corcato in grembo a mille vari fiori Via più dolce et sicuro sonno dorme, Che non fanno ne’ lor pregiati letti I maggiori et più illustri Re del Mondo. A lui più giova il saporito cibo Di morbide castagne, et di maturi Pomi, co’l suo buon cascio, et fresco latte, Ch’altrui non fan le sontuose cene, In cui la morte spesso si nasconde.

On first impression, this fragment would then have all the necessary characteristics to belong to the lost Scandianese’s version. But if we read it more closely, it is clear that not only is it not particularly felicitous: it doesn’t match any precise passage from the DRN. Indeed, it may be read as a very loose rendering of DRN 2.29–36, but it is also laden with Virgilian overtones from the Georgics. Not every last bit of hope is lost as to the possibility of retrieving, if nothing else, at least the sixth book of Scandianese’s version. But, if this fragment does indeed reflect Scandianese’s style of translation, then we are left with more questions than answers as to the style and artistic value of Scandianese’s work, or, to put it another way, if this is any indication of the dire quality of his translation of Lucretius, then it’s probably no bad thing that it went lost… irretrievably.

 60 Lollio 1563, 222v.

  Valentina Prosperi

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Goddard, Charlotte (1993), “Lucretius and Lucretian Science in the Works of Fracastoro”, in: Res Publica Litterarum 16, 185–192. Gordon, Cosmo Alexander (1962), A bibliography of Lucretius, London. Haskell, Yasmin (1998), “The Masculine Muse: Form and Content in the Latin Didactic Poetry of Palingenius and Bruno”, in: Form and Content in Didactic Poetry, ed. by C. Atherton, Bari, 117–144. Haskell, Yasmin (2015), “Poetic Flights or Retreats? Latin Lucretian Poems in Sixteenth-Century Italy”, in: D. Norbrook/S. Harrison/P. Hardie (eds.), Lucretius and the Early Modern, Oxford, 91–121. Levi, Giorgio Enrico/Jacopo Gelli (1903), Bibliografia del duello, con numerose note sulla questione del Duello e sulle recenti Leghe antiduellistiche di Germania Austria e Italia, Milan. Liburnio, Niccolò, (1534), Publii Vergilii Maronis poetae Mantuani Aeneidos liber quartus. Lo quarto libro dell’Eneida Vergiliana con verso heroico in lingua thosca tradotto per m. Nicolo Liburnio vinitiano, Venice. Lollio, Alberto (1563), Orationi, Ferrara. Marcucci, Marcello/Natalina Crevani (1988), Accademie e istituzioni culturali in Toscana, Florence. Lopez, Pasquale (1974), Inquisizione stampa e censura nel Regno di Napoli tra ‘500 e ‘600, Naples. Magnoni, Alessandra (2005), “Traduttori italiani di Lucrezio (1800–1902)”, in: Eikasmos 16, 419–470. Mari, Michele (1999), Il genio freddo. La storiografia letteraria di Girolamo Tiraboschi, Milan. Martelli, Mario (1984), “Le forme poetiche italiane dal Cinquecento ai nostri giorni”, in: A. Asor Rosa (ed.), Letteratura italiana, Volume terzo. Le forme del testo. I. Teoria e poesia, Turin, 519–620. Menchi, Silvana (1967), “Bernardino Realino, Santo”, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 9, Rome. Menchi, Silvana (1987), Erasmo in Italia (1520–1580), Turin. Minturno, Antonio (1549), Lettere, Venice. Minturno, Antonio (1559), Amore Innamorato, Venice. Muscettola, Giovan Francesco (1544), Giustificatione del S. Capitan Pietro di Vita Palermitano Intorno alle cose passate fra lui & il Capitan Pedro Torrellas Spagnuolo, Pesaro. Muscettola, Giovan Francesco (1563), Pareri di molti principi, et signori illustrissimi, et d’altri famosissimi letterati, sopra la querela occorsa tra il Cap. Bartolomeo Serughi, et Fabritio Mattei da Forlì; con alcune ragioni del Cap. Bartolomeo, poste innanzi per informatione de’ lettori, Parma. Negrini, G. (1838), Scritti inediti di D. Bartoli, F. Testi, A. Lollio, Ferrara. Osbat, Luciano (1974), L’Inquisizione a Napoli. Il processo agli ateisti (1688–1697), Rome. Paitoni, Iacopo Maria (1776), Biblioteca degli autori antichi greci, e latini volgarizzati, Venice. Palmer, Ada (2014), Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance, Cambridge (Mass.). Palmer, Ada (2014b), “T. Lucretius Carus, Addenda et Corrigenda,” in: Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum, vol. 10, Washington, DC. Pastore, Raffaele (1776), La filosofia della natura di Tito Lucrezio Caro: e confutazione del suo deismo e materialismo col poema di Aonio Paleario dell’immortalità degli animi, London. Piccolomini, Alessandro (1549), Cento sonetti, Rome. Piccolomini, Alessandro (1575), Annotationi di M. Alessandro Piccolomini, nel libro della Poetica Di Aristotele, con la traduttione del medesimo Libro, in Lingua volgare, Venice.

  Valentina Prosperi Pignatti, Franco (2016), “Per il sonetto di Molza Se voi ponete a tutto questo mente. Storia di una porpora mancata”, in: Dentro il Cinquecento. Per Danilo Romei, Rome, 265–312. Piquet, Théa (2004), “Nature et jardin. Le api de Giovanni Rucellai”, in: Italies 8, 151–168. Preti, Cesare (2007), “Marchetti, Alessandro”, in: Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 69, Rome. Prosperi, Valentina (2004), «Di soavi licor gli orli del vaso». La fortuna di Lucrezio dall’Umanesimo alla Controriforma, Turin. Prosperi, Valentina (2007), “Proemi lucreziani nella poesia italiana del Cinquecento”, in: Materiali e discussioni per l'analisi dei testi classici, 145–162. Quadrio, Francesco Saverio (1749), Della storia e della ragione di ogni poesia, Milan. Realino da Carpi, Bernardino (1551), In Nuptias Pelei et Thetidis Catullianas Commentarius, Bologna. Refini, Eugenio (2007), “Le «gioconde favole» e il «numeroso concento». Alessandro Piccolomini interprete e imitatore di Orazio nei Cento sonetti (1549)”, in: Italique, URL: http://italique. revues.org/73. Refini, Eugenio (2011), “Il commento ai classici nell’esperienza intellettuale di Alessandro Piccolomini”, in: M.-F. Piéjus/M. Plaisance/M. Residori (eds.), Alessandro Piccolomini (1508– 1579) un Siennois à la croisée des genres et des savoirs, Actes du Colloque International (Paris, 23–25 septembre 2010), Paris, 259–273. Riccioni, Laura (1999), “Ganzarini, Tito Giovanni (Scandianese)”, in: Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 52, Rome. Saccenti Mario (1966), Lucrezio in Toscana. Studio su Alessandro Marchetti, Florence. Scandianese, Ganzarini Tito Giovanni (1555), La Fenice, Venice. Scandianese, Ganzarini Tito Giovanni (1556), I quattro libri della caccia, Venice. Scandianese, Ganzarini Tito Giovanni (1563), La Dialettica di Tito Giovanni Scandianese, Venice. Schindler, Claudia (2014), “Aeternitatis et immortalitatis desiderio ardere homines. Unsterblichkeitsbeweise in der neulateinischen Lehrdichtung von Paleario bis Polignac”, Wolfenbütteler Renaissance-Mitteilungen 35/2, 125–153. Sgarbi, Marco (2015), Profumo d’immortalità. Controversie sull’anima nella filosofia volgare del Rinascimento, Rome. Simonetta, Marcello (2017), “Rucellai, Giovanni”, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, Rome. Steadman, John M. (1964), “Verse Without Rime: Sixteenth-Century Italian Defences of ‘Versi Sciolti’”, in: Italica 41. 4, 384–402. Tallini, Gennaro (2008), “Voluptas e docere nel pensiero critico di Antonio Minturno”, in: Esperienze letterarie 23, 73–100. Tallini, Gennaro (2018), “Sebastiani Minturno, Antonio”, in: Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 91, Rome. Testa, Simone (2015), Italian Academies and their networks 1525–1700, from local to global, New York. Tiraboschi, Girolamo (1824), Storia della Letteratura Italiana, Milan. Torrini, Maurizio (1981), “L’Accademia degli Investiganti. Napoli 1663–1670”, in: Quaderni Storici 16.48 (3), 845–883. Trieste, Pietro (1780), Saggio di memorie degli uomini illustri di Asolo, Venice. Virgil (1540), I sei primi libri de l’Eneide di Vergilio tradotti a più illustre et honorate donne, Venice. Virgil (2002), I sei primi libri de l’Eneide di Vergilio tradotti a più illustre et honorate donne; L’Eneida in Toscano, ed. L. Borsetto, Sala Bolognese. Zabughin, Vladimiro (1923), Vergilio nel Rinascimento Italiano da Dante a Torquato Tasso. Fortuna, studi, imitazioni, traduzioni e parodie, iconografia. Vol. 2, Il Cinquecento, I.

Ada Palmer

The Persecution of Renaissance Lucretius Readers Revisited Abstract: The Renaissance Lucretius has become a favorite subject of scholars of the history of radical heterodoxies, especially atheism. While Lucretius believed in Epicurean gods, his text contains several concepts – such as its materialist account of nature, and denial of planned creation – akin to, and possibly formative of, more modern radicalisms. Since, in the Renaissance, overt atheism was illegal, scholars have hunted for hidden radicals by expecting them to congregate around Lucretius, as biologists seek elusive predators by watching the local watering hole. Yet many kinds of Renaissance minds were drawn by rich Lucretian bait. A reexamination of the list of known Renaissance Lucretius readers who were at some point persecuted for their beliefs by authorities or communities confirms that we are right to associate the reading of Lucretius with intellectual radicalisms, but that those radicalisms were often anything but secularizing. On the contrary, they included humanist syncretic theisms, Catholic reform movements, and diverse Protestantisms. This demonstrates that we may be wiser to approach Lucretius, less as the ground zero of a secularizing movement, than as a vital ingredient in the broader multiplication of beliefs in the Renaissance, Reformation, and Counter-Reformation. Keywords: humanism, atheism, secularization, modernity, reception

This chapter examines known Renaissance readers of Lucretius who faced various forms of persecution, in order to challenge the popular hypothesis that Renaissance radicals in general, and Lucretius’ readers in particular, tended toward atheist, secularist, or anti-theist beliefs. Renaissance Epicureanism, and the recovery of Lucretius’s didactic epic De Rerum Natura, are often invoked in narratives which characterize the Renaissance as a period of secularization, and Renaissance humanism as a secularizing movement. 1 In this hypothesis, interest in pagan antiquity, in new forms of education and government, and especially in Epicureanism – which contains so many elements incompatible with orthodox Christianity – are read as evidence

 1 On this question see Robichaud 2013, 182, Hunter and Wootton 1992, Wootton 1988, Fubini 2003, McKnight 1989, Baumer and Wagar 1982, Palmer 2018b. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110673487-010

  Ada Palmer that the intellectuals at the heart of the Renaissance saw themselves as revolutionary freethinkers laboring to throw off the yoke of ignorance and usher in the golden modern age. In such narratives, Lucretius and key figures in his recovery play the role of secular saints, and founding fathers of secular modernity. Versions of this narrative may claim that Lucretius’s recovery is the ultimate source and first mover of the secularizing change, or alternately that the Renaissance already contained secular-minded humanists who were drawn to Lucretius as a guide and kindred spirit. The conflicting subtitles chosen by publishers to market Stephen Greenblatt’s Pulitzer prize-winning The Swerve, alternately How the World Became Modern (USA) or How the Renaissance Began (UK), demonstrate their marketing teams’ awareness of the popular appetite for narratives of a selfconsciously modernizing Renaissance, in which Lucretius and his Renaissance readers such as Poggio and Machiavelli become heroic proto-moderns, anticipating modern rationalist values and sparking the Renaissance in order to push their world toward ours. 2 The vast popular reception of The Swerve gave fresh fuel to this narrative, and popular reviews of the book did more so, stripping the nuance of the original work out of their summaries and presenting a black-and-white triumph of modern Reason narrative. 3 For example, a piece in the Harvard Gazette entitled “A Key to Modernity” boldly begins, “Greenblatt recounts [a] discovery that helped to reshape worldview” describing a talk by Greenblatt about the book but repeatedly stressing Lucretius’s modernity in such paraphrases as, “‘On the Nature of Things’ anticipated modern understandings of the physical universe... Not only did Lucretius anticipate the basis of modern physics, Greenblatt said, but also Darwin’s theory of evolution.” 4 Quoting undergraduate Sarah Siskind who at-

 2 Greenblatt 2011, Greenblatt 2012. 3 See Monfasani 2012, Caferro 2014, Palmer 2017, Hinch 2012. 4 Massari 2012. Other popular treatments include Maureen Corrigan, “‘The Swerve’: Ideas That Rooted The Renaissance”, Fresh Air, NPR, Maureen Corrigan, September 20, 2011 https://www. npr.org/2011/09/20/140463632/the-swerve-ideas-that-rooted-the-renaissance; “A Poem Led to Tolerance and Modernity, Greenblatt Says”, Central European University blog May 28, 2014, https://www.ceu.edu/article/2014-05-28/how-poem-led-tolerance-and-modernity. Stephen Greenblatt’s own piece in the New Yorker announcing the book is, like the book itself, considered and modest in its claims, but the journal’s choice of title and tagline, “The Answer Man: An ancient poem was rediscovered – and the world swerved”, show how easily and eagerly popular reception fixed upon modernization as the crux (August 1, 2011, https://www.newyorker. com/magazine/2011/08/08/the-answer-man-stephen-greenblatt). The game of telephone which step by step inflated Greenblatt’s claims far beyond his words may be further seen in private blog posts, such as poet and horror writer Steven Craig Hickman’s essay “Lucretius and the Making of Modernity”

The Persecution of Renaissance Lucretius Readers Revisited  

tended the lecture, the editor of the piece chose quotes which again focus on modernity: “‘The whole concept of modernity is interesting,” she said. ‘He’s talking about ideas from antiquity as modern ideas, so why don’t we just call them modern?’” And if such coverage of The Swerve made Lucretius a poster-child of the modernizing and secularizing Renaissance for hundreds of thousands of readers, that is nothing to the estimated 135 million people worldwide who watched the pilot episode of the 2014 Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey Television series and saw its description of Giordano Bruno, martyred for science because of his Lucretian rationalism. Problematic as they are, these oversimplified modernization and secularization narratives are difficult to dismantle without erring too far on the other side. Lucretius does contain fascinating radical content, much of which aligns closely with later and especially Enlightenment radicalisms, and Lucretius’s dissemination was irrefutably a factor in these radicalisms’ growth and success. 5 Renaissance reactions to the De Rerum Natura and its denial of Providence, creation, prayer, the immortal soul, and divine ordering of Nature are one of our best avenues as we seek to understand the vein of radical heterodoxy which led to the Enlightenment proliferation of deism and atheism. 6 Since the publication of The Swerve in 2012, every Renaissance Lucretius specialist has been asked many times, usually by enthusiastic believers in the secularizing narrative, whether it is indeed true that the rediscovery of Lucretius was at the heart of science’s triumphant rebellion against the yoke of superstition. The answer is both yes and no: yes Lucretius had a great and well-documented influence on radicalisms and modernity, 7 but no it was not the black and white triumph of secular Reason against a wicked Church that has been retold so many times. Yet, when giving the answer “yes and no”, it can be difficult to articulate exactly how Lucretius’s influence on Renaissance radicals can be real while the larger secularizing narrative remains false. One way to approach a satisfying answer to this question lies in examining Lucretius’s encounters with censorship and hostility in the Renaissance. We can identify a number of individuals who both read Lucretius in the Renaissance and  on his blog Dr. Rinaldi’s Horror Cabinet, published May 16, 2014, https://socialecologies.wordpress.com/2014/05/16/lucretius-and-the-making-of-modernity/ 5 On this see Kors 2016a. 6 Palmer 2014, esp. 1–31, 233–241. 7 For treatments of this see Wilson 2008, Norbrook, Harrison and Hardie 2015, especially the chapters by David Butterfield, Alison Brown, and Nicholas Davidson; Brown 2010, Passannante 2011, Prosperi 2004, Prosperi 2007, Palmer 2020, Palmer 2014, Nicoli 2015, Nicoli 2017, Butterfield 2013.

  Ada Palmer faced various sorts of persecutions, from the Inquisition, local authorities, or other forces of social and intellectual control. Such persecutions leave a variety of records, and in many cases it is possible to identify the specific actions or ideas which triggered the persecutions, since records allow us to access, either the charges levied by adversaries, the beliefs avowed by targets, or both. If Lucretius’ readers did indeed tend toward atheist or radically anti-Christian views, and the specific ideas or activities that triggered persecutions were anti-establishment, anti-religious, and otherwise consistent with the ideas expected by secularization narratives, the records of their trials and other persecutions should reveal this. As this paper will show, these records instead reveal a strategy of censorship and information control very different from the popular image of closet atheists hiding from zealots and bonfires, one in which intellectual clashes were more often between rival theisms than between the Church and anything one could call secularizing radicals, and in which the most prominent opponents of Epicureanism were not top-down censoring bodies, but the very scholars –many extremely heterodox – who stood at the heart of intellectual, and even scientific, innovation. After all, the Renaissance contained a vast diversity of radical heterodoxies, many deeply un-modern, and deeply entwined with religiosities including a range of Christianities, various reconstructions of classical belief systems including paganism and philosophical religions, and other influences such as Islam, Judaism, even Zoroastrianism.

“In Prison, of Course...”: The Modern Myth in-Depth Before reviewing the real tribulations of Renaissance Lucretius readers, a close analysis of the Cosmos television series’ depiction Giordano Bruno reveals how much the now-popular idea of Lucretius as a catalyst for self-consciously revolutionary proto-modern intellectuals is entwined with the assumption that Lucretius’s ideas were forbidden and his readers persecuted for their beliefs by a repressive and censorious mixture of Church and State. That the televised depiction is shallow and rife with factual errors has been pointed out by many, 8 but a close analysis of the assumptions that underlie the script reveals many popular myths about the Renaissance which supplied the dramatic details imagined by the

 8 Powell 2014b, Powell 2014a.

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scriptwriters. This analysis of television may seem out of place in a chapter focused on Renaissance issues, but also demonstrates how closely the worlds of popular perception and academic scholarship are entangled, since the scriptwriters’ depiction of Bruno as a reader of Lucretius clearly derives from Greenblatt’s The Swerve. The sequence begins showing Bruno in prison, “gaunt and haggard, with graying black hair, trembling on a makeshift bed of straw.” 9 Prominent astrophysicist, atheist, and pro-science activist Neil deGrasse Tyson narrates: Back in 1599, everyone knew that the Sun, planets, and stars were just lights in the sky that revolved around the Earth – that we were the center of a little universe, a universe made for us. There was only one man on the whole planet who envisioned an infinitely grander cosmos. And how was he spending New Year’s Eve of the year 1600? Why, in prison, of course... 10

Here persecution is assumed to be the norm for Renaissance figures daring enough to attempt outside-the-sphere thinking. Bruno was presented by Greenblatt as an example of the kind of individual Lucretius influenced, but the screenwriters’ expectations transform him from an example of a type into the sole freethinker of his day. After a brief digression about Copernicus as a precursor of Bruno, the sequence shows a younger Giordano Bruno in Dominican robes walking through a monastery and removing a floorboard to expose a secret compartment, pulling out a book for covert reading. The book is not Erasmus or works of Arianism, the real heterodox yet extremely theist books which even Bruno’s Wikipedia page (a common source for screenplay writers) identifies as the causes of the indictment which caused him to flee the monastery. 11 Instead the scriptwriters chose Lucretius’s De Rerum Natura. The narration continues: His name was Giordano Bruno and he was a natural born rebel. He longed to bust out of that cramped little universe. Even as a young Dominican monk in Naples, he was a misfit.  9 Druyan and Soter 2014, 18. 10 Ibid. 11 “...proceedings were twice taken against him for having cast away images of the saints, retaining only a crucifix, and for having recommended controversial texts to a novice. Such behavior could perhaps be overlooked, but Bruno's situation became much more serious when he was reported to have defended the Arian heresy, and when a copy of the banned writings of Erasmus, annotated by him, was discovered hidden in the convent privy. When he learned that an indictment was being prepared against him in Naples he fled, shedding his religious habit, at least for a time”. The indictment condemned works including Erasmus’s editions of Saints Jerome and Saint John Chrysostom were found hidden in Bruno’s latrine, see Black 2009, 183, 289n, 182.

  Ada Palmer This was a time when there was no freedom of speech in Italy. But Bruno hungered to know everything about God’s creation. He dared to read the books banned by the Catholic Church. And that was his undoing. In one of those forbidden books, an ancient Roman, a man dead more than fifteen hundred years, whispered to him of a universe far greater. One as boundless as his idea of God. 12

The scene then shows Bruno being expelled from his monastery, with the comment, “It was the last steady job he ever had.” The assumptions in this sequence are telling: that the De Rerum Natura must have been banned by the Church (which it was not until 1717); 13 that monasteries must have been hostile to reading classical books (of which, of course, they were primary preservers); that intellectual innovation must have made one a misfit even among the scholarly Dominicans; that the geocentric cosmos imagined by orthodox thought pre-1600 must have been cramped and little (a supposition quickly exploded by the briefest perusal of Dante or Aquinas); and that Medieval thought must have had no interest in the concept of infinity, which, of course, was a major topic of scholastic controversy and a cause of the real condemnation of Aristotle in 1277. The idea of expulsion from a monastery as the termination of steady employment is another fascinating assumption, and the episode depicts Bruno’s “Years of Wandering”, not as moving from patron to patron studying, publishing, and periodically relocating to avoid trouble, but living as a homeless drifter shivering by a campfire. This projects back onto the Renaissance modern cases of scholarly persecution through blacklisting, drawn on popular understandings of intellectual persecution under the USSR or McCarthyism. The focus on Lucretius was clearly inspired by The Swerve, and the details focused on throughout the sequence are the same forefronted in Greenblatt’s brief account of Bruno. The screenwriters’ assumption that Bruno’s trouble derived from his supposedly-innovative interest in infinity, and not Christian controversies such as antitrinitarianism or his Calvinist contacts, presents a seemingly-deist Bruno who feels like an anticipation of the Enlightenment. 14

 12 Druyan and Soter 2014, 20. 13 Palmer 2014, 226, Davidson, Nicholas “Lucretius, Atheism and Irreligion in Renaissance and Early Modern Venice” in Norbrook, Harrison and Hardie 2015, 123–134 esp. 130. 14 One objection quickly raised to the Cosmos account of Bruno was that English mathematician and astronomer Thomas Digges had published a Copernican model including infinite space in 1576 (in appendices added to an expanded third edition of his father’s A Prognostication everlasting, in which Digges named the Pythagoreans as well as Copernicus as sources). Popular press critics focused on the issue of who deserved credit for the innovation, Bruno or Diggs, ra-

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Bruno’s famous dream about perceiving an infinite cosmos is animated in a sequence clearly based on the famous Flammarion engraving, first published in Camille Flammarion’s 1888 book L’atmosphère: météorologie populaire, which – in an antiquing style which dupes many into thinking the image is Medieval or Renaissance – depicts a traveler in Renaissance garb piercing through the sphere of stars at the edge of the world and seeing a more complex mechanical set of celestial spheres and wheels beyond. Bruno’s vision, conflated with a late 19th century image of the Man of Reason breaking through the surface of the cosmos, is presented as a conversion moment, part of a sequence of comments in which the televised depiction, with strategic inconsistency, presents Bruno’s belief in infinity as a substitute for Christianity, taking the place of religiosity, or as a new grander anti-Christian scientific theism. “Bruno became an evangelist, spreading the gospel of infinity throughout Europe. He assumed that other lovers of God would naturally embrace this grander and more glorious view of Creation.” 15 Bruno is then shown being condemned by a Roman Cardinal and by Lutheran authorities, and fleeing to England – skipping his warm receptions in Geneva and Paris and his endorsement by King Henry III of France – where he is attacked by a mob at Oxford University who call him “Heretic!” and “Infidel!” for saying in his lecture, “I beg you, reject antiquity, tradition, faith, and authority. Let us begin anew, by doubting everything we assume has been proven!” 16 Bruno did indeed encounter hostility at Oxford for endorsing Copernicus, and also for plagiarizing Marsilio Ficino, but the words the scriptwriters insert into his speech are not his. They are recognizably the proposal to recommence philosophy from scratch advanced most famously by Descartes and Francis Bacon, both of whom were, at the time of Bruno’s execution, beginning to publish, to warm receptions. Skipping Bruno’s entanglements with the French Embassy in London, his alleged spying, and other political contexts for his departure from England, Bruno is depicted returning to Italy and living in hiding, glancing nervously out of windows as the narration continues: Giordano Bruno lived at a time when there was no such thing as the separation of church and state, or the notion that freedom of speech was a sacred right of every individual. Expressing an idea that didn’t conform to traditional belief could land you in deep trouble. Recklessly, Bruno returned to Italy. Maybe he was homesick. Still, he must have known that

 ther than on the notable fact that Digges’s innovative book did not lead to persecution nor substantial controversy, undermining the argument that infinity was at the heart of Bruno’s prosecution; see Powell 2014b, Powell 2014a. 15 Druyan and Soter 2014, 23–24. 16 Ibid.

  Ada Palmer his homeland was one of the most dangerous places in Europe he could possibly go. The Roman Catholic Church maintained a system of courts known as the Inquisition. Its sole purpose was to investigate and torment anyone who dared voice views that differed from theirs... It wasn’t long before Bruno fell into the clutches of the thought police... 17

The Inquisition was, of course, very complex and any condensation must elide its vast range of activities. 18 The false assumption that the Inquisition was fiercer in Italy than elsewhere is a common one, 19 and by using George Orwell’s phrase “thought police” the writers fall back on modern images of dystopia, the USSR, and China. This passage uses language about freedom of speech and the separation of Church and State strongly associated with the Enlightenment and the drafting of the American constitution, and the characterization of free speech as a “sacred right of every individual” paints a deist, rather than an atheist or secular, idea of human rights. The following line, “This wanderer, who worshipped an infinite universe, languished in confinement for eight years”, continues the text’s alternation between depicting Bruno as an awestruck deist or something closer to the modern secular humanism, fired by awe at the natural mysteries of the cosmos, of which the narrator Neil deGrasse Tyson is a famous advocate. Deism and materialist atheism were often conflated in the early modern period, especially after the publication of Hobbes’s Leviathan in 1651, 20 but the Cosmos writers use a modern version of that conflation to create a Bruno who can feel like a hero both to theist and to anti-theist viewers. In the next sequence, stock images of instruments of torture – mainly postdating Bruno’s era – accompany the words, “Through relentless interrogations he stubbornly refused to renounce his views. Why was the Church willing to go to such lengths to torment Bruno? What were they afraid of? If Bruno was right,

 17 Ibid. 18 For good studies of the Inquisition and its diverse practices in different regions, see AronBeller and Black 2018, Black 2009, Mayer 2012, Mayer 2013, Mayer 2014, Mayer 2015, Nesvig 2009, Priolkar 1961, Liebman 1970, Donato 2019, Marcus 2018, Marcus forthcoming, Marcus 2016, Marcus 2017, Marcus 2016, Palmer 2018a, 32–120, Grendler 1977. 19 For an excellent exploration of the comparative weakness of the Inquisition within Italy, see Black 2009. 20 Sheppard 2015; such conflation is vividly described in Charles Blount – one of Hobbes’s supporters and an associate of the infamous John Wilmot Earl of Rochester – in the opening address to the reader in his Anima Mundi: “Methinks I already behold some haughty Pedant... looking down... as from the Devils Mountain upon the Universe, where amongst several other inferior objects, he happens at last to cast his eye upon this Treatise... damning it by the name of an Atheistical, Heretical Pamphlet: and to glorifie his own Zeal, under the pretence of becoming a Champion of Truth, summons Ignorance and Malice for his Seconds.” Blount 1679, 1.

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then the sacred books – and the authority of the Church – would be open to question”. 21 The dramatized execution is crowned with Bruno’s ashes becoming the stars, another strategically hybrid image which can be read theologically as a soul’s ascent to heaven, or materialistically as the atoms of Bruno’s body returning to the stars where they were formed. “Giordano Bruno had planted the seed,” the narration continues. “Ten years after Bruno’s martyrdom, Galileo first looked through a telescope, realizing that Bruno had been right all along”. 22 Bruno as martyr for science borrows from the old archetype of Galileo as martyr, first popularized by Protestant critics of the Catholic Church 23 but also popular among current atheist movements, especially in the Anglophone world, many of which repurpose Protestant anti-Catholic rhetoric against organized religion in general. These scriptwriters offer Bruno as an earlier Galileo, his martyrdom for science more dramatic because of his execution, and the fact that there was a great martyr for science whom the viewer has never heard of encourages the viewer to imagine there must have been hundreds or thousands more such victims. The sequence as a whole communicates two contradictory narratives. Bruno is presented as a unique genius, the only man in 1600 brave enough to think scientifically, drifting broken, jobless, without peers, supporters, or protectors. At the same time the generalized language, and the implication that Bruno’s and Galileo’s fates are a pattern, create the simultaneous narrative that Bruno’s experience was not unique at all, but typical in an age of the Inquisition’s anti-scientific, anti-innovative thought policing when persecution of Lucretianism was the norm. The hybrid, Bruno as both typical and alone, invokes George Orwell’s depiction of the dissenting Winston Smith in Nineteen Eighty-Four as a “minority of one”, and Bruno’s broken wanderings, waiting for the Inquisition-Church-State engine to round him up for death at last, become Orwell’s account of thought criminals, numerous yet always isolated in their persecution by the Ministry of Love, “Sometimes they were released and allowed to remain at liberty for as much as a year or two years before being executed. Very occasionally some person whom you had  21 Druyan and Soter 2014, 28. 22 Ibid. 23 See, for example, Brewster 1846, Ball 2014 A fascinating case is “The story of Galileo” on BibleStudyTools.com, a Protestant web resource which presents a searchable database of martyrs derived from John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, originally printed in 1563 but expanded with many additions after his death, including presented as a Galileo as a victim of the Inquisition, and its characterization of Galileo’s trial, “The most eminent men of science and philosophy of the day did not escape the watchful eye of this cruel despotism”, is widely quoted on evangelical websites today, see https://www.biblestudytools.com/history/foxs-book-of-martyrs/the-story-ofgalileo.html

  Ada Palmer believed dead long since would make a ghostly reappearance at some public trial where he would implicate hundreds of others by his testimony before vanishing, this time for ever”. 24 Before moving on to the real persecutions of Lucretius’s readers, a final telling window on the modern myth appeared in Discover magazine where Cosmos co-writer Steven Soter published a rebuttal to criticism of his depiction of Bruno by reviewer Corey S. Powell, which was in turn critiqued by Powell a second time. 25 Powell’s initial criticism pointed out, as historians of the period confirm, that Bruno was not a solitary drifter but had many powerful supporters until his “impassioned statements and outrageous personality alienated many of his natural supporters”, that his condemnation was less related to his ideas than his aggressive and provocative behavior during the trial, 26 and that he was a mystic, “advancing his own, heretical theology, which goes a long way to understanding the real reason that he was burned at the stake.” 27 Powell then argues that Thomas Biggs might have been a better choice for the scriptwriters since his successful efforts to argue that an infinite universe was compatible with Scripture made Diggs “not just an astronomer, he was also a popularizer of science. You might call him the Carl Sagan of his day”, referring to Sagan’s role as creator of the original 1980 Cosmos: A Personal Journey, which catapulted both Sagan and many astronomical ideas to popular fame. “The story of Bruno and Digges”, Powell continues, “has a lot to say about the way science operates today, and about the spiritual side of science that Sagan was so adept at exploring... in trying to show how science and religion sometimes worked hand in hand, [the new] Cosmos missed a chance to showcase a key episode in brokering peace between the two sides.” The rebuttal from scriptwriter Steven Soter tellingly exposes how much antitheist hostility shapes his thinking, even though his script attempted to please both theist and atheist audiences by celebrating Bruno’s association of infinity with his concept of God. Soter writes, “Powell’s critique dwells on the well-known facts that Bruno was a mystic and an extremely difficult person. Well, so was Isaac Newton, who devoted as much time to alchemy and biblical numerology as to physics. But that has no bearing whatever on the value of his good ideas.” 28 Here Soter treats the observation that Bruno was a mystic simply as an attack on

 24 Nineteen Eighty-Four, Part 1, Chapter 4. 25 Powell 2014b, March 10, 2014, Powell 2014a, March 13, 2014. 26 On this see Black 2009, 182–185, Mayer 2014, 115–124. 27 Powell 2014b. 28 Powell 2014a.

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Bruno’s scientific credibility, jumping instantly to the assumption that a mind influenced by faith must be scientifically illegitimate. This expectation surfaces again in Soter’s response to Powell’s observation that Kepler and Galileo did not consider Bruno a major contributor to astronomy. Soter writes, It is true that Kepler recoiled from Bruno’s infinite universe of worlds and found it frightful, but his reasoning was based in part on a mystical obsession. He rejected the existence of any planets beyond the six allowed by his notion of a perfect Pythagorean solar system. The naming of the Kepler space telescope, dedicated to the discovery of planets around other stars, is perhaps somewhat ironic.

In Soter’s reading, Kepler’s mysticism was an obsession and source of closedminded error, and it is ironic, i.e. inappropriate, that someone who suffered from the flaw of theism should be honored in modern astronomy. Soter does not engage at all with Powell’s actual argument about Bruno’s theism, that it was Bruno’s radical theology, not his scientific ideas, which angered Church authorities whose wiliness to accept scientific innovation is proved by their acceptance of Nicolas of Cusa and other scientists of Bruno’s day. Powell’s assertion that Cosmos “was downright wrong” to credit Bruno with associating infinity with God Soter treats as a quibble over which scientist deserves what credit, writing “But the script never says that. Bruno got the idea of infinite space from Lucretius, but he also read Nicolas of Cusa, who related the concept to an infinite God. Bruno’s originality lay elsewhere. He was indisputably the first person to grasp that the Sun is a star and the stars are other suns with their own planets.” This answer is deceptive, since Bruno’s interest infinity is stressed repeatedly in the Cosmos script, his idea about suns only fleetingly, so the episode gives the strong impression that infinity was Bruno’s core idea. Most tellingly, of Thomas Digges, Soter writes, “But Digges regarded the stars as ‘the court of the celestial angels’, not as the suns of other material earths. And that was a big step backward.” Since, as Soter acknowledged, Digges’s work predated Bruno’s, his proposal that stars were scattered in space and that stars and angels – i.e. inhuman intelligences – are part of our physical cosmos, not beyond it, was a step toward, not away from, modern cosmology. Soter’s comment “a big step backward” only makes sense if Soter believes pre-1600 scientists already had a secular cosmology, and thus that Digges’s attempt to integrate angels constituted “backward” threat to the integrity of that science. No text exists espousing such a cosmology, not even Lucretius, 29 but knowing there was censorship makes  29 Lucretius states the gods are real, but are one atom wide and inactive, dwelling in undisturbed deep space, De Rerum Natura 2, 664–60.

  Ada Palmer it easy for defenders of the myth to imagine that such ideas must have existed, and were simply silenced. Thus while Soter’s script seems to celebrate Bruno’s union of God and infinity, Soter’s own words show that he imagines pre-1600 scientists as fundamentally secular minds struggling move the world forward, and that any attempt to reconcile faith with science is a backward threat to science. For Soter, mysticism is a flaw in Kepler, a secondary trait in Bruno, and disqualifier for Digges, while the push forward to modernity is imagined as a resistance movement of maverick secular thinkers galvanized by reading forbidden books. Scriptwriter Steven Soter is not a scholar and this is not a rebuttal of his portrait of Bruno – innumerable studies offer that. 30 Rather Soter’s attitude bleeding through his script and op-ed show how powerful the myth of the persecution of Lucretius’s readers is, and thus how important it is for scholarship to engage actively in combatting it. Proving that Bruno, or any individual historical figure, was not a secular-minded proto-modern will not keep Soter and thousands like him from assuming that the archetype is real even if one instance was not, that if Bruno was not a proto-modern then Galileo was, or Machiavelli, or Campanella, and that innumerable other figures were as well, minorities of one their names and records erased by the oppressive Church’s efforts, just as Winston Smith working daily at the Ministry of Truth erases thought-criminals and is erased in turn. Believers in this myth can easily to discount the lack of evidence by blaming it on censorship, making it a particularly difficult myth to dismantle. 31 Soter did not derive the myth of the persecuted proto-modern, nor his Faith versus Reason binary, from reading Stephen Greenblatt. Rather the speed with which his expectations translated Greenblatt’s literary vignette into this archetype, and into a form which impacted millions, shows how high the stakes are when we depict sections of history which resemble – or can be made to resemble – the secularizing myth. As when we write about historical topics which can feed other major misconceptions, such as histories of race, our histories of radical belief have outsized influence on present day views, controversies, even politics, and must be written with great care. The following survey of Lucretius’s real encounters with persecution aims to provide a framework for doing so.

 30 Beyond Black and Mayer cited above see Salvatore 2003b, Salvatore 2003a, Yates 2015, Gatti 1999, Gatti 2011. 31 In this and many cases, one of the victims of censorship is the ability to tell histories of the era the censorship affected, since censorship renders the documentary record suspect, and invites revisionist movements to imagine different content in the blank spaces. This makes those historical eras famous for their censorship especially vulnerable to historical distortion, easy spaces onto which regimes and movements can project narratives that advance their causes.

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The Inquisition’s Real Response to Lucretius First, if the Church did indeed consider the De Rerum Natura’s materialist challenges a major threat, then Lucretius should have been prominent on the Inquisition’s Index of forbidden authors. Through Lactantius, Arnobius and other Christian apologists, Lucretius and Epicurean denial of the afterlife had been sufficiently infamous before the poem’s rediscovery in 1517 for Dante to reserve Epicurean deniers of the afterlife their own section in Hell. 32 Early Renaissance scholars knew that Ovid, Cicero, and Statius had praised the language of the De Rerum Natura, but the most substantive summary of his ideas remained that in Lactantius’s De ira dei book X, which characterizes Epicureanism as a set of intentionally self-deluding lies designed to give naturally sinful people a way to try to convince themselves that their deeds are not wicked, crowned with Lactantius’s mocking summary: “Who would think that [Lucretius] had a brain when he said these things?” 33 The idea that the majority of atheists were actually just wicked sinners trying to convince themselves of the non-existence of a God they feared was common in the period, especially in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries 34 so this characterization of Lucretius certainly paints him a source of atheism. Yet, while the single most famous fact about Lucretius was that his work was filled with un-Christian, atheism-fostering error and delusion, the De Rerum Natura was never burned by the Inquisition, quite the contrary. Much has been written of the 1557 letter of Michele Ghislieri – the future Pope Pius V and one of the most important architects of the Roman Inquisition – warning a fellow Inquisitor that those compiling the Index must not target works such as Lucretius, Orlando Furioso, or the Decameron which, Ghislieri wrote, may have some disreputable content but are harmless because everyone knows to read them as mere fables. 35 Ghislieri clearly feared that his fellow Inquisitors would take good and valuable things away if they overreached and censored Lucretius. And Ghislieri gave this warning in the same period when other Inquisitional condemnations were reaching so as far as to ban any work printed in Amsterdam, or any work printed on a press that had printed the works of Martin Luther. 36 The sixteenth 32 Inferno, X. On classical and medieval references to Lucretius available in the Renaissance see Palmer 2014, chapter 3, 97–139. 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid., Kors 1990, 28, Sheppard 2015. 35 Palmer 2014, 37, 274–275 n. 108. 36 de Bujanda 1984, Mayer 2013, 158–207, Black 2009, Grendler 1977, 93–133.

  Ada Palmer century Catholic Church was very concerned about dangerous information, but saw the De Rerum Natura as both harmless to faith and valuable for scholarship. But how could Renaissance authorities have perceived Lucretius as harmless, when Epicureanism attacks so many core Christian tenets and fits their own definition of atheism so well? The answer, evidenced both by Inquisitorial practices and by the testimony of Lucretius’s editors, is that the radical elements of Lucretius were so heterodox, so far from standard belief, so far off the spectrum of established truth, that authorities remained consistently confident that Lucretius and similar radicalisms could never persuade intelligent minds. From the beginning of the print tradition, Lucretius’s own editors and translators consistently dismiss his more radical ideas, and characterize the act of reading Lucretius as a pleasurable exercise in visiting falsehoods and sorting them from truth. The anonymous poem in the 1486 Verona editio secunda of Lucretius writes: If these things are true by reason and sense: accede to them. If rather they are false and even reason and sense are false: abandon them. Whence you know what it is to know and not to know in turn. For nothing is more excellent: than to separate clear things from doubtful ones. For reason deceives no one and is never deceived. End. 37

Aldus in his 1515 edition, the last of his series of octavo classics, writes: But truth, the more it is sought, appears that much clearer and more noble: thus is the Catholic faith, which the Lord Jesus Christ when he lived among men declared to humankind: it seems to me that Lucretius and those who are similar to Lucretius must be read, but as false men and liars, as they certainly are. Thus we have touched on these points: so that if anyone reading these things of ours does not know of the lunacies of Lucretius, let them learn it from us. 38

Lambin in the letter dedicating his 1563 to Charles IX wrote: Albeit Lucretius attacked the immortality of the soul, denied divine providence, abolished all religions, and placed the highest good in pleasure. But this fault belongs to Epicurus, whom Lucretius followed, not to Lucretius... Moreover these insane and frenzied ideas of Epicurus, those absurdities about a fortuitous conjunction of atoms, about innumerable worlds, and so on, neither is it difficult for us to refute them, nor indeed is it necessary: certainly when they are most easily disproved by the voice of truth itself or by everyone remaining silent about them. 39

 37 Palmer 2014, 197–199. 38 Ibid. 39 Ibid.

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And later in his address to the reader Lambin adds: But Lucretius and Epicurus were impious. What of it? Does it then follow that we, who read them, are impious? First, how many things are there in this poem, especially the ideas and theorems of other philosophers, which are delightful? How many plausible? How many outstanding, and almost divine? These let us claim, these let us take hold of, these let us appropriate for ourselves. 40

Finally Thomas Creech in 1682: In this book Lucretius reasons of many Things excellently well, but has miscarry’d in his main Design, and does not so much as stagger the Belief of divine Providence, which he attacks with his utmost Force. 41

Some scholars have dismissed such protestations as self-defensive dissimulation on the part of editors who support Lucretius yet wish to appear orthodox, but, as the following discussions will show, many of Lucretius’s editors and readers were very open about publishing or reading more controversial works or supporting heterodoxies far more likely to get them in trouble with the Inquisition. This expectation that Lucretius’s attacks on soul, afterlife and Providence pose no real danger to Christians is also consistent with the broader behavior of censoring bodies in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Europe, which consistently expressed less anxiety about atheism than about heterodox Christian theologies, positions close to – but not quite in alignment with – orthodoxy. Various versions of the Index of condemned authors categorize condemned figures in different ways, and those classified as more severe or more dangerous are consistently theologians, rather than atheists or materialists. 42 A 1608 edition of the Index of forbidden authors places the names of “Arch-Heretics” in all caps, yet all the all caps names are Christian theologians – Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, many more obscure Protestant theologians – while the radicals invoked by the secularizing narrative – Giordano Bruno, Galileo, even Machiavelli – receive only minor mentions, and Lucretius and Epicurus do not appear at all. 43 This same Index that considers Epicureanism safe and Bruno’s works only slightly hazardous specifies that anyone who reads scripture in a vernacular translation will be damned immediately without hope of redemption. Atheism is not this Inquisition’s fear.

 40 Ibid. 41 Creech, T. Lucretius Carus, of the Nature of Things, 821. 42 de Bujanda 1984. 43 Guanzelli, Ventura and Church 1608.

  Ada Palmer Roman Inquisition specialist Christopher Black has observed that vernacular translations of scripture were the main and in many cases only category of book that the Inquisition within Italy worked hard to truly eradicate, rather than carrying out symbolic burnings. 44 Black’s tables indexing the diverse categories of Inquisitorial indictments – charges of heresy, sodomy, Lutheranism, bigamy etc – also show how minor atheism and related radical heresies were in the Inquisition’s overall activities. 45 In Venice and Friuli from 1547-85 Black documented 717 indictments for Lutheranism, 59 for practicing magical arts, 37 for Anabaptism, 34 for “Judaising”, thirteen for Calvinism, ten for “Mohammedanism”, 68 for diverse heretical i.e. radical theological propositions, other clusters for adultery, sodomy, or blasphemy, but only one for atheism/materialism, fifteen for apostasy, and twenty-one for miscellaneous sacrilege and irreligiosity. 46 Accusations in Naples similarly yielded, from 1591–1620, 489 accusations of practicing magical arts, 86 of heretical theological propositions, 73 of bigamy, 67 of Mohammedanism, 43 of giving false testimony, 32 of blasphemy, eighteen of Protestantism, and only eight charges of atheism and nine involving prohibited books. 47 Black’s numbers also very visibly demonstrate how particular anxieties came in waves. 48 The Inquisition in Spanish-dominated Sicily, for example, investigated, between 1501 and 1550, 2,080 indictments for “Judaising” – a major anxiety for the Spanish crown – a surge which comprises 29% of all accusations the Sicilian Inquisition saw, not just in that period, but over 250 years. 49 Accusations of Judaising in the region dropped off immediately after 1550, followed by waves of anxiety about Muslims from 1550-1600, then witchcraft from 1601–1650. Indictments related to science and philosophy, like those of Bruno, Galileo, and Campanella, were also a wave, all clustered within a decade of 1600, and the most thorough perusal of records cannot find more than twelve cases where scientific claims were a major component of an Inquisitorial investigation, and in all cases the scientific questions were entangled with concern about other heresies or Protestant influences. 50 Bruno, Galileo, and Campanella were not, as they are so often imagined now, typical examples of a long-term phenomenon of the Church ferociously policing science, but the few atypical cases at the peak of a brief two-

 44 Black 2009, 175–177. 45 Ibid. 46 Ibid. 47 Ibid. 48 See ibid. 49 Ibid., Palmer 2018a, 32–120 esp. 132–123. 50 See Black 2009, 181–194, Aron-Beller and Black 2018.

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decade phase of Church anxiety about the new science, which was never considered a threat on the order of witchcraft or Calvinism, or, in the case of the Spanish Inquisition, supposed covert Jewish or Muslim practices. From the instructions for inquisitors printed in editions of the Index to the internal correspondence of Inquisition leaders, case after case shows inquisitors and other Renaissance figures expecting – and acting upon the expectation – that Christian heterodoxies close to truth were the true threat, because they could confuse and persuade pious people who would otherwise have a chance at salvation, while extreme radicalisms like atheism were believed to be convincing only to the wicked who are already lost. 51 Even in the eighteenth century, as deism and atheist writings became bolder and more visible, indictments for blasphemy and witchcraft outnumbered concern for atheism or accessing banned books often by two orders of magnitude, 52 and book raids focused on rival Christian theologies such as Jansenism far more than on the works of materialists. 53 We know influential radicals such as Voltaire and d’Holbach were deeply engaged with Lucretius, 54 yet in the same decades even so commonplace a resource as Alletz’s 1764 Dictionnaire Théologique-Portatif, a portable theological quick reference dictionary promising to list proofs of the truth of Revelation & dogma, points of controversy and the “most famous heresies”, includes entries on fornication, angels, the antichrist, Luciferism, Anabaptists, Manichees, Lutherans of course, even the 1431–49 Council of Florence and its by-then-obscure attempt to reconcile the Eastern and Western Churches, but the dictionary does not have entries on Lucretius, Epicurus, materialism, or even atheism. 55 The claims of Lucretius’s editors that the De Rerum Natura and similar materialisms were not meaningfully dangerous are perfectly matched by the real actions of the Inquisition and other orthodox authorities. But if the Inquisition’s chief concerns were magic, Protestantisms, and heterodox propositions advanced by Catholic theologians, authorities did see Epicureanism as a threat in one context: lay vernacular reading. Renaissance legal systems consistently regulated different social classes differently, and what was true for sumptuary law, taxation, and civic obligations was also true of reading. Historian of science Hannah Marcus has explored the Inquisitional licensing process, through which individuals could apply for licenses granting permission to

 51 See especially Davidson 2015, Hunter and Wootton 1992. 52 Black 2009, gives examples from eighteenth-century Italian cities, as well as Malta, 265. 53 Matytsin 2016, Kors 2016b, Kors 2016a. 54 Kors 2016a. 55 Alletz 1764.

  Ada Palmer own and read banned works. 56 The Inquisition especially within Europe rarely attempted to destroy information, 57 collecting forbidden works for its own reference, since new suspect ideas could be best identified by comparing them to known condemned works. And private individuals could apply to local inquisitors, bishops and other Church authorities for licenses to read individual banned works or authors. Licenses were often granted to monarchs and nobles whose secular power made it difficult for minor Church officials to oppose them, as well as to scholars, members of trusted monastic orders, and to thousands of doctors – high-status figures trusted to read only for legitimate purposes, and to be protected from error by their high level of education. While Lucretius was not on the Index and required no such license, the expectation that learned readers read more safely is visible in period discussions of the work and its threats. Giovan Battista Pius’s 1512 commentary which warned that Lucretius should be read only by the learned, not by youths or libertines, who would find Lucretius “only a weight”, i.e. that Lucretius’s verses are difficult and have little to reward the hedonist which Epicureanism’s reputation might draw to the work, while weight in the period also implies sin, and potentially danger to the soul.” 58 Hubert van Giffen’s 1564–5 edition was designed for classroom use, supplemented by a vocabulary aid and excerpts on Epicureanism from Cicero and Diogenes Laertius, and in its preface van Giffen states that Lucretius should be taught in classrooms so young minds can encounter Epicurean ideas with a teacher present to demonstrate their falseness, lest youths read such works alone and be deceived. 59 The Florentine Council’s 1517 ban on teaching Lucretius similarly focused on danger to students, characterizing Lucretius with “licentious” works which must be kept from classrooms lest they corrupt the young. The ban may well have been influenced, not only by the sudden availability of the text through the small, affordable octavo editions of 1512 and 1512, 60 but by the 1504 Latin paraphrases of Lucretius printed in Bologna by Florentine Raphael Franchi – a professor and notorious sodomite – which made the radical content of Lucretius easily accessible in simpler Latin, and forbade the excuse of reading for the poetry alone. 61  56 Marcus 2018, Marcus forthcoming, Marcus 2017, Marcus 2016. 57 Inquisition branches in many areas operated with such independence that one might more accurately call them the plural Inquisitions, and these patterns in Rome and Europe can be contrasted with the policy of the Inquisition in Goa of burning all writings in native languages, see Priolkar 1961. 58 Butterfield 2012, 98–99. 59 Palmer 2014, 170–172. 60 Lucretius Carus 1512, Lucretius Carus 1515. 61 Francus 1504 On Franchi’s reputation see Butterfield 2012, 98.

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The first vernacular Italian translation of the De Rerum Natura – now lost but recently traced by Valentina Prosperi – was undertaken by Gianfrancesco Muscettola in the early 1540s, but he did not even try to publish it. 62 When in 1669 Alessandro Marchetti completed his Italian verse translation, Duke Cosimo III of Florence denied him a license to print it. This was not just the residue of the 1517 ban, since the long absence of Lucretius from Italian print shops had been broken in 1647 by Aristotelian physician Giovanni Nardi’s Latin edition, printed in Florence with Ducal permission, but accompanied by supplementary discussions of the plague and Egyptian burial practices, an edition clearly aimed at doctors, antiquarians, and learned professionals, not classrooms. 63 Marchetti’s verse translation became popular despite the ban, multiplying in manuscripts which are now found in dozens of European libraries, and when it was printed upon his death in 1717, with a deceptive London imprint on the title page to conceal its Italian origin, inquisitors finally added Lucretius to the Index. 64 The pattern is clear: Lucretian ideas were considered dangerous in the hands of unsupervised students and the less educated, not in the hands of scholars like Giordano Bruno who were expected to see through the holes and errors in Lucretius’s system. And in Bruno’s case the Inquisition’s expectations were borne out since, as Nicholas Davidson has observed, in the many pages of Bruno’s meticulous trial records, Inquisitors’ questions and Bruno’s responses both consistently associated his heresies with Aristotle, while the interrogators never mentioned Epicureanism, Lucretius, or Lucretian ideas; the only instance of Lucretius’s name in the trial record was when Bruno himself mentioned Lucretius explicitly in order to disagree with him. 65

Anti-Lucretianism in the Real Response of Scholars The Inquisition expected Lucretius’s belief in vacuum, innumerable worlds, atomic gods, material souls, and planetary menopause to meet with rejection by  62 Butterfield 2012, 99. 63 Lucretius Carus 1647. 64 Lucretius Carus 1717, Saccenti 1966, on the effects a vernacular translation could have increasing reading of the Latin original see Line Cottegnies’ chapter “Michel de Marolles’s 1650 French Translation of Lucretius and its Reception in England” in Norbrook, Harrison and Hardie 2015, 161–190. 65 Davidson 2015, 123–134.

  Ada Palmer the learned, and it did, but not the kind of rejection the myth imagines. Hostile engagement can be deep engagement, and as we seek the widespread pattern of responses Lucretius in the Renaissance, we do not see the majority throwing the poem on the fire but retaining it on the desk as an adversary for deep reading and refutation. We begin with one documented burning in 1492, the year Marsilio Ficino burned, not the poem, but his youthful notes on Lucretius which he later rejected in his turn toward Christian Platonism, but even while burning the notes Ficino clearly kept reading the poem since his Platonic Theology, without naming Lucretius, refutes Lucretius’s attacks on the immortal soul one by one in almost precisely the order they appear in the poem. 66 The first commentary on Lucretius, published by Giovan Battista Pius in 1511, mixes positive and negative engagement, refuting some sections of the poem, and inserting and advocating new contemporary ideas about inertia and atomism current in the sixteenth century but absent in the original. 67 In 1535 Scipione Capece, head of the Accademia Pontaniana in Naples, published a didactic poem De principiis rerum, against materialism, imitating Lucretius’s style and encapsulating many Lucretian arguments while refuting them. 68 Only a year later Greek and Hebrew scholar Aonio Paleario, a courtier of Leo X, published his anti-Lucretian De immortalitate animorum, again imitating Lucretius’s style and systematically refuting his arguments while defending the immortality of the soul. 69 Parisian Aristotelian Denys Lambin’s massive 1563 annotated edition focused, among its discussions of the poetry, on pointing out Lucretius’s Epicurean errors and supplying the “correct” Aristotelian answers. The first vernacular Italian treatment of Lucretius, Breve Spositione di Tutta l’Opera di Lucretio, published by Girolamo Frachetta in 1589, aimed – according to the authors preface – to reveal where Lucretius agrees with Aristotle and where he errs by disagreeing with Aristotle, and the work defends at length the immortality of the soul and the existence of Providence, and attacks belief in vacuum. 70 Recent work on Lucy Hutchinson’s 1650s English translation shows how, in her correspondence, she says she translated Lucretius so that she could feel she understood the poet clearly enough to refute and reject him. 71

 66 Hankins 2017. 67 Lucretius Carus 1511, Hine 1995, Nicoli 2017. 68 Capece 1546, see Perutelli 1980. 69 Paleario 1992. 70 Frachetta 1589. 71 Hutchinson 2012.

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Cardinal Melchior de Polignac’s 1745 Latin verse epic Anti-Lucretius again borrows Lucretius’s language and structure to create a lengthy, scientifically rich, stimulating, and intellectually innovative rejection. 72 This and other refutations are part of Europe’s rich tradition of books against books, along with works such as Giorgio Polacco’s Anticopernicus Catholicus (1644), the Anti-Machiavel of Frederick II (1640) and the anonymous English Anti-Machiavell: Or, Honesty against Policy published by A Lover of Truth and Honesty (1647), Edward Earl of Clarendon’s A Brief View and Survey of the Dangerous and Pernicious Errors to Church and State in Mr. Hobbes’s Book Entitled Leviathan (so popular it was printed twice in 1676), and numerous anti-materialist, anti-atheist, anti-heretical, or anti-Protestant compendia popularly produced in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. 73 Peppered among this tradition of hostile engagement were a few scholars who positioned themselves as followers or sympathizers with Lucretius and Epicureanism rather than critics, yet even these consistently rejected the arguments we associate with secularization and modernity, such as the rejection of divine action in creation. Lorenzo Valla’s De voluptate, completed 1433, presents a rich and lively Epicurean interlocutor who discusses ethics and pleasure as the highest good but abjures Epicurean physics, materialism, and embraces the immortal soul and Providence. 74 Pierre Gassendi called himself a Christian Epicurean, and outlined an atomist and empiricist system while embracing mysticism and writing proofs of the soul’s immortality and the existence of God. 75 Jean-François Sarasin’s 1656 Discours de Morale sur Épicure, states that pious Christians are the truest Epicureans because they seek the eternal pleasure of Heaven through austerity and sinless living, 76 and Abbot Charles Batteaux – inspired as he says by Gassendi – undertook a similar program in his 1758 La Morale d’Epicure. 77 The rebuttal which proponents of the secularizing narrative usually advance against such examples of hostile engagement is that the hostility is insincere, that many of these authors only claim to reject the radical ideas because of their fear of persecution, and that pro-Christian anti-secular voices are self-censorship cau-

 72 Polignac 1757, Polignac 1766, Ament 1970, Jones 1991, Tsakiropoulou-Summers 2004. 73 Polacco 1644, Clarendon 1676, Lover of Truth 1647, Frederick II 1741. On similar cases see Kors 1990. 74 Valla wrote after the poem’s recovery but without access to the full text, due to his feud with its rediscoverer Poggio Bracciolini. See Valla 1977, Palmer 2014, 17–20. 75 Osler 2002, Johnson 2003, Osler 2003, LoLordo 2007. 76 Sarasin 1926. 77 Batteaux 1758.

  Ada Palmer tious dissimulation hiding true pro-Epicurean anti-Christian sentiments underneath. 78 We have real evidence for two such cases. In the case of Raphael Franchi, author of the 1504 Latin paraphrases, a friend, Giovambattista Pelotti, joked that, when Franchi died, he expected him to be welcomed to Hell by Epicurus and Lucretius. Franchi’s paraphrases chose to cover only the first three books of Lucretius, which may reflect intended classroom application, since we know students even in the sixteenth century advanced slowly through Lucretius’s difficult Latin, 79 but it could be that Franchi – already in trouble for sodomy – may have intentionally avoided the treatment of sex in Book IV. 80 Franchi’s decision to add appendices, Appendice de Animi Immortalitate, defending the immortal soul could also be a cautious attempt to evade charges of atheism, often associated with sodomy. We also have Leonardo Marso’s funeral oration for Giovan Battista Pius, author of the 1511 commentary, which does not suggest atheism or radical heterodoxy but does describe Pius’s serious engagement and sympathy with Epicurean ideas. 81 Yet while caution is a plausible – though far from certain – reading in Franchi’s and Pius’s cases, the strongest evidence against the hypothesis that many anti-Epicurean or Christianized Epicurean texts were cautious dissimulation veiling Epicurean sympathies is the simple fact that so many of these authors were manifestly incautious about veiling their support for other positions far more controversial, more feared by the Inquisition, and more likely to trigger persecution. Many figures associated with Lucretius actually were investigated or persecuted, but for radical ideas unrelated to and usually incompatible with atheism or Epicureanism. In 1466 Pomponio Leto, whose annotations on Lucretius demonstrate his deep engagement with the poem, was imprisoned in Venice on charges of sodomy, then extradited to Rome in 1488 and tortured along with his students by order of Pope Paul II who accused Leto of pagan worship and conspiring to assassinate the pope. Lucretius’s name does not appear in any of the charges, nor

 78 On reading pre-modern protestations of orthodoxy as “innocent dissimulation,” and the uses and pitfalls of such a method, see Wootton, David “New Histories of Atheism” in Hunter and Wootton 1992, 20. 79 Petrus Nannius’s 1542 Somnium describes his struggles to get his students past Book 1, see Sacré 1994. An edition of the Latin text of books I–III only was printed in Paris in 1561 in a large quarto format with wide margins for note taking clearly intended for classroom use, Lucretius Carus 1561. 80 See Butterfield 2012, 98. 81 Lucretius Carus 1511, Hine 1995, Pius Ca. 1501, my thanks to Elena Nicoli for this observation, see Nicoli 2017.

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does atheism, the focus falling on Cicero’s republican, anti-monarchal orations. 82 Nor can we accuse Leto of caution when he and his circle adopted Roman names, celebrated the pagan festival of Rome’s birthday, and addressed him as pontifex maximus, while his close associate Platina organized a forty-day protest vigil against the pope and threatened to trigger a Church council. 83 Marsilio Ficino, knowing full well that Inquisition trials for magic outnumbered those for atheism more than twenty-to-one, would not have burned his notes on Lucretius to veil secret Epicurean sympathies and then gone on to pack his published works with radial magic and even more controversial heterodox content from other ancients which did in fact get him in trouble with the Inquisition. 84 We also have a sample of how Ficino behaved when he was being cautious in the more moderate magical content and apologetic letters of his 1489 De vita libri tres, published after his runin with the Inquisition yet still containing magical material far closer to what the Inquisition was worried about than anything in Lucretius. Politics, not doctrine, caused Machiavelli’s torture and exile as we know, and during his lifetime he never faced persecution from the Church or any authority relating to his ideas or written work, despite the secularizing ethics and Epicurean ideas present in works published in his lifetime, 85 his apparently-notorious habit never going to church, and the incautious attitude shown in his letters frankly discussing anticlericalism, adultery, homosexuality, and his family’s participation in simony. 86 Pietro Pomponazzi’s 1516 De immortalite animi was condemned by the Inquisition for arguing that the immortality of the soul cannot be proved with logic, but, despite the materialist and empiricist elements of the text, the condemnation documents and published criticisms focused on Pomponazzi’s radical use of the Aristotle and Averroes, whereas Pomponazzi’s experiments with materialism or empiricism. 87 And Pomponazzi – despite stirring more trouble and expressing more radical theological positions than Bruno’s – was not extradited by Venice,

 82 Palermino 1980, de Beer 2008, Dunston 1983. 83 Palermino 1980, 125–126. 84 See “Marsilio Ficino and the Roman Curia”, Kristeller 1993, 265–281 esp. 275–276, Hankins 2003. 85 Rahe 2007, Brown in Norbrook, Harrison and Hardie 2015. 86 See letter 70 on simony, letters 178 and 238 and on extramarital affairs, on homosexuality letters 226–229, 236, and anticlerical attitudes in letters 3, 22, 25, 74, and 269–274 especially 270, in Machiavelli 1996 Letter 35 mentions writing in code, but Machiavelli saw no reason to use code or any other form of caution when committing simony, encouraging a friend’s homosexual affair, or being flippant about salvation. Would he be so open about commonly-prosecuted crimes yet silent about rarely-prosecuted atheism? See also Najemy 1993. 87 See Pine 1968.

  Ada Palmer confirming how much Bruno’s fate was shaped by the fact that he alienated his patron and thereby the Venetian protective patronage network, rather than by his specific ideas. Scipione Capece, who published the Lucretian anti-materialist De principiis rerum, publically espoused Lutheran sympathies utterly incompatible with secularizing atheism and was forced to flee from Naples. And Aonio Paleario, author of the De immortalitate animorum, which advanced anti-Lucretian defenses of the immortal soul in Lucretian style, was burned at the stake in 1570 for holding Protestant positions, especially criticizing the Roman Church for heeding tradition over Scripture. A closet secularizer would not go to the stake for sola fide. Neither in Capece’s case nor Paleario’s case was Epicureanism mentioned by critics, despite the not uncommon association of Epicureanism with Lutheranism in Counterreformation pamphlets. 88 Finally Sperone Speroni, a student of Pomponazzi in Padua, was denounced to the Inquisition in 1575 in part because of his Dialogo d’amore, which used Lucretian sexual imagery, but neither atomism nor attacks on the soul featured in the case, which focused purely on sexual matters. 89 Magic, astrology, radical Aristotelianism, Averroism, Lutheranism, licentiousness, sodomy – it is not plausible that Lucretius’s Renaissance readers would publically discuss such controversial things and yet employ artful dissimulation to hide even in their subtlest private writings closet Epicurean, atheistic, and secularizing sympathies which they knew were minor issues in the eyes of the Inquisition. Their criticisms of Lucretius were not self-censorship, they were sincere, yet also fruitful. And such fruitful yet hostile engagements continued in the next decades, with the rich scientific poems of Maurice Scève and Robert Burton which reject atomism but embrace empiricism and Lucretian style, and the works of seventeenth-century French libertines such as Cyrano de Bergerac who adapted Epicurean ethics into a radical hedonism far from anything Epicurus or Lucretius described or endorsed. 90 Francis Bacon, Walter Raleigh, Margaret Cavendish, and Robert Hues employed Lucretius in their engagement with materialism, as did Walter Charleton who translated Gassendi. 91 And a key figure in Giordano Bruno’s rise to fame in England, setting the stage for Bruno to join Galileo as a martyr for science in anti-Catholic narratives, was Bruno’s defender and popularizer Nicholas Hill, who published his Christian and semi-sympathetic Philosophia Epicurea in 1601. All these figures rejected most core of Lucretian

 88 Palmer 2014, 28–30. 89 Prosperi 2007, 214–226. 90 Norbrook, Harrison and Hardie 2015. 91 Ibid.

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principles, especially the swerve, yet made use of Epicurean ideas in a range of scientific, ethical, theological, even political contexts. The radical deisms and atheisms of philosophes such as Voltaire, Diderot, La Mettrie, and d’Holbach were indeed influenced by Lucretius’s dissemination but coequally with numerous other heterodoxies, most of them theist and pro-Christian, only a tiny sliver of which might be termed, in the teleological language of the secularizing myths, steps “forward”, and many of which were far closer to the mysticisms of Kepler and Bruno, or the innovative Christian “big step backward” of Thomas Digges’s spacial infinity populated with angelic intelligences.

Conclusion: Who Made our Minds Modern My starting question was how we can replace the secularization myth of modernizing radicals battling an oppressive Church while still celebrating Lucretius’s centrality in the development of modern thought, including radical thought. I suggest that we relocate agency. Lucretian ideas and atheism itself were not major targets of the Inquisition or other forms of persecution, nor was Lucretius or any anti-theist idea the primary cause of the persecution faced by figures who – like Capece and even Bruno – did pay the ultimate price for their heterodoxies. At the same time, there were radicals in the Renaissance who engaged seriously with such extreme positions as denial of the immortal soul: evidence suggests Franchi, Giovan Battista Pius, and Pomponazzi might have held such views, and we can look back to Dante placing respected friends in the circle of Epicurean deniers of the afterlife in the early 1300s, which he is unlikely to have done unless they themselves expressed such views to him. Yet those few radicals with ideas similar to those celebrated by the advocates of the secularizing myth were clearly a small minority even among those open-minded enough to read Lucretius, while other readers of Lucretius advanced a range of theist radicalisms, and helped diffuse Lucretius and many ideas we recognize as modern within humanism while commixing them with a panoply of distinctly un-modern heterodoxies which cannot be called secular in any sense. Nor – and this is key – were the small minority whose ideas seem most modern to us the most influential in disseminating Lucretius or intellectual innovation. Agency, the actual transformation of European thought, rested primarily in a different kind of freethinker, one we cannot characterize as an atheist or a secularizer. Lucretius’s revolutionary ideas were avidly studied by radicals with a variety of interests, the majority of them orthogonal, or even opposed to, anything we might call secularization, and more aligned with theist or mystical radicalisms of

  Ada Palmer the day, such as humanist syncretism, Protestantism, or early deism. We do these courageous freethinkers a disservice if we dismiss the diverse and original ideas expressed in their Christian Epicurean and anti-Epicurean works as mere veils over a comfortably proto-modern rationalism. Rather than taking a step forward on a triumphant path leading inevitably toward modernity, Lucretius’s radical Renaissance readers took many steps in many directions, breaking new and fruitful ground in philosophy and theology. Epicureanism galvanized their explorations, but the majority treated Epicurus more as an antagonist or gadfly than a teacher, though the results of this hostile engagement were just as fruitful as if they had embraced him. In this sense we can compare the diffusion of Lucretius to that of Thomas Hobbes; in the decades after the 1641 publication of Leviathan England and Western Europe became a beehive of activity dedicated to dismantling Hobbes’s system, activity which generated innumerable new works and intellectual breakthroughs. No one could argue that Hobbes’s great sympathizer and defender Charles Blount had even a fraction of the impact of Hobbes’s great opponent John Locke, who disseminated and popularized many of Hobbes’s ideas even while attacking him. Just so, anti-Lucretian projects, from Ficino’s defense of the soul, to Lambin’s Aristotelianization, to the Anti-Lucretius of Cardinal de Polignac, provably disseminated Lucretian ideas more than any straightforwardly pro-Lucretian project did. Giordano Bruno has been appropriated as a modern icon of scientific secularism battling a backwards Church, but those who use him this way employ a carefully curated version of his story, one which ignores his earlier arrests, the role of politics and patronage in his movements, and the actual content of the trial documents, which show the Inquisition’s alarm at Bruno’s heterodox theism and Aristotelianism, not his materialism or Lucretianism. Bruno was not executed for celebrating the power of Reason, not when the entire Dominican order which largely ran the Inquisition was dedicated to celebrating the power of Reason and its unquestioned consonance with Christian faith. Bruno was both amazing and important, but he did less for the dissemination of Lucretian ideas than Poggio, or Aldus Manutius, or Denys Lambin, or Gassendi, or Ficino. As we seek the agents who forged modernity we need to stop looking for people who look like heroes, for people who look like villains, and above all for people who look like us. The characteristic ideas and values of modernity were not birthed by people we would have agreed with. They were birthed by a vibrant and diverse range of pre-modern minds alien to our own, advancing plural projects which all moved and shaped each other, plural particles in constant motion all with dynamism and momentum, not passive and inert until struck by a single modernizing genius who contained the swerve.

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We also need, as we seek to understand the real causes of intellectual change, to abandon our insistence upon intentionality. Thomas Hobbes did not intend to create John Locke, and Poggio Bracciolini and Pomponio Leto when studying Lucretius did not intend to create Giordano Bruno, Montaigne, Darwin, or Neil DeGrasse Tyson. Even Petrarch and Machiavelli, who did consciously attempt to change the way we think, did not envision our specific future when they tried to change their present, nor did the most quasi-atheist of our Renaissance freethinkers, those whose friends envisioned them in Hell with Epicurus, imagine themselves as working to turn the Earth into some distant scientific rationalist paradise. We are not like our Renaissance predecessors in our values or world view, but we are like them in another respect ignored by the black and white secularization narrative. We are not heroes or villains. We are not marching to the stake for some clearly envisioned better future age, nor are we burning in the streets the books of adversaries. We are studying, retreading, proposing new interpretations and systems with we think are steps toward truth, and disseminating them without any true knowledge of what impact they will have on a future we can only trust to use them well. When we look back on the incredible breadth of Renaissance heterodoxies stimulated by Lucretius, and see how his many readers’ unheroic, modest human projects commixed to produce so many unanticipated innovations, from the germ theory of disease 92 to the Declaration of the Rights of Man, we can draw from them a little more confidence in our own modest human projects, undertaken, like all such projects, in the face of uncertainty, not a genius vision of a specific worked-for future but a blank – the same blank faced by Bruno, Machiavelli, Lucretius, and ourselves.

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  Ada Palmer Baumer, Franklin L./Wagar, W. Warren (1982), The Secular Mind: Transformations of Faith in Modern Europe, New York. Black, Christopher (2009), The Italian Inquisition, New Haven. Blount, Charles (1679), Anima Mundi, Or, An Historical Narration of the Opinions of the Ancients Concerning Man’s Soul After this Life: According to Unenlightned Nature, Amsterdam [i.e. London?]. Brewster, David (1846), The Martyrs of Science: Lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler, London. Brown, Alison (2010), The Return of Lucretius to Renaissance Florence, Cambridge, Mass. Butterfield, David J. (2012), “Contempta relinquas: anxiety and expurgation in the publication of Lucretius’ De rerum natura”, in: S.J. Harrison/Christopher Stray (eds.), Expurgating the Classics: Editing Out in Latin and Greek, London, 95–114. Butterfield, David J. (2013), The Early Textual History of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura, Cambridge. Caferro, William (2014), “Stephen Greenblatt, The Swerve: How the World Became Modern”, in: Modern Philology 111 (3), E306–E308. Capece, Scipione (1546), De principiis rerum libri duo Eiusdem De vate maximo libri tres, Venetiis. Clarendon, Edward H.E. (1676), A brief view and survey of the dangerous and pernicious errors to Church and State in Mr Hobbes’s Book entitled Leviathan. Second impression, London. Davidson, Nicholas (2015), “Lucretius, Atheism and Irreligion in Renaissance and Early Modern Venice”, in: David Norbrook/Stephen Harrison/Philip Hardie (eds.), Lucretius and the Early Modern (Classical Presences), Oxford, 123–134. de Beer, Susanna (2008), “The Roman ‘Academy’ of Pomponio Leto: From An Informal Humanist Network To The Institution Of A Literary Society”, in: Arjan Van Dixhoorn/Susie Speakman Sutch (eds.), The Reach of the Republic of Letters: Literary and Learned Societies in the Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, Leiden, 181–218. de Bujanda, Jesús Martínez (1984), Index des livres interdits, Sherbrooke, Québec. Donato, Maria Pia (2019), Medicine and the Inquisition in the Early Modern World, Leiden. Druyan, Ann/Soter, Steven (2014), “Standing Up in the Milky Way”, Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey Episode 1, Fox and National Geographic Channel, March 9 (text taken from unapproved final cut script, April 21, 2014). Dunston, Arthur John (1983), “Pope Paul II and the Humanists”, in: Journal of Religious History 7, 287–306. Fracastoro, Girolamo (1984), Fracastoro’s Syphilis, Liverpool. Frachetta, Girolamo (1589), Breve spositione di tutta l’opera di Lucretio, Venice. Francus, Raphael (1504), Raphaelis Franci florentini In Lucretium paraphrasis, cum appendice de animi immortalitate, Bologna. Frederick II, King of Prussia (1741), Examen du Prince de Machiavel (Anti-Machiavel), La Haye. Fubini, Riccardo (2003), Humanism and Secularization: From Petrarch to Valla, Durham [N.C.]. Gatti, Hilary (1999), Giordano Bruno and Renaissance Science, Ithaca, N.Y. Gatti, Hilary (2011), Essays on Giordano Bruno, Princeton, N.J. “Giordano Bruno”, Wikipedia. (Accessed December 3, 2019). Greenblatt, Stephen (2011), The Swerve: How the World Became Modern, New York. Greenblatt, Stephen (2012), The Swerve: How the Renaissance Began, London. Grendler, Paul F. (1977), The Roman Inquisition and the Venetian press, 1540–1605, Princeton, N.J.

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Guanzelli, G.M./Ventura, C./Church, Catholic (1608), Indicis librorum expurgandorum in studiosorum gratiam confecti: tomus primus, in quo quinquaginta auctorum libri praecaeteris desiderati emendantur, Roma, primò, deinde Bergomi. Hankins, James (2003), “Ficino, Avicenna and the Occult Powers of the Rational Soul”, in: Fabrizio Meroi/Elisabetta Scapparone (eds.), La magia nell’Europa moderna: Tra antica sapienza e filosofia naturale (Atti del convegno (Istituto nazionale di studi sul rinascimento), Florence, 35–52. Hankins, James (2017), “Ficino’s Critique of Lucretius”, in: James Hankins/F. Meroi (eds.), The Rebirth of Platonic Theology in Renaissance Italy. Proceedings of a Conference in Honor of Michael J.B. Allen, Florence, 26–27 April 2007, Florence. Hinch, Jim (2012), “Why Stephen Greenblatt is Wrong—and Why it Matters”, Los Angeles Review of Books Dec. 1. Hine, William L. (1995), “Inertia and scientific law in sixteenth-century commentaries on Lucretius”, in: Renaissance Quarterly 48 (4), 728–741. Hunter, Michael C.W./Wootton, David (1992), Atheism from the Reformation to the Enlightenment, Oxford. Hutchinson, Lucy (2012), The Works of Lucy Hutchinson: Volume I: the Translation of Lucretius, Oxford. Johnson, Monte Ransome (2003), “Was Gassendi an Epicurean?”, [research article], in: History of Philosophy Quarterly 20 (4), 339–360. Jones, Howard (1991), “An eighteenth-century refutation of Epicurean physics: the AntiLucretius of Melchior de Polignac (1747)”, in: Studies International Congress of Neo-Latin, Alexander Dalzell/Charles Fantazzi/Richard J. Schoeck (eds.), Medieval & Acta Conventus Neo-Latini Torontonensis: proceedings of the seventh International Congress of Neo-Latin Studies: Toronto, 8 August to 13 August, 1988, Binghamton, N.Y. Kors, Alan Charles (1990), Atheism in France, 1650–1729: The orthodox sources of disbelief, Princeton N.J. Kors, Alan Charles (2016a), Epicureans and Atheists in France, 1650–1729, Cambridge. Kors, Alan Charles (2016b), Naturalism and Unbelief in France, 1650–1729, Cambridge. Kristeller, Paul Oskar (1993), Studies in Renaissance Thought and Letters, Rome. Liebman, Seymour B. (1970), The Jews in New Spain: Faith, Flame, and the Inquisition, New York. LoLordo, Antonia (2007), Pierre Gassendi and the Birth of Early Modern Philosophy, New York. Lover of Truth, Peace, Honesty, A (1647), Anti-Machiavell: or, honesty against policy. An answer to that vaine discourse, The case of the kingdome stated, according to the proper interests of the severall parties ingaged, London. Lucretius Carus, Titus (1511), De rerum natura, Bologna. Lucretius Carus, Titus (1512), De rerum natura, Florence. Lucretius Carus, Titus (1515), De rerum natura, Venice. Lucretius Carus, Titus (1561), De rerum natura, Paris. Lucretius Carus, Titus (1647), Titi Lucretii Cari De rerum natura libri sex : Unà cum paraphrastica explanatione, & animadversionibus, D. Ioannis Nardii florentini, Florentiæ. Lucretius Carus, Titus (1717), Di Tito Lucrezio Caro della natura delle cose libri sei Tradotti da Alessandro Marchetti, Prima edizione, London. Machiavelli, Niccolò (1996), Machiavelli and his friends: their personal correspondence, Dekalb, I.L.

  Ada Palmer Marcus, Hannah (2016), “Bibliography and Book Bureaucracy: Reading Licenses and the Circulation of Prohibited Books in Counter-Reformation Italy”, in: The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 110 (4), 433–457. Marcus, Hannah (2017), “Expurgated Books as an Archive of Practice”, in: The Archive Journal (August), n/a. Marcus, Hannah (2018), “The Mind of the Censor: Girolamo Rossi, a Physician and Censor for the Congregation of the Index”, in: Early Science and Medicine 23, 14–33. Marcus, Hannah (forthcoming), Forbidden Knowledge: Medicine, Science, and Censorship in Early Modern Italy, Chicago. Massari, Paul (2012), “A Key to Modernity”, in: The Harvard Gazette. Cambridge, M.A., Jan 20. Matytsin, Anton M. (2016), The Specter of Skepticism in the Age of Enlightenment, Baltimore. Maurette, Pablo (2014), “De rerum textura: Lucretius, Fracastoro, and the Sense of Touch”, in: The Sixteenth Century Journal 45 (2), 309–330. Mayer, Thomas F. (2012), The Trial of Galileo, 1612–1633, Toronto. Mayer, Thomas F. (2013), The Roman Inquisition: A Papal Bureaucracy and Its Laws in the Age of Galileo, Philadelphia. Mayer, Thomas F. (2014), The Roman Inquisition on the stage of Italy, c. 1590–1640, Philadelphia. Mayer, Thomas F. (2015), The Roman Inquisition: Trying Galileo, Philadelphia. McKnight, Stephen A. (1989), Sacralizing the Secular: The Renaissance Origins of Modernity, Baton Rouge. Monfasani, John (2012), “Review of The Swerve: How the Renaissance Began”, in: Reviews in History (1283). Najemy, John M. (1993), Between Friends: Discourses of Power and Desire in the MachiavelliVettori Letters of 1513–1515, Princeton, N.J. Nesvig, Martin A. (2009), Ideology and Inquisition: The World of the Censors in Early Mexico, New Haven. Nicoli, Elena (2015), “Il giudizio su Epicuro nel commento di Giovan Battista Pio a Lucrezio”, in: M. Beretta/F. Citti/A. Iannucci (eds.), Il Culto di Epicuro. Testi, iconografia e paesaggio, Florence, 227–254. Nicoli, Elena (2017), The Earliest Renaissance Commentaries on Lucretius and the Issue of Atomism, (Ph.D. thesis) Radboud University Nijmegen. Norbrook, David/Harrison, Stephen/Hardie, Philip (2015), Lucretius and the Early Modern, Oxford. Osler, Margaret J. (2002), “Pierre Gassendi”, in: Steven M. Nadler (ed.), A Companion to Early Modern Philosophy, Malden, MA, 80–95. Osler, Margaret J. (2003), “Early modern uses of Hellenistic philosophy: Gassendi’s Epicurean project”, in: Jon Miller/Brad Inwood (eds.), Hellenistic and Early Modern Philosophy, Cambridge, UK/New York. Paleario, Aonio (1992), Aonii Palearii Verulani: De animorum immortalitate libri III: introduction and text, Brussel. Palermino, Richard J. (1980), “The Roman Academy, the Catacombs, and the Conspiracy of 1468”, in: Archivum Historiae Pontificiae 18, 117–155. Palmer, Ada (2014), Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance, Cambridge, M.A. Palmer, Ada (2017), “Lucretius after The Swerve”, in: Modern Philology 115 (2), 289–297. Palmer, Ada (2018a), Censorship & Information Control from Printing Press to Internet, an Exhibit Catalog, Chicago.

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Palmer, Ada (2018b), “Humanist Lives of Classical Philosophers and the Idea of Renaissance Secularization: Virtue, Rhetoric, and the Orthodox Sources of Unbelief”, in: Renaissance Quarterly 70 (3), 935–976. Palmer, Ada (2020), “Humanist Dissemination of Epicureanism”, in: Phillip Mitsis (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Epicureanism, Oxford. Passannante, Gerard (2011), The Lucretian Renaissance: Philology and the Afterlife of Tradition, Chicago. Perutelli, Alessandro (1980), “Scipione ed Epicuro. Sul proemio al v di Lucrezio”, [article], in: Atene e Roma: rassegna trimestrale dell’Associazione Italiana di Cultura classica XXV, 23– 28. Pine, Martin (1968), “Pomponazzi and the Problem of “Double Truth””, in: in: Journal of the History of Ideas 29 (2), 163–176. Pius, Johannes Baptista (Ca. 1501), Praelectio in Titum Lucretium et Suetonium Tranquillum. Polacco, Giorgio (1644), Anticopernicus Catholicus, seu de terrae statione, et de solis motu, contra systema copernicanum, Catholicæ assertiones, Venetiis. Polignac, Melchior de (1757), Anti-Lucretius, London. Polignac, Melchior de (1766), A Translation of Anti-Lucretius by George Canning, London. Powell, Corey S. (2014a), “Defending Giordano Bruno: A Response from the Co-Writer of ‘Cosmos’”, in: Discover Magazine, March 13. Powell, Corey S. (2014b), “Did ‘Cosmos’ Pick the Wrong Hero?”, Discover Magazine, March 10. Priolkar, Anant Kakba (1961), The Goa Inquisition: Being a Quatercentenary Commemoration Study of the Inquisition in India, Bombay. Prosperi, Valentina (2004), Di soavi licor gli orli del vaso: la fortuna di Lucrezio dall’Umanesimo alla Controriforma, Torino. Prosperi, Valentina (2007), “Lucretius in the Italian Renaissance”, in: Stuart Gillespie/Philip Hardie (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Lucretius, Cambridge, 214–226. Rahe, Paul Anthony (2007), “In the Shadow of Lucretius: The Epicurean Foundations of Machiavelli’s Political Thought”, in: History of Political Thought 28 (1), 30–55. Robichaud, Denis J.-J. (2013), “Renaissance and Reformation”, in: Stephen Bullivant/Michael Ruse (eds.), in: The Oxford Handbook of Atheism, Oxford, 179–192. Saccenti, Mario (1966), Lucrezio in Toscana: Studio su Alessandro Marchetti, Firenze. Sacré, Dirk (1994), “Nannius’s ’Somnia’”, in: Rudolf de Smet (ed.), La satire humaniste: Actes du Colloque international des 31 mars, 1er et 2 avril, 1993, Bruxelles. Salvatore, Margherita (2003a), “Giordano Bruno e Lucrezio: l’entusiasmo per la vita infinita”, Studi Rinascimentali 1, 111–118. Salvatore, Margherita (2003b), “Immagini lucreziane nel De immenso di Giordano Bruno”, in: Vichiana 5 (1), 123–134. Sarasin, Jean-François (1926), Œuvres de J.-Fr. Sarasin, Paris. Sheppard, Kenneth (2015), Anti-Atheism in Early Modern England 1580-1720: The Atheist Answered and His Error Confuted, Leiden. Tsakiropoulou-Summers, Tatiana (2004), “Tantum Potuit Suadere Libido: Religion and Pleasure in Polignac’s Anti-Lucretius”, in: Eighteenth-Century Thought 2, 165–205. Valla, Lorenzo (1977), On Pleasure = De Voluptate, New York. Wilson, Catherine (2008), Epicureanism at the Origins of Modernity, Oxford. Wootton, David (1988), “Lucien Febvre and the Problem of Unbelief in the Early Modern Period”, in: The Journal of Modern History 60 (4), 695–730. Yates, Frances Amelia (2015), Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, New York.

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Part IV: Modern Receptions of Lucretius and his Thought

Mario De Caro

Machiavelli’s Lucretian View of Free Will “Ars simul cum fortuna consentit.” Marsilio Ficino, In dialogum quartum de legibus

Abstract: Even if in the last couple of decades the crucial impact exercised by the rediscovery of the De Rerum Natura on Renaissance culture has been stressed in many ways, only very recently the relevance of that poem for Machiavelli’s conception of free will has begun to be fully appreciated. In this paper it will be argued that only if one interprets the relevant Machiavellian texts as presenting an indeterministic (Lucretian) view of free will can one solve the vexata quaestio of whether “il Segretario” had a consistent view of free will (he did!) and explain the place of that view in the context of Machiavelli’s political anthropology. More specifically, already in 1961 Sergio Bertelli discovered that Machiavelli had copied by his own hand the entire De Rerum Natura and added some marginalia to it. Since then the role that Lucretius, and through him, Epicureanism played in Machiavelli’s thought started to be investigated and understood. Surprisingly, however, the issue of free will was not very much at the center of these analyses. The main reason of that was, arguably, that many important interpreters (notably, Gennaro Sasso) interpreted Machiavelli’s remarks on free will as scattered, simplistic, and even contradictory. Prima facie, Machiavelli’s seems indeed to present a sort of pre-Kantian antinomy of free will, which however he never addresses explicitly. One the one hand, he writes passages as the following: “I hold it to be true that Fortune is the arbiter of one-half of our actions, but that she still leaves us to direct the other half, or perhaps a little less” (Principe, 25). On the other hand, he continuously stresses the role of four causal factors that, independently from each other, seem to make free will impossible: (i) Divine providence; (ii) The fate; (iii) Planetary influences; (iv) Polybian anacyclosis. In modern terms, these three factors have generally been interpreted as, respectively, theological-metaphysical determinism, astrological determinism, and historical determinism, and have been seen as incompatible with free will. Basing my interpretation on Alison Brown’s groundbreaking interpretation, I will argue that, for Machiavelli, (i) the above-mentioned causal factors are not to be interpreted as deterministic in nature; (ii) free will is real; (iii) and it is a causal property of human agents modeled on the Lucretian view. Keywords: Niccolò Machiavelli, Lucretianism, free will, determinism, libertarianism https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110673487-011

  Mario De Caro

 Introduction According to some interpreters, Machiavelli did not offer a consistent treatment of free will, while according to others, he was simply skeptical about that notion. The first interpretation has been defended, notably, by Gennaro Sasso (1987), who has argued that the Secretary did not have sufficient philosophical preparation, and, perhaps, was not even interested in formulating a unitary view of the freedom of the will. 1 The second interpretation has been recently proposed, among others, by Vittoria Perrone Compagni (2014), who has given an epistemological twist to it. In her view, Machiavelli thinks we believe in free will only because we cannot understand the infinite series of causes that determine all the events in the world, including our actions (a sort of proto-Spinozian view, then). 2 Recently, John Najemy (2014, 1151) has put together these two interpretations, claiming that we do not yet whether Machiavelli held inconsistent ideas regarding human free will or was skeptical altogether about it: It remains an open question whether Machiavelli wrote himself into a contradiction, or whether he intended to show that fortune, as a way of conceptualizing that which cannot be conceptualized, was a dead end, thus preparing the reader for the turn in chapter 26 to redemption governed by historical necessity.

However, the thesis that Machiavelli denied free will altogether encounters a big problem, since it is difficult to see how it can be reconciled with several passages in which the Secretary explicitly states that, in determinate conditions, humans enjoy free will. Well-known, in this sense, is a passage in book XXV of The Prince (98): “I judge that it might be true that fortune is arbiter of half of our actions, but also that she leaves the other half, or close to it, for us to govern.” 3 In this light, one may be tempted to accept the alternative interpretation – that, regarding free will, Machiavelli was simply confused, and could not avoid falling into contradiction. Things are not so easy, however, as we will see. A good way of posing the issue of free will in Machiavelli is to present it as an antinomy. On the one hand, there is the thesis that, in determinate conditions, there are good reasons for thinking that humans have free will. On the other hand, there is the antithesis, according to which free will is not real. In this light,

 1 Sasso 1987, II, 119–163, 277–349. 2 Perrone Compagni 2014. 3 “Iudico potere essere vero che la fortuna sia arbitra della metà delle azioni nostre, ma che etiam lei ne lasci governare l’altra metà, o presso, a noi”, Italian original, 162–163.

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one can wonder whether Machiavelli’s writings present a solution to this antinomy, or if, as many claim, he remained embroiled in an unsolved aporia. In this article, it will be argued that, even if he was sometimes hesitant and ambiguous in some of his formulations, Machiavelli believed that the world is not entirely governed by necessity, and that there are cases in which humans can in fact exercise free will.

 Machiavelli’s Antinomy of Free Will As said, Machiavelli sometimes argued for the reality of free will (for about half of human action), but he often also seems to take the opposite position. In Machiavelli’s writings, the antithesis of the antinomy (i.e., the argument against free will) is presented in several slightly different ways depending on which of the factors that threaten free will is under discussion. Machiavelli considered four such factors: (i) divine providence; (ii) fortune; (iii) astrological influences; (iv) historical-anthropological conditioning. Often, in the history of thought, these factors have been seen as forms of comprehensive determinism in regards to the human world – that is, they have been seen as necessitating all human choices and actions. Let us then see how Machiavelli presented these factors in order to understand if any conceptual space remains for free will.

. Divine providence The relationship between divine providence and free will is, notoriously, the focus of one of the most important debates in theology. Patristic and scholastic philosophers (such as Augustine, Boethius, Aquinas, and Duns Scotus) debated endlessly about how God’s prerogatives could be reconciled with the then unquestionable theological truth that God gave us free will as a gift. 4 During the humanistic period the issue was presented in new ways 5 due to the emphasis given to human dignity, as is most clearly shown by Pico della Mirandola’s De dignitate hominis, with its thesis that man is the miracle of creation since, by using his free will, he can intentionally lower himself to the condition of the beasts, or raise himself to the height of the angels. In the same period, however, other thinkers delivered aporetic responses to the question of free will, most notably,  4 Cf. Lettieri 2014; Porro 2104a e 2014b. 5 Cf. Poppi 1988; Ramberti 2014.

  Mario De Caro Lorenzo Valla who, in his De libero arbitrio (1440ca.), a dialogue that remained famous for centuries, suggested the epistemic impossibility for humans to solve the mystery of free will. Finally, other philosophers and theologians denied the same possibility of free will altogether, such as Pietro Pomponazzi, in De fato, de libero arbitrio et de praedestinatione, and Martin Luther in De servo arbitrio, works written in 1520 and 1525 respectively, when Machiavelli was still alive (even if De fato was published posthumously in 1557). In Machiavelli’s writings one can find many references to God’s providential prerogatives. For example, in The Prince (1513, VI, 22), one reads that even though Moses was “a mere executor of things that had been ordered for him by God”; 6 and, in chapter XI (45), that ecclesiastical principalities are “exalted and maintained by God”. 7 In these passages, and in others, Machiavelli seems to suggest that there are actually interventions of divine providence in the world – and, if so, that human free will would be very limited, if not wiped out altogether. In other passages, God is mentioned as a part of a hendiadys, coupled with the term “fortune” (“Dio o la fortuna”): a not uncommon and very meaningful coupling in the Renaissance. For example, in The Prince, XXV (98), he writes: “It is not unknown to me that many have held and hold the opinion that worldly things are … governed by fortune and by God”, 8 while in the Florentine Histories (1520– 1525/1988) he claims: “They exercised power for themselves without any hesitation and so conducted themselves that it appeared that God and fortune had given them that city in prey” (VII, 22, 300) 9 and “Lorenzo was loved by fortune and by God in highest degree” (VIII, 36, 362). 10

. Fortune In Machiavelli’s writings there are many other references to fortune besides the above-mentioned hendiadys with the term ‘God’. 11 In particular, two of his early

 6 “Uno mero executore delle cose che gli erano ordinate da Dio”, Italian original, 161. 7 “[E]xaltati e mantenuti da Dio”, Italian original, 230. 8 “E’ non mi è incognito come molti hanno avuto et hanno opinione che le cose del mondo sieno in modo governate dalla fortuna e da Dio”, Italian original, 72. 9 “La qual potenza senza alcun rispetto esercitavano, ed in modo si governavano, che pareva che Dio e la fortuna avesse data loro quella città in preda”, Italian original, 21. 10 “Fu dalla fortuna e da Dio sommamente amato”, Italian original, 160. 11 On the theme of fortune, seen as a threat to freedom, cf. Wind 1961.

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works, both composed in 1506, Ghiribizzi to Soderini (where he writes that “Fortune is fickle, controlling men and keeping them under her yoke”) 12 and the short poem Of fortune are dedicated to this theme. Moreover in many other works by Machiavelli the issue of fortune is discussed or mentioned, particularly in The Discourses on Livy (1519), The Ass (1517), The Mandrake (1518), and Florentine Histories (1525). The most important examination of the question of fortune, however, is The Prince and, more specifically, in its most famous chapter (XVIII, 101), where Machiavelli writes, “I conclude, thus, that when fortune varies and men remain obstinate in their modes, men are happy while they are in accord, and as they come into discord, unhappy”. 13 One may be tempted to interpret passages like this as if Machiavelli is recommending the prince to favor fortune as long as it is impossible for him to modify its decrees – a kind of amor fati, which it may be tempting to read as an utter denial of the possibility of free will. As we will see, however, this lectio facilior is not the correct one.

. Astrological influences In Machiavelli’s writings one can find many references to astrological influences. In the Ghiribizzi (1506/1996, 135), for example, Machiavelli claims that one who could read and favor planetary influxes should be considered master of the stars (as if that person “could control the stars and the Fates”). 14 It is interesting to mention here a letter sent by Machiavelli, in his capacity as Secretary of the Florentine Republic, to the astrologer Lattanzio Tedaldi on June 5, 1509, asking him to determine, on the basis of the zodiacal configuration, the best moment for taking possession of Pisa, which had surrendered to Florence. (Tedaldi responded that Pisa had to be taken on the following Thursday, between 7:30AM and 8:30AM). 15 Another interesting clue to Machiavelli’s deep involvement in astrology is offered by Luigi Guicciardini, brother of Francesco and a personal friend of Machiavelli, who around 1533 (few years after Machiavelli’s death, then) wrote a philosophical dialogue, in which a character named Niccolò (certainly modeled after Machiavelli) gets involved in a discussion in which he defends the idea of

 12 “La Fortuna varia et comanda ad li huomini, et tiègli sotto el giogo suo”, Italian original, 137. 13 “Concludo, adunque, che variando la fortuna, e stando li uomini ne’ loro modi ostinati, sono felici mentre concordano insieme e, come discordano, infelici”. Italian original, 15. 14 “[C]omandasse alle stelle e a’ fati”, Italian original, 137. 15 Unger 2011, 172.

  Mario De Caro the relevance of astrological conditioning: “I cannot believe that Justice, Chastity, Liberality and many other admirable virtues, which many famous men… have shown, do not depend upon the sky. And the same is true of Pride, Cruelty, Luxury, Avarice and the other shameful vices”. 16 There are no serious doubts that Machiavelli was deeply involved in astrology; and, for this reason, Graham Lock has claimed that we should consider Machiavelli to be less modern than Girolamo Savonarola, since the latter had categorically refused astrology (as was done also by Pico della Mirandola). 17 At any rate, considering all these elements, it may seem that in Machiavelli’s view astrological influences do seriously threaten free will.

. Historical-anthropological conditioning The last form of human conditioning Machiavelli deals with is the result of the intersection of historical and anthropological factors. In particular, he accepts Polybius’s idea of anacyclosis, a cyclical theory of political evolution. To this classic thesis, Machiavelli adds an anthropological claim: human nature is immutable, since the same passions keep moving humans to action across the ages. In the Ghiribizzi (1506/1996), he writes: “because times and affairs often change – both in general and in particular – and because men change neither their imaginations nor their ways of doing things accordingly, it turns out that a man has good fortune at one time and bad fortune at another”. 18 Analogously, in the Discourses (I, 12, 36) he asserts: “men are born, live, and die always in one and the same order.” 19 From the thesis that the interconnection of historical and anthropological factors is never entirely new, Machiavelli concludes that there are never any real novelties in the world. This is also why princes, or would-be princes,

 16 Quoted in Gilbert 1937, 164. Italian original: “Non mi posso persuadere, come la Justitia, la Castità, la Liberalità et molte altre mirabili virtù, quali in molti famosi huomini… si sono comprese, non dependino dal cielo. Et similmente la Superbia, la Crudeltà, la Luxuria, la Avaritia et li altri vituperosi vitii”, ibid. 17 Lock 2008. 18 “[M]a perché e tempi e le cose universalmente e particularmente si mutano spesso, e li uomini non mutono le loro fantasie né e loro modi di procedere, accade che uno ha un tempo buona fortuna et uno tempo trista”, Italian original, 137. 19 “Gli uomini… nacquero, vissero e morirono sempre con uno medesimo ordine”, Italian original, 83.

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should meditate on the lessons of history, and become aware that the limited opportunities that open in front of them, from time to time, are mere repetitions of the past. In this regard Machiavelli writes in the Discourses (1512, III, 43, 302): Prudent men are accustomed to say, and not by chance or without merit, that whoever wishes to see what has to be considers what has been; for all worldly things in every time have their own counterpart in ancient times. That arises because these are the work of men, who have and always had the same passions, and they must of necessity result in the same effect. 20

The anthropological invariants, combined with the constant repetition of the historical context, appear to make it impossible that anything substantially new ever appears. Once again, one may be tempted to conclude that, for Machiavelli, free will is doomed. This conclusion, however, would be wrong both in this and in the previous cases.

 Dissolution of the Antinomy Before we delve deeper into these issues, it should be noted that Machiavelli’s hesitation in addressing the theoretical question of the fortune-virtue relation is partially justifiable for two reasons. First, the problem of free will is objectively one of extreme complexity, and, in this respect, we may again mention the aporetical conclusion of the eponymous dialogue of Lorenzo Valla (1440a), which was the main contribution of the early Renaissance to this issue, and which Leibniz still praised as a philosophical masterpiece. Or, going forward in time, we can recall David Hume’s (1748/1975, 95) famous statement that the question of free will is the most complex problem that thought has ever been faced with, or, in our own time, we may think of Thomas Nagel’s disconsolate statement, that the discussion on free will “is a case where nothing believable has (to my knowledge) been proposed by anyone in the extensive public discussion of the subject.” 21 Finally, it must be noted that the main focus of Machiavelli’s investigation was not

 20 “Sogliono dire gli uomini prudenti, e non a caso né immeritamente, che chi vuole vedere quello che ha a essere, consideri quello che è stato: perché tutte le cose del mondo in ogni tempo hanno il proprio riscontro con gli antichi tempi. Il che nasce perché essendo quelle operate dagli uomini, che hanno ed ebbono sempre le medesime passioni, conviene di necessità che sortischino il medesimo effetto”, Italian original, 768. 21 Nagel 1986, 119–20.

  Mario De Caro metaphysical but political. What mattered most to him was not the metaphysical issue, but its practical consequences with respect to human choice and action. With all this, it should be noted that Machiavelli was well aware of the unavoidability of the question of free will when investigating the nature of political action. Why should one try to persuade those who aim at succeeding politically that they should act in this or that manner, if there was no possibility for them to choose or to act freely? And why should one endeavor to overcome the obstacles placed in one’s way, if it were impossible to orient our own destiny? This is why, in chapter XXV of The Prince, Machiavelli explicitly maintains that the exercise of free will is possible. His aim is to convince the virtuous prince that it is up to him to undertake the noblest political action described in the next and final chapter of the book: freeing Italy from the “barbarians” and unifying it. However, the consistency of Machiavelli’s conception is not obvious, since one must still prove that the factors that in his theoretical framework are thought to condition human choices and actions are not mortal threats to free will. In short, one has to show that his conception is not contradictory, as many of his interpreters instead believe. The first thing to notice is that, despite appearances, none of the above-mentioned factors represent, in themselves, an insurmountable obstacle for the advocates of free will. As is well known, in the course of history many philosophers (such as the Stoics, most of the Scholastics, Locke, Leibniz, Hume, and onward, up to Davidson and Dennett) 22 have defended the view called “compatibilism”, according to which free will is compatible with determinism – or even requires it. However, as we will see below, the spirit of compatibilism is wholly alien to Machiavelli’s philosophical sensibilities, since he belongs to the so-called “libertarian” tradition for which the exercise of free will requires indeterminism. But, before discussing this component of Machiavelli’s conception, we have to return to his treatment of the above-mentioned factors that threaten free will, in order to understand how he granted them relevance without interpreting them as completely determining human choices and actions.

. Divine providence Concerning the references to divine providence in Machiavelli’s writings, it is clear that they tend to have a rhetorical or prudential tone. There are few doubts

 22 See Bobzien 1998; De Caro/Mori/Spinelli (eds.) 2014; Kane (ed.) 20112, part IV.

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that Machiavelli’s religious ideas were very heterodox (he may have been agnostic, if not atheist). 23 In this regard, it suffices to repeat a famous comment by Francesco Guicciardini, in a letter to Machiavelli (1521/2016, 23), about the hypothesis that Niccolò, then fifty-two years old, should begin worrying about religious things. Guicciardini wrote: “your honor … would be stained if at this age you started to think about your soul… because, since you have always lived in a contrary belief, it would be attributed rather to senility than to goodness.” 24 Machiavelli’s interest in religion was intense, but also quite instrumental in the sense that he saw it as a crucial factor in the formation of civic pride. 25 In short, he had a political interest, but there was no sincere spiritual inspiration in him. 26 In this light, the problem is how to explain the flood of references to providence that Machiavelli disseminates in his writings. In this regard, it will be enough to recall a convincing claim by Gennaro Sasso: “Should we be surprised that Machiavelli – who was so unwilling to believe in God – was also so able to exploit so well the Christian conception of providence, when that was required by political reasons?” 27 The reference to God’s providence was an almost inescapable topos in the culture of Machiavelli’s time (and remained so for much longer, as proved by the religious references of thinkers tending to atheism like Hobbes and Hume). That Machiavelli’s references to providence should not be taken literally is also suggested by the fact that, as I have mentioned, he also uses the hendiadys “fortune and God,” in which natural and providentialistic determinism are combined. Taken literally, the pair of concepts would be incongruous because fortune has no providentialistic connotations. The correct interpretation, however, is that, from the semantic point of view, the hendiadys is completely unbalanced on the side of fortune – that is, on the naturalistic side. According to Machiavelli, then,

 23 According to Bausi 2005, 319–20, and Viroli 2005, Machiavelli was a Christian, albeit unorthodox. However, in the preface to the English edition of his book 2010, xiii–xiv, Viroli considerably (and plausibly) moderates his earlier interpretation. 24 “Perche, avendo sempre vivuto con contraria professione, sarebbe attribuito piutosto al rimbambito che al buono”, Italian original, 371. 25 In this regard we can mention the famous judgment expressed in the Discourses (i, 12), in which the Church is seen as the cause of the failed unification of Italy, as neither strong enough to subdue the whole country nor weak enough to allow others to do so. 26 That the Machiavellian vision is not attributable to Catholicism clearly emerges, for example, from the Discourses (II, 5): with their elliptical defense of Aristotelian thesis of the eternity of the world, those remarks certainly cannot be integrated into Christian theology; cf. Biasiori 2018. On Machiavelli’s “completa irreligiosità”, see also Pedullà 2013, LXX–LXXIV. 27 Sasso 1987, II, 288.

  Mario De Caro divine providence does not play any real role among the factors affecting human affairs.

. Fortune In the context of Machiavelli’s thought, the conditioning put on us by fortune is a much more serious (even if non-conclusive) threat to free will than divine providence. As just said, the term “fortune”, as used by Machiavelli, is to be interpreted in a naturalistic sense. However, it would be wrong to confuse his naturalism with the naturalism of the following century, which was centered on the idea that nature is ubiquitously ruled by the deterministic laws of physics. Machiavelli’s mind, though cutting-edge for his time, was still the mind of a Renaissance man with no idea of the mechanistic world and the deterministic laws of physics. Even so, for Machiavelli often the influence of fortune does not permit the exercise of free will, even for the most virtuous men; sometimes, though, it leaves precious spaces of contingency (the “occasioni”) for whoever is able to grasp them: As one examines their [the founders’ of kingdoms] actions and lives, one does not see that they had anything else from fortune that then opportunity, which gave them the matter enabling them to introduce any form they pleased; without that opportunity their virtue of spirit would have been eliminated, and without that virtue the opportunity would have come in vain. (1513/1998, VI, 23) 28

In principle, this could be enough to rescue free will from the threat of the conditioning factors since, in order to defend free will, it is sufficient to show that we are able to exercise it sometimes. – given that it is obvious that nobody is able to exercise it all the time. 29 However, if in this way we may answer the question of whether we have we have free will, another important question is still left unanswered – how exactly fortune can leave room for our exercise of free will. In order to answer this question we have to understand what fortune is for Machiavelli. We know that for him fortune is different from theological providence, stoic fate,  28 “Ed examinando le azioni, e vita loro, non si vedrà che quelli avessino altro dalla fortuna, che l’occasione, la quale dette loro materia di potervi introdurre quella forma che a lor parse; e senza quella occasione la virtù dell’animo loro si saria spenta, e senza quella virtù l’occasione sarebbe venuta invano”; Italian original, 161–162. 29 For a presentation of the issue in contemporary terms, cf. van Inwagen (1994). According to van Inwagen (arguably the world’s foremost authority on the matter), we are able to exercise our free will only very rarely.

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and physical determinism. This is because, for Machiavelli, fortune incorporates the influences played on humans by astral and meta-historical factors. Let’s analyze them in turn.

. Astrological influences As said, Lock argued that, in accepting astrology, Machiavelli was less modern than Savonarola, who categorically refused it. 30 Lock’s remark, however, is deeply wrong for two reasons. In the first place, as is clear in the analogous case of Pomponazzi (1520/2004), in Machiavelli the reference to astrology is an expression of secularization, as celestial influences are in fact natural influences, since they are not governed by celestial intelligences. Second, while believing in astral influences, Machiavelli does not interpret them in a deterministic sense, which is how people have traditionally thought of astrology as a menace to free will. Rather, Machiavelli is a proponent of the interpretation according to which astra inclinant non necessitant. And that view was not uncommon at all in Renaissance Florence: for example, Marsilio Ficino (1477/1999, 97) had written that “The soul will dominate the body, moving it in order to be able to accommodate, but also to reject, the inclination that is impressed in the body by the sky”. 31

. Historical-anthropological conditioning The last threat to Machiavellian free will is represented by the constraints put on our choices and actions by nature and history. As is well known, in support of his naturalistic political anthropology Machiavelli used the study of the “effettuale”, i.e. the concrete reality of the human world, which can be understood by reflecting upon the examples offered by history, from the most remote myths of antiquity to the Roman Republic, from the great events of ancient Eastern-Asian history – mediated by Greek historiography – to his own confused times. There he found that the lessons of the past were guaranteed to apply to the present at the meta-historical level, more specifically, in a classic Polybian cyclical conception of history revisited with modern eyes. Where Polybius believed in a substantial meta-historical determinism that left no freedom of action to humans, Machia-

 30 Lock 2008. 31 On the conceptions of astrology in the Renaissance, cf. Ernst/Giglioni (eds.) 2012.

  Mario De Caro velli thought that the cyclicity of the forms of government was not tied to a deterministic conception of history, but to a secularized view, in which freedom and the contingencies on which freedom is based play a decisive role. In this way, Machiavelli took up an important theme common in Renaissance culture but not in the Middle Ages. In the Middle Ages, fortune was personified as a “royal figure, dressed and crowned, who holds a wheels to which four men are bound, who are doomed to repeat perennial courses and recourses” – a view that was summarized with the formula regnabo, regno, regnavi, sum sine regno. 32 In this regard, fortune produced an inevitable and complete meta-historical determinism not even princes could escape. During the Renaissance a new idea of fortune emerged. Recall the famous emblem of the Rucellai family, which represented fortune as a half-naked woman standing on a boat and supporting the sail inflated by the wind. 33 This image suggests that in the Renaissance, the idea of fortune was inextricably linked to that of “occasione” – i.e. the opportunities that were offered to humans for shaping their own destiny out of their free will, without being determined. 34 So, it is easy to understand why, according to Machiavelli, man’s virtue can oppose the cyclical and necessitating dynamics of history. This “virtue”, however, has neither the theological nature of Christian free will nor the moral character of Aristotelian areté. It is to be understood, rather, as the ability for human beings to act freely with political purposes. In this context, chapter 25 (98) of The Prince explicitly denies that “wordly things are so governed by fortune and by God, that men cannot correct them with their prudence, indeed that they have no remedy at all”. 35 In looking at human affairs, Machiavelli is aware that contingency plays a crucial role, and cannot be eliminated. Because of this, he argues that the role of virtue – that is, the correct use of human freedom in its political valence – is roughly equal to the role played by fortune. Therefore, political action, insofar as it lies within the realm of contingency, is not hetero-determined, but constitutionally autonomous, i.e. it follows rules that can’t be drawn from any other field. And this is the reason why, for Machiavelli, political action can only be investigated iuxta propria principia, without ethical or religious interferences. Thus, we  32 Nova 1980, 52, fn. 29. 33 In the new iconography of fortune, the lesson of Ficino was influential: see Wind 1961; see also Buttay–Juties 2008. 34 Kiefer 1979, 1–27. 35 Machiavelli denies that “Le cose del mondo sieno in modo governate da la fortuna e da Dio, che li uomini con la prudenza loro non possino correggerle, anzi non vi abbino rimedio alcuno”, Italian original, 161–162.

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can finally understand the meaning of the famous claim of chapter XXV of the The Prince regarding the equal weight virtue and fortune have in human affairs. The “ordinata virtù” – historically aware of the laws of political action, so as to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the circumstances – is in some cases able to take precedence over fortune and orient the course of events. It is in this sense, then, that one must interpret the infamous saying “fortune is a woman; and it is necessary, if one wants to hold her down, to beat her and strike her down.” 36

 Machiavelli and Lucretius In the preceding, we have seen that Machiavelli subscribes to the libertarian view, according to which free will requires indeterminism. We then noted that, for him, none of the factors that allegedly make indeterminism, and consequently libertarian free will, impossible (divine providence, fortune, astrological influences and historical conditioning) is completely pervasive, or, to say it differently, none of those factors produce a scenario in which all events (including all human actions) are necessitated. From this it follows that in Machiavelli’s world some windows of indeterminism – that is, contingency – are available, in which free will can be exercised. The last question to address is how, according to Machiavelli, these windows of indeterminism are generated. The correct answer to this question, I believe, is that Machiavelli’s treatment of free will is indebted to the Epicurean-Lucretian view in which spaces of contingency open up – thanks to deviations of atoms from their course – and pave the way for the exercise of free will by human beings. It is a recent historiographical acquisition that the themes of the EpicureanLucretian tradition had considerable importance in the culture of the Florentine Renaissance, even though they were often left implicit for reasons of opportunity. In particular, with respect to Machiavelli, the first crucial contributions were offered by C.E. Finch (1960) and Sergio Bertelli (1961) (who discovered and studied the full hand-made copy made by Machiavelli of the De Rerum Natura, with his own marginalia) and by Gennaro Sasso (1987) (who studied the influence of the early atomists on the thought of the Chancellor). The most influential contribution regarding the influence the Epicurean-Lucretian view had on Machiavelli

 36 “[L]a fortuna è donna ed è necessario, volendola tenere sotto, batterla e urtarla”, Italian original, 167.

  Mario De Caro has, more recently, been offered by Alison Brown, who has explored, with great accuracy, the intellectual framework of the Florentine Chancery in the figures of Bartolomeo Scala, Marcello Adriani, who directed it, and the same Niccolò Machiavelli, who was its most famous secretary. 37 This perspective of study is fruitful because, unlike other figures of the Florentine Renaissance (from Ficino to Poliziano), the intellectuals centered around the Chancery, since they were not members of the clergy, could have more freedom of expression concerning the galaxy of heterodox, and potentially heretical, themes contained in Lucretius’ masterpiece brought to light by Poggio Bracciolini in 1417. However, the fact that the intellectuals of the Chancery enjoyed greater freedom than their ecclesiastical colleagues does not mean that they could act without caution. The ecclesial and academic orthodoxy, in fact, looked at the Epicurean-Lucretian tradition with a growing suspicion that, in the sixteenth century, turned into open hostility, and not without reason, since it was the most important pre-Christian naturalist tradition. It was interpreted thus by less aligned Renaissance thinkers, who used it in opposition to the neo-Platonic and Aristotelian views, which could be far more easily incorporated into the Catholic Weltanschauung. Machiavelli could read, in Marullo’s version of De Rerum Natura, that the universe is made up of atoms that – through random deviations from their straight motion that break the chain of causes – are sometimes brought together to form worlds and living beings, and ensure that the will of humans can escape natural determination: libera [...] fatis avulsa voluntas (Lucr. 2.256–257). Moreover, in the context of Epicurean-Lucreatian philosophy, the gods, even if they do exist, are not interested in human affairs. There is no such thing as the survival of the individual soul, and morality has a hedonistic nature. Such ideas were certainly unorthodox, if not utterly heretical, in Renaissance culture. It is not surprising, therefore, that Machiavelli never mentions either Epicurus or Lucretius. And, in confirmation of the idea that such silence should be explained by caution due to the general intellectual atmosphere, recall that in 1513 – the year in which Machiavelli wrote The Prince and started to work on the Discourses – the fifth Lateran Council condemned the denial of the immortality of the individual soul proper to both Averroism and, indeed, Epicureanism. And, if that were not enough, one can also recall that Machiavelli was also facing the problem that the head of that Council was Pope Leo X de’ Medici, son  37 See also Brown 1979; 2001; 2010. Other interpreters who stress the importance of Lucretius for Machiavelli or, more generally, for Florentine humanists are Del Lucchese 2002, Rahe 2007, Morfino 2011, Roecklein 2012, Palmer 2014, Erwin (forthcoming).

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of Lorenzo the Magnificent, i.e., the most influential living member of the dynasty whose favor Machiavelli was desperately trying to get back by writing The Prince. As shown by Brown (2010b), the intellectuals of the Chancery, and especially Machiavelli, wrote and worked when the Epicurean-Lucretian tradition was perceived as a serious threat to orthodoxy. Therefore, in order to properly assess how much they were influenced by that tradition, one has to read their texts between the lines, looking for hidden clues and implied hints. To summarize, Machiavelli did offer – even if with some ambivalences and hesitations – a solution of the antinomy of free will that we have discussed at the beginning of this article. All the factors that seem to threaten the reality of free will, in fact, left some space for the exercise of human free will in the Lucretian universe that Niccolò was contemplating. 38

References Atkinson, James B./David Sices (1996), Machiavelli and His Friends. Their Personal Correspondence, Northern Illinois University Press, DeKalb (IL). Bausi, Francesco (2005), Machiavelli, Salerno/Rome. Bertelli, Sergio (1961), “Notarelle machiavelliane. Un codice di Lucrezio e di Terenzio”, in: Rivista storica italiana 76, 544–53. Biasiori, Lucio (2018), “Machiavelli e l’eternità del mondo”, in: Studi storici I, 203–215. Bobzien, Susanne (1998), Determinism and Freedom in Stoic Philosophy, Oxford. Brown, Alison (1979), Bartolomeo Scala, 1430–1497, Chancellor of Florence: The Humanist as Bureaucrat, Princeton. Brown, Alison (2001), “Lucretius and the Epicureans in the Social and Political Context of Renaissance Florence”, in: I Tatti Studies 9, 11–62. Brown, Alison (2010a), Philosophy and Religion in Machiavelli, in: Najemy (ed.) 2010, 157–172. Brown, Alison (2010b), The Return of Lucretius to Renaissance Florence, Cambridge (MA). Buttay-Juties, Florence (2008), Fortuna. Usage politiques d’une allégorie morale à la Renaissance, Paris. De Caro, Mario/Mori, Massimo/Spinelli, Emidio (eds.) (2014), Libero arbitrio. Storia di una controversia filosofica, Rome. Del Lucchese, Filippo (2002), “Strategie della virtù tra necessità e libertà in Machiavelli”, in: Quaderni Materialisti 1, 41–67. Ernst Germana/Guido Giglioni (eds.) (2012), Il linguaggio dei cieli. Astri e simboli nel Rinascimento, Rome. Erwin, Sean (forthcoming), Mixed Bodies, Agency and Narrative in Machiavelli and Lucretius.

 38 I thank Alison Brown, Sean Erwin, Drew Jain, Ada Palmer, Gabriele Pedullà, Vickie Sullivan, and the late Germana Ernst for some very useful discussions on the issues discussed in this article.

  Mario De Caro Ficino, Marsilio (1477/1999), Disputatio contra iudicium astrologorum, Scritti sull’astrologia, Rizzoli, Milan. Finch, Chauncey E. (1960), “Machiavelli’s Copy of Lucretius”, in: The Classical Journal 56, 1, 29–32. Gilbert, Felix (1937), “A Machiavellian Unknown Contemporary Dialogue”, in: Journal of the Warburg Institute 1, 163–166. Guicciardini, Francesco (1521/2016), Letter to Niccolò Machiavelli (May 17, 1521), in: Maurizio Viroli (ed.), The Quotable Machiavelli, Princeton; Italian version in Niccolò Machiavelli, Lettere, ed. by Corrado Vivanti, Einaudi, Turin 1997, 371. Hume, David (1748), Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding, reprinted 1777 edition, Oxford 1975. Kane, Robert (ed.) (20112), The Oxford Handbook of Free Will, Oxford. Kiefer, Frederick (1979), “The Conflation of Fortuna and Occasio in Renaissance Thought and Iconography”, in: The Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 9, 1–27. Lettieri, Gaetano (2014) “Le aporie della libertà cristiana dal Nuovo Testamento a Giovanni Scoto Eriugena”, in: De Caro/Mori/Spinelli (eds.) (2014), 133–170, Lock, Grahame (2008), New Light on the Savonarola-Machiavelli Controversy. Philosophy, Simplicity and Popular Government, http://www.bfriars.ox.ac.uk/download_file. php?file=dl_2_1_lock-maiolo-savonarola-machiavelli.pdf&cat=resources. Machiavelli, Niccolò (1506/1971), Di Fortuna, in: Tutte le opere, a cura di Mario Martelli, Florence. Machiavelli, Niccolò (1506/1996), Ghiribizzi al Soderino, in: James B. Atkinson/David Sices (eds.), Machiavelli and His Friends. Their Personal Correspondence, DeKalb (IL); Italian original in: Capitoli, ed. by Giorgio Inglese, Rome 1981. Machiavelli (1513/1998), The Prince, ed. by Harvey C. Mansfield, Chicago; Italian original, Il principe, Milan 1999. Machiavelli (1517/1989), The Ass, in: Allan Gilbert (ed.), Machiavelli: The Chief Works and Others, Durham, vol. 2, 750–772; Italian original, in: Novella di Belfagor. L’Asino, Rome 1990. Machiavelli, Niccolò (1519/1996), Discourses on Livy, ed. by Harvey C. Mansfield & Nathan Tarcov, University of Chicago Press, Chicago; Italian original, a cura di Francesco Bausi, Salerno editrice, Rome 2001. Machiavelli, Niccolò (1525/1988), Florentine Histories, Princeton; Italian original, Istorie fiorentine, Turin 2007. Morfino, Vittorio (2011), “Lucrezio e la corrente sotterranea del materialismo”, in: Filippo Del Lucchese/Vittorio Morfino/Gianfranco Mormino (eds.), Lucrezio e la modernità, i secoli XV–XVII, Naples, 35–59. Nagel, Thomas (1986), The View from Nowhere, Oxford. Najemy, John M. (2010) (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Machiavelli, Cambridge. Najemy, John M. (2014), Machiavelli and History, in: Renaissance Quarterly 67, 4, 1131–1164. Nova, Alessandro (1980), “Occasio pars virtutis. Considerazioni sugli affreschi di Francesco Salviati per il Cardinale Ricci”, in: Paragone, 31, 29–63. Palmer, Ada (2014), Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance, Cambridge (MA). Pedullà, Gabriele (2013), “L’arte fiorentina dei nodi”, Introduction to Niccolò Machiavelli, Il Principe, Rome, V–CV. Perrone Compagni, Vittoria (2014), “Volti della fortuna. Note su un dibattito rinascimentale”, in: Spazio Filosofico 12, 607–622.

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Pomponazzi, Pietro (1520/2004), Libri quinque de fato, de libero arbitrio et de praedestinatione in: Il fato, il libero arbitrio e la predestinazione, ed. by Vittoria Perrone Compagni, Turin. Poppi, Antonino (1988), “Fate, Fortune, Providence and Human Freedom”, in: Charles B. Schmitt/Quentin Skinner (eds.), The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, Cambridge, 641–667. Porro, Pasquale (2014a), “Trasformazioni medievali della libertà/1. Alla ricerca di una definizione del libero arbitrio”, in: De Caro/Mori/Spinelli (eds.) (2014), 171–190. Porro, Pasquale (2014n), “Trasformazioni medievali della libertà/2. Libertà e determinismo nei dibattiti scolastici”, in: De Caro/Mori/Spinelli (eds.) (2014), 191–222. Rahe, Paul (2007), “In the Shadow of Lucretius: The Epicurean Foundations of Machiavelli’s Political Thought”, History of Political Thought, 28, 1, 30–55. Ramberti, Rita (2014), “Il dibattito sul libero arbitrio tra Rinascimento e Riforma”, in: De Caro/ Mori/Spinelli (eds.) (2014), 223–260. Roecklein, Robert J. (2012), Machiavelli and Epicureanism: An Investigation into the Origins of Early Modern Political Thought, Lanham. Sasso, Gennaro (1987–1997), Machiavelli e gli antichi e altri saggi, Naples, 4 volumes. Unger, Miles J. (2011), Machiavelli. A Biography, New York. Valla, Lorenzo (1440ca.), De libero arbitrio, in: Eugenio Garin (ed.), Prosatori latini del Quattrocento, Milan 1952, 523–565. Van Inwagen, Peter (1994), “When Is the Will not Free”, in: Philosophical Studies, 75, 95–114. Viroli, Maurizio (2005), Il Dio di Machiavelli e il problema morale dell’Italia, Laterza, Rome/ Bari; English modified translation Machiavelli’s God, Princeton 2010. Viroli, Maurizio (ed.) (2017), The Quotable Machiavelli, Princeton. Wind, Edgar (1961), Platonic Tyranny and the Renaissance Fortune. On Ficino’s Readings of Laws IV, 709A–712A, in: Millard Meiss (ed.), De artibus opuscula XL. Essays in Honour of Erwin Panofsky, New York, 491–496.

Andrea Ceccarelli

Reading Lucretius in Padua: Gian Vincenzo Pinelli and the Sixteenth-Century Recovery of Ancient Atomism Abstract: This article deals with a Renaissance commentary to Lucretius held in the Incunable n. 699 of the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan, a copy of the first Aldine edition of the poem (1500), entirely interleaved and annotated by Gian Vincenzo Pinelli (1535–1601). This commentary is a considerable work, consisting of around 150 pages including the untied leaves with Adnotationes in Lucretium held in a miscellaneous codex in the Ambrosiana library (D 239 inf., ll. 76–101), and it represents a first large account of atomistic sources before Lambin’s critical edition of Lucretius was published in 1563. Keywords: Atomism, Gian Vincenzo Pinelli, Renaissance, Lucretius, University of Padua

The numerous studies that in the last few years have been devoted to the humanistic return of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura, 1 have not perhaps completely shown an important fact: between the fifteenth and sixteenth century, Lucretius had a rather limited circulation and publishing history, that certainly cannot be compared to those of other classics of Latin poetry – there are only four editions of the De Rerum Natura in the fifteenth century and no more than thirty editions before the end of the sixteenth century, when Ovid and Virgil had around two hundred editions each one before 1500, Catullus and Propertius had eight editions, Tibullus fifteen, Martial twenty, Juvenal and Persius had more than fifty editions each one, and even Manilius’ Astronomica was printed in six different editions during the fifteenth century. 2 Lucretius remained for a long time an obscure author that very few scholars read and even fewer of them understood. 3

 1 See Norbrook et al. 2016; Palmer 2014; Greenblatt 2011; Paladini 2011; Passannante 2011; Del Lucchese et al. 2011; Brown 2010; Lucrèce 2010; Hardie 2009; Beretta/Citti 2008; Gillespie/Hardie 2007; Prosperi 2004; Gambino Longo 2004. 2 See the Incunabula short title catalogue, British Library: http://data.cerl.org/istc; Gordon 1962. 3 A different opinion is in Palmer 2014, 196 ff. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110673487-012

  Andrea Ceccarelli And the reason for this renewed “conspiracy of silence”, as Ubaldo Pizzani defined it, 4 has to be found, in primis, in the problematic content of Lucretius’ poem, in its materialistic and atheistic philosophy that even an eclectic age like the Renaissance could not accept completely. It is significant, from this point of view, the warning to the readers about Lucretius’ deliramenta that an important publisher like Aldo Manuzio used as a premise in his second edition of the poem (Venice 1515): En igitur tibi Lucretius et poeta, et philosophus quidem maximus vel antiquorum iudicio, sed plenus mendaciorum. Nam multo aliter sentit da Deo, de creatione rerum, quam Plato, quam caeteri Academici, quippe qui Epicuream sectam secutus est. Quamobrem sunt qui ne legendum quidem illum censent Christianis hominibus, qui verum Deum adorant, colunt, venerantur. Sed quoniam veritas, quanto magis inquiritur, tanto apparet illustrior, et venerabilior, qualis est fides catholica, quam Iesus Christus Deus Optimus Maximus dum in humanis ageret, praedicavit hominibus, Lucretius, et qui Lucretio sunt simillimi, legendi quidem mihi videntur, sed ut falsi, et mendaces, ut certe sunt. Haec autem attigimus, ut siquis haec nostra legens, nesciat deliramenta Lucretii, id discat e nobis, licet ad te unum scribere videamur. Id enim est harum epistolarum genus, ut cum ad unum scribuntur, ad omnes, in quorum manus pervenerint, tanquam argumenta scribantur. 5

The second Aldine edition of Lucretius would have been the last one to be printed in Italy during the sixteenth century, before the reading of the poem was prohibited in grammar schools by the Florentine Synod in 1517 6 and that the text would literally disappear from the Italian printing presses, to reappear only in 1647, with the illustrated edition of the Florentine physician Giovanni Nardi. Outside of Italy, the initial reception to Lucretius was, in some ways, even worse, if we think that there would have been no fifteenth-century editions and that the first one would have been a French reprint of the volume with comments of Giovan Battista Pio, in 1514. In 1563, Lambin’s masterpiece finally appeared in Paris: it was the first really accurate edition of Lucretius from the philological point of view, the first one in which the pre-humanistic manuscript tradition was recovered, and the first which presented a variety of notes finally suitable to the philosophical content of the poem. After Lambin’s edition, the poet and philosopher Lucretius finally took off, reemerging not only as a model of poetic style, but  4 Pizzani 2001, 531. 5 Lucretius 1515, Iv–IIr. 6 The prohibition followed the doctrinal and disciplinary decrees promulgated in the papal bull Apostolici regiminis (1513); see Gilbert 1967, 978: Ut nullus de caetero ludi magister audeat in scholis suis exponere adolescentibus poemata aut quaecumque alia opera lasciva et impia, quale est Lucretii poema, ubi animae mortalitatem totis viribus ostendere nititur.

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above all as the primary source for the reconstruction of ancient atomism and as an authority for a large part of seventeenth-century science. 7 Starting from such premises, the recovery of an unpublished commentary to the De Rerum Natura becomes extremely meaningful and, perhaps, was meant to enrich a sixteenth-century edition of the Lucretian poem that was never completed. The author of such comment is the Neapolitan humanist and collector Gian Vincenzo Pinelli (1535–1601), who read and commented Lucretius during his years of study in Padua under the indications of the Venetian publisher Paolo Manuzio. 8 The comment was composed at the end of the 50s of the sixteenth century, therefore before the first edition by Lambin appeared, and is now preserved in the Incunable n. 699 of the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan and in the miscellaneous codex D 239 inf. of the same library that compiled a large part of Pinelli’s private collection and is known to be one of the most amazing European book collections of the sixteenth century. 9 What makes Pinelli’s work extremely interesting is the systematic attempt to recover the atomistic philosophical tradition, the only true great alternative to the Aristotelian philosophy, foremost in every university of that time and the fact that his activity was mostly developed in Padua, in the environment that saw the first affirmation of modern science – Pinelli was an authority in mathematics, medicine and Greek philosophy. It is not by chance that in the present article I will focus on Pinelli’s notes dedicated to the Lucretian dynamics and to other distinctive aspects of the atomistic physics, themes that will somehow mark the overcoming of Aristotelian physics and which will characterize the affirmation of mechanicism in the seventeenth century.

 Pinelli in Padua and His Commentary to Lucretius Gian Vincenzo Pinelli was born in Naples in 1535 and moved to Padua in 1558 to study law. As a learned scholar, he collected one of the best private libraries in Italy in the second half of the sixteenth century, putting his collections of books, manuscripts, mathematical and astronomical instruments, globes, maps, fossils

 7 See Beretta/Citti 2008. 8 See Ceccarelli 2015. 9 Nuovo 2007, Grendler 1980, Hobson 1971.

  Andrea Ceccarelli and even his private botanical garden, at the disposal of his guests and all talented students, as well as the professors of the local university. 10 Galileo Galilei was his most famous guest: Pinelli introduced him to the University of Padua, and the mathematician stayed in his house and used his library to prepare his first lectures. In addition to his friends and visitors, among his correpondents we can find Justus Lipsius, Claude Dupuy, Jacopo Corbinelli, Fulvio Orsini, Ulisse Aldrovandi, Carolus Clusius, Joachim Camerarius and Henry Savile. In Naples Pinelli was a pupil of the mathematician Giovanni Paolo Vernaleone (1525–1600?) and of the physician and botanist Bartolomeo Maranta (1514?–1571), and he maintained a lifelong passion for mathematics, in particular astronomy (he was involved in the very first spread of the Copernican theory in Italy), 11 but actually he was interested in philosophy and Greek science in general. Pinelli never published his works, even though he left thousands of letters, hundreds of annotated manuscripts and books, and many other notebooks with a copious variety of observations. After his death in 1601, his library was acquired by Cardinal Federico Borromeo (1564–1631) for the Ambrosiana Library in Milan, and among the incunables which belonged to him, there is the copy of the De Rerum Natura which I am going to describe. Pinelli’s commentary on Lucretius was produced in 1559/1560 – before the first critical edition of De Rerum Natura was published by Denys Lambin in 1563 – in collaboration with the Hungarian bishop Andreas Dudith (1533–1589) and the Spanish humanist Pedro Núñez Vela (d. 1580). On the incunable of the Ambrosiana there are around forty marginal notes in the handwriting of Dudith, while from two epistles by Paolo Manuzio – who was supervising the work of the three scholars on Lucretius – we know that Pinelli put up Pedro Núñez in that biennium (1559–1560) and that the Spaniard was studying the poem. Concerning Dudith, we have a lot of information about the Hungarian’s sojourn in Padua and his friendship with Pinelli, but nothing was known relating to this specific philological work on the De Rerum Natura. Dudith was in Italy between 1558 and 1560 (Venice and Padua), before his election as bishop of Tina (Dalmatia). In 1562–63 he served as representative of the Hungarian clergy to the council of Trent, but in 1567 his marriage to a Polish noblewoman caused the official condemnation by the Roman Church and his resignation from the bishopric. From his retirement in Breslau (1579–89) he continued to collect and exchange manuscripts also with Pinelli, as well as supporting mathematical and astronomical studies with his learned patronage of Henry and Thomas Savile, Johannes  10 Gualdo 1607. 11 See Bucciantini 2003.

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Praetorius, Thaddaeus Hagecius, Paul Wittich and others. Lucretius remained one of his favorite authors, so that he chose as his personal motto the Epicurean “lathe biosas” (live in obscurity). 12 We know much less about the Spanish humanist Pedro Núñez Vela, who arrived in Padua in 1558–59, after a sojourn in Rome, to become a ‘family’ guest (“familiare”) of Pinelli until he left Italy to go to Geneva and then on to Lausanne, where he received the professorship of Greek at the local university. In his Dialecticae libri tres (Basle 1570), he was reported to have left some Commentaries to Lucretius incomplete, work that he had presumably composed during his stay in Italy; and indeed Núñez is mentioned by Pinelli in his own notes to the De Rerum Natura. 13 In his work on Lucretius, Pinelli provided a first impressive account of Greek and Roman Epicurean sources, including texts extracted from Thucydides, Diogenes Laertius, Plutarch, Cicero, Aristotle for the earliest atomism, and even quoting the lyrics of Anacreon and Mimnermus, or Cleomedes’ Meteora and the Hippocratic Peri physón. His notes are written both in Latin and Italian, with very large quotations in ancient Greek: the marginal notes on the printed pages consist in particular of philological emendations to the text, with the record of different lections taken from other editions of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura (Pinelli possessed twelve different editions of the poem). 14 On the inserted pages there are instead large descriptive notes in which Pinelli explains the philosophical content of the poem. I want to examine a few of the exegetical notes by Pinelli to clarify his large recovery of the sources of ancient atomism.

 Pinelli’s Notes About the Vacuum Pinelli didn’t complete his work; indeed, even if he divided the whole text in paragraphs, the first two books of the poem on nature are the only ones entirely annotated by the humanist. Therefore, the largest part of his annotations deals with the Epicurean physics, and his notes on the concepts of vacuum and clinamen are of great interest.

 12 See Costil 1935, 80–97. 13 See Ceccarelli 2015, 244–249. 14 See the table in Ceccarelli 2015, 239–240.

  Andrea Ceccarelli One of the decisive points of atomistic physics is the concept of inane (κενόν). Pinelli was aware of the two different meanings related to the term inane in Lucretius and in the Epicurean school. Thus, describing verses 419–429 of the first book, he refers to the authority of Epicurus and, more interestingly, to Cleomedes, the Greek astronomer of the II century AD: Sin qui ha monstrato, che nihil ex nihilo et nil in nihilum. primo d’onde se ne cavava, che v’erano li corpi primi, et questi che noi vedemo id est misti. 2.° che v’è ancora l’inane tanto dentro de li corpi che noi credemo solidi quanto tra corpo e corpo, perche altramenti non si moverebbero. qui tandem conclude, che dice che tutta la soma dell’universo, o sono corpi, quod patet sensu, o vero vacuo, quod probatum est esse. è ben da notare che si ritrovano due vacui l’uno ch’è l’inane vacuo, et l’altro ch’è lo διάστημα et però quanto prova di sopra essere l’inane si deve intendere del voto vacuo, il che credo et per l’inconveniente che ne fa nascere perche li corpi non saprebbero dove andare, et per quel verso che dice nam vacuum tunc fit quod non fuit ante [1.393]. Qui poi quando conclude, et parla del vacuo si intende di tutti due, il che appare dale medesime parole di Lucretio quando dice inane, haec in quo sita sunt, et qua diversa moventur [1.420–421]. Dove haec in quo sita sunt s’intende l’inane διάστημα. 2.° si mostra questo medesimo piu di sotto quando dice, si nullum foret [1.427] id est se non fossero i due inani detti, ne seguirebbe etc. Hanc vacui divisionem duplicem expresse habemus apud Cleomedem, et Epicurum quando ait ὅπου ἦν οὐδὲ. 15

Pinelli writes: “Absolute vacuum exists both inside bodies that we believe solid and between body and body, because otherwise they could not move”. But “it’s good to note” that alongside the absolute vacuum, “we have to consider that the term inane in Lucretius also means diastema, or locus, the space occupied by a body”. The scholar was aware of the strict interpretation of Epicurus’ doctrine by Lucretius: Lucr., 1.419–429: omnis ut est igitur per se, natura duabus constitit in rebus; nam corpora sunt et inane, haec in quo sita sunt et qua diversa moventur. corpus enim per se communis dedicat essesensus; cui nisi prima fides fundata valebit, haud erit occultis de rebus quo referentes confirmare animi quicquam ratione queamus. tum porro locus ac spatium, quod inane vocamus, si nullum foret, haud usquam sita corpora possent esse neque omnino quoquam diversa meare; id quod iam supera tibi paulo ostendimus ante.

 15 BAM, Inc. 699, 12; Epicur., Ep. Hrdt., 40, 10.

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Epicur., Ep. Hrdt., 39–40: Ἀλλὰ μὴν καὶ τὸ πᾶν ἐστι 〈σώματα καὶ τόπος〉: σώματα μὲν γὰρ ὡς ἔστιν, αὐτὴ ἡ αἴσθησις ἐπὶ πάντων μαρτυρεῖ, καθ᾽ ἣν ἀναγκαῖον τὸ ἄδηλον τῷ λογισμῷ τεκμαίρεσθαι, ὥσπερ προεῖπον. τόπος δὲ εἰ μὴ ἦν, ὃν κενὸν καὶ χώραν καὶ ἀναφῆ φύσιν ὀνομάζομεν, οὐκ ἂν εἶχε τὰ σώματα ὅπου ἦν οὐδὲ δι᾽ οὗ ἐκινεῖτο, καθάπερ φαίνεται κινούμενα.

According to Epicurus there are different terms to indicate void or, better, the intangible nature (ἀναφὴς φύσις): κενόν (void/vacuum), τόπος (place), and χώρα (space), terms which, from the semantic point of view, mean three different physical conditions, respectively linked to the absence, the presence, and the movement of bodies through the ἀναφὴς φύσις; on the other side Pinelli knows that vacuum in Epicureanism was actually conceived with two different meanings (locus ac spatium / usquam ... quoquam): vacuum meant as a place filled by a body (ὅπου, διάστημα), or vice versa as ‘absolute emptiness’, empty space that atoms and bodies can go through or occupy and that make the local movement possible. 16 Indeed, the use of διάστημα by Pinelli is quite significant. The term did not appear in the passage of Epicurus mentioned above, and was used by the Master to indicate a distance of space, 17 or the interval between worlds, “a mostly empty place, but not an absolutely vast and empty place.” 18 The term was used with the same meaning by Cleomedes, whose theories largely depended on those of Posidonius or of the Stoic school, and who asserted the real existence of the vacuum, although only outside of a spherical and finite cosmos: Aliquam itaque inanis substantiam esse necesse est. Est sane eius opinatio simplicissima, cum sit corporis et tactus expers, neque figuram habens, neque figurati, nec patientis quicquam, neque facientis, sed simpliciter corpus excipientis, neque existentis. Tale nimirum est inane. In mundo autem prorsus non esse, ex eis quae apparent licet nobis perspicere. 19

And afterwards he immediately added: Nos ergo latere non debet vas corporis duobus dici modis: uno cum corpus habet a quo imbuitur, altero quod potest corpus excipere. […] Et illud quoque ab eadem dicitur factione [Ari-

 16 Sedley 1982, 184 ff. 17 See Epicur., Ep. Pyth., 91, 110; Cleomedes 1891, ad indicem. 18 See Epicur., Ep. Pyth., 89: “ὃ λέγονεν μεταξὺ κόσμων διάστημα, ἐν πολυκένῳ τόπῳ καὶ οὐκ ἐν μεγάλῳ εἰλικρινεῖ καὶ κενῷ”. 19 Cleomedes, 1547, 4r–v.

  Andrea Ceccarelli stotelians]: quod si extra mundum sit inane, fusa per ipsum essentia in infinitum dispargeretur, atque dispesceretur. Cui occurrimus, ne id quidem posse pati, habitum siquidem habet, qui ipsam continet atque agglutinat, ac ipsam comprehendens inane facit nihil. 20

Pinelli therefore used the term διάστημα with the Aristotelian meaning of “extension”, space dimension, or place or space occupied by a body, and not with the Epicurean one. 21 The reference to Cleomedes’ Meteora is intended only to further clarify the double concept of emptiness defended in the Epicurean school: “first, as what contains the body and is filled; second, as what can receive the body.” On the other hand, the “conscious” use of Cleomedes by Pinelli – the fact that he cited Cleomedes without precise references to the text could indicate a certain degree of familiarity with the content of his work – should be seen in light of what his profound knowledge of Greek astronomy was: Pinelli was a tireless collector of manuscripts and mathematical prints, and among the manuscripts of the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan, there are at least three codices of Cleomedes’ Meteora that belonged to him, proving that rarely his textual references are ‘accidental’. 22

 Pinelli’s Notes About the Clinamen There are other quotations of great interest in Pinelli’s notes in the first part of the second book, where Lucretius examines the Epicurean dynamics. One of the main aporias of atomistic physics has always been identified in the natural motion downward of atoms in an infinite universe which could not have, formally, an upper point, nor a lower point, nor a center – pondera, quantum in se est, cum deorsum cuncta ferantur (2.190); corpora cum deorsum rectum per inane feruntur/ ponderibus propriis (2.217–218). Pinelli shows this objection to Epicurean physics by quoting a Plutarch’s passage:

 20 Cleomedes, 1547, 4v–5r. 21 See Arist., Phys. 4.209a 4. 22 See Todd 1990: Cleomedes Mss today in the Ambrosiana library which belonged to Pinelli are the D 54 sup. (XIII cent.), G 62 sup. (XIV cent.), Z 130 sup. (XV cent.) and presumably the A 92 sup. and C 108 sup. (both XV–XVI cent.).

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Hanc opinionem (principia omnia deorsum ferri) Epicuri sic Plutarcus in de defectu oraculorum Ἐπίκουρος κινοῦντι τὰς ἀτόμους ἁπάσας εἰς τοὺς ὑπὸ πόδας τόπους ὥςπερ [ἢ τοῦ κενοῦ πόδας ἔχοντος ἢ τῆς ἀπειρίας ἐν αὑτῇ κάτω τι καὶ ἄνω διανοῆσαι διδούσης.] 23

Plutarch’s passage was quoted in order to explain verses 157–161 of Book 2, where, actually, Lucretius doesn’t talk of the theme of downward atomic motion, but in general of the “fast motion” of primordia rerum in the void: Videntur ex Epicuro apud Laërtium καὶ μὴν καὶ ἡ διὰ τοῦ κενοῦ φορὰ κατὰ μηδεμίαν ἀπάντησιν τῶν ἀντικοψάντων γινομένη πᾶν μῆκος περιληπτὸν ἐν ἀπερινοήτῳ χρόνῳ συντελεῖ. 24 unum)[in quem coepere locum conixa feruntur, 160] his verbis multum lucis affert ille versus infra scriptus p[articula] 12 imbris uti guttae caderent per inane profundum [222]. itaque puto non arbitrari Lucretium omnia principia simul in unum locum sed singularia principia in singularia sua loca ferri. Hanc opinionem (principia omnia deorsum ferri) Epicuri sic Plutarcus in de defectu oraculorum Ἐπίκουρος κινοῦντι τὰς ἀτόμους […] 25

Perhaps Pinelli wants to overcome the difficulty attributing to atoms in the vacuum an unceasing chaotic motion caused by the combination of gravitational moving downwards, minimal random inclinations from the perpendicular and consequent bumps between the individual particles, which could not be directed, then, to a unique point of the universe – he writes: itaque puto non arbitrari Lucretium omnia principia simul in unum locum sed singularia principia in singularia sua loca ferri. In his description of the Epicurean dynamics, Pinelli goes on exposing the main theory of the clinamen. He recognizes three different causes of the atomic motion according to Lucretius: 1. the pondus, that perpendicularly drags down every single atom (atoms and atomic compounds); 2. the clinamen, representing that imperceptible swerve in the perpendicular motion of the atoms which causes first impacts between them (in the Epicurean physics all particles fall at the same speed in the empty space); 3. ictus (or plagae) that continually modify the direction of atomic movement (and which generate atomic aggregates or break down the compounds). Pinelli’s main source to reconstruct the Epicurean doctrine of the ‘minimum swerve’ in the atomic fall motion is Cicero (De fato, 18–23, De finibus bonorum et malorum, 1.18–20). The scholar also quotes the passage of Aetius in the pseudoPlutarch (De placitis philosophorum, 1.12, 3) with the Greek term παρἐγκλισις, a

 23 BAM, Inc. 699, 35; see Plut., de Def. orac. 425d (= Usener fr. 299). 24 Epicur., Ep. Hrdt., 46. 25 BAM, Inc. 699, 35.

  Andrea Ceccarelli term that never appears in the writings of Epicurus that we find in Diogenes Laertius: plagas) [2.285] tres atomis motus Plutarcho autoritate tradit Epicurus κατὰ στάθμην παρἐγκλισιν καὶ πληγὴν. p.° moventur deorsum per inane profundum. 2° propter adhaesionem et ut se attingant ut p[articula] 12asupra. 3° propter plagas ipsorum corporum quae sunt solida. 26

Pinelli’s statement for the second kind of atomic movement (propter adhaesionem et ut se attingant), is derived from the Cicero account of the swerve in the De finibus. 27 In the paragraph 12 (lines 217–219, book 2: corpora cum deorsum rectum per inane feruntur/ ponderibus propriis, incerto tempore ferme/ incertisque locis spatio depellere paulum) Pinelli had already examined the clinamen, clarifying, through the use of Cicero, an important evolution of Epicurean atomism with respect to the ancient one: Cum dixerit corpora prima deorsum ferri, nunc non recta ferri ait sed declinare. hoc argumentum nam si non sit hoc nihil potest attingi, ex hoc nihil generaretur, at videmus multa generari ergo declinant. ἐλάχιστον Cicero et perpaulum in de fato Epicuri sententia) hic ostendit declinare infra paulum. 28 Lucretius reprehendit opinionem Democriti qui nolebat atomos declinare ut apparet ex Cicerone de fato, sed omnia gigni propter gravitatem et levitatem corporum, sed reprehendit nam celeritas est propter quod aliquod cedit quod provenit ex tactu sed inanis non cedit ergo ἰσοταχῶς corpora prima movere per inane. 29

The bumps between the atoms cannot be caused by the fall of the corpuscles on one another because of their different weights, as according to Democritus: the fall rate of atoms and atomic compounds is not determined by their mass but by

 26 BAM, Inc. 699, 39; See Aetius, 1.12, 5 (Diels, Doxographi Graeci, 311a = Ps. Plut., Plac. 1.12, 3; Usener fr. 280): “κινεῖσθαι δὲ τὰ ἄτομα ποτὲ μὲν κατὰ στάθμην ποτὲ δὲ κατὰ παρέγκλισιν, τὰ δ᾽ ἄνω κινούμενα κατὰ πληγὴν καὶ ᾶποπαλμόν”. 27 See Cic., Fin. 1.19: declinare dixit atomum perpaulum, quo nihil posset fieri minus; ita effici complexiones et copulationes et adhaesiones atomorum inter se, ex quo efficeretur mundus omnesque partes mundi, quaeque in eo essent. (ed. Schiche 1915). 28 BAM, Inc. 699, 37; see Cic., Fat. 22: Sed Epicurus declinatione atomi vitari necessitatem fati putat. Itaque tertius quidam motus oritur extra pondus et plagam, cum declinat atomus intervallo minimo (id appellat ἐλάχιστον). (ed. Giomini 1975). 29 BAM, Inc. 699, 37 (see Lucr. 2.225–250). On the atomic ἰσοτάχεια, see Epicur., Ep. Hrdt., 43 and 61–62.

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matter resistance to be crossed, and in vacuum therefore, each atom or compound must proceed at the same speed (that is the ἰσοτάχεια). This argument – 2.225–242: omnia quapropter debent for inane quietum / aeque ponderibus not aequis concitet irri (2.238–239); Epicur. Ep. Hrdt., 61 – was one of the main a priori arguments of Epicurean tradition, and Pinelli didn’t ignore the fact that it was opposed to the Aristotelian thesis that speed of bodies had to be proportional to their weight, or to the volume in compound bodies of the same matter. Pinelli writes: celeritas est propter quod aliquod cedit quod provenit ex tactu sed inanis non cedit ergo ἰσοταχῶς corpora prima movere per inane.

 Other Themes of the Atomistic Tradition in Pinelli’s Commentary The subject of the random deviation of atoms (clinamen) was strictly linked to the theme of man’s free will and the same Pinelli, under the patronage of Cicero, underlined the fact, by pointing out how tight was the link between physics and morality in the Epicurean system: Denique in integrum) [251] atomos declinare ita docet, quia multa fiant nostra voluntate, nulla fati necessitate cogente, sed haec melius infra in versu Pondus enim prohibet in integrum [288]. [254] motum illum quo corpora deorsum feruntur fatum vocat, quoniam ille motus efficit ut aliqua necessario fiant ut infra pondus enim prohibet in integrum. Praeterea Democritus omnia necessitate fieri aiebat. Cicero de fato Democritus autor [sic] atomorum accipere maluit … 30

Pinelli then added the De natura deorum to the Ciceronian texts used to describe how a random and indeterminable atomic deviation (incerto tempore ferme/ incertisque locis spatio, 2.218–219; nec regione loci certa nec tempore certo, 2.293) was able to break the rigid necessity of nature: Sed ne res ipsa necessum 31) [289] hoc modo Epicurus conabatur effugere necessitatem fati. Cicero de natura deorum. Epicurus cum videret si atomi ferrentur in locum inferiorem …

 30 BAM, Inc. 699, 38; Cf. Cic., Fat. 23: Id Democritus auctor atomorum accipere maluit, necessitate omnia fieri, quam a corporibus individuis naturales motus avellere. 31 Lucr. 2.289–290: … sed ne mens ipsa necessum/ intestinum habeat … (mens is a Lambin’s emendation).

  Andrea Ceccarelli ἕως τοῦ non posse defendere. 32 et de fato[:] sed Epicurus declinatione atomi vitari necessitatem … ἕως τοῦ naturalis motus avellere. 33 Etiam de fato. nec cum haec ita sint est causa cur Epicurus fatum extimescat … ἕως τοῦ necessitate fati devinciunt. 34

An interesting aspect of Pinelli’s comment can still be found in the veiled criticism used to emphasize Lucretius’ habit of not fully respecting the logical rigor of argumentations, often joining statements whose causal connection was not clear. Indeed, after leaving the theory of atomic motion, and after starting to discuss the variety of atomic shapes (2.333–477), Pinelli judged the a priori reasoning in book 2.338–341, as not rigorous: non est forte argumentum hoc sed vult dicere. hoc non est ad mirum propositum vel θέσις. 35

Dealing with the endless number of atoms (2.522–580), Pinelli repeated his criticism of the Lucretian habit to introduce previously unproved statements. Thus, a priori, Lucretius affirmed that the number of atoms were necessarily infinite, because of the finiteness of their different shapes (2.525–527) and the constant and eternal permanence of the total amount of the things existing in the universe (corpuscola materiai/ ex infinito summam rerum usque tenere, 2.529–530). At this point, according to Pinelli, Lucretius added, without demonstration, that the universe was conserved because of the continuous collisions among the atoms were repeated everywhere (undique protelo plagarum continuato, 2.531): undique [protelo plagarum continuato, 531] variis ex partibus propulsatione ictuum continuata, et hoc addit Lucretius non tamen probaturus, coniungere enim solet enunciata quaedam quae non probat. Sic in primo 63. cum ait. corpora perpetuo volitare invicta per aevum [2.952], non proferet enim volitare. 36

Pinelli’s comment also naturally focused on one of the key topics of the atomistic conception of matter: the secondary qualities of the objects. Lucretius, after having dealt in book 1 and book 2 with the topics related to ‘primary qualities’ attributable to atoms, the only ones to be their coniuncta (1.449), dimension, shape and weight – of the atoms’ dimension in the doctrine of minimae partes (1.599–634, 749–52 and 2.481–499); of the shape or geometric  32 See Cic., N.D. 1.69–70. 33 See Cic., Fat. 22–23. 34 BAM, Inc. 699, 39; see Cic., Fat. 18–20. 35 BAM, Inc. 699, 40 (referred to book 2.338–341: Nec mirum; nam cum sit eorum copia tanta/ ut neque finis, uti docui, neque summa sit ulla,/ debent nimirum non omnibus omnia prorsum/ esse pari filo similique adfecta figura). 36 BAM, Inc. 699, 45.

Reading Lucretius in Padua  

figure of the atoms as the origin of observable differences in the perception of compounds (2.333–729); of weight as a cause of the natural downward motion of the primordia rerum (2.184–215) – he addressed the theme of “secondary qualities” (2.730–1022), that are all those shifting properties (eventa) of the material compounds that we perceive through the senses and which are the result of the combination, the number, the position, the shape and, above all, the motion of the atoms, which therefore remain themselves deprived of qualities like color, taste, sound, smell, but also are deprived of heat and cold, and finally sensitivity itself. 37 Color, like other secondary qualities, is not attributable to raw material (primordia rerum), but is determined by the variety of atoms’ shapes and atoms’ positions in the compounds: [730–756] docet primordia rerum non esse colore praedita. prima ratio. omnia colore praedita mutantur at principia non mutantur ergo non sunt colore praedita. [757–775] colores in rebus sunt a varietate formarum atomorum. 38

Pinelli thus allowed himself to have a very positive judgment (pulcherrimi versus et lucidissimi 39) while pointing out for their beauty and clarity the lines 739–747: In quae corpora si nullus tibi forte videtur posse animi iniectus fieri, procul avius erras. Nam cum caecigeni, solis qui lumina numquam dispexere, tamen cognoscant corpora tactu ex ineunte aevo nullo coniuncta colore, scire licet nostrae quoque menti corpora posse vorti in notitiam nullo circum lita fuco. Denique nos ipsi caecis quaecumque tenebris tangimus, haud ullo sentimus tincta colore.

740

745

Our knowledge of corporeal realities precedes that of the sensible qualities that we commonly attribute to them. Thus the blind or people in the dark can have knowledge of an object perceiving its form with touch (741–747), even if they cannot see its color, which is only seen in presence of the light. The atoms, vice versa, do not depend on the light for their existence and therefore the color cannot be their coniunctum:

 37 BAM, Inc. 699, 54: docet principia rerum non habere sensum. 38 BAM, Inc. 699, 51. 39 BAM, Inc. 699, 51.

  Andrea Ceccarelli [795–809] altera ratio expertia colorum esse principia) colores non possunt esse sine luce, at principia possunt esse sine luce, ergo principia possunt esse sine colore. 40

I conclude this partial analysis of Pinelli’s notes on the scientific and philosophical content of the De Rerum Natura, by mentioning an interesting source that is associated to the atomistic and epicurean tradition by the Neapolitan humanist. Specifically it is the De flatibus (Περὶ φυσῶν, “On winds”) of the Corpus hippocraticum that is mentioned both in relation to the steps of book 6 dedicated to earthquakes (6.535 ff.), and in an interesting comparison with one of the hypotheses linked to the astral movements presented by Lucretius in book 5.637–649: dice Lucr. che aër est omnibus rebus circundatus appositusque et non pare fuora di proposito dire come hippocrate prova l’aria essere anco nel mare così nel libro de flatibus ἅπον γἀρ τὸ μεταξὸ γής in integrum. 41 […] ma non ogni cosa è ripiena d'aria perche dove et l’acqua et il fuogo. et benche terram et aquam non a spiritu agitari videmus. agit. quidem ea non a cong.to et insito sed mentit. et sic ab hanc cum terrae motus fieri Arist.s et democr. existimarunt. ibidem, Hipp. ἀλλὰ μηὺ ἁλίου καὶ σελύντω καὶ ἄσταν ὁδὸς. 42

Pinelli’s note can be read on the additional sheets of the incunable (ms D 239 inf.) and it is interesting that the Hippocrates Περὶ φυσῶν is recalled: we do not know if Pinelli has followed an ancient tradition that indicated Hippocrates to be a follower of Democritus, and unfortunately, Pinelli’s notes are missing in the passages of book 6 dedicated to the plague of Athens, where the influence of Hippocratic medicine is more evident, but we are aware of how Pinelli’s fellow Girolamo Mercuriale, professor of theoretical medicine at the University of Padua, just a decade after the unpublished work on the De Rerum Natura by Pinelli, again associated the two names of Hippocrates and Lucretius in his Variarum lectionum libri (Padua 1570). Thus, in one of his philological-medical lessons, Mercuriale quoted the whole passage of the De Rerum Natura (6.1090–1137) in which Lucretius explained the cause of the pestilential contagions, with the action of “seeds” of the disease that, transported by air, brought sickness and death among men and the multitudes of animals. The verses of the Latin poet, placed next to the Hippocratic De flatibus, led the scholar to affirm that without any doubt Lucretius ex Hippocratis libro ea omnia excerpsisse, et quae breviter hic docentur, ibi fusius et luculentius declarasse videatur:  40 BAM, Inc. 699, 52. 41 See Hippocrates, De flatibus (ed. Jouanna 1988): 3.2–3 (106–107). 42 Adnotationes in Lucretium: BAM, ms D 239 inf., 84r.

Reading Lucretius in Padua  

Si igitur quis attento animo Lucretiana Hippocraticis conferat, sane cognoscet latinum scriptorem non modo sententiam atque principia a Graeco accepisse, immo et saepe verba verbis alterius correspondere perspicuo animadvertet: quod ego magis miror, quoniam cum Epicurus, et Democritus cuius discipulus fuit Hippocrates, eandem opinionem tenuerint, facile dici posset Lucretium potius illos, quam Hippocratem secutum esse. Ut vero cumque sit manifeste patet pestis originem apud illos omnes pene eandem haberi, atque in hoc duntaxat varietatem aliquam apparere, quod Democritus atomos, Hippocrates μιάσματα, Lucretius Epicurum imitatus semina appellare maluerit. 43

Mercuriale thought Hippocrates was a follower of Democritus – perhaps believing the apocryphal writings of the Corpus Hippocraticum – while the Lucretian seeds (semina) came to assume a value almost identical to that attributed to Hippocratic miasmata. The reference to the philological work of Mercuriale and its recovery of the atomistic medical tradition, is useful to indicate how much lively interest there was in Padua in the second half of the sixteenth century in the philosophical and scientific content of the De Rerum Natura of Lucretius and, more generally, in the atomistic tradition tout court, in a perspective that is perhaps not yet consciously anti-Aristotelic – or anti-Galenic, specifically as regards medical knowledge – but certainly aimed at enriching scientific heritage and philosophical knowledge that the sixteenth-century Aristotelianism could no longer exhaust. Of this recovery and of this profound interest in atomism and its most important Latin source, Lucretius, Gian Vincenzo Pinelli must be considered, if not an initiator, one of its most significant interpreters.

References Beretta, Marco/Citti, Francesco (2008), Lucrezio. La natura e la scienza, Florence. Brown, Alison (2010), The Return of Lucretius to Renaissance Florence, Cambridge/London. Bucciantini, Massimo (2003), Galileo e Keplero: filosofia, cosmologia e teologia nell’Età della Controriforma, Turin. Ceccarelli, Andrea (2015), “Un inedito commento rinascimentale a Lucrezio: Gian Vincenzo Pinelli, Pedro Núñez Vela e Andreas Dudith lettori del De rerum natura a Padova”, in: Giornale critico della filosofia italiana, 94 [96], 2, 233–263. Cleomedes (1547), Circularis inspectionis meteororum libri duo. Giorgio Valla Placentino interprete, Parisiis, Apud Thomam Richardum. Cleomedes (1891), Motu circulari corporum caelestium libri duo, ed. by Hermann Ziegler, Leipzig.

 43 Mercuriale 1570, 79r.

  Andrea Ceccarelli Costil, Pierre (1935), André Dudith, humaniste hongrois, 1533–1589. Sa vie, son oeuvre et ses manuscrits grecs, Paris. Del Lucchese, Filippo/Morfino, Vittorio/Mormino, Gianfranco (2011), Lucrezio e la modernità. I secoli XV–XVII, Naples. Gambino Longo, Susanna (2004), Savoir de la nature et poésie des choses. Lucrèce et Épicure à la Renaissance italienne, Paris. Gilbert, Felix (1967) “Cristianesimo, Umanesimo e la bolla Apostolici Regiminis del 1513”, in: Rivista storica italiana 79, 976–990. Gillespie, Stuart/Hardie, Philip (eds.) (2007), The Cambridge Companion to Lucretius, Cambridge. Giomini, Remo (ed.) (1975), M. Tulli Ciceronis Scripta… De divinatione, De fato, Timaeus, Leipzig. Greenblatt, Stephen (2011), The Swerve: How the Renaissance Began, London. Grendler, Marcella (1980), “A Greek Collection in Padua: the Library of Gian Vincenzo Pinelli (1535–1601)”, in: Renaissance Quarterly XXXIII, 386–416. Gualdo, Paolo (1607), Vita Ioannis Vincentii Pinelli, Patricii Genuensis. In qua studiosis bonarum artium, proponitur typus viri probi et eruditi, Augustae Vindelicorum, ad Insigne Pinus (excudit Christophorus Mangus) Hardie, Philip (2009), Lucretian receptions: history, the sublime, knowledge, Cambridge. Hippocrates (1988), De vents, De l’art, ed. by Jacques Jouanna, Paris. Hobson, Anthony (1971), “A Sale by Candle in 1608”, in: The Bibliographical Society, 215–233. Lucrèce (2010), La renaissance de Lucrèce, Cahiers V.L. Saulnier 27, Paris. Lucretius (1515), Venetiis, in aedibus Aldi, et Andreae soceri. Mercuriale, Girolamo (1570), Variarum lectionum libri quatuor, Venetiis, Gratiosus Perchacinus excudebat sumptibus Pauli et Antonii Meieti frat. librarii Patauini. Norbrook, David/Harrison, Stephen/Hardie, Philip (2016), Lucretius and the Early Modern, Oxford. Nuovo, Angela (2007), The Creation and Dispersal of the Library of Gian Vincenzo Pinelli, in Giles Mandelbrote (ed.), Books on the Move: tracking copies through collections and the book trade, New Castle (Delaware)/London (UK), 39–67 Paladini, Mariantonietta (2011), Lucrezio e l’epicureismo tra Riforma e Controriforma, Naples. Palmer, Ada (2014), Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance, Cambridge/London. Passannante, Gerard (2011), The Lucretian Renaissance: philology and the afterlife of tradition, Chicago/London. Pizzani, Ubaldo (2001), Lucrezio nell'Umanesimo italiano e nei giudizi dei primi commentatori d'Oltralpe, in: Luisa Rotondi Secchi Tarugi (ed.), Rapporti e scambi tra Umanesimo italiano ed Umanesimo europeo. “L’Europa è uno stato d’animo”, Milan, 515–538. Prosperi, Valentina (2004), «Di soavi licor gli orli del vaso». La fortuna di Lucrezio dall’Umanesimo alla Controriforma, Turin. Sedley, David (1982), “Two conceptions of vacuum”, in: Phronesis 27, 175–193. Todd, Robert (ed.) (1990), Cleomedis Caelestia (Meteora), Leipzig.

Elena Nicoli

Atoms, Elements, Seeds. A Renaissance Interpreter of Lucretius’ Atomism Abstract: When commenting on De Rerum Natura, Lucretius’ sixteenth-century editors were confronted with some rather controversial ideas, such as the theory according to which the universe is ultimately made out of atoms. Given that physical atomism had an unsavoury reputation since the days of the Church Fathers, the tendency of many Renaissance commentators was to harmonize, and sometimes to conflate, Lucretius’ matter theory with some other more accepted doctrines, which could be as different as Empedocles’ four-element theory, Plato’s geometric atomism, or Aristotle’s prime matter. This strategy is very conspicuous in the first Renaissance commentary on Lucretius, written by Johannes Baptista Pius (1470–1542?) and published in Bologna in 1511. With its extensive exegesis, Pius’ commentary constitutes a paramount illustration of how early sixteenthcentury scholars accounted for Lucretius’ (natural) philosophy. By following the intricate network of references and citations put forward by Pius, I shall show in this paper how Lucretius’ scientific theories, and especially atomism, were read, interpreted, and injected back into the philosophical discourse after the rediscovery of his poem. Keywords: Renaissance, Lurcretian commentaries, atomism, vitalism, four elements

According to a rather widespread account, Lucretius was in many ways an author clearly ahead of his time, a philosopher who anticipated and even made possible certain intellectual developments that one commonly associates with the idea of modernity. 1 In keeping with this narrative, some scholars tend to depict the rediscovery of his poem in the Renaissance as a revolutionary event, which even promoted the so-called revival of atomism, a phenomenon which has long been considered a driving force of the scientific revolution. Despite this very common assumption, it is still not quite straightforward to what extent Lucretius’ natural

 1 See Farrell 2016. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110673487-013

  Elena Nicoli philosophy had an impact on Renaissance and early-modern thought, and especially on the so-called revival of atomism in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 2 There are, of course, many possible ways to tackle this issue and assess how Lucretius’ philosophy indeed affected Renaissance and early-modern (scientific) thought. A preliminary and essential step in this enquiry should involve considering the earliest Renaissance commentaries on De Rerum Natura, in order to find out how Lucretius’ natural philosophy was read and understood by those scholars who first had his text in hands after its rediscovery. In this contribution, I shall therefore examine the earliest Renaissance commentary on De Rerum Natura, that of Johannes Baptista Pius (Giovan Battista Pio, ca. 1470–1542), written in 1511. This case study is in fact fairly representative of the main tendencies one can find in the Renaissance exegetical works on Lucretius with respect to the interpretation of his natural philosophy. More specifically, I shall analyse some passages in which Pius comments on Lucretius’ matter theory, in order to evaluate how he tackled the issue of atomism in De Rerum Natura. This investigation will eventually contribute to the assessment of the impact of Lucretius’ natural philosophy on Renaissance thought.

 Pius, “a hog of Epicurus’ herd”? We know very little about Pius’ life: he was probably born in Bologna, where he was a pupil of Filippo Beroaldo the Elder and studied natural philosophy under the guidance of Alessandro Achillini. He later became a university professor: he taught rhetoric and poetry in Milan, Bologna, and Rome. He also published several editions of classical authors, such as Plautus and, of course, Lucretius. 3 At the time when Pius wrote his commentary, Lucretius’ text was probably already widely circulating in the Bolognese milieu. Already in 1505, Pius’ teacher, Filippo Beroaldo the Elder, in his Opusculum de terrae motu et pestilentia, had referred to Lucretius several times, showing a certain familiarity with the poem. Unquestionably, Pius already knew Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura in 1501, when he wrote his eight-folio Praelectio in Titum Lucretium et Svetonium Tranquillum, which is probably the written text of a lecture he gave in Bologna. Although in

 2 On this topic see Beretta 2003. 3 Information about Pius’ biography can be found in Fantuzzi 1789; Del Nero 1981; Conti 2015. In general, about Pius’ commentary, see Raimondi 1972.

Atoms, Elements, Seeds. A Renaissance Interpreter of Lucretius’ Atomism  

the praelectio there is only one explicit reference to Lucretius, positively described as “the first among the poets”, this text proves Pius’ precocious interest in his poem. 4 Even though the reason that led Pius to compose a voluminous commentary on Lucretius is not explicitly stated anywhere in the text or in the paratexts, it is still possible to collect information from external sources; some episodes concerning Pius’ life provide in fact hints about the motivation that pushed him to undertake this project. First, Pius’ edition of Plautus, which had been printed in Milan in 1500, had been systematically and ruthlessly criticized by the grammarian Giovan Francesco Boccardo, called Pylades, whose own edition of the same author was published posthumously in 1506. After this blistering attack, Pius had to regain credibility and the consensus eruditorum, so to speak, and the most effective way to do so was to undertake an ambitious project, such as the first commentary on Lucretius. 5 Secondly, Leonardo Marso, who was Pius’ colleague at the Sapienza and wrote his funeral oration around 1542–3, presents the commentator as a sympathizer of Epicureanism. But he [sc. Pius], not some half-educated man, was deeply engaged with the opinion of the stupid Epicureans [and yet] was very studious of the Christian religion, more than anybody would believe. He fought with heretics with all his might, , and not with the incenses of the ancients, but, having confessed his faults to the priest with living voice, each year he strove strenuously to purify his soul. 6

Marso does not specify to what extent Pius was committed to Epicureanism, since his main goal was to show that, even so, he was a good Christian, who eventually confessed his faults and repented. However, if Marso’s testimony can be accepted for a fact, it is plausible to suppose that, among other reasons, Pius might have written his commentary on De Rerum Natura out of a genuine interest in Lucretius’ Epicurean philosophy.

 4 Praelectio f. 1r, Primus hic animus deus in humano corpore hospitans ausus autore Manlio [scil.: Manilio] oculos alieno immittere caelo, indidemque deus effectus, uti Lucretio poetarum antistiti in uno eo placuisse video. 5 On this controversy, see Raimondi 1972, 112–113; Dionisotti 1968, 84–87; Maranini 2001; Signaroli 2011. 6 Sed hic plumbeorum Epicureorum opinioni, nec quivis mediocriter eruditus, inhaerebat Christianae religionis supra quam credibile cuiquam sit studiosissimus erat. Cum haereticis velis, equisque ⟨ut dicitur⟩ decertabat, nec Antiquorum suffimentis, sed viva voce cum sacerdote confessus admissa, singulis annis animam purgare enixissime studebat. See Novoa 2010, 247–253, 250–253.

  Elena Nicoli Last but not least, it can hardly be a coincidence that only a few years earlier, in Bologna, the Paraphrasis in Lucretium by Raphael Francus (1504) had been published by the same publisher that also edited Pius’ commentary. It is more than possible that this precedent had also encouraged Pius to write his work on Lucretius.

 Pius on Lucretius’ Atoms . Epicurus and Empedocles: a twofold model How did Pius comment on Lucretius’ atoms? And which was his stance towards the latter’s natural philosophy? An interesting answer to this question can be found in the Expositio, a section at the beginning of the commentary in which Pius immediately establishes a connection between Lucretius and Empedocles: In order to grasp the poem of Lucretius completely and entirely, it is useful to know, in general and in its individual aspects, the doctrine of Empedocles, whom Lucretius the poet, illuminated in various ways by the light of his genius, follows in a great many aspects; and not only does he repeatedly follow, sedulously, the doctrine of the philosopher from Agrigento, but he also makes use of verses that recall the character and the spirit of Empedocles. 7

After this introduction, there follows a detailed exposition of Empedocles’ philosophy: Pius mentions his doctrine of the four elements – fire, water, air and earth – which are moved by two opposing forces, Love and Strife. It is worth pointing out that connecting Lucretius with Empedocles was anything but uncommon among Renaissance scholars, but it was often limited to the poetic sphere; Pius, instead, pointedly remarked on the debt that Lucretius’ philosophy had to Empedocles. Linking the two was certainly a safe move, after all, contrary to what had happened to Epicureanism, Empedocles and notably his doctrine of the four elements had enjoyed a great fortune from Aristotle onwards and up to the seventeenth century and even beyond. Therefore, it seems that, by emphasizing the association of Lucretius with Empedocles, Pius endeavored to

 7 Pius 1511, f. 1v, Ad absolutam et integram cognitionem poematis lucretiani expedit summatim carptimque dignoscere Empedoclis dogmata, quem litus variis ingenii luminibus Lucretius poeta sectatur in plurimis, qui nedum sedulo sectam Agrigentini philosophi identitem sequitur, sed et carminibus utitur Empedoclis flatum spiritumque referentibus.

Atoms, Elements, Seeds. A Renaissance Interpreter of Lucretius’ Atomism  

render the former’s atomism more acceptable in the eyes of the Renaissance reader. Nonetheless, at the end of the paragraph, Pius also links Lucretius’ philosophy to Epicurus, first by referring to their shared atomism: Nevertheless, in most respects, Lucretius follows Epicurus, who thought that the elements and the other things of this kind consist of atoms, that is to say of small, very small principles, which he used to call ‘atoms’, that is indivisible [bodies], to which the Latin Homer [sc. Virgil] gives his approval in the Bucolics like this: “how through the mighty void the seeds were driven of earth, air, ocean, and of liquid fire, how all that is from these beginnings grew, and the young world itself took solid shape”. 8

The quotation is a passage in Virgil (ecl. 6.31–34), in which Silenus explains how the world was made according to the doctrine of Epicurus. Quoting this passage, Pius seems to suggest that even a well-accepted author like Virgil supported the atomistic theory. At this stage, Pius feels that he ought to connect the dots and provide a comparison between the philosophy of Empedocles and that of Epicurus: But I want to warn you of this, that Epicurus and Empedocles think differently about the principles of things, since Empedocles posits the four elements as first-beginnings, as well as the Sphairos, that is God, according to what Themistius says in the first book of the Physics. Empedocles also believed that there were two other principles, strife and love, mutually incompatible, according to the same Themistius, in the second book of the Physics. Instead Epicurus [posits] only two principles: namely body and void. 9

Having remarked on the differences between the doctrines of Lucretius’ main two philosophical ancestors, Pius describes the nature of Epicurus’ atomistic physics, then again, he compares Epicurus with Empedocles. This time, too, the focus is  8 Pius 1511, f. 2r, Sequitur tamen Lucretius in plurimis Epicurum, qui atomis hoc est minutiis, minutissimis videlicet principiis, quas atomos hoc est insectiles dictitat, elementa et id genus reliqua consistere voluit cui in buccolico ludicro suffragatur latinus Homerus sic: ‘Namque canebat uti magnum per inane coacta/ semina terrarumque animaeque marisque fuissent/ et liquidi simul ignis; ut his exordia primis/ omnia, et ipse tener mundi concreuerit orbis’. For Virgil’s passage, I have used J.B. Greenough’s translation. 9 Pius 1511, f. 2r, Sed hoc admonitum te volo Epicurum et Empedoclem de principiis rerum disserentes non concinere, quoniam Empedocles quatuor elementa rerum primordia ponit et sphaerum idest deum auctore Themistio libro primo physicorum. Idem odium et amorem principia duo esse credidit inter se capitalia auctore eodem Themistio secundo physicorum. Duo tantum Epicurus, corpus videlicet et inane. Sphairos is the term with which Pius transcribes the Empedoclean σφαῖρος, that is the initial stage in the formation of the cosmos. See Themistius 1900, 13 (124, 26– 27) and 42 (167, 20–22).

  Elena Nicoli on the difference between the Empedoclean and Epicurean conceptions of first principles. Empedocles of Agrigento, however, posits the four elements as principles: namely fire, air, water and earth. He also posits two forces, friendship and discord; while friendship unites, discord divides. But they [sc. the atomists] call the space, in which the atoms are, void. And so, they think that, from these two principles [sc. atoms and void], those four are generated: fire, air, water, earth, and from these the others, so that those two principles are elementary, but these four, which are syntheta, i.e., composed from the other two, give rise to all other things. Therefore, with regard to the principles of things, Epicurus and Empedocles have different opinions. 10

In the end, Pius’ aim is to show that the doctrines of Empedocles and Epicurus are not mutually exclusive, given that, according to the atomists, the four elements are an intermediate stage between atoms and compounds. Although this interpretation may receive some backing from a few passages in De Rerum Natura (e.g. 1.820–1, 5.235–7), with this idiosyncratic reading, Pius seems to be trying to harmonize Lucretius’ controversial atomism with the well-accepted theory of the four elements. More in general, as seen before, Pius was certainly not the first to notice the parallel with the philosopher from Agrigento. What is new of his interpretation is that he tried to establish Lucretius’ double indebtedness to Epicurus and Empedocles alike, by means of a comparison between the doctrines of the two philosophers. As we shall see shortly, this alleged double dependence provides the key to Pius’ reading of Lucretius’ first principles.

. Atoms or elements? Other passages that reveal Pius’ interpretation of Lucretius’ atoms are those in which the former comments on books I and II of De Rerum Natura. In fact, in his proem to book I (lines 54–61), Lucretius introduces his own alternative set of terms for ‘atom’, a word that he himself never uses. These terms are: rerum primordia, materies, genitalia corpora, semina rerum, corpora prima.

 10 Pius 1511, f. 2r, Empedocles vero agrigentinus quatuor elementa, ignem videlicet, aerem, aquam et terram principia ponit. Duas etiam virtutes amicitiam atque litem; et amicitiam quidem coniungere, litem vero distinguere. Inane vero dicunt spacium in quo sunt atomi. De his itaque duobus principiis volunt quatuor ista procreari: ignem, aerem, aquam, terram, et ex iis caetera, ut illa duo elementa sint, haec vero quatuor syntheta idest composita ex aliis duobus prestent originem aliis omnibus rebus. In principiis ergo rerum Epicurus et Empedocles diversa sentiunt.

Atoms, Elements, Seeds. A Renaissance Interpreter of Lucretius’ Atomism  

Nam tibi de summa caeli ratione deumque disserere incipiam et rerum primordia pandam, unde omnis natura creet res, auctet alatque, quove eadem rursum natura perempta resolvat, quae nos materiem et genitalia corpora rebus reddunda in ratione vocare et semina rerum appellare suemus et haec eadem usurpare corpora prima, quod ex illis sunt omnia primis.

55

60

For I shall begin to discourse to you upon the most high system of heaven and of the gods, and I shall disclose the first-beginnings of things, from which nature makes all things and increases and nourishes them, and into which the same nature again reduces them when dissolved – which, in discussing philosophy, we are accustomed to call matter, and bodies that generate things, and seeds of things, and to entitle the same first bodies, because from them as first elements all things are. 11

Given that we look in vain for the word ‘atom’ in the poem, the link between these terms and the ‘atom’ of Democritus or Epicurus cannot have immediately been obvious to the humanist reader. We can in fact witness this lack of initial certainty and precision when Pius comments on Lucretius’ alternative terms, beginning with primordia: Primordia. Principles. I will explain how the elements and the principles of natural things obtained their own nature. Unde (whence). From the four principles, even though Epicurus thinks from one, namely from the atoms. 12

Since, by itself, the term primordia could refer to any kind of principle or element, and certainly not specifically to atoms, Pius glosses Lucretius’ primordia as principia and explains this term by referring to the four Empedoclean elements. He then contrasts this view with Epicurus’ doctrine, according to which the atoms are considered to be first principles. In the end, however, he does not clarify from whom Lucretius has taken his concept of primordia, leaving for now the question open. Another expression put forward by Lucretius to refer to the atoms is genitalia corpora, ‘bodies that generate things’. Pius comments: Genitalia corpora. The elements and principles of things are named carefully and correctly ‘bodies that generate things’, because from them the other things are created. It is true that  11 All translations of De Rerum Natura are W.H.D. Rouse’s (Lucretius 1992). 12 Pius 1511, f. 9v, Primordia. Principia. Enarrabo quo pacto elementa et rerum naturalium principia naturam suam sortita sunt. Unde. A quatuor principiis, cum ab uno hoc est atomis censeat Epicurus.

  Elena Nicoli they supply first beginnings and principles to the natural things, but they cannot be rightly called ‘bodies’ – if not by means of the figure of speech [called] catachresis, i.e., the improper use of a word – nor, in fact, are the (real) first elements contaminated and impure, I mean those from which everything is born, for instance, neither does fire, as a first element, burns, but, as John (Duns) Scotus maintains, it ‘fires’, nor is the earth dry or wet, but [each] is pure and simple, and likewise the other two elements that follow them. 13

So, according to Pius, the genitalia corpora, understood as the four elements, are to be taken to be pure and abstract principles, not real corporeal bodies. The idea that there are true and pure elements, of which the elements we see are composed, was already widespread in Antiquity and Middle Ages, and might stem from Plato’s Timaeus. According to this theory, there would be elements in their pure state – that is, not combined with the properties of the other elements – and elements as apprehended by sense perception – that is, seen and perceived in an impure state, mixed with other elements. In the Timaeus, Plato explains that the four elements, as we know them, do not have an unchanging character: we observe, for instance, “things which we now call ‘water’ becoming by condensation, as we believe, stones and earth; and again, this same substance, by dissolving and dilating, becoming breath and air…”. 14 For this reason, ‘fire’, ‘air’, ‘water’ and ‘earth’ are names of qualities, rather than substances: “we should speak of fire, not as ‘this’, but as ‘what is of such and such quality’”. 15 Later on, interpreting this passage, Calcidius, the 4thcentury commentator of the Timaeus, had explained that ignis should therefore be called igneum, terra should be called terreum, and so on. 16 Then, Calcidius had distinguished between igneum and ignis purus, which is the species, the non-corporeal idea of sensible fire. 17

 13 Pius 1511, f. 10r, Genitalia corpora. Elementa et principia rerum conquisite recteque corpora genitalia dicuntur, quoniam ex illis caetera gignuntur. Illa certe dant primordia et principia naturalibus rebus, nec recte corpora vocari possunt nisi per figura catacresin hoc est abusionem, nec vero elementa prima feculenta sunt et impura, illa dico ex quibus omnia nascuntur, verbigratia ignis primum elementum non adurit, sed ut ait Ioannes Scotus ignit, nec terra est sicca aut humecta, sed pura et simplex cum caeteris duobus sequentibus elementis. 14 Transl. by W.R.M. Lamb, Plat., Tim. 49b–c, πρῶτον μέν, ὃ δὴ νῦν ὕδωρ ὠνομάκαμεν, πηγνύμενον ὡς δοκοῦμεν λίθους καὶ γῆν γιγνόμενον ὁρῶμεν, τηκόμενον δὲ καὶ διακρινόμενον αὖ ταὐτὸν τοῦτο πνεῦμα καὶ ἀέρα... 15 Plat., Tim. 49d, …ὡς πῦρ, μὴ τοῦτο ἀλλὰ τὸ τοιοῦτον ἑκάστοτε προσαγορεύειν πῦρ, μηδὲ ὕδωρ τοῦτο ἀλλὰ τὸ τοιοῦτον ἀεί, μηδὲ ἄλλο ποτὲ μηδὲν ὥς τινα ἔχον βεβαιότητα. 16 Calcidius, Commentarius in Timaeum, 326, non est ignis censendus, sed igneum quiddam. 17 Calcidius, Commentarius in Timaeum, 272, ignis porro purus et ceterae sincerae intellegibilesque substantiae species sunt exemplaria corporum, ideae cognominatae.

Atoms, Elements, Seeds. A Renaissance Interpreter of Lucretius’ Atomism  

At the same time, the view that the ordinary elements, being composite bodies, are mixtures of the pure elements, which in nature are never found in an isolated state, is also Aristotelian. Aristotle, in De generatione et corruptione (II 1 328b 26 – 3 331a 6), explains that fire, air, water, and earth are not really elements, because they can be analysed into more fundamental constituents. Strictly speaking, their primary qualities (hot and cold, dry and wet) and prime matter are the real elements, that is, eternal elementary conditions of generation and corruption. 18 Even though he does not reveal his exact source, Pius might have drawn upon both the Platonic and Aristotelian traditions when he interprets Lucretius’ first beginnings as the four elements, conceived as pure and non-corporeal entities. By putting forward this interpretation, Pius distances himself from the original passage: he is actually commenting on the four-element theory, rather than on Lucretius’ principles. Therefore, Pius’ hesitation to call Lucretius’ genitalia corpora ‘bodies’, perhaps informed by his reading of some Platonic and Aristotelian sources, is a personal philosophical concern that has nothing to do with the original text he is commenting on. On the contrary, to Lucretius, as to Epicurus, atoms are the bodies par excellence and are hence rightly called ‘bodies that generate things’, because they are pure body, while compound bodies always have an admixture of void. Even though Pius primarily links Lucretius’ first principles with the Empedoclean (and Aristotelian) four elements, he does not reject the parallel with Epicurus’ atoms altogether: it seems rather that he believed these theories to be perfectly compatible. For instance, when he later comments on the passage in which the four-elements theory is explicitly rejected by Lucretius (1.778–781), Pius acknowledges that Lucretius’ first principles could actually be atoms. At primordia.[…] we regard as principle certain extremely small corpuscles, endowed with multiple shapes […], and we will call them atoms, with which nature forged the sky, the earth and the sea, after they have been added or removed. 19

Atoms therefore first created sky, earth and sea, which may be considered the worldly manifestations of the four elements, and then the other bodies. As he had also noticed in his introduction, Pius remarks on the fact that, according to Lucretius, the four elements, even though they are not different in substance from  18 See Crowley 2008, 224. 19 Pius 1511, f. 41r, At primordia. […] nos principia facimus quedam tenuissima corpuscula multiplicibus figuris praedita, […] et appellabimus atomos, quibus natura caelum, terram, mare fabrefecit, quibusdam additis aut remotis.

  Elena Nicoli any other atomic combination, must represent the first stage in the creation of the world. Therefore, even though Epicurus and Empedocles “think differently about the first principles” – as Pius states in his preface – their doctrines are not incompatible. In fact, immediately after having explained the primordia as atoms, Pius turns back to the four-element interpretation: De numero. One should implicitly understand that, among those principles, there is no one which alternately fights against the others and impedes generation. In fact, if the elements were not very subtle, fire would fight against water and one of the two would succumb. But, since they are simple, they cannot exert adverse forces strongly, because of their smallness. 20

In the passage Pius is commenting on, Lucretius is arguing against Empedocles in showing that he went astray by regarding the four elements as first-beginnings. Among other things, Lucretius points out that the four elements are destructive to one another, so, if they retained their character in composites, they could not produce anything, because each element in the combination of this discordant heap would hinder the creation of all things (1.778–780). Having to face this explicit condemnation of the four-element theory, in order to make sense of this passage, Pius now assumes that these ‘pure’ elements must possess almost atomic properties: they must be simple and very subtle. Therefore, in commenting on the first book of De Rerum Natura, Pius sometimes identifies Lucretius’ principles with the four elements, conceived in their ‘pure’ state, sometimes with Epicurus’ atoms. He seems not particularly bothered by the fact that Lucretius himself rejected the four-element theory (1.705–829) and clearly showed that the four elements cannot be what matter is ultimately made out of. Most probably, according to the Bolognese commentator, this contradiction must stem from Lucretius himself, who sometimes follows Empedocles, but at other times Epicurus, as he maintains:

 20 Pius 1511, f. 41r, De numero. Subintelligatur sit ne ex numero illorum principiorum sit aliquid quod invicem repugnet et generatione impediat. Nam elementa nisi essent tenuissima ignis aquae repugnaret et alterum succumberet. Sed cum sint simplicia valde non possunt exercere vires ob tenuitatem adversatrices. At line 780, Pius reads de numero, instead of emineat, which is the most widely accepted reading in modern editions.

Atoms, Elements, Seeds. A Renaissance Interpreter of Lucretius’ Atomism  

Besides, Lucretius is Empedoclean, even though not always. Sometimes he is Epicurean, sometimes he is not, such as in the invocation to Venus: in different passages he follows different opinions. 21

Later in the commentary, Pius goes as far as to assert that The opinion of Empedocles is that everything consist of atoms, corpuscles which do not admit division. 22

Most probably, in this passage, Pius had a slip of the pen and wrote ‘Empedocles’ instead of ‘Epicurus’. But it is indeed curious that, after having taken great pains to render Lucretius’ Epicurean atomism more Empedoclean, Pius ends up, intentionally or not, turning Empedocles into Epicurus.

. Atoms as seeds Some interesting clues as to Pius’ understanding of Lucretius’ atoms can also be found in the comment on the passage in which Lucretius claims that nothing can arise out of nothing (1.159–191). According to Lucretius, a given organism can only grow from appropriate and fixed seeds (certa semina); in fact, it is impossible that all things are born from all things, because in particular things resides a distinct faculty (secreta facultas). In this passage, Lucretius establishes the organizing and creative power of his seminal atoms, and seems to go beyond a purely materialist view of composition by endowing his atoms with almost miraculous generative powers. 23 Commenting on this passage, Pius interprets the expression secreta facultas as “Secreta. Separate, distinct. Facultas. Capacity to generate (gignendi potentia)”. 24 The second definition is quite relevant: in fact, the noun potentia cannot be found anywhere in Lucretius, but is crucial to the scholastic tradition, where it translates Aristotle’s δύναμις as ‘potentiality’. 25 Analysing facultas in terms of potentia, Pius reveals once again his Aristotelian bias: he makes clear not only

 21 Pius 1511, f. 3v, Amplius empedocleus est Lucretius quamvis non semper. Quandoque epicureus, quandoque non, ut in Veneris invocatione: diversis locis diversas secutus est opiniones. 22 Pius 1511, f. 61r, Opinio Empedoclis est ex atomis omnia consistere corpusculis sectionem non admittentibus, quae uncorum nexuum et hamorum speciem praeseferunt. 23 Sedley 1998, 197. 24 Pius 1511, f. 19v, Secreta. Seiuncta, separata. Facultas. Gignendi potentia. 25 Galen’s use of δύναμις, translated into the Latin facultas, was also very common among medieval and Renaissance natural philosophers and physicians.

  Elena Nicoli that Lucretius’ semina are endowed with a generative power – as Lucretius’ himself seems to say – but also that in them resides a potentiality to develop into some actuality. In the same fashion, Pius defines semina as “the causes that bring to the things their own essence”. 26 He thereby suggests that the seeds are the bearers of the things’ essence, not mere chunks of matter that create the bodies by their mutual aggregation and disaggregation. Importantly, the conception of semina as an informing principle had been already formulated by Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499), who, differently from Lucretius, conceived the seeds as something immaterial closest to the Stoic and Plotinian idea of seminal reasons rather than to Lucretius’ atoms. 27 Then, when Pius comments on the passage in which Lucretius presents the causes of atomic motion and the swerve (Lucr., 2.216–293), he comments: Quare in seminibus. Lucretius has already argued that the bodies are moved from an intrinsic force that produces the motion. Now, he says that the same thing happens to the principles, which are moved by an internal cause, i.e., their own form, if we trust Aristotle. In seminibus. Read: in the causes of things and in the principles. 28

In this passage, at first, Pius suggests that atoms are moved by an intrinsic force that is inherent to their nature and produces their motion. Then, he moves from a physical to a metaphysical level, suggesting that an Aristotelian kind of form resides in the atoms and is the cause of their motion. Later on, he clarifies this idea: The principles are moved by a hidden cause, in no other way than we are dragged and moved by an innate, internal form. 29

Pius explains Lucretius’ first principles not as merely material and structural elements, and as parts of a purely mechanical explanation, but as bearers of form. While Lucretius simply maintains that the swerve is the cause of free will (voluntas) in living beings, Pius interprets the Lucretian passage as if atoms themselves were provided with some kind of internal will, which he identifies with Aristotle’s concept of form. If atoms are bearers of form, this means that they have a causal,

 26 Pius 1511, f. 19v, Semina rerum. Causae quae rebus esse suum afferunt. 27 See Nicoli 2018. 28 Pius 1511, f. 58v, Quare in seminibus. Disseruit iam Lucretius a vi intrinseca corpora moveri gignente motum. Nunc idem accidere principiis inquit, quae moventur ab interiori causa hoc est a forma sua si credimus Aristoteli. In seminibus. In causis rerum et principiis expone. 29 Pius 1511, f. 58v, Principia a causa latente moventur non secus ac nos ab innata interiori forma trahimur et agimur.

Atoms, Elements, Seeds. A Renaissance Interpreter of Lucretius’ Atomism  

formal principle in them, which makes them develop according to their specific nature. Finally, commenting on a passage in book II, on the possible creation of other worlds elsewhere in the universe (Lucr., 2.1072), Pius writes: Quae. [Their own] nature and natural impetus moves the seeds of things. Lucretius wants to hint that the seeds are not moved by Nature, that is God, but by a natural instinct and impulse, that is to say inherent to the nature of those principles. 30

Pius clearly supports the idea of a spontaneous action of the atoms as the cause of change, given that they are endowed with a natural impulse that is inherent in their nature. With this interpretation, Pius enhances a very specific aspect of Lucretius’ philosophy, namely the organizing and generative power of the seminal atoms. At the same time, he provides a link between the Aristotelizing scholastic doctrine of substantial forms and Lucretius’ conception of atoms. Therefore, it appears to be evident that Lucretius’ atoms, defined as semina rerum, are understood by Pius to be more than mere Democritean chunks of matter. But then one must point out that the emergence of a vitalistic notion of atoms in Pius and other Renaissance authors was probably inspired by certain passages in Lucretius’ own text. This explains why a similar interpretation can be found not only in Pius’ commentary, but also in other Renaissance authors, such as in Ficino. However, more clearly than many other Renaissance commentators, Pius grasped the ambiguity and polyvalence of Lucretius’ concept of semina rerum, chose to enhance the generative and vitalistic power of his ‘seeds’ and re-contextualized and adapted them to the demands of Christian, Platonic and Scholastic traditions.

Conclusions To conclude, as for the interpretation of Lucretius’ matter theory, one encounters two main features in Pius’ exegetical work: 1. he sometimes identifies Lucretius’ atoms with the four Empedoclean elements, even though Lucretius had explicitly rejected the idea that air, fire, water and earth can be conceived as the ultimate constituents of matter

 30 Pius 1511, f. 81r, Quae. Natura et naturalis impetus. Mouet semina rerum. Non a natura hoc est a deo vult innuere Lucretius semina moueri sed ab instinctu et impressione naturali hoc est insita naturae illorum principiorum.

  Elena Nicoli

2.

(1.705–829). In order to face this explicit rejection and harmonize these two doctrines, Pius endows the four elements with almost atomic properties, describing them as simple, very subtle, and ‘pure’, that is, not combined with the properties of the other elements. This interpretation of the four elements as ‘pure’, simple and minimal particles, can be traced back to Plato’s Timaeus and to its medieval tradition, while a similar explanation can also be found in Aristotle and in some scholastic texts. At the same time, mixing the Aristotelian tradition with Ficino’s vitalistic concept of seeds, Pius also describes Lucretius’ semina rerum as endowed with a power of generation (gignendi potentia) and as bearers of the substantial form of things. Pius therefore re-contextualizes Lucretius’ concept of seeds in an Aristotelian framework, thereby taking the first step towards the conception of atoms as living and ensouled entities.

More in general, one notices in Pius two main tendencies: 1. The absence of an explicit condemnation of Lucretius’ atomism as such, but instead a clear tendency to adapt and re-contextualize it within other frameworks; 2. A highly complex and eclectic range of interpretations, which often originated from the conflation of Epicurean atomism with other doctrines, such as the Empedoclean four-element theory and Aristotle’s hylomorphism. Pius is just an example, but the same tendencies can be found also in the other Renaissance commentaries on De Rerum Natura. Given this complex array of influences, it is certainly incorrect to regard Lucretius’ doctrine, and especially his atomism, as the sole philosophical model that contributed to overturning Aristotle’s natural philosophy and paved the way for the development of modern scientific thought. If at some point, after the rediscovery of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura, an atomistic model of nature managed to spread successfully and to replace Aristotle’s natural philosophical system, it is only because some atomistic explanations were harmonized with more vitalistic theories of matter and embedded in a teleological account of nature. 31 The interpretations put forward by Pius and other Renaissance commentators of De Rerum Natura attest to this process of harmonization, rather than opposition, between these two philosophical systems. Finally, as it often happens with classical reception, one should not think of a linear and univocal correspondence between an ancient text and its modern  31 A similar tendency is later to be found in Bruno’s vitalist atomism or Sennert’s atomi-cumforma. On Bruno, see Gatti 2001; on Sennert; Michael 2001. On Sennert, see also Hirai, 2015.

Atoms, Elements, Seeds. A Renaissance Interpreter of Lucretius’ Atomism  

responses. On the contrary, it is always necessary to take into account various intermediate stages of reception, possible ‘contaminations’, and subjective interpretations. These details are often lost in the grand narratives, especially those concerning the reception of Lucretius in the Renaissance, which sometimes tend to look at the rediscovery of De Rerum Natura as a revolutionary event that, according to some scholars, even triggered the Renaissance or had a direct impact on the scientific revolution. This interpretation is too linear and unsophisticated, and therefore gives us only a partial view. As shown in Pius’ case, the story of the reception of Lucretius’ philosophy in the Renaissance can be – and should be – much more complex, rich and interesting than how it is usually told.

References Beretta, Marco (2003), “The Revival of Lucretian Atomism and Contagious Diseases during the Renaissance”, in: Medicina nei Secoli. Arte e Scienza 15, 129–154. Conti, Daniele (2015), “Pio, Giovan Battista”, in: Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani 84, 87–91, Rome. Crowley, Timothy J. (2008), “Aristotle’s So-Called Elements”, in: Phronesis 53.3, 223–242. Del Nero, Valerio (1981), “Note sulla vita di Giovan Battista Pio (con alcune lettere inedite)”, in: Rinascimento 21, 247–263. Dionisotti, Carlo (1968), Gli umanisti e il volgare tra Quattro e Cinquecento, Florence. Fantuzzi, Giovanni (1789), Notizie degli scrittori bolognesi, vii, Bologna. Farrell, Joseph (2016), “Lucretius and the Symptomatology of Modernism”, in: Jacques Lezra/ Liza Blake (eds.), Lucretius and Modernity. Epicurean Encounters Across Time and Disciplines, London/New York. Gatti, Hilary (2001), “Giordano Bruno’s Soul-Powered Atoms: From Ancient Sources Towards Modern Science”, in: Christoph H. Lüthy/John E. Murdoch/William R. Newman (eds.), Late Medieval and Early Modern Corpuscular Matter Theories, 133–162, Leiden. Hirai, Hiro (2015), “Mysteries of Living Corpuscles: Atomism and the Origin of Life in Sennert, Gassendi and Kircher”, in: Early Modern Medicine and Natural Philosophy, ed. by P. Distelzweig, B. Goldberg, and E.R. Ragland, Dordrecht, 255–269. Lucretius (1992), De Rerum Natura, (on the Nature of Things). With an English Translation by W.H.D. Rouse, Revised (…) by Martin Ferguson Smith, Cambridge, MA. Maranini, Anna (2001), “Dispute tra vivi e morti: Plauto tra Bocchi, Pio e Pilade”, in: Giornale italiano di filologia 53, 315–330. Michael, Emily (2001), “Sennert’s Sea Change: Atoms and Causes”, in: C.H. Lüthy/J.E. Murdoch/ W.R. Newman (eds.), Late Medieval and Early Modern Corpuscular Matter Theories, 331– 361, Leiden. Nicoli, Elena (2018), “Ficino, Lucretius and Atomism”, in: Early Science and Medicine 23.4, 330–361. Novoa, James W. Nelson (2010), “Leonardo Marso d’Avezzano’s Oratio on the death of Giovanni Battista Pio”, in: Bruniana & Campanelliana 16.1, 247–253.

  Elena Nicoli Pius, Johannes Baptista (1511), In Carum Lucretium Commentarij a Ioanne Baptista Pio editi codice Lucretiano diligenter emendato, nodis omnibus et difficultatibus apertis, obiter ex diuersis auctoribus tum Grecis tum Latinis multa leges enucleata, que superior etas aut tacuit aut ignorauit, Bologna. Raimondi, Ezio (1972), “Il primo commento umanistico a Lucrezio” in: Id., Politica e commedia: dal Beroaldo al Machiavelli, Bologna, 101–140. Sedley, David (1998), Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom, Cambridge. Signaroli, Simone (2011), “Plauto nel cimento della filologia umanistica: Brescia, Bologna e la tipografia dei Britannici”, in: Valentina Grohovaz (ed.), Viaggi di testi e di libri. Libri e lettori a Brescia tra Medioevo e età moderna, 95–100, Udine. Themistius (1900) Themistii In Aristotelis Physica Paraphrasis, ed. H. Schenkl, Berlin.

Mauro Sarnelli

Lucretius in (moderate) Baroque: Meanings and Functions of the Lucretian Auctoritas in Giovanni Delfino’s Philosophical and Scientific Dialogues in Prose To my mentors in Delfino studies Martino Capucci, Mario Costanzo Beccaria, Rocco Paternostro and Edoardo Taddeo, imperituri

Abstract: Giovanni Delfino (or Dolfin) was a prominent figure in Venetian culture, belonging to the wave of the so-called moderate-Baroque. He received the finest cultural training in Padua and his political career took off in 1656, when the Patriarch of Aquileia picked him as coadjutor and successor; in due course, Delfino became cardinal. True to his aristocratic upbringing, Delfino reserved his multifarious and exceptionally learned output for a select circle of distinguished friends and correspondents, and always shrank from the idea of publishing his writings in print. The two manuscripts containing his philosophical and scientific Dialogues in prose reveal an intellectual personality of the highest interest: in the ten Dialogues Delfino discusses Gassendi’s and Galileo’s theories, backed up by an extensive selection of ancient texts, in which Lucretius (with Manilius) takes a leading place, both as a didactic model in poetry, and as a repository of scientific knowledge. Delfino is especially interesting as a representative of a kind of Italian reader of Lucretius not often taken into consideration: up to date with the latest advances in science and philosophy, but characterized by the utmost caution in divulging their otherwise progressive theories to a wider audience. Keywords: Titus Lucretius Carus, Giovanni Delfino, Galileo Galilei, Pierre Gassendi, classical tradition.

 In limine, I still maintain the most devoted memory of Prof. Maria Teresa Acquaro Graziosi, to whom many years ago I presented my Graduate Thesis (on Giovanni Delfino’s Tragedies). Special thanks also go to the Biblioteca Arcivescovile and the Biblioteca Civica “Vincenzo Joppi” of Udine, and the Biblioteca Federiciana of Fano, for their precious help in facilitating the consultation of Delfino’s manuscripts held in the Institutions; and, last but not least, to Dr. Richard Bates, formerly of the Università degli Studî of Rome “La Sapienza”, for his essential, attentive and acute work in revising the translation of the present paper. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110673487-014

  Mauro Sarnelli This paper is in two distinct parts: an accessus to the author and the work, and a more specific section devoted to Giovanni Delfino’s use of Lucretius’ auctoritas, attempting to understand the meanings and functions of DRN for a literary and erudite personality of European scope. Though he had an aristocratic disdain for publishing his work (and indeed he chose not to publish it in his lifetime), his work was appreciated in intellectually distinguished circles. He had contacts with the French, the Spanish and the Imperial Court, and with the Respublica litteraria – in the broadest sense of the term –, which was cultivating and taking full advantage of the most innovative achievements of contemporary thought and science. The manuscripts 121 [olim F.18.IV.18] and 122 [olim F.19.IV.19], 1r-108r, held in the Biblioteca Arcivescovile of Udine [= I-Ua], 1 mention the philosophical and scientific ‘decameron’ by Giovanni Delfino (in Venetian, Dolfin: Venice, Saturday 22. April 1617 – Udine, Sunday 19. July 1699), a leading figure of moderate-Baroque Venetian culture. He was a member of the San Pantalon branch of his family (a branch which included his great-uncle of the same name, who had been made cardinal by Pope Clement VIII Aldobrandini in the Consistory of Wednesday 9. June 1604), and had received a comprehensive cultural education and

 1 The description of them is in Scalon 1979, s.vv., 179–180. In transcribing excerpts from manuscripts and printed works XVI–XVIII, essentially conservative criteria have been adopted, intervening only in the following cases (other than transcribing j with i; and in always differentiating u from v in Italian texts, and in Latin ones only for lower-case v- for u- as the initial letter of a word, e.g. vt → ut): 1) spelling out the Tironian notes and tachygraphic signs indicating the conjunction with et, and the abbreviations, except in the typographical indications and tachygraphic appellatives of courtesy, in which the terminations in exponent have been transcribed below; 2) normalizations of the apostrophes and acute and grave accents, conforming to current use, in accordance with Serianni/Castelvecchi 2006; 3) emendations of lapsus calami and typographical misprints in single letters or groups of them, using square brackets for the expunctions and integrations which rectify mechanical errors, and angle brackets for the conjectural integrations, demonstrating the interventions in the notes (instead of indicating them in the text), in accordance with Maas 1972, 29 (repr. in Montanari 2003, LXV; comm., §§ 75.1–3, 246–248); 4) punctuation, but to a very limited extent, and only where it was necessary for understanding the sense of the texts. The readings or the parts of them which are crossed out – usually with a horizontal stroke – are indicated in italics in square brackets. The refer. ed. of DRN is Lucretius 2002–2009 (for the commentary Lucretius 1996 has also been followed); the transcription of the title-pages of the works follows Bowers 1994, 135–180; the bibliographical terminology, Fahy 1988, “Edizione, impressione, emissione, stato”, 65–88; the chronological indications, Cappelli 2012, 25–105. For reasons of brevity, the notes will transcribe passages from manuscript sources, giving only bibliographical details of the printed ones, apart from those more directly functional to the development of the argument. Finally all the materials consulted on the Internet were rechecked on the date of delivery of the present work, on Saturday 21. March 2020.

Lucretius in (moderate) Baroque:  

graduated in utroque iure at the University of Padua, 2 where the memory of the Lucretian tradition was still alive. This tradition had been preceded – and made possible – by the influence of the exegetical and literary examples of Ficino and Bernardo Tasso, and had left an ineffaceable trace on the young Torquato, 3 before reaching Gian Vincenzo Pinelli. 4 The latter spread the Lucretian influence both in the Milan of the Archbishops Carlo and Federico Borromeo, and in the Rome of Popes Gregory XIII Boncompagni and Sixtus V Peretti. In Rome, indeed, four men of letters, Baldo Cataneo, Antonio de’ Pazzi, Porfirio Feliciani and Antonio Decio da Orte, had been members of the Accademia degli Incitati, whose name dominates the title-page of Girolamo Frachetta’s Lucretian Commentary, 5 and,  2 The oration which celebrates the event, written by the jurist Giacomo Caimo from Udine (nephew ex fratre of Pompeo, the renowned personal physician of the powerful Cardinal Montalto – Alessandro Peretti Damasceni, nephew ex sorore of Pope Sixtus V –, and professor of Natural Philosophy and Theorical and Practical Medicine at “La Sapienza” thanks to Pope Paul V Borghese), and held in Venice, Biblioteca del Museo Correr, Cod. Cicogna 3060/I, is recorded with his usual erudition by G. Benzoni, “Caimo, Giacomo”, in: DBI, vol. XVI, 1973, 356–357: “Fonti e Bibl.”, 357; and Id., “Dolfin, Giovanni”, in: DBI, vol. XL, 1991, 532–542: 532, “Fonti e Bibl.”, 540 (only the quoted shelf-mark). 3 The possibility that from the young Tasso the DRN might have been “recepito forse nell’ambiente naturalistico della Padova di uno Speroni” has been raised by Basile 1984, “Follia e ragione: Tasso lettore di Lucrezio” [1975], 65–101: 71; another possibility is that “la casa paterna [scil. aveva] costituita […] l’humus ideale di questo incontro, che anche la prova esterna della postilla al De caelo antedata agli anni di Padova”, by Prosperi 2004, chap. 4: “La memoria poetica lucreziana nell’opera di Tasso”, 207–265: 220 note 377 (and 207 for the reference to the marginale of Tasso); another alternative is that “la dottrina di Lucrezio [scil. fosse] filtrata inizialmente in Tasso attraverso la principale e più illustre mediazione umanistica costituita dai celebri passi ficiniani del commento al Simposio”, by Corsaro 2003, chap. IV.3: “Tra Lucrezio e Platone”, 152–168 (the quotation is on 155). 4 For further information on this fundamental personality of scholar, bibliographer and commentator of Lucretius, see in general the indications in M. Callegari, “Pinelli, Gian Vincenzo”, in: DBI, vol. LXXXIII, 2015, 727–732, and in particular the Doctoral Dissertation by Ceccarelli 2011–2012; and Raugei 2018. 5 Frachetta 1589: right from the dedicatory letter to Cardinal Scipione Gonzaga (as is well known, one of the most significant figures in Tasso’s literary experience and life), dated “In Rovigo il dì [scil. Friday] I Genaro 1588”, a2r–a3r, Frachetta’s aim was to claim the novitas of his work, by nature not only judging iuxta Aristotelem, but also illuminating the word and sense of the text in accordance with the best humanistic and Renaissance tradition of the expositio, redeeming it from misunderstandings and exegetical misrepresentations, both of which had also been caused by the vicissitudes of the Epicurean Fortleben: “la presente fatica sopra Lucretio […], se non dovesse esser cara al mondo per altro, si doverebbe per esser sola, o presso che sola, intorno così grave Scrittore, il quale non doveva a partito niuno rimanere senza spositione, imperoché, oltre l’essere oscuro et contenere molte cose buone che sono state frantese, ne contiene anco molte di ree, le quali fa di mestiero, accioché altri non vi s’inganni, in iscambio togliendole,

  Mauro Sarnelli along with Tasso, had been counted in the Accademia dei Pastori della Valle Tiberina. 6 In spite of a violent misadventure in his youth – for which a dispensation from Pope Alexander VII was later necessary –, Delfino seemed set to follow the senatorial cursus honorum that was the natural next step after his degree, but in 1656 there came the turning point of his political career. On Friday 23. June he was appointed Bishop of Tagaste in partibus and coadjutor cum iure futurae successionis of the recently appointed Patriarch of Aquileia, Girolamo Gradenigo, afterwards becoming Patriarch himself at the end of the following year, 7 and cardinal ten years later, in the sixth and last Consistory of Pope Chigi (on Monday 7. March 1667). The ten Dialogues in prose were the culmination of the author’s literary activity, though his haughty sense of his own status (social and political in the main, as well as ecclesiastical) made any form of circulation of his works beyond the most select sphere of his cultivated friends and illustrious correspondents repugnant to him. Delfino’s literary activity had already begun in his university years in Padua, and appears emblematic of the intellectual, cultural and creative currents of the

 rifiutare; et è uno ravvivatore della dottrina, di già per poco dimenticata, del grande Epicuro, a cui sono apposte a torto molte bugie” (a2v). This is the route – the aim of which is represented by the ‘rehabilitation’ of Epicurus – that Delfino’s philosophical and scientific Dialogues followed, while also abandoning Aristotelian auctoritas in favour of Gassendi’s libertas philosophandi; but this achievement – as will be shown – would be reached not only by a much more sophisticated intellectual personality than Frachetta’s (though less uncompromisingly directed towards a reductio to orthodoxy than the facies of his exegetical programme might suggest, as well as the cultural stereotypes on the academic Rome of Sixtus V, in which and for which that programme originated), but also a series of concomitant causes among which might be anticipated at least the circulation and diffusion of naturalistic thought, non- and largely antiAristotelian, the Florentine linguistic and scientific research centres, and the new political and cultural environment of the Pontificate of Alexander VII Chigi. 6 See Ripa 1593, “Poesia”, 215–216 (which is the first of the three entries dedicated to this item); as Ceccarelli 2011–2012, 177 note 26, acutely pointed out, “nelle edizioni successive (Roma, 1603 [scil. 406–407: 407; mod. ed., 2012, 480–481 (but see Maffei, comm. ad loc., 790–791 note 1: 791)] e Siena, 1613 [scil. 2nd pt., 157–158: 157; and also 1611, 431–432, but not in 1602, 215–216] spariva ogni riferimento all’accademia degli Incitati, mentre restava quello all’accademia degli Insensati di Perugia, cosa che ci fa supporre che‹,› se nel 1593 ancora esisteva a Roma un circolo di Incitati, questo doveva essersi ormai estinto all’inizio del Seicento”. (On the Accademia dei Pastori della Valle Tiberina cf. Sarnelli 2007, 19–24.) 7 Gauchat (ed.) 1935, s.v. “Aquilegien(sis) […]”, 90 note 8: “[scil. Saturday] 29 Dec. 1657 mandatum capiendi possessionem eccl. Aquilegien. infra 3 mense [Hieronymus iam obierat] […], ei conc. privilegium assistentium capellae pontificiae [scil. Thursday] 10 Ian. 1658 […], et pallium [scil. Monday] 14 Ian. 1658”.

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seventeenth century, starting from the juvenile compositions of “odi […] sopra soggetti amorosi”, which he destroyed as they were drafted (the more so after his ecclesiastical career began). 8 These were followed by his pastoral Tragicomedy, 9 the four Tragedies, significantly accompanied by theoretical and interpretative comments on them, 10 the Poems on celebratory, heroic or meditative subjects, 11 the ethical and political remarks on Sallust’s Coniuratio and Tacitus’s Agricola. 12 In the two philosophical and scientific cycles that followed – the first (hexaemeronic)  8 See Delfino’s letter to Ciro di Pers, dated “Udine li [scil. Tuesday] 13 gennaro 1660”, ed. in: Sarnelli 1996, nr. XIII, 251–253: 252; and also Delfino, Esame sopra il Medoro, held in the Biblioteca Civica “Vincenzo Joppi” of Udine, ms. 441, 1r–11v: 2r, 2v: “Dopo l’aver io nella mia gioventù adoprato la penna per qualche anno in Poesie Pindariche, volli esperimentarla nelle Drammatiche ancora [scil. with Medoro]; […] io non haveva scritto né quel Dramma, né le Odi per desiderio di lode, ma per non mi lasciar vincere dall’ozio, e per ubbidire al genio, che mi sforzava ad amare la Poesia seria e morale, e perciò molte delle mie compositioni ho condannate al fuoco subito nate, senza permettere che nessun Giudice ascolti le loro ragioni”; the passage recalls the preface addressed A chi legge, starting from Testi 1627, *3r–*4r: *3v: “Molte sono le Canzoni che ’n vario tempo ho composte, e poche nondimeno son queste che presentemente io do alla stampa: il fuoco ne ha havuta la parte sua, che forse è la maggiore” (the influence of “l’Alcina del Testi” on Medoro is evident from the interlocutor Ciro di Pers in Delfino 1733a, “Dialogo sopra le Tragedie»”, i–xxxii: ii). 9 The work in question is the first draft of Medoro, mentioned at the end of the ms. with Delfino’s four Tragedies (I–Ua, ms. 220 [olim Qt.22.VI.24], 354r–398v); it is certainly the result of a misprint that Scalon 1979, s.v., 221, indicates only the fols. of this one, and not those of the ‘reformed’ one, 290r–345v (this last fol. is indicated as the final of Creso). 10 For a description of the mss. which mention the Tragedies Cleopatra, Lucrezia, Creso, Medoro (I–Ua, ms. 220, quoted in the previous note), and the Dialogo sopra le Tragedie (I–Ua, ms. 221 [olim Qt.23.VI.25], 116r–139v), see Scalon 1979, s.vv., 221–222 (also of relevance: Esame sopra il Medoro, quoted supra note 8, was used by the author as the basis for the first draft of this Dialogo); editions of them are Delfino 1730 (an extremely incorrect text, without the Dialogo, and presenting Medoro as Angelica, Tragi-comedia, 1st pt., with autonomous numb. of the pages), 1733a, 1733b (both with the Dialogo, and presenting Medoro with its title); for the modern editions of Cleopatra, Lucrezia, and the Dialogo sopra le Tragedie, see in order Delfino 1976, 1994, 2008, 1995b; for the first scene of the first act of Creso, see infra note 30. 11 For a description of the ms. which mentions the Poesie del Cardinale Giovanni Delfino, per la maggior parte Originali […] (I–Ua, ms. 123 [olim F.20.IV.20]), see Scalon 1979, s.v., 180–181, and Delfino 1999, “Nota filologica”, 35–60 (mod. ed. of thirteen Poems, 63–104; “Commento ai testi”, 105–153); a previous mod. ed. of ten Poems is Delfino 1995a. 12 For a description of the mss. which mention the Riflessioni sopra Salustio (I–Ua, ms. 218 [olim Qt.20.VI.22], and the Riflessioni sopra Cornelio Tacito nella Vita di Agricola (I–Ua, ms. 217 [olim Qt.20.VI.21]), see Scalon 1979, s.v., 218–219; the first are also witnessed, anepigraphic, in I–Ua, ms. 122, 149r–185v (they were not recognized by the eighteenth century ecclesiastic scholar and bibliophile Domenico Ongaro, who gave them the title Riflessioni politico-morali sopra varie sentenze di antichi scrittori, followed by Scalon 1979, s.v., 180).

  Mauro Sarnelli in verse, 13 the second in prose – the Dialogues have the proportions of “grandi figure” compared with the “piccioli ritratti” of the poetical ones. 14 From both these cycles of Dialogues Delfino emerges as an intellectual and cultural personality of the utmost interest: not only he embraces Galileo’s astronomical theories and Gassendi’s atomism. He supports their theories – alongside many others – drawing on a corpus auctoritatum in which Lucretius’ and Manilius’ philosophical and scientific works occupy a central position. Lucretius and Manilius are important to Delfino both for the example they set in expounding philosophical and scientific topics in verse, and for their specific treatment of the

 13 For a description of the ms. which mentions these six Dialogues (I–Ua, ms. 221, 2r–114r), and for a planned edition of them that was never carried out, which would have followed Delfino 1733a, see the already quoted Scalon 1979, s.v. (supra note 10); the ed. of them is Id. 1740. In the ms. (apograph with autograph corrections) their order is “La Creazione” (interlocutors Aristotle, Plato, 2r–11v), “L’Anima” (interlocutors Aristotle, Disciple, 13r–24r), “La Chimica” (interlocutors Chemist, Philosopher, 30r–39r), “Gli Atomi” (interlocutors Hippocrates, Democritus, 43r–62v), “Astronomico” (interlocutors Astronomer, Philosopher, 66r–97r), “Delle Meteore” (interlocutors Master, Disciple, 98r–114r); in the printed ed., “Della Creazione” (4–21), “Dell’Anima” (22–41), “Gli Atomi” (42–69), “Dell’Astronomia” (70–109), “Le Meteori” (110–140), “Della Chimica” (141– 160). A different order, most likely founded on the chronology of their composition, appears in the relevant autograph rough draft of a letter addressed by Delfino to the Florentine man of letters Prior Orazio Ricasoli Rucellai (undated, but certainly some time after Sunday 22. May 1667, day of Pope Alexander VII’s death), held in I–Ua, ms. 122, 201r–202r (preceded on 200r by a shorter draft of it, the result of a transcription): 201v: “Essendomi venuto desiderio, nel leggere Lucrezio e Manilio, di esperimentare in qual modo mi fosse potuto riuscire lo spiegare alcune dottrine [in versi], ho composto sei dialoghi in versi sciolti, cioè dell’anima, degli atomi, della creazione, delle meteore, dell’Astronomia e della Chimica”; a part of this passage is also transcribed in Anselmo 1962, 270. (Cf. Sarnelli 1995). 14 This is a phrase from the autograph rough draft of a letter addressed by Delfino to Rucellai, dated “Udine [scil. Friday] 29 Gennaro 1666” (I–Ua, ms. 122, 193r–194r: 193v: figure [–e corr. -a], piccioli ritratti [in both cases, -i corr. -o]); there is a more general (within the context of a literary autobibliography en abîme) comparison between the two cycles in the autograph rough draft of the letter to Rucellai (quoted in the previous note), in which his ‘profession of faith’ in the vernacular (clear ‘positive’ transposition of DRN 1.138–139) is also relevant: “Ho avuto sodisfazione di far qualche prova del mio debole intendimento in varie sorte di composizioni, le quali ricercano diversità di studi e diversità di stile, così in prosa, come in versi, nella lingua materna, che [sup. int.; (la quale)] ho sempre desiderato di vedere ornata e arricchita al pari di ogni altra lingua” (I–Ua, ms. 122, 201v); this passage is also quoted in Anselmo 1962, 279. For indications on this cycle see Bigi 2002.

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naturales quaestiones at the heart of their Poems. Delfino’s regard for the two poets is also visible when he quotes them as auctoritates for the highest genre, tragedy. 15 In considering Delfino’s theoretical stance, we should bear in mind that Aristotle had firmly ostracized didactic poetry and that in the sixteenth century Ludovico Castelvetro 16 had strenuously embraced Aristotle’s view. The opposite view, as represented by Quintilian, 17 had been significantly claimed by Tasso. 18 It is precisely the intentional – and regulated – revitalization of this branch of the tradition that acted as an antidote against the dangers of heterodoxy. These could hide beneath Marino’s influential literary taste, that had spread to the Italian Academies such as the Incogniti in Venice, the Umoristi in Rome and the Oziosi in Naples. Marino had professed his admiration for Nonnus and Claudian, and claimed that Ovid’s Metamorphoses were not inferior to the Aeneid. 19 But turning to the poets of the didactic tradition, of which Lucretius was the most illustrious one, also implied a different and more insidious danger for orthodoxy. In Delfino’s day, Lucretius had gradually become ever more attuned with the most recent advancements in philosophy and natural sciences. His voice carried a veritable risk for the whole system of intellectual, ethical, religious and literary values that the conciliar decrees had built and sanctioned, and that the Catholic censors had then enforced with such meticulous – albeit not inflexible – care.

 15 In this regard see Delfino 1733a, “Dialogo sopra le Tragedie”, xii–xvi, where there is no real contradiction in the comment by the interlocutor Ciro di Pers on Aristotle’s judgement on Empedocles (Arist., Poet., 1.1447b.18–20, refer. ed. 1966) as regard Lucretius and Manilius, a judgement that was not challenged for clearly programmatic reasons, because it was deemed preferable not to defend those “che debbono chiamarsi piuttosto Versificatori, che Poeti”, in order to confute “che […] le dottrine filosofiche non sieno proprie […] della Poesia” (xiv). 16 Castelvetro, Poet., 1.4 ad 1.1447b.13–20 (ed. 1978–1979, vol. I, 41–49: 45–46). 17 Quint., 1.4.4 (refer. ed. 1970); significantly, the whole passage is quoted in full and confuted in Castelvetro, Poet., vol. I, 47. 18 Tasso 1964, “Discorsi del poema eroico” 1, 57–259: 65 (“Nota filologica”, 287–315); Basile 1984, 71–72, identified the dialectic between this passage and Castelvetro’s, cited supra note 16, to which could be added Mazzoni 2017, Intr., 52, 62 (102, 111–112) – on this Intr. see Tasso’s marginalia, ed. in: Russo 2000, 301–318 –, 3.1 (395). 19 “[Marino] così come aveva sempre dichiarato le sue simpatie per Nonno e Claudiano, lumi inestinguibili, diceva, della poesia greca e latina, aveva anche scritto a tutte lettere che Ovidio superava per fantasia tutti gli altri poeti e che quanto all’arte, ossia all’invenzione, al costume, alla sentenza, all’elocuzione, le Metamorfosi non cedevano punto all’Eneide”. Raimondi 1966, “Alla ricerca del classicismo” [1963 (and 1964)], 27–41: 27; his references are to Marino 1911–1912, nrs. CCXLIX, CCXXX, vol. II, in order 74–76: 75, 52–55: 55, 54. In Marino 1966, the two letters just quoted are nrs. 235, 216, in order 424–426: 424, 394–397: 396.

  Mauro Sarnelli As a bulwark against such dangers, and also as an impulse towards a humanistic and Christian renovatio, the Jesuits elaborated a political and cultural programme that took immediate advantage of this reformed poetical tradition. Proof is that their treatises always quote it alongside the other major infraction to the Aristotelian rules: the one concerning the innocent, Christ-like nature of the tragic hero. 20 A case in point is the much reprinted Ars Poetica by Alessandro Donati 21 (which the Order held in high regard, as witnessed by the illustrious imprimatur of the editio princeps). 22 It is no surprise that, in this “manuale ‘scolastico’, dedicato al cardinale Francesco Barberini [scil. Pope Urban VIII’s ‘cardinal nephew’, older and more influential than his brother Antonio] e destinato in particolare agli allievi del Collegio Romano”, 23 from the opening chapters of the first book the normative discourse moves, with more than perspicuous consequentiality, from claiming “materiam poësis non esse res falsas”, to “non esse tantum actiones humanas”, with the preliminary confutation of Castelvetro’s theory, to the final and influential conclusion that “omnia canenda sunt in poësi”. 24 This last is an expression, if anything, of the “sincretismo irenico dei Gesuiti, che fagocita tutto quanto gli è estraneo e, assimilandolo, lo rende innocuo”. 25 The pursuit of the poetry of knowledge, then, does not represent, for the most advanced authors of treatises of the Society, an aim which is good in itself. Rather, it is one way of reaching the double pedagogical as well as literary purpose of distancing themselves from profane and mythological poetry. It also makes

 20 On this complex question, a general prolegomenon in Sarnelli 2001, and two case studies in Id., 2000, 2009. 21 Editions: Donati 1631, 1633 (which presents the same paratextual apparatus as the princeps, *1v–*3r), 1659, 1684, 1708 (the copy I viewed – held in the Biblioteca Nazionale of Turin, with shelf-mark F.XII.200, and available on the site Google Books, ‹http://books.google.it/› – presents on the colophon the variant of the year: 1718, evidence of a 2nd issue). 22 The four imprimatur are signed in order by: the General Provost of the Society, father Muzio Vitelleschi (the only one dated: “Romae [scil. Friday] 15 Nouembris 1630”); Giulio Rospigliosi, the future Pope Clement IX, who wrote a real micro-laudatio of the work (“immo quam plurimum bonarum artium studiosis commodum allaturos esse iudicaui”); Antonio Ricciulli (“A. Episc. Bellocastr. Vicesgerens”, for whom see Gauchat (ed.), s.v. “Bellicastren(sis) […]”, 111–112: 112 and note 9); the Master of the Sacred Palace, friar Niccolò Riccardi (Donati 1631, +v). 23 Costanzo 1969–1971, “L’Ars poëtica di Alessandro Donati (1633)”, t. III: Studi del Novecento sulle poetiche del Barocco (1899–1944). Alessandro Donati, Emanuele Tesauro, 73–88: 76. 24 Donati 1631, the quotations are in order on the title of book I, chap. VIII, 16–17, on part of the title of the following one, and on the final sententia of this one, 17–18 (on 17, there is the confutation of Castelvetro, Poet., ptc. 6, ad 2.1448a.1, vol. I, 51–60: 55–57). 25 Battistini/Raimondi 1990, 146.

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possible the renovatio of a taste which prepares the way for and enables appreciation of a “Poesis probis et piis ornata documentis primaeuo decori restituenda”. This was the title of Urban VIII’s most famous Poem, which serves as a proem of the Apollo Vaticanus’s poetry collection from both the editions printed in Rome in the same year, 1631, as the princeps of Donati’s Ars poetica, 26 a Poem on which Tommaso Campanella was to conduct a monumental exegesis. 27 We might reasonably claim that the high political and cultural programme of the institutio puerorum, (for the future secular and ecclesiastical ruling classes) had the palingenetic premise of a poetry whose origins did not arise “solamente per dilettare e per ricreare […] gli animi della rozza moltitudine e del commune popolo”. 28 Rather, it aimed to enhance as much as possible the classical and humanistic concept of the ἐγκύκλιος παιδεία, which was naturally oriented towards post-Tridentine ethical and religious purposes. However, trying to shed more light on Delfino’s intellectual personality and literary work, the aspects illustrated so far do not play a central, or, rather, founding, role. It is true that Delfino claimed on several occasions that “non ebbe per fine di far altro, che di parlare ben sì di molte dottrine, ma compendiosamente, e di fare un’operetta che potesse istruire in qualche materia scientifica i suoi nipoti giovanetti, se non averanno, come per lo più accade, volontà di studiare le scienze esattamente”; 29 and he did give an active contribution to the Jesuit cause in Venice. 30

 26 A modern edition, with facing French transl., is in appendix to La Lyre jésuite 1999, 242–247; the Poem has been incisively defined the Pope’s “Encyclique poétique” both in Fumaroli 1994, “L’Inspiration du poète de Poussin: les deux Parnasses” [1989], 53–147: 101 (It. transl., 81–208: 147); and in Fumaroli 2007, 9. 27 Campanella 1977, “Commentum in elegiam, cuius titulus «Poësis probis et piis documentis primaevo decori restituenda»“, 93 (“La presente edizione”), 690–889 (text and It. transl.). 28 Castelvetro, Poet., ptc. 4, “s[posizione]”ad 1.1447b.13–19, vol. I, 46. 29 Autograph rough draft of a letter addressed by Delfino to Rucellai, dated “Udine [scil. Monday] 28 Decembre 1665” (I–Ua, ms. 122, 189r–190r: 190v: post nipoti [che]; post giovanetti [quasi]); the passage is transcribed (sit venia verbis, with some errors) in Anselmo 1962, 273. The same pedagogical τόπος, combined with a political and institutional purpose, is restated by the author both in the autograph rough draft of his letter to Rucellai already quoted supra notes 13– 14 (I–Ua, ms. 122, 201r; some passages are transcribed in Anselmo 1962, 273); and in a letter to Cardinal Leopoldo de’ Medici, dated “Udine [scil. Sunday] 15 Gennaro 1668” (I–Ua, ms. 122, 210r– 211r: 210r; the passage is transcribed – also in this case, non sine mendis – in Anselmo 1962, 273– 274). 30 It is testified by the Scrittura pel Richiamo dei Gesuiti di mano dell’Autore (I–Ua, ms. 122, 140r– 147r); four decades later this contribution was still considered so important, as to suggest that Delfino, “per haver aiutato il Card.le [scil. Carlo] Carafa allora Nuntio di Venezia per introdurvi li Gesuiti, meritò la Porpora da Alessandro VII nell’ultima Promotione de’ Prencipi” ([Orazio

  Mauro Sarnelli However, his historical and cultural reference model is to be found rather in the ‘line’ Pinelli-Peiresc, given his attention to philosophical and scientific doctrines and his aristocratic “risoluzione di non publicare” his works, 31 circulating them instead among a very select Respublica litteraria. Apart from his favourite interlocutor Ciro di Pers, 32 and his friend of longstanding, Michelangelo Torcigliani, 33 his correspondents included, among others: the Emperor Leopold I, through Raimondo

 d’Elci], Relatione della Corte Romana composta estemporaneamente da un Personaggio per servitio di S. Ecc.a il Sig. Marchese CLEMENTE VITELLI Ambasciatore Straordinario al Sommo Pontefice INNOCENZO XII [scil. Pignatelli] per S. A. Reale il Gran DUCA DI TOSCANA felicemente Dominante [scil. Cosimo III], Rome, Biblioteca Angelica, ms. 2475, “Giovanni Delfino” [with the portrait], 74r–76v: 76r; a recensio of the mss. which mention this Relatione is in Pastor 1886–1933, Bd. XIV, II Abtl., 1080 note 5, to which should at least be added the manuscript just quoted, and Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 13659). Delfino’s friendship with the future powerful Cardinal Carafa and the appreciation of Pope Chigi (claimed by the author himself, in the autograph rough draft of his letter to Rucellai already quoted supra notes 13–14, 29) was also well-known by the political affairs press of the day, so effectively that both are witnessed in [Leti] 1678, pt. II, 517–530: 523–524 (the latter was already mentioned at the beginning of Delfino’s detailed account which is in Leti 1675–1676, pt. IV, 9–42: 9–10; the portrait is completed by the printing – the only one during the lifetime of the author, and in Calvinist territory – of the first scene of the first act of Creso, 34–42). See also Pallavicino 1843, vol. II, 203–204. 31 Passage of the letter addressed by Delfino to Pers, dated “Udine li [scil. Friday] 28 novembre 1659”, ed. in: Sarnelli 1996, nr. XI, 249; for the only three printings of Delfino’s compositions during his lifetime, see the previous note and infra note 33. 32 As well as being a correspondent of the author, he is also one of the three interlocutors of Delfino’s Dialogo sopra le Tragedie (already quoted supra notes 8, 10, 15), together with the future Doge Nicolò Sagredo, nephew ex fratre of the renowned Giovan Francesco, and the General and poet Bartolomeo Varisano Grimaldi. Four letters addressed by Sagredo to Delfino – the first with a missing first page, and the last incomplete –, dated “Venetia li [scil. Saturday] 8 Aprile 1662”, “Venetia [scil. Wednesday] 31 Marzo 1666”, “Venetia [scil. Wednesday] 18 Luglio 68”, are in I–Ua, ms. 114: Lettere di alcuni Principi e di vari Letterati al Card. Giovanni Delfino, nrs. [70– 72], 84, in order 146r, 147r–v, 151r–152v, 177r–178v (the third is related to three documents about the fall of three meteorites outside Verona, “tra le 5 e le 6 della notte, venendo il mercordì 20 Giugno 1668, nrs. 73–[75], in order 153r–v: 153r, 154r, 155r–158v, and the autograph rough draft of the letter of reply addressed by Delfino to Sagredo, dated “Udine [scil. Monday] 23 Luglio 1668”, nr. 76, 159r–160r); a letter of Varisano Grimaldi, incomplete, nr. 85, 179r–180v. 33 Torcigliani’s posthumous works included two of Delfino’s Dialogues in verse, under his name. For the relationship between these two authors, see Taddeo 1999 (in the Appendix, 93– 95, there is the mod. ed. of five letters addressed by Delfino to Torcigliani); as Taddeo shows, “L’Astronomia” and “La Chimica” (the only Dialogues in verse by Delfino in which “non […] sinomina mai l’atomismo, presente per esteso o saltuariamente in tutti gli altri”, 87) were printed in Torcigliani 1680–1683, vol. III, in order 232–260, 261–273: a posthumous printing which was most likely not unknown to Delfino, who received the first vol. of it by Torcigliani’s brother, Salvestro – promoter and editor of the printing –, as is shown by Delfino’s letter to him, dated

Lucretius in (moderate) Baroque:  

Montecuccoli; 34 the Cardinal Giulio Rospigliosi (future Pope Clement IX); 35 the Jesuit Cardinal Sforza Pallavicino 36 (even though Delfino’s literary tastes were very dif-

 “Udine, [scil. Wednesday] 20 Novembre 1680”, vol. II, 158 (“E quanto al libbro fatto stampare, l’anderò leggendo”). Regarding the “errore commesso da” Salvestro in printing the two Dialogues under the name of his brother, it “può essere stato propiziato dal fatto che i due testi a lui pervenuti fossero di certa grafia del fratello, il quale, ricevuti gli originali dall’autore, o degli apografi da terzi, potrebbe averli trascritti di propria mano per conservarli” (Taddeo 1999, 88). A latere, it is worth pointing out that the present writer is investigating a similar case regarding four of Delfino’s six Dialogues in verse (“L’Anima”, “Gli Atomi”, “Astronomico” and “Delle Meteore”), which are mentioned among Domenico Federici’s manuscript works, held in the Biblioteca Federiciana of Fano, Mss. Federiciani, 18, nrs. 70–73 (in which we may recognize the hand of Delfino’s younger brother, and coadjutor in the Patriarchate of Aquileia, Daniele), in order with the titles “Gli Atomi”, “L’Anima”, “Dialogo Meteorologico” and “Dialogo Astronomico” (cf. Mabellini 1928, 14–19: 17; and M. G. Marotta, “Federici, Domenico”, in: DBI, vol. XLV, 1995, 622– 624: 624, in which the third is not mentioned and the fourth presents the title “Il cielo”); a letter dated “Venezia [scil. Wednesday] 21 Marzo 1668”, in which Federici asks Delfino for “qualche pezzo de’ suoi Dialoghi e delle sue robbe Poetiche”, is in I–Ua, nr. [102], 212r. 34 Six letters addressed by Montecuccoli to Delfino, dated “Vienna li [scil. Sunday] 25 Gennaio 1665”, “Vienna [scil. Sunday] 22 Febbraio 1665”, “Finale [scil. Saturday] 24 Luglio 1666”, “Finale [scil. Friday] 6 Agosto 1666”, “Finale [scil. Tuesday] 17 [sup. int.; (li)] Agosto 1666”, “Di Vienna li [scil. Sunday] 12 Decembre 1666”, are in I–Ua, ms. 114, nrs. [60–65], in order 124r–127r, 128r, 129r–130r, 133r–134r, 135r–v,136r–137r; six letters addressed by Montecuccoli “All’Ill.mo mio Sig.re Sing.mo Il Sig.re Conte Ottavio Tassis, Gentilhuomo della Camera di S. M.tà Ces.a e Maestro Generale delle Poste Cesaree, a Venezia” (253v), dated “Vienna [scil. Sunday] 18 Gennaio 1665”, “Vienna 25 Gennaio 1665”, “Vienna li 22 Febbraio 1665”, “Finale [scil. Monday] 12 Luglio 1666”, “Finale [scil. Tuesday] 27 Luglio 1666” (with a post scriptum, on the upper-left-hand margin, dated “Finale 28 Luglio”), “Vienna [scil. Sunday] 14 Novembre 1666”, with significant mentions of Delfino’s work and their reception by the Emperor and the Court, nrs. [117–118], 119–122, in order 247r–v, 248r–249r, 251r–v, 255r–256r, 257r, 258r–v; a letter addressed by Montecuccoli to the “Ecc.mo S.r Proc.re Sagredo [scil. see supra note 32], Venetia”, dated “Finale 24 Luglio 1666”, with valuable praise of Creso, nr. [125], 263r–v. 35 A “Capitolo di Lettera scritta il dì [scil. Saturday] 13 Giugno 1665 dall’Eminentiss.mo Sig.r Cardinale Rospigliosi al Sig. Paolo del Sera, di Venetia”, and a letter addressed by the Cardinal to “P. fra Carl’Antonio Bellagranda Inquis.re / Udine”, dated “Roma [scil. Saturday] 15 Agosto 1665”, both with reasoned praise of Delfino’s Poems, are in I–Ua, ms. 114, nrs. [127–128], in order 266r, 268r. 36 Three letters of this literary Prelate to the author, the first one with just the indication “Roma, etc.” (but preceding Delfino’s cardinalate, because it is addressed “A Monsignor Delfini Patriarca d’Aquileia et ora Cardinale”), the other two dated “Roma il dì [scil. Monday] 7 di Marzo 1667” (on the occasion of Delfino’s cardinalate), “Roma il dì [scil. Friday] 11 di Marzo 1667”, are edited in Pallavicino 1668, in order 433, 193, 193–194; in Pallavicino 1848, in order t. III, 11–12, t. I, 238– 239, 239–240.

  Mauro Sarnelli ferent, which led him to declare that this renowned man of letters, “benché per altro insigne, non fosse nato alla poesia”). 37 Delfino was also in touch with the famous Jesuit prose writer Daniello Bartoli, through his companion in studies father Lazzaro Sorba; 38 with Agostino Favoriti, the renowned exponent of the Pleias Alexandrina, the literary circle around Pope Alexander VII. 39 Other names included: the Master of the Sacred Palace Giacinto Maria Libelli, who supported both the – anything but eclectic – libertas philosophandi, and even the ‘rehabilitation’ of Epicurus; 40 the Jesuit father Carlo Maurizio Vota (counselor of the King of Poland, Jan III Sobieski, who also corresponded with Delfino), who made himself spokesman of the appreciation of the Savoy Court for his works; 41 the Benedictine scholar and  37 Passage of the letter addressed by Delfino to Pers, dated “Udine, [scil. Friday] 28 gennaio 1661”, ed. in: Sarnelli 1996, nr. XLVI, 284–285: 285. 38 Five letters addressed by Sorba to Delfino, dated “Roma li [scil. Saturday] 7 novembre 1665”, “Roma li [scil. Tuesday] 29 decembre 1665”, “Roma li [scil. Saturday] 16 gennaio 1666”, “Perugia [scil. Sunday] primo marzo 1676”, “Perugia [scil. Wednesday] 22 aprile 1676”, are in I–Ua, ms. 114, nrs. [96]–100, in order 200r–201v, 202r–203r, 204r–v, 206r–v, 207r. 39 Cf. a letter addressed by this powerful man of letter to “M.r [scil. Bartolomeo] Gra‹de›nigo / Roma”, dated “Castel Gandolfo [scil. Wednesday] 29 Aprile 1665” (with the significant incipit “Hieri presentai a N. S. [scil. Pope Chigi] la Canzone di quel Prelato che va incognito”: the reference is to the Poem “Nella canonizazione del Beato Francesco di Sales”, ed. in: Delfino 1999, text 63–67, comm. 108–112), in I–Ua, 114, nr. 129, 270r–v. 40 The three letters addressed by Libelli to Delfino (genuine commentaries on the first two Dialogues in prose and on the entire work), the first and the third one dated “dalle Stanze [scil. Vaticane, Sunday] 4 Settembre 1667”, “Roma [scil. Saturday] 29 Ottobre 1667” (with the mention of “la difesa di Epicuro” in the tenth Dialogue: “Di Dio e della Providenza […]”, I–Ua, ms. 122, 77r– 108r: 82v–84r), the second one undated, are in I–Ua, ms. 114, nrs. [57–59], in order 108r–111v, 112r–119r, 120r–123r: 122r. For the former ‘rehabilitations’ of the Greek philosopher in the seventeenth century, see at least the classical contribution in: Tenenti 1978, “La polemica sulla religione di Epicuro nella prima metà del Seicento” [1959–1960], 287–306; and Jones 1992, chaps. VII–VIII (It. transl., 207–229, 231–262, notes in order 295–299, 299–303). 41 Five letters addressed by Vota to Delfino, dated “Venezia [scil. Saturday] 18 Aprile 1665”, “Venezia [scil. Thursday] 28 Maggio 1665”, “Venezia [scil. Thursday] 27 Agosto 1665”, “Venezia [scil. Thursday] 29 Aprile 1666”, “Venezia [scil. Saturday] 2 febraio 1669”, are in I–Ua, ms. 114, nrs. [91–92], 93–95, in order 190r–191v, 192r–193r, 194r–v, 195r, 196r–197v; a letter addressed by Vota to the powerful minister of the Savoy Court Carlo Emanuele Giacinto di Simiana, Marquis of Pianezza, dated “Di Casa hoggi alle prime [?] hore [1669]” (in Anselmo 1962, 278, the letter is dated “1668”, and is supposed to be “rivolta forse allo stesso autore [i.e. Delfino]”), with very appreciative judgements on Delfino’s Dialogues in prose, nr. 123, 259r–260v (the last c. is an addendum to the letter); a letter addressed by the Marquis to Delfino, dated “Torino li [scil. Saturday] 8 Maggio 1666” (with the significant incipit “Grandissima obligazione tengo al P. Vota di haver portato il mio nome, scompagnato per sé da ogni Comendazione di merito, alla notitia della Generosa humanità di V. S. I.”), nr. 67, 139r–v. Two letters addressed by Sobieski to Delfino, dated “Breslavia In Vhraijna li [scil. Monday] 21 Gennaio 1675” (sent to Rome), “Leopoli li [scil.

Lucretius in (moderate) Baroque:  

man of letters Angelo Maria Arcioni, a devotee of Angelo Grillo and mentor of Benedetto Bacchini, and the dramatist Florio Tori of Ferrara, who told him of Corneille’s interest in his Tragedies. 42 To these we might add the whole circle of the Florentine men of letters, pre-eminently Cardinal Leopoldo de’ Medici, 43 Carlo Roberto Dati 44

 Thursday] 17 Aprile 1692” (sent to Venice), nrs. 7–8, in order 7r–v, 8r; Chiurlo 1910, nrs. 6–7, in order 13–14, 14–15, prints the full transcription of the first letter, and a summary of the second one (the incipit of which is “Il Padre Carlo Maurizio Vota, della Compagnia di Giesù, nostro Teologo”). 42 A letter addressed by Arcioni to Delfino, dated “Ferrara gli [scil. Wednesday] 5 di decembre 1674”, is in I–Ua, nr. 101, 210r (in it he asks the author “il poter far copiare la Tragedia del Medoro, degno parto di V. E., per goderne io stesso nel farla oggetto delle mie ammirationi, e per inviarla altresì ad un Amico in Parigi [scil. how the next letter shows, the Benedictine Vittorio Siri, Counsellor of State and Historiographer first of the Regent Anna of Austria, then of her son Louis XIV], che me la ricerca a nome del celebre Monsù Cornelio, il quale si protesta di ritrovare la sua delitia nella lettura delle opere di V. E.”); a letter addressed by Tori to Delfino, dated “Ferrara [scil. Wednesday] 21 Ottobre 1676”, nr. [103], 214r–v (see in it the last five lines of 214r, about Delfino’s Tragedies: “Ha poi soggiunto il Padre Abbate [scil. Arcioni] ch’oltre i Monti ne sia anche arrivata la fama, a segno che fu già ricercato dal Padre Abbate Vittorio Siri a mandarle in Francia, come le mandò in effetto, per satollarne la curiosità di Cornelio, che è quel compositor di Tragedie tanto accreditato in quelle parti, che faceva fervida istanza d’haverle”). Delfino’s Lucrezia is mentioned in Stegmann 1968, vol. II: “L’Europe intellectuelle et le théâtre, 1580–1650. Signification de l’héroïsme cornélien”, chap. II.4: “Retour à la tragédie historique (1630–1636)”, 128–136: 132 (due certainly to a misprint, at note 20 Stegmann claims that “la pièce ne sera imprimée qu’en 1718 par son neveu”, whereas the first ‘official’ ed. of the four Tragedies and the relative Dialogue is Delfino 1733a: see supra note 10). Finally, it may be worth recalling that Arcioni would later dedicate to Delfino the second part of the ed. of his Poems (containing the “Ode Spirituali”, the first of which presents the title “All’Eminentissimo Signor Cardinale Giovanni Delfino, che nella lettura delle Tragedie composte da S. E. si sente l’animo sollevarsi in Dio, unico fonte dell’humana felicità”, Arcioni 1682, 187–194). 43 Six letters addressed by the Cardinal to Delfino, dated “Firenze [scil. Thursday] 28 Febbraio 1664 ab Incarnatione [i.e. 1665]”, “Firenze [scil. Sunday] 19 Luglio 1665”, “Firenze [scil. Thursday] 3 Marzo 1667 [i.e. 1668]”, “Roma li [scil. Saturday] 5 Maggio 1668”, “Di Roma [scil. Saturday] 19 Maggio 1668”, “Firenze li [scil. Saturday] 15 Settembre 1668”, are in I–Ua, ms. 114, nrs. [19–24], in order 32r–v, 33r–v, 34r–v, 35r–v, 36r, 37r–v; the first of them was included with the letter of the same date, addressed by Leopoldo to his privileged interlocutor in Venetian art, the Florentine connoisseur Paolo Del Sera, resident in Venice, (already cited supra note 35), nr. 107, 222. Other two letters addressed by Leopoldo to Del Sera, dated “Firenze a li [scil. Saturday] 31 Gennaio 1664 [i.e. 1665]”, “Di Firenze [scil. Saturday] 20 Giugno 1665”, nrs. 106, 108, in order 221r–v, 223r–v; and two letters addressed by Del Sera to Delfino, dated “Venetia [scil. Saturday] 7 Marzo 1665”, “Venetia [scil. Saturday] 21 Marzo 1665”, nrs. 87–88, in order 183r, 184r. 44 For the indications of the letters regarding this Florentine literary nobleman, see Sarnelli 1996, 227 note 5.

  Mauro Sarnelli and the above mentioned Prior Orazio Ricasoli Rucellai, 45 who introduced him in the Accademia della Crusca. Delfino became a member of the Crusca on Tuesday 27. September 1667, the same year as his election as cardinal, 46 and it was to this Academy, through Rucellai, that he sent his Dialogues in prose, conscious that “nella lingua […] non può giungere alle ultime differenze chi non è nato sotto quel Cielo dove bene si parla”. 47 As a natural result of both his scientific interests and the proximity between the two Florentine Academies, Delfino became aware of the scientific activities of the Accademia del Cimento, as we see from a passage of the third Dialogue, “Dei Principii”, in the course of a discussion on Galileo’s theories about ice: D. Sopra quello che avete detto dell’avere il freddo virtù di condensare, mi sovviene che ha creduto il Galileo essere il ghiaccio più tosto acqua rarefatta che condensata, poiché diceva egli che la condensazione cagiona diminuzione di mole e accresce la gravità, e che l’acqua nell’agghiacciare cresce di mole, e che il ghiaccio è più leggiero dell’acqua, standovi a galla. 48 B. È verissimo che così ha creduto il Galileo, et è anche vero che in Firenze l’Accademia del Cimento ha fatto diverse diligentissime esperienze, colle quali resta provata la opinione di quel grande ingegno (90r–v [other numb. 35–36]).

Again, in Delfino’s fourth Dialogue, “Della Generazione”, the character identified as “D.” – clearly Delfino himself – describes to his interlocutor “S.” (the above mentioned Nicolò Sagredo) a book on the generation of insects only recently appeared in Florence and that he has already received, being a friend of the author (“l’ho già avuto, perché l’autore è amico mio”). The book in question is Francesco Redi’s Esperienze intorno alla generazione degl’insetti (Florence 1668). Sagredo replies that he knows and admires the author in question, of whom he has read a previously appeared treatise on vipers: “già mi è noto il valore del Redi, et ho  45 See supra notes 13–14, 29; and Sarnelli 1996, 227–228 note 5. 46 For the letters which mention this aggregation, see Sarnelli 1995.7, 70 note 24; for his cardinalate, see supra note 30. 47 It is a passage of the autograph rough draft of the letter addressed by Delfino to Rucellai (I– Ua, ms. 122, 193v: giungere [sup. int.; (arrivare)]), quoted supra note 14; the author reuses almost ad litteram the sentence in a passage of the autograph rough draft of the letter addressed by him to Cardinal Leopoldo de’ Medici (I–Ua, ms. 122, 211r), quoted supra note 29: “che non [si] può arrivare a sapere [sup. lin.; (a ben intendere)] tutte le sottigliezze [scil. della lingua] chi non è nato sotto quel Cielo dove [perfettam(ente)] bene si parla”. Cf. Delfino, “Di Dio e della Providenza […]”, 81r: “ma noi, che non abbiamo beuta la lingua Toscana col latte, dobbiamo contentarci anche di errare dove si tratta di certe finezze, e abbiamo da consolarci di aver potuto collo studio fuggire gli errori grossi e che non possono ritrovare difesa”. 48 Galilei 1612, 5; mod. ed., 1890–1909, vol. IV, 57–141: 65.

Lucretius in (moderate) Baroque:  

ammirato quell’operetta, da lui pubblicata ch’è poco tempo, in materia delle vipere, e vedrò con gusto grande questo curiosissimo libro” (Osservazioni intorno alle vipere, Florence 1664). 49 Once more, we need to insist on the natural propensity to dialogue in Delfino’s intellectual personality, which can be seen in his relations with all these various milieux. In doing so, we may hope to clarify the irradiating source of such broad-based cultural activity, in which the process of self-promotion does not exist for its own sake, but is functional to a programme which clearly had the res litterariae and their role as vehicles of knowledge at its heart. From the rhetorical point of view, this is the meeting-place between two divergent virtutes elocutionis, perspicuitas and ornatus, and here – in the imitatio naturae, not in the quaestiones related to it – Delfino shows his background in the Aristotelian and Peripatetic-Ciceronian tradition, claiming: Ho procurata sopra tutto la chiarezza, credendo con Cicerone e con altri che le dottrine abbiano necessità di essere trattate lucidamente, e che non si possa senza offuscarle usare molte figure, e che, quando le materie sono molto sottili, ogni ornamento sia vizioso, e mi sono ricordato di quel verso di Manilio [scil. 3.39], che dice appunto a tale proposito: Ornari res ipsa negat contenta doceri; e posso affermare con verità che la mia penna avvezza a composizioni poetiche ha provato fatica nell’astenersi dal parlare figurato. Ho però lasciato correre talvolta qualche figura, ma nei luoghi dove non intorbidasse, e insino a quel segno che possa difendere la locuzione da una sozza bassezza. 50

 49 Delfino, “Della Generazione, Dialogo. Giornata Quarta”, I–Ua, ms. 121, 106r–153v: 126r–v; this passage testifies ad abundantiam that the affirmation in Chiurlo 1939, 167 note 2, that “tranne poche cose giovanili, tutti gli scritti letterari del Delfino sono opera del Patriarca; nessuno del Cardinale”, should be read bearing in mind that Delfino continued to work, particularly on the Dialogues. 50 Passage of the autograph rough draft of the letter to Cardinal Leopoldo de’ Medici (I–Ua, ms. 122, 210r–v), already quoted supra notes 29, 47: procurata sopra tutto sup. int. [studiato | che]; post chiarezza [sopra tutto]; dottrine sup. int. [teorie | più so(ttili); materie so(ttili) scientifiche]; di essere trattate lucidamente sup. int. [della chiarezza]; e che quando le sup. int. [se mi]; materie … e mi margin.; provato sup. int. [più tosto avuto]; dal: -l corr. -lle; post figura [anche le (qualche: sup. int.) figura (-a corr. -e) insino]; post non [intorb-]; post e [nel servirmene]. Here Delfino reuses a passage of his “Dei Principii, Dialogo. Giornata Terza”, I–Ua, ms. 121, 72r–103v (other numb. 1–62): 84v (24): [S.] “E con questa occasione voglio anche scusarmi se vi paresse il mio parlare non ornato, poiché parlo così, credendo poco proprio il parlare molto figurato in queste materie, e pur forse non mi riuscirebbero difficili gli ornamenti, essendo io stato sempre molto amico alla Poesia, ma dirò con Manilio: Ornari res ipsa negat contenta doceri”. On the “maravigliosa chiarezza, che è […] la più bella virtù d’uno scrittore”, see Pers’ letter to Delfino, dated “Pers alli [scil. Wednesday] 10 novembre 1660”, ed. in: Sarnelli 1996, nr. XXXIV, 269–271: 269 and note 130.

  Mauro Sarnelli From the philosophical and scientific point of view, this is the meeting-place with Lucretius’s Poem, frequently alluded to in the Dialogues in verse (a genre of which, through the τόπος of modesty, Delfino represents himself as the πρῶτος εὑρετής in vernacular), 51 and adduced as auctoritas in the Dialogues in prose, without resorting to the translation expressly recommended by the men of letters of the Accademia della Crusca both for Greek and Latin authors. 52

 51 On this, cf. these two passages of the autograph rough drafts of two letters addressed by Delfino to Rucellai (for the first of them, see supra notes 14, 47): “Veggo il desiderio del Ser.mo S.r Prencipe Leopoldo e di V. S. Ill.ma insieme di vedere qualche mio dialogo in versi, e per ubbidire a S. A. e meritare insieme i favori pregiatissimi di lei, […] ne ho fatto subito trascrivere uno, che verrà [-nirà corr.] con queste mie righe, e se non dispiacerà totalmente, ne manderò qualche altro, ma sono bagattelle et ischerzi, non avend’io avuto altro [altro] oggetto, che di far prova di me stesso nel [portare in ve-] toccare qualche dottrina verseggiando, et [ne] ne ho scritto in quelle materie che mi sono andate venendo nel capriccio, onde per questo e per [per…per sup. int.] essere [-ere corr. -na] una qualità di composizione in versi, per quanto io so, [nella nos-] nuova nella lingua Toscana, si rende nelle imperfezioni tanto più compatibile” (I–Ua, ms. 122, 193r–v; italics added); and, still more, “V. S. Ill.ma, che possede tanto profondamente quelle materie [scil. the reference is to the “dottrine di Aristotele nei libri dell’anima”, 207r, a primary source of the Dialogue in verse of the same title, for which see supra note 13] saprà scoprirvi con una occhiata i difetti, e la prego quanto posso di qualche avvertimento, conoscendo di averne più che bisogno, particolarmente in quella qualità di dialoghi formati senza esemplari nella nostra lingua, e posso dire [anche] in parte senza esemplari anche nella Latina, mentre [né] Manilio e [né] Lucrezio parlano ben [non toccano certe materie, che ho toccato io] sì degli Atomi, [e di cose] e l’altro di cose Astronomiche, ma non toccano certe materie che ho trattato io in alcuni di quei dialoghi, e camminano pur anche per [diversa] altro per diverse strade” (I–Ua, ms. 122, 206r–207r: 206v, dated “Udine [scil. Wednesday] 7 Aprile 1666”; italics added). See also two passages of Delfino, “Dei Principii”, in the first of which, about the alchemists, the interlocutor indicated as S. affirms that “non […] darà gusto nello spiegare le loro dottrine nella nostra lingua”, and asked by D. about the reason of that reticence, he answers: “Perché le avete vedute spiegate in versi in un dialoghetto di quel vostro e mio amico, che ha dimostrato con quella e con molte altre composizioni che la lingua nostra è capace pur anche di filosofare verseggiando” (I–Ua, ms. 121, in order 91r [37], 91v [38]); whereas in the second passage, about atomism, the interlocutor indicated as B. tries once again – but in this case without success – not to answer D., reminding him that “queste dottrine pure siano state spiegate in versi Toscani da quel nostro amico, onde lo spiegarle in prosa sarebbe con mio discapito, perché la vaghezza del verso dona molta grazia” (97v [50]). 52 In this regard see Delfino’s extensive examination of the indications suggested to him by the Academics, in the central part of the autograph rough draft of the letter addressed by the author to Rucellai, dated “Udine [scil. Friday] 19 Marzo 1666” (I–Ua, ms. 122, 208r–209r): “Mi è sommamente piaciuto il ricordo di portare i luoghi degli autori Greci in Toscano, o incorporargli [in] nel discorso, [al che] e me ne varrò [–rro corr. –lerò]. […] Sopra il campo del tradurre i versi Latini [ne-] che si portano di vari autori [from di sup. int.; (per tradurli insino)] nella lingua Toscana, io vi ho due difficoltà: una insuperabile, ch’è quella del peggioramento notabilissimo che riceverebbero, l’altra è che, imitando il dialogo un discorso familiare [scil. Galileo est passé par ici], non

Lucretius in (moderate) Baroque:  

But now hora ruit, and it is time to conclude, with a brief review of Delfino’s philosophical and scientific ‘decameron’. The cycle of the Dialogues in prose, which “son tutti copiati da una mano, ma ritoccati dall’Autore” (I–Ua, ms. 121, Ir, as pointed out by Domenico Ongaro), is organized as follows: 1. “Delle Sette dei Filosofi, Dialogo. Giornata Prima” (1r–24v); 2. “Del Mondo in Universale, Dialogo. Giornata Seconda” (50 [i.e. 26]r–70 [i.e. 46]r; other numb.: 1–39); 3. “Dei Principii, Dialogo. Giornata Terza” (72r–103v; other numb.: 1–62); 53 4. “Della Generazione, Dialogo. Giornata Quarta” (106r–153v); 5. “Dell’Anima, Dialogo. Giornata Quinta” (156r–207r; other numb.: 1r–[51]r); 6. “Dei Sensi, Dialogo. Giornata Sesta” (210r–240r; other numb.: 1–59); 7. “Della Terra, Dialogo. Giornata Settima” (242r–273v); 54 8. “Delle Meteore, Dialogo. Giornata Ottava” (I–Ua, ms. 122, 2r–29v); 9. “Dell’Astronomia, Dialogo. Giornata Nona” (32r–75v); 10. “Di Dio e della Providenza, Dialogo. Giornata Decima” (77r–108r).

References Anselmo, Francesco (1962), Giovanni Delfino tra classico e barocco. Studio storico-critico, Messina. Arcioni, Angelo Maria (1682), Ode, Pavia, 2 pts. Aristoteles (1966), De arte poetica liber, recognouit breuique apparatu critico instruxit Rudolfus Kassel, repr. with corrections, Oxonii [1st ed. 1965]; the text is also available on the site of the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (‹http://stephanus.tlg.uci.edu›), s.v. Basile, Bruno (1984), Poëta melancholicus. Tradizione classica e follia nell’ultimo Tasso, Pisa. Battistini, Andrea/Raimondi, Ezio (1990), Le figure della retorica. Una storia letteraria italiana, Turin [1st ed. 1984]. Bigi, Stefano (2002), “Letteratura e scienza. Gli inediti Dialoghi in prosa di Giovanni Delfino (1617–1699)”, in: Aevum 76, 775–827.

 pare naturale che all’improvviso si traducano con eleganza versi latini, e il dire di averli tradotti per avanti e di averli nella memoria [p-] riuscirebbe [-uscire- corr. -esciri-] credibile proprio [erasure above the line] per una o due volte, ma non frequentemente portandosi molti versi e di molti poeti” (italics added). 53 In the description of the two mss. by Scalon 1979, s. vv., 179–180 (already quoted supra note 1), from this Dialogue on the remaining ones, with the exception of nr. 9, indications are not to the fol. with the title, but to the following one, with the beginning of the work. 54 Mod. ed.: Delfino 1964.

  Mauro Sarnelli Bowers, Fredson (1994), Principles of Bibliographical Description, intr. by G. Thomas Tanselle, Winchester-New Castle, Delaware [1st ed. Princeton 1949]. Campanella, Tommaso (1977), Opere letterarie, ed. by Lina Bolzoni, Turin. Cappelli, Adriano (2012), Cronologia, Cronografia e Calendario perpetuo. Dal principio dell’era cristiana ai nostri giorni, 7th ed. rev., corr. and incr. by Marino Viganò, Milan [1st ed. 1906]. Castelvetro, Lodovico (1978–1979), Poetica d’Aristotele vulgarizzata e sposta, ed. by Werther Romani, Rome-Bari, 2 vols. [the 2nd, printed in December 1978]. Ceccarelli, Andrea (2011–2012), La fortuna di Lucrezio a Padova nel secondo Cinquecento, Università degli Studî of Rome “La Sapienza”, Ph.D. thesis; available on the site Padis (‹http://padis.uniroma1.it/handle/10805/1973›). Chiurlo, Bindo (1910), Una lettera autografa di Luigi XIV ed altre di G. Sobieski, Cosimo III ecc. al cardinal G. Delfino, Udine, Tipografia Giuseppe Vatri (“Nozze Chiurlo-Roselli”) [repr. in: Bollettino della Civica Biblioteca e Museo di Udine IV, 1910, 3, 144–155]. Chiurlo, Bindo (1939), “I manoscritti letterari del patriarca Giovanni Delfino”, in: Archivio Veneto s. V, LXIX, 47–48, 121–171. Corsaro, Antonio (2003), Percorsi dell’incredulità. Religione, amore, natura nel primo Tasso, Rome. Costanzo, Mario (1969–1971), Critica e poetica del primo Seicento, Rome, 3 ts. Delfino, Giovanni (1730), Parnaso del[sic]’Em.mo Cardinal Delfino […], Utrecht, 2 pts. Delfino, Giovanni (1733a), Le Tragedie […], ora la prima volta alla sua vera Lezione ridotte, e illustrate col Dialogo Apologetico dell’Autore, non più stampato, [ed. by Giovanni Antonio and Gaetano Volpi], Padua. Delfino, Giovanni (1733b), Tragedie […], con Dialogo sopra di esse […], Rome. Delfino, Giovanni (1740), “Dialoghi […]”, in: Miscelanea di varie Operette […], t. I, Venice, 1– 160. Delfino, Giovanni (1964), Della Terra. Il VII dei dialoghi in prosa per la prima volta stampato, with commentary and note by Francesco Anselmo, Messina. Delfino, Giovanni (1976), “Cleopatra”, in: La tragedia classica dalle Origini al Maffei, ed. by Giammaria Gasparini, 2nd ed., Turin [1st ed. (without the work) 1963], 741–886. Delfino, Giovanni (1994), La Cleopatra, ed. by Mauro Sarnelli, Santa Marinella (Rome). Delfino, Giovanni (1995a), Rime scelte, ed. by Mario Costanzo, intr. by Rocco Paternostro, Rome. Delfino, Giovanni (1995b), “Dialogo sopra le Tragedie”, ed. by Stefano Tomassini, in Philo‹:›logica IV, 8, sect. Arch‹:›Bar, ed. by Marzio Pieri, Angelo Colombo and S. T., 74–94. Delfino, Giovanni (1999), Nuove Rime scelte, ed. and with intr. by Rocco Paternostro, philological note and commentary to the texts by Mauro Sarnelli, Rome. Delfino, Giovanni (2008), Lucrezia, ed. by Federica Giampieretti, Manziana (Rome). DBI: Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (1960 ff.), Rome; also available on the site Treccani (‹http://www.treccani.it/biografico›). Donati, Alessandro (1631), Ars Poetica […], Rome. Donati, Alessandro (1633), Ars Poetica siue Institutionum Artis Poeticae Libri Tres[…], Cologne. Donati, Alessandro (1659), Ars Poetica […]. Libri Tres, Bologna. Donati, Alessandro (1684), Ars Poetica […]. Libri Tres, Venice. Donati, Alessandro (1708), Ars Poetica […]. Libri Tres, Parma. Donati, Alessandro (1718), Ars Poetica […]. Libri Tres, Parma. Fahy, Conor (1988), Saggi di bibliografia testuale, Padua.

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Frachetta, Girolamo (1589), Breve Spositione di tutta l’Opera di Lucretio, nella quale si disamina la dottrina di Epicuro, et si mostra in che sia conforme col vero et con gl’insegnamenti d’Aristotile, et in che differente. Fatta per Girolamo Frachetta nell’Academia de gli Incitati di Roma. […] All’Illustrissimo et Reverendissimo Signor Cardinale Scipione Gonzaga, Venice. Fumaroli, Marc (1994), L’École du silence. Le sentiment des images au XVIIe siècle, Paris (It. transl., La scuola del silenzio. Il sentimento delle immagini nel XVII secolo, Milan 1995). Fumaroli, Marc (2007), “Le “siècle” d’Urbain VIII”, in: I Barberini e la cultura europea del Seicento. Atti del convegno internazionale, Palazzo Barberini alle Quattro Fontane, 7.–11. December 2004, ed. by Lorenza Mochi Onori, Sebastian Schütze, Francesco Solinas, Rome, 1–14. Galilei, Galileo (1612), Discorso al Serenissimo Don Cosimo II Gran Duca di Toscana intorno alle cose che stanno in su l’acqua, o che in quella si muovono […], Florence. Galilei, Galileo (1890–1909), Le Opere, nation. ed. dir. by Antonio Favaro, Florence, 20 vols. (repr. 1929–1939). Gauchat, Patrick (ed.) (1935), Hierarchia Catholica […], vol. IV: A Pontificatu Clementis PP. VIII (1592) usque ad Pontificatum Alexandri PP. VII (1667), Münster. Jones, Howard (1992), The Epicurean Tradition, London-New York [1st ed. 1989] (It. transl., La tradizione Epicurea. Atomismo e materialismo dall’Antichità all’Età Moderna, Genua 1999). Leti, Gregorio (1675–1676), L’Italia Regnante, o Vero Nova Descritione dello Stato presente di tutti Prencipati e Republiche d’Italia, Geneva, 4 pts. [Leti, Gregorio] (1678), Il Livello Politico, o sia La Giusta Bilancia, nella quale si pesano le Massime di Roma et attioni de’ Cardinali Viventi, Cartellana [i.e. Geneva], 4 pts. Lucretius Carus, Titus (1996), La natura delle cose, intr. by Gian Biagio Conte, transl. by Luca Canali, Latin text and comm. by Ivano Dionigi, 2nd ed., Milan [1st ed. 1990]. Lucretius Carus, Titus (2002–2009), De rerum natura, crit. ed. with intr. and vers. by Enrico Flores, Naples, 3 vols. La Lyre jésuite. Anthologie de poèmes latins (1620–1730) (1999), présentés, traduits et annotés par †Andrée Thill, notices biographiques et bibliographies par Gilles Banderier, préf. de Marc Fumaroli, Geneva. Maas, Paul (1972), Critica del testo, transl. by di Nello Martinelli, present. by Giorgio Pasquali, 3rd ed., with the “Sguardo retrospettivo 1956” and a note by Luciano Canfora, Firenze [1st ed. 1952 (orig. ed. Leipzig/Berlin 1927)]; repr. in: Montanari, Elio (2003), La critica del testo secondo Paul Maas. Testo e commento, Florence, XXIII–CIV. Mabellini, Adolfo (1928), Inventario dei Manoscritti della Biblioteca Comunale Federiciana di Fano, Florence 1928–1932, 2 vols.(= Albano Sorbelli, Inventari dei Manoscritti delle Biblioteche d’Italia, work founded by Prof. Giuseppe Mazzatinti, vols. XXXVIII, LI), I. Manilius, Marcus (2011), Il poema degli astri, intr. and transl. by Riccardo Scarcia, crit. text by Enrico Flores, commentary by Simonetta Feraboli and Riccardo Scarcia, Milan, 2 vols. [1st ed. 1996–2001]. Marino, Giambattista (1911–1912), Epistolario, seguito da lettere di altri scrittori del Seicento, ed. by Angelo Borzelli and Fausto Nicolini, Bari, 2 vols. Marino, Giambattista (1966), Lettere, ed. by Marziano Guglielminetti, Turin. Mazzoni, Iacopo (2017), Della difesa della Comedia di Dante [1st book], ed. by Claudio Moreschini and Luigia Businarolo, Cesena.

  Mauro Sarnelli Pallavicino, Sforza (1668), Lettere dettate dal Card. Sforza Pallavicino di gloriosa memoria. Raccolte e dedicate alla Santità di N. Sig. Papa Clemente Nono da Giambattista Galli Pavarelli Cremonese, Rome. Pallavicino, Sforza (1843), Vita di Alessandro VII, Sommo Pontefice. Libri cinque, with a Discourse by Pietro Giordani on the life and works of the Author, Milan, 2 vols. Pallavicino, Sforza (1848), Opere edite ed inedite, ts. XX–XXII: Lettere […]. Edizione corretta e accresciuta sopra i mss. casanatensi, [ed. by Ottavio Gigli, with the collab. of father Domenico Boeri], Rome, 3 ts. Pastor, Ludwig von (1886–1933), Geschichte der Päpste […], Freiburg im Breisgau, 16 Bde. Prosperi, Valentina (2004), «Di soavi licor gli orli del vaso». La fortuna di Lucrezio dall’Umanesimo alla Controriforma, Turin. Quintilianus, Marcus Fabius (1970), Institutionis oratoriae libri duodecim, recognouit breuique apparatu critico instruxit M[ichael] Winterbottom, repr. with corrections, Oxford, 2 ts. Raimondi, Ezio (1966), Anatomie secentesche, Pisa. Raugei, Anna Maria (2018), Gian Vincenzo Pinelli e la sua biblioteca, Geneva. Ripa, Cesare (1593), Iconologia […], Rome. Ripa, Cesare (1602), Iconologia […], Milan [colophon: 1601]. Ripa, Cesare (1603), Iconologia […], Rome. Ripa, Cesare (1611), Iconologia […], Padua [colophon: 1610]. Ripa, Cesare (1613), Iconologia […], Siena. Ripa, Cesare (2012), Iconologia, ed. by Sonia Maffei, text established by Paolo Procaccioli, Turin. Russo, Emilio (2000), “Il rifiuto della sofistica nelle postille tassiane a Jacopo Mazzoni”, in: La Cultura 38, 2, 279–318. Sarnelli, Mauro (1995), “«Ed a me piacque sempre / filosofar con libertà...». I sei dialoghi filosofico-scientifici in poesia di Giovanni Delfino”, in: Philo‹:›logica IV, sect. Arch‹:›Bar 7, 66–89 (1st pt.); 8, 96–118 (2nd pt.). Sarnelli, Mauro (1996), “«Maravigliosa chiarezza», «raccomandazioni» e «mal di pietra»: il carteggio Delfino-Pers”, in: Studi Secenteschi 37, 225–315. Sarnelli, Mauro (2000), “Emanuele Tesauro dall’«Hermenegildus» (1621) all’«Ermegildo» (1661)”, in: Paola Andrioli/Giuseppe Antonio Camerino/Gino Rizzo/Paolo Viti (eds.), Teatro, scena, rappresentazione dal Quattrocento al Settecento. Atti del Convegno internazionale di studi, Lecce, 15.–17. Mai 1997, 255–277. Sarnelli, Mauro (2001), “Riflessioni preliminari sulla problematica dell’eroe innocente nella drammaturgia manieristico-barocca”, in: Lucia Strappini (ed.), I luoghi dell’immaginario barocco. Atti del convegno di Siena, 21.–23. October 1999, Naples, 81–93. Sarnelli, Mauro (2009), “Tragico e sacro all’ombra del Tasso: «I Santi Innocenti» di Malatesta Porta”, in: Stella Castellaneta/Francesco Saverio Minervini (eds.), Sacro e/o profano nel teatro fra Rinascimento ed Età dei lumi. Atti del Convegno di Studi, Bari, 7.–10. February 2007, pref. by Grazia Distaso, Bari, 155–182. Sarnelli, Mauro (2007), “Fra i ‘cigni del Tevere’ accanto al Tasso: Antonio Decio da Orte, Fabio e Virginio II Orsini (con documenti inediti)”, in: Franco Piperno (ed.), Luca Marenzio e il madrigale romano. Atti del convegno internazionale di studi, Rome, 9. and 10. September 2005, Rome, 15–38. Scalon, Cesare (1979), La Biblioteca Arcivescovile di Udine, Padua. Serianni, Luca/with the collab. of Castelvecchi, Alberto (2006), Grammatica italiana. Italiano comune e lingua letteraria, Turin [1st ed. 1988].

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Stegmann, André (1968), L’héroïsme cornélien. Genèse et signification, Paris, 2 vols. Taddeo, Edoardo (1999), “Torcigliani e Delfino, Patriarca atomista” in: Studi Secenteschi 40, 83–95. Tasso, Torquato (1964), Discorsi dell’arte poetica e del poema eroico, ed. by Luigi Poma, Bari. Tenenti, Alberto (1978), Credenze, ideologie, libertinismi tra Medioevo ed Età moderna, Bologna. Testi, Fulvio (1627), Poesie Liriche […]. All’Altezza Sereniss.ma del Prin.e Alfonso d’Este, Modena. Torcigliani, Michelangelo (1680–1683), Echo Cortese […], ed. by Salvestro Torcigliani, Lucca, 3 pts.

Matteo Favaretti Camposampiero

Lucretius in Leibniz

Abstract: Although recent scholarship accepts that Leibniz was familiar with De Rerum Natura, not enough attention has been devoted so far to how Leibniz actually presents, uses, criticizes, or endorses several key Lucretian doctrines. This paper offers a detailed reconstruction and assessment of Leibniz’s enduring fascination with Lucretius. Sections 1–2 bring to light the philosophical background of Leibniz’s interest in both Marchetti’s Italian version of De Rerum Natura and Polignac’s anti-Lucretian poem. Section 3 considers Leibniz’s vindication of natural finalism against Lucretius’ denial of divine providence and design. Sections 4–5 argue that Leibniz was, on the one hand, attracted by the combinatorial strand of ancient atomism and, on the other hand, repelled by Lucretius’ commitment to casualism, indeterminism, and emergentism. Rather than Lucretius’ materialism, it was his endorsement of the clinamen doctrine with its consequent violation of the principle of sufficient reason that most bothered Leibniz. Keywords: Leibniz, Lucretius, chance, finalism, indeterminism

While we are not certain exactly when Leibniz first read De Rerum Natura, we do know that the young Leibniz began to read Roman historians and poets around the age of ten. 1 His first mention of Lucretius is in his master’s dissertation in philosophy, the Specimen quaestionum philosophicarum ex jure collectarum, discussed in 1664. Although not highly frequent, references to Lucretius appear regularly throughout the fifty years of Leibniz’s philosophical production, with the latest in a 1715 letter. 2 For guidance, I propose to differentiate between two types of references to the poem by analogy with the familiar distinction between use and mention. In some cases, Leibniz uses Lucretian verses to make a point or to express his own view more icastically; he thereby treats the poem as a sapiential text from which wise words can simply be extracted. 3 Notable examples are the decontextualized

 1 See Wilson 2008, 159f., and Antognazza 2009, 35f. 2 See Leibniz to Driesch, 2 June 1715 (Leibniz 1768, vol. V, 430). Hence, it is not only through the intermediary of Gassendi and Cordemoy that Leibniz was acquainted with ancient atomism, as suggested by Cariou 1978, 69. 3 I take the term “sapiential” in the sense specified by Hill 2005, 166f. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110673487-015

  Matteo Favaretti Camposampiero quotations of De Rerum Natura 2.7–8, 4 3.11, 5 and especially 2.15, used to depict the presently poor state of the scientific community. 6 However, the most striking use of the poem is in a 1690 letter concerning the newly aroused controversy between Jesuits and Jansenists on so-called philosophical sin and the delicate theological issue of the damnation of heathens. 7 To explain why the most rigorous theologians such as Antoine Arnauld seem to secretly enjoy the thought that millions of people are eternally damned, Leibniz evokes the psychological phenomenon of Schadenfreude, which he describes by quoting the incipit of Lucretius’ Book 2. 8 My focus in this paper, however, is on references of the other type, which consist in mentioning Lucretius or his poem primarily in order to report the poet’s views. Contrary to uses, mentions are typically free from endorsement and often serve as prelude to discussion or interpretation of Lucretian doctrines. The young Leibniz was strongly influenced by Lucretian atomism and mechanism. In his 1668 Confessio naturae contra atheistas, he praises Lucretius and the other ancient atomists for their attempts to provide a mechanical explanation of the cohesion of bodies, although he already stresses that the ultimate reason of cohesion cannot be found in atoms but only in God. 9 In 1671, he lists Lucretius among the philosophers from which he has learned that all physical explanations must be based on size, figure, and motion. 10 Nevertheless, this paper argues that Leibniz’s original interest in Lucretian atomism relates not only to physics but also (and predominantly) to combinatorics and metaphysics. Indeed, Leibniz’s very first mention of Lucretius concerns modalities and the metaphysics of fiction. In Book 5.878–879, Lucretius denies the possibility of the existence of centaurs. According to Leibniz, these verses are not about hybrid creatures as such, for otherwise they would be contradicted by the actual existence of monsters in nature. Rather, Lucretius means to deny only the existence of mythical, fictional creatures. 11

 4 “Edita doctrina sapientum templa serena” (A II, ii, 381; A VII, ii, 805f.; A VII, vi, 503n). Cf. A VI, iv, 1093: Leibniz quotes De Rerum Natura 5.438, and 1.685. 5 “[F]loriferis ut apes in saltibus omnia libans” (A VI, iv, 2059; A II, iii, 336). 6 “Talibus in tenebris vitae tantisque periclis, il n’appartient à aucun mortel, d’allumer un flambeau capable de chasser cette obscurité” (A VI, iv, 694). 7 On the controversy, see Leibniz’s excerpts and notes in A VI, iv, 2690–2700, and Leibniz 2006, 305–308. 8 Leibniz to Ernst von Hessen-Rheinfels, 14 Sept. 1690 (A II, ii, 340). 9 See A VI, i, 491f. In the Dissertatio praeliminaris (1670), Lucretius and Epicurus are mentioned as precursors of modern atomism (A VI, ii, 424). 10 See Leibniz to Conring, 8 Feb. 1671 (A II, i2, 132). 11 Specimen quaestionum philosophicarum ex jure collectarum (A VI, i, 86).

Lucretius in Leibniz  

 Marchetti, Toland, and Polignac Leibniz also showed considerable interest in modern translations of Lucretius. 12 Although his quotations from De Rerum Natura are regularly in Latin, there is one remarkable exception. In Theodicy (1710), Leibniz quotes eighteen verses from Alessandro Marchetti’s Italian version, which he qualifies as “lovely”. 13 Marchetti’s translation first appeared in 1717, but it was finished by 1669, and manuscript copies are known to have circulated after this date. 14 As we learn from Leibniz’s correspondence, the Italian courtier Francesco Palmieri used to recite this version of Lucretius at court in the early 1690s, in both Hanover and Berlin, as his own work. 15 By the end of 1701, having learned about Marchetti’s translation, Leibniz strives to acquire the manuscript to offer it to the Queen of Prussia. 16 At the same time, he begins to suspect Palmieri’s trick, 17 but his suspicions are confirmed only one year later, as after many solicitations he is finally sent the book that the Queen was impatiently awaiting. 18 When informing the Queen, Leibniz also takes the opportunity to appraise Lucretius’ poetic and philosophical merits: “This translation seems beautiful; the verses of the original are even more so, and they also contain many very good thoughts with regard to the mechanical explanation of physical things”. 19 After this positive assessment, however, Leibniz goes on to stress the flaws of Lucretian mechanism:

 12 In addition to the Italian translation (see below), Leibniz also managed to obtain a French (presumably Du Bellay’s) version of the beginning of the poem. See Poisson to Leibniz, 27 Jan./6 Feb. 1700 (A I, xviii, 339). 13 Essais de théodicée, §321 (GP VI, 307). Cf. Leibniz to Grandi, 6 Sept. 1713 (GM IV, 220). 14 See Gordon 1985, 194–198. 15 The first mention of an Italian translation is in Leibniz to Magliabechi, 5/15 Jan. 1693 (A I, ix, 248). 16 See Leibniz to Eckhart, 1 Nov. 1701 (A I, xx, 53). 17 See Leibniz to Sophie, 27 Dec. 1701 (A I, xx, 127): “J’ay acheté en Hollande d’une Auction une traduction Mste de Lucrece en vers Italiens, quand je l’auray, nous verrons si elle est entiere, et si elle s’accorde avec ce que feu M. le Comte Palmieri nous a lu autresfois comme de son crû”. Some eight months before, Leibniz still ascribed the translation to Palmieri himself. See Leibniz to Sophie Charlotte, 30 Apr. 1701 (A I, xix, 637f.): “Monsieur Palmieri … y trouvera de quoy enrichir sa description des beautés de la nature traduite de Lucrece. Je ne sçay s’il en a lû quelque chose à V. M. comme il en a lû le commencement il y a plusieurs années à Mad. l’Electrice”. 18 See Leibniz to von Bothmer, 30 May 1702 (A I, xxi, 20f.). 19 Leibniz to Sophie Charlotte and Toland, early Dec. 1702 (A I, xxi, 718, transl. Strickland 2011, 271n).

  Matteo Favaretti Camposampiero But as the source of motive action and of the wonderful order that is apparent in the laws of motion …, i.e., the principles of mechanism itself, could not themselves be explained mechanically, and as, moreover, the source of the internal action, or of the perception of the order, could be explained that way even less, this is where Lucretius and all the others lost the plot [ont perdu leur Latin]. 20

Why were Leibniz and Queen Sophie Charlotte so concerned with Lucretius precisely in the early 1700s? Consider that the letter just quoted is actually a draft of Leibniz’s response to John Toland, the notorious free thinker who arrived in Hanover in 1701 before moving to Berlin, where he was soon followed by Leibniz. There, the two spent many months of the subsequent year at the royal court and engaged in a controversy triggered and arbitrated by the Queen. 21 Part of Leibniz’s strategy consisted in dismissing Toland’s doctrines by arguing that they were merely recastings of Lucretius’ materialism, though not of his atomism. 22 Leibniz’s reaction to Toland is strikingly similar to his appraisal of Lucretius quoted above; just as both the ancient materialist and his modern fellow are right in upholding mechanism, both are wrong in denying that there must be something “above matter”, since matter can neither ground the principles of mechanical action itself nor explain perception and internal action in general. 23 Thus, in the early 1700s Leibniz still displays towards Lucretius his typically nuanced attitude toward materialism as a false doctrine that nevertheless contains an element of truth. Deeply convinced of the usefulness of didactic 24 poetry, Leibniz fosters the imitation of Lucretian philosophical verses. 25 When expressing the wish that Petersen would compose a cosmogonic poem inspired by Leibnizian principles – for “things might be permitted to a poet which would be tolerated with more difficulty in a dogmatic theologian” – he suggests Lucretius as a model. 26 In terms of philosophical doctrines, however, Lucretius is not a model but a sort of antimodel. His De Rerum Natura should be both emulated in terms of style and opposed in terms of content. The philosophical inspiration should rather come from Plato:  20 Ibid. 21 See Heinemann 1945, Fichant 1995, 421–439, Antognazza 2009, 418–420, and Strickland 2011, 17–20. 22 See Leibniz to Sophie, 9 Dec. 1702 (A I, xxi, 64). 23 Leibniz to Sophie, mid-Dec. 1702 (A I, xxi, 66). 24 See Aus und zu Alsteds Enzyklopädie (A VI, iv, 1133): “Poetica. Sunt didascalici: Lucretius De natura …”. 25 See Leibniz to Driesch, 2 June 1715 (Leibniz 1768, vol. V, 430). 26 Leibniz to Fabricius, 3 Sept. 1711 (Leibniz 1768, vol. V, 294, transl. Hotson 1999, 189).

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In all seriousness, I think that such an excellent man, poet and philosopher alike, and above all Platonic philosopher, could give us a poem on the principles of things that would infinitely outdo what Lucretius and other poet-philosophers have given us; for they did not have sufficiently high views, whereas those of Plato are more sublime … 27

This confidence in the alliance of philosophy and poetry aroused Leibniz’s interest in Cardinal Polignac’s professedly anti-Lucretian poem. Leibniz knew Polignac’s work only by hearsay, but he was clearly tantalized by the idea that someone was challenging Lucretius on his poetic turf. From the information that Polignac wrote a poem “in the style of Lucretius, but on opposite principles”, Leibniz initially infers that this poem is based “on the true principles of divinity”. 28 Some months later, however, he takes a more prudent position. That Polignac’s poem is anti-Lucretian no longer ensures that it is based on true principles like those of Plato or Leibniz himself; more plausibly, Polignac draws on Descartes, Gassendi, and Malebranche. 29 For Leibniz, however, even Cartesian philosophy appears preferable to ancient Epicureanism; the question is exactly why.

 Lucretius as the Anti-Galen Leibniz had several reasons for deeming Lucretian doctrines harmful to rational theology. First, he thought that the elimination of substantial forms in the name of atomism and mechanism could undermine the belief in the immortality of the soul. 30 Moreover, he feared that Lucretian atomism would threaten the a priori demonstration of God’s existence from his aseitas. Since this argument aims to prove that God is the ens a se and therefore necessarily exists, its difficulty consists in proving that the ens a se has all the attributes of the Christian God: “Lucretius will say that all his atoms are entia a se; thus, you must add other reasonings”. 31 Further anti-Lucretian inputs came from William King, who claimed that the inability to explain why evil exists had led many philosophers to deny either the existence of God or at least his providence: “Thus Epicurus, and his Adherents:  27 Leibniz to Remond, 14 March 1714 (GP III, 611). 28 Leibniz to Burnett, 23 Aug. 1713 (GP III, 326). 29 Leibniz to Remond, 14 March 1714 (GP III, 611). 30 See the 1693 fragment Parum consulit immortalitati (A VI, v, pre-edition). 31 Leibniz to Christian Wolff, 8 Dec. 1705 (Leibniz/Wolff 1860, 50). The passage is a comment on Wolff’s confident formulation of the argument: see Wolff to Leibniz, 2 Dec. 1705 (ibid., 48f.). Wolff learned the lesson: see Wolff 1736, §760.

  Matteo Favaretti Camposampiero nor does Lucretius bring any other Reason for his denying the System of the World to be the Effect of a Deity [naturam rerum divinitus esse creatam], than that it is so very faulty [tanta stat praedita culpa]”. 32 In his remarks on this work, Leibniz develops King’s reading of Lucretius as follows: All these evils [sc. metaphysical, physical, and moral evils] exist in God’s work; Lucretius thence inferred that there is no providence, and he denied that the world can be an effect of divinity: Naturam rerum divinitus esse creatam; because there are so many faults in the nature of things, quoniam tanta stat praedita culpa. Others have admitted two principles, the one good, the other evil. There have also been people who thought the difficulty insurmountable, and among these our author appears to have had M. Bayle in mind. 33

Here, Lucretius’ anti-providentialism and anti-creationism represent an alternative to Bayle’s scepticism, as they provide a viable solution to the core problem of theodicy. Indeed, it is one of the main traditional (non-Christian) ways of making the existence of a deity compatible with the admission that evil is real – the other way being Manicheism. But what does the denial of providence mean, exactly? Of course, Leibniz may well have in mind – as he occasionally mentions it 34 – the state of perfect isolation from our world’s concerns that is enjoyed by Epicurean and Lucretian deities, who never meddle in human affairs. However, Leibniz was notoriously not a sponsor of continuous divine intervention. His providentialism does not require God to interfere with the natural course of events but rather claims that all that happens is pre-established by God as a means to his highest ends. 35 Leibniz’s defence of divine providence is a restoration of finalism in nature. As Leibniz states in a 1696 text, the problem with Lucretius is that his naturalism fails to account even for properties and laws of the physical world. His bias for mechanistic explanations combined with his materialism prevented him from recognizing not only the realm of incorporeal substances but also one of the two realms of corporeal nature:

 32 King 1702, 37, transl. King 1731, 74. Cf. De Rerum Natura 2.180–181. 33 Remarques sur le livre de l’origine du mal (GP VI, 406, transl. Leibniz 1985, 411f.). 34 See A I, x, 352n. Cf. Leibniz to Sophie, Sept. 1694 (A I, x, 68). 35 That is why Leibniz compares Bayle’s arguments against pre-established harmony with the Epicurean arguments against providence. In questioning the possibility of pre-established harmony, Bayle reasons like an Epicurean: “Les Epicuriens qui ont declamé autresfois contre la providence, et quelques autres Philosophes et Theologiens qui ont refusé à Dieu la connoissance et l’ordonnance du detail de choses, ont raisonné de la même ma[n]iere; ils ont crû sans raison que l’infinité de Dieu n’etoit pas assès grande pour y pourvoir” (Extrait du Dictionnaire de Bayle avec mes remarques, GP IV, 538f.).

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… there are, so to speak, two kingdoms even in corporeal nature, which interpenetrate without confusing or interfering with each other – the realm of power, according to which everything can be explained mechanically by efficient causes … and the realm of wisdom, according to which everything can be explained architectonically so to speak, or by final causes … In this sense one can not only say with Lucretius that animals see because they have eyes but also that eyes have been given them in order to see, though I know that some people, in order the better to pass as free thinkers, admit only the former. 36

With respect to the doctrine of natural causes, the most effective antidote to Lucretius appears to be Galen, who is indeed evoked immediately afterwards. 37 Like several early moderns, Leibniz presents Lucretius and Galen as the respective champions of two diametrically opposed doctrines. The former claims that biological functions depend on structures that are independently formed, while the latter holds that biological structures are designed to perform specific functions. Note that Galenism does not deny that functions depend on structures; it only denies that structures are independently formed, since it maintains that in terms of design it is structures that depend on functions. This two-way metaphysical dependence makes it methodologically legitimate both to derive functions from structures (“animals see because they have eyes”) and to explain structures in terms of functions or purposes (“eyes have been given them in order to see”). Lucretius was able to see only one of these two dimensions of corporeal nature; he remained blind to the other, just as he was blind to all that is not material. Thus, Leibniz rejects Lucretian mechanism not as false in itself but as incomplete and therefore false if absolutized.

 Providence vs. Chance In the late 1680s, Leibniz had found a detailed discussion of Lucretius’ anti-finalism from a Platonic point of view in Cudworth’s True Intellectual System. 38 At that time, however, he had already independently developed his own anti-Lucretian arguments. As early as around 1680, the role of final causes and providence had been the subject of Leibniz’s first and perhaps most extensive criticism of Lucretius, which appears in the Conversation du Marquis de Pianese et du Pere Emery.

 36 Tentamen anagogicum (GP VII, 273, transl. Leibniz 1989, 478f., slightly modified). 37 GP VII, 273. 38 See Leibniz’s excerpts in A VI, iv, 1953.

  Matteo Favaretti Camposampiero In this philosophical dialogue, the Marquis of Pianese is the advocate of Epicureanism. To rule out providential and teleological explanations, Pianese questions first the tacit assumption that nature can be viewed and explained as an artefact whose orderly structure reveals design by some maker. His argument is drawn from De Rerum Natura 4.823ff.: “Lucretius, following Epicurus, made use of a few exceptions that greatly hurt your argument, based on the order of things. He says that feet are not made for walking; rather, men walk because they have feet”. 39 But, in that case, how did order arise? How did precisely those organic structures form that are best-suited to perform living functions? Pianese draws on Lucretius’ account in terms of natural selection: If you ask, then, why it turns out that things fit each other so well in the animal’s machine, as if everything was made intentionally, Lucretius will reply that it is necessity that brings about that ill-made things disappear and well-made ones are preserved and seem to be the only ones; therefore, although there is an infinity of ill-made things, they cannot remain among the others. 40

Leibniz’s spokesperson, Emery, replies that there is no evidence that such malformed or imperfect species are ever generated: “These persons are patently wrong. For we never see things half-made; how would the ill-made things disappear so early, and how would they escape our eyes armed with the microscope?” 41 On the contrary, nature displays beautiful order and perfection in all of its products, as far as we can observe: “Please observe the difference between an animal damaged by an accident and the most imperfect species, and you will admit that nature does nothing in this world that is not marvelous”. 42 Once again, Pianese draws inspiration from Lucretius. 43 Even granted that the world we see is passably ordered, this is only one world among infinite others which we cannot observe but may be far less perfect. Thus, the beauty of our world can be explained in statistical terms as a property that obtains for at least one item in an infinite collection. If the universe is unlimited in both extension

 39 A VI, iv, 2266, transl. Leibniz 2006, 184. 40 Ibid. Cf. De Rerum Natura 5.837ff. The passage on centaurs that attracted the young Leibniz’s attention (see above) belongs to this context. 41 A VI, iv, 2267, transl. Leibniz 2006, 184. 42 Ibid. Here, Leibniz advances a further argument to the effect that not every biological perfection consists in some existential advantage. Thus, he challenges the view that the more perfect a biological structure is, the more advantageous it is for the preservation of the respective animal species. 43 A VI, iv, 2267. Cf. De Rerum Natura 2.1048–1066.

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and variety, the idea of statistical distribution can relieve us from having recourse to a wise creator. Leibniz takes this objection seriously as “the last entrenchment of sophisticated Epicureanism”. 44 First, he counters that nothing suggests that things are less perfect and ordered elsewhere in the universe than here. Second, he dismisses the hypothesis that order arises by chance as highly implausible, since it appears contrary to the ordinary course of nature: “Yet, it is as little believable as to assume that an entire library has been created one day by the casual concourse of atoms”. 45 From this implausibility, he concludes that “there is moral certainty to the effect that it is providence that governs things”. 46 The argument from order provides only “moral” and not absolute certainty about providential finalism because the “fiction” of ordered complex structures forming by chance or random combination of parts does not involve a contradiction; thus, it cannot be conclusively discarded as metaphysically impossible. Leibniz, however, must have felt unsatisfied with this formulation, since he added a clause to point out that the asserted inconclusiveness concerns only the argument from order, whereas other arguments can destroy this fiction absolutely. 47 Unfortunately, he does not specify those arguments. 48 The next section and the conclusion elaborate on this issue, which I deem crucial for understanding Leibniz’s interpretation of Lucretian Epicureanism.

 Three Types of Combinatorics According to Leibniz’s metaphysics, any formation of structures is a combinatorial process. Both artefacts and natural bodies arise from combining certain basic components in particular ways. Atomism provides a consistent and simple frame-

 44 A VI, iv, 2267, transl. Leibniz 2006, 185, modified. 45 A VI, iv, 2268, transl. Leibniz 2006, 185. 46 Ibid. 47 “Je demeure d’accord que cette fiction n’est pas impossible absolument parlant, c’est à dire qu’elle n’implique pas contradiction quand on ne considere que le raisonnement present pris de l’ordre des choses (quoyqu’il y en ait d’autres qui l[a] detruisent absolument)” (A VI, iv, 2268). Cf. fifteen lines below: “Il y en a encore d’autres demonstrations qui sont absolument geometriques”. 48 Wilson 2003, 100, laments that “there is no such proof in all of Leibniz’s writings”.

  Matteo Favaretti Camposampiero work for articulating this idea. Every individual thing is merely a particular combination of material atoms; thus, even an entire world is nothing but a very complex combination of atomic components. This insight into the essentially combinatorial character of reality was in fact the real reason behind Leibniz’s early fascination with Lucretius and atomism. In the Dissertatio de arte combinatoria of 1666, Leibniz traces the alphabet metaphor for the origin of things back to the ancient atomists – a metaphor that was to play a prominent role in both his metaphysics and his theory of knowledge: Even Aristotle used the example of the origin of all words from a few letters to clarify the origin of things from atoms according to the doctrine of Democritus. See De generatione et corruptione I, text 5, and more clearly Metaphysics I, ch. 4, where Aristotle says that according to Democritus atoms differ by schēma, i.e. figure, like the letters A and N; by thesis, i.e. position, like the letters N and Z, for if you look sideways the one will turn into the other; and by taxis, i.e. order, like the syllables AN and NA. 49

Then Leibniz quotes Lucretius’ verses, in which he also finds a hint at two basic concepts of combinatorics (his additions are italicized): “Quin etiam refert nostris in versibus ipsis / Cum quibus (complexiones) et quali sint ordine (variatio situs) quoque locata”. 50 Changes of complexion and situs (i.e. combinations and permutations) are characterized by Leibniz as the two kinds of variations. 51 Given an alphabet or another finite set of simple elements, their possible combinations are obtained either by picking out different elements to combine or by varying their relative positions. In the same way, every combination of material particles is identified both by its components (atoms of different form or size) and its structure. The book and library metaphors debated by Pianese and Emery in Leibniz’s dialogue originate from the same intuition; things are composed of atoms just as books are composed of letters arranged in various orders. Even though Leibniz was soon to reject atomism, he never rejected his youthful combinatorial metaphysics; 52 the actual world is the best possible combination of possible things. Leibniz’s combinatorics is essentially a work of intelligence and wise choice. A combinatorial process takes place when simple terms are combined by a rational agent who discriminates between possible (i.e. logically consistent) and impossible (i.e. logically inconsistent) combinations, then

 49 A VI, i, 216. 50 Ibid. Cf. De Rerum Natura 2.1013–1014. 51 See A VI, i, 171. 52 Cf. Leibniz’s mention of Lucretius in connection with combinatorics in Ars lulliana Ivonis (A VI, iv, 1093n).

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selects the best one among the possible ones. This combinatorial model has two main rivals. The first is the so-called principle of plenitude, which holds that all possibilities are realized in the actual world. Plenitude provides an alternative explanation as to why such or such combinations exist: simply because the components of the world combine together in all possible ways. This combinatorial account can thus dispense with intelligence and choice by assuming that every possible combination necessarily actualizes somewhere and sometime simply by virtue of the mechanical evolution of the material universe. Leibniz interpreted Descartes’s cosmogenesis in this way and strenuously denounced its underlying modal metaphysics as paving the way to Spinoza’s necessitarianism, since it makes possibility collapse into actuality. 53 Assuming that Descartes’s combinatorial cosmogony derives from Epicurean atomism, one might argue that Leibniz’s reaction to Epicurean and Lucretian anti-providentialism is part of his attack on the self-forming Cartesian universe. 54 Although this reading is tempting, it lacks adequate textual support. Of course, Leibniz occasionally mentions Epicurus together with Spinoza as upholders of blind necessity. 55 To my knowledge, however, Leibniz never explicitly conflates the Epicurean and the Cartesian accounts of cosmogenesis or implies that Epicureanism is committed to modal plenitude. The second rival is casualism, which consists in replacing intelligent choice with chance and natural selection. Nature tests several possibilities by producing random combinations: most are unfit and perish, but some are successful and survive. The combinatorial model that Leibniz’s above-cited Conversation ascribes to Lucretius clearly conforms to this second alternative, in which chance plays a central role. In my view, this is the very core of Leibniz’s concern with Lucretius and Epicureanism in general.

 53 See, e.g., A VI, iv, 1466, 1477f. 54 A picture of this kind is suggested by Wilson 2008, 97–103. 55 See Réflexions sur l’ouvrage de Hobbes (GP VI, 390): moral necessity must be distinguished from “cette necessité aveugle, par laquelle Epicure, Straton, Spinosa, et peutestre M. Hobbes ont crû que les choses existoient sans intelligence et sans choix, et par consequent sans Dieu”. Presumably, Leibniz’s point is that both Epicureanism and Spinozism lead to the same conclusion, the denial of God’s design. It is in this sense that Epicurean chance or fortune can be compared with some “blind necessity” or “blind power”. Bayle has shown, writes Leibniz, “que si une creature aveugle pouvoit venir à bout de former un aussi bel ouvrage que le corps organique d’un animal, rien n’empechera les Athées de dire qu’une puissance aveugle a formé le monde, comme Straton, Philosophe ancien, le soutenoit, ou bien le concours fortuit des atomes selon Epicure” (Eclaircissement sur les natures plastiques, GP VI, 555).

  Matteo Favaretti Camposampiero Of course, these two rival accounts have much in common, as both introduce processes of self-formation so as to dispense with any rational combiner. But from a closer perspective, they also represent the Scylla and Charybdis of modal metaphysics: the former introduces fatal necessity, the latter introduces indeterministic chance. Leibniz was as distrustful of casualism as he was of necessitarianism, for both challenge, though in opposite ways, the intrinsic rationality of reality that is expressed by the principle of sufficient reason. Casualism amounts to a radical form of indeterminism, since genuine chance exists if and only if it is not the case that everything has a sufficient reason for existing – and for existing just as it is rather than otherwise.

Conclusion After the Conversation, Leibniz confronts Lucretius’ indeterminism twice, first in the excerpts from Cudworth cited above. As Cudworth reports, Lucretius advocates a form of emergentism 56 by arguing that some typical features of human bodies (such as speaking, laughing, and thinking) clearly do not belong to their elementary components. Thus, the same must be true of the property of sensing, which belongs to animated bodies but not to the corpuscles of which they are made. Leibniz summarizes as follows: “Lucretius wants that just as [humans] who are made of non-laughing things can laugh, so [animals] who are made of non-sensing things can sense. Et ridere potest non ex ridentibus factus”. 57 This idea is at odds with Leibniz’s doctrine of preformation, according to which all organic bodies are composed of smaller organic bodies and no living being can arise from non-living matter. In the margin of the excerpt, Leibniz remarks: “[The principle that] nothing comes from nothing is valid only insofar as it proves that nothing is without a reason”. 58 This remark can be read as an ad hominem objection to Lucretius, who strongly supports the ex nihilo nihil fit in order to rule out creation from nothing. 59 In Leibniz’s view, a sound interpretation of this principle

 56 Cudworth himself adopts a proto-emergentist vocabulary to describe the Lucretian position he refutes. See Cudworth 1678, 666: “Had there been once nothing but Sensless Matter, Fortuitously Moved, there could never have emerged into Being, any Soul or Mind, Sense and Understanding”. This Lucretian doctrine is described as emergentist also by Wilson 2006, 177. 57 A VI, iv, 1953. Cf. De Rerum Natura 2.986, and Cudworth 1678, 666. 58 “Ex nihilo nihil fieri non amplius locum habet, nisi quia probat, nihil esse sine ratione” (A VI, iv, 1953n). 59 De Rerum Natura 1.149–150. Cf. Cudworth 1678, 64f., 738–767.

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does not deny creation but simply amounts to the principle of sufficient reason. The ad hominem point is that the emergentist materialism that Lucretius adopts in Book 2 appears to be inconsistent with the ex nihilo, for it makes mental properties arise from nothing, 60 i.e. without any sufficient reason or cause. The second confrontation occurs in the Theodicy, in which one of Leibniz’s arguments against the late-scholastic and Cartesian account of free will in terms of full indifference is that it would introduce pure chance, just as the Epicurean clinamen does: All wise men are agreed that chance is only an apparent thing, like fortune: only ignorance of causes gives rise to it. But if there were such a vague indifference, or rather if we were to choose without having anything to prompt us to the choice, chance would then be something actual, resembling what, according to Epicurus, took place in that little deviation of the atoms, occurring without cause or reason. Epicurus had introduced it in order to evade necessity, and Cicero with good reason ridiculed it. 61

The same comparison is drawn in response to Clarke: “A will without reason would be the chance of the Epicureans”. 62 In order to avoid necessitarianism and preserve contingency and freedom, the Epicureans fall into the other extreme and accept that something can arrive even without any cause or reason, which is to say purely by chance. 63 With strong disapproval, Leibniz reports that Epicurus went so far in his defence of freedom as to deny the principle of bivalence, 64 which for Leibniz is inseparable from the principle of non-contradiction. But Leibniz’s main point is that both fully indifferent choice and the random swerve of particles would make pure chance real: suddenly a determination exists that comes out of nothing, where “nothing” means a complete absence of previous determinations. Both thus violate the principle of sufficient reason (not to say the ex nihilo) 65 and introduce absurd figments: To claim that a determination comes from a complete indifference absolutely indeterminate is to claim that it comes naturally from nothing. … This doctrine introduces something as preposterous as the theory already mentioned, of the deviation of atoms, whereby Epicurus asserted that one of these small bodies, going in a straight line, would turn aside all at once

 60 A similar objection is raised by Cudworth 1678, 761f. 61 Essais de théodicée, §303 (GP VI, 297, transl. Leibniz 1985, 310f.). 62 Leibniz, Fourth Letter to Clarke, 1716, §18 (GP VII, 374, transl. Leibniz/Clarke 2000, 24). 63 See Essais de théodicée, §362 (GP VI, 329f.). 64 See Essais de théodicée, §169 (GP VI, 211). 65 On the inconsistency between the doctrine of clinamen and the ex nihilo principle, cf. Cudworth 1678, 762f.

  Matteo Favaretti Camposampiero from its path, without any reason, simply because the will so commands. Take note moreover that he resorted to that only to justify this alleged freedom of complete indifference … 66

It is at this point that Leibniz quotes eighteen verses from Marchetti’s version of De Rerum Natura (see above, sect. 1) to illustrate the Epicurean doctrine of clinamen and free will. It thus seems possible to identify at least one candidate for the role of decisive argument against Lucretius’ denial of providence and final causes. As Lucretius introduces chance to explain order and make design unnecessary, Leibniz’s ace in the hole is the principle of sufficient reason, which should reveal the absurdity inherent in pure chance and fortuitous emergence of order. Intrigued by the combinatorial strand of Epicurean-Lucretian atomism but worried about its theological and specifically anti-teleological implications, Leibniz somehow comes to realize that the singular character of this philosophy consists in its marrying materialism and indeterminism. However, it is not materialism that he finds most disturbing; on the contrary, he appears prepared to recognize its merits and even its partial truth. The original and irretrievable error that Leibniz ascribes to Epicurus and Lucretius is rather the indeterministic doctrine of clinamen: For nothing gives clearer indication of the imperfection of a philosophy than the necessity experienced by the philosopher to confess that something comes to pass, in accordance with his system, for which there is no reason. That applies to the idea of Epicurus on the deviation of atoms. Whether it be God or Nature that operates, the operation will always have its reasons. 67

Abbreviations A, series, volume = Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm (1923ff.), Sämtliche Schriften und Briefe, Berlin. GM, volume = Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm (1849–1863), Mathematische Schriften, ed. Carl Immanuel Gerhardt, Berlin/Halle. GP, volume = Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm (1875–1890), Die philosophischen Schriften von Leibniz, ed. Carl Immanuel Gerhardt, Berlin.

 66 Essais de théodicée, §320 (GP VI, 306, transl. Leibniz 1985, 319f.). 67 Essais de théodicée, §340 (GP VI, 316, transl. Leibniz 1985, 329).

Lucretius in Leibniz  

References Antognazza, Maria Rosa (2009), Leibniz: An Intellectual Biography, Cambridge. Cariou, Marie (1978), L’atomisme. Trois essais: Gassendi, Leibniz, Bergson et Lucrèce, Paris. Cudworth, Ralph (1678), The True Intellectual System of the Universe: The First Part, London. Fichant, Michel (1995), “Leibniz et Toland: philosophie pour princesses?”, in: Revue de Synthèse 116, 421–439. Gordon, Cosmo Alexander (1985), A Bibliography of Lucretius, 2nd edn., Winchester. Heinemann, Friedrich Heinrich (1945), “Toland and Leibniz”, in: The Philosophical Review 54, 437–457. Hill, Thomas D. (2005), “Old English Sapiential Poetry”, in: David F. Johnson/Elaine Treharne (eds.), Readings in Medieval Texts: Interpreting Old and Middle English Literature, Oxford/ New York, 166–182. Hotson, Howard (1999), “Leibniz and Millenarianism”, in: Stuart Brown (ed.), The Young Leibniz and His Philosophy, Dordrecht, 169–198. King, William (1702), De origine mali, London. King, William (1731), An Essay on the Origin of Evil, Cambridge. Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm (1768), Opera omnia, ed. Louis Dutens, 6 vols., Genevae. Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm (1985), Theodicy, transl. E.M. Huggard, La Salle (Ill.). Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm (1989), Philosophical Papers and Letters, transl. Leroy E. Loemker, 2nd edn., Dordrecht. Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm (2006), The Art of Controversies, ed. and transl. Marcelo Dascal, Dordrecht. Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm/Clarke, Samuel (2000), Correspondence, ed. Roger Ariew, Indianapolis (Ind.). Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm/Wolff, Christian (1860), Briefwechsel, ed. Carl Immanuel Gerhardt, Halle. Strickland, Lloyd (2011), Leibniz and the Two Sophies: The Philosophical Correspondence, Toronto. Wilson, Catherine (2003), “Epicureanism in Early Modern Philosophy: Leibniz and His Contemporaries”, in: Jon Miller/Brad Inwood (eds.), Hellenistic and Early Modern Philosophy, Cambridge, 90–115. Wilson, Catherine (2006), “Commentary on Galen Strawson”, in: Journal of Consciousness Studies 13, 177–183. Wilson, Catherine (2008), Epicureanism at the Origins of Modernity, Oxford. Wolff, Christian (1736), Theologia naturalis methodo scientifica pertractata. Pars prior, Frankfurt/Leipzig.

Andrew Laird

Lucretius in the Spanish American Enlightenment Atomism, Sublimity and the Dispute of the New World Abstract: Lucretius’ pivotal and pervasive influence on the thought and literature of creole Jesuits from colonial Spanish America grew steadily during the 1700s. The extent of this influence is now little known, partly because it was confined to manuscripts and printed books in Latin, and partly because the Hispanic Enlightenment is generally ignored by intellectual historians. Nonetheless, this aspect of Lucretius’ early modern reception is important for its ramifications in Italy and Europe after the expulsion of the Society of Jesus from Spain’s territories in 1767, and it invites a more flexible and inclusive historical conception of the Enlightenment. This paper will consider exemplary texts which highlight three distinct phases of Lucretius’ influence on creole Jesuit writing and ideas: first on works produced in New Spain (Mexico) in the earlier 1700s; secondly on Diego José Abad’s monumental poem in 42 books, De Deo, Deoque Homine Carmina Heroica; and thirdly on some creole contributions to the Enlightenment ‘Dispute of the Americas’. Keywords: Abad, Clavigero, Jesuits, Kant, Landívar

A comedy staged in Mexico City in the mid-1700s, Esperanza malograda, ‘Hope Frustrated’, featured a young man who had just finished a philosophy degree. His speech contained phrases which captured the spirit of several passages and expressions from Lucretius: Yo soy mirado a otra luz del admirable edificio del hombre, la mejor parte: La antorcha que lo ilumino la aguja que lo gobierno la estrella que lo dirijo y, en voluntarios naufragios, el timón de su albedrío. Yo lo sabido comprendo, Yo lo ignorado investigo, yo lo dividido aduno, y lo adunado divido. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110673487-016

  Andrew Laird Y, para no proceder defendiendo en infinito, soy entendimiento, que es todo y más de lo que he dicho. Yo soy aquel que, embarcado en el velero navío de la gran Filosofía, en tres anos he corrido, de todo su vasto océano las sirtes y los bajíos. Ya encallando y zozobrando, surge el piélago enemigo que cuántas olas abarca, tantos previene peligros. 1 I am a beholder by another light [Luc. DRN 2.24–8, 1.136–40], that of the admirable edifice of man, the best part: the torch that I shine for him, the compass with which I steer him, the star by which I guide him and the rudder of his free will, in his deliberate shipwrecks [DRN 2.1f.]. I understand what is known [DRN 1.404–9], I search for what is not known, I unite what is divided [DRN 1.215–25], I separate what is united. And in order not to go on with this defence ad infinitum, I am the understanding [DRN 1.410–17], which is everything I have said, and more. I am the one who, aboard the sailing ship of great Philosophy, has coursed through in three years all of its vast ocean, the sandbanks and the troughs. Now pounding and wrecking us, the inimical deep rises up [DRN 2.549f.], preparing as many dangers as it has waves.

The conceit of el piélago enemigo, ‘the inimical Deep’, drew on Lucretius’ simile of a shipwreck which had conveyed the impossibility of a finite number of atoms combining (tanto in pelago turbaque aliena “in such a great ocean and such an alien crowd”, DRN 2.550), but the expression also rhymes with peligro, ‘danger’, two lines below. In this speech, the hostile ocean represents the tide of modern thought which was overwhelming higher education in New Spain in the 1750s: the grecism, piélago (πέλαγος), could well hint at the teaching of classical philosophy in the original Greek which was now accompanying the dissemination of the ‘New Science’. The playwright, Cayetano de Cabrera y Quintero – himself a jurist and classical scholar – was testifying to the impact of this new current of ideas. Such allusions in a work for the popular theatre indicate that the winds of change were felt outside the cloisters of colleges and seminaries. 2 Lucretius’ influence in colonial Spanish America became more pronounced over the course of the 1700s. Though it has received little attention, that influence  1 Parodi 1976, 217 quoted in Beuchot 1996, 140. 2 Beuchot 1996, Navarro 1948 and Navarro 1983 are important accounts of thought and philosophy in New Spain. Traver Vera 2009 surveys Lucretius’ reception in the peninsula.

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had important ramifications for European intellectual history after the expulsion of the Society of Jesus from Spain and its colonies in 1767. This paper will briefly survey evidence for Lucretius’ circulation among the American Jesuit elites in the New World up to the mid-1700s (I), before (II) considering the role of the De Rerum Natura in challenges to Enlightenment authors from the exiled creole Jesuits, most of whom settled in Italy. The final part (III) will show how Rafael Landívar contested European critiques of the Americas. Landívar’s attempts to convey the grandeur and power of American nature were rooted in a conception of the sublime derived from Lucretius, which anticipated Kant’s Critique of Judgment. The emphasis in what follows is on the productions of creole Jesuits simply because the members of the Society of Jesus or their disciples, from the late sixteenth century onwards, had come to monopolise education and intellectual life in the Americas. 3 The focus is mainly on New Spain because Mexico City had long been established as the metropolitan centre of learning in the New World. The word ‘creole’ [criollo] is now the conventional and convenient way of referring to Americans of Spanish descent, to distinguish them from peninsular Spaniards and other groups.

 In the Christian humanist traditions of education in the Spanish colonies, the principal currents in philosophy and poetry had been Aristotle and Virgil respectively. Through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Lucretius’ poetry and thought was largely ignored, as it had been in Spain. 4 But in Pedro de Salas’ Thesaurus poetarum, an influential teaching anthology published in Mexico City in 1641, Lucretius comes fourteenth in a list of Roman poets deemed appropriate

 3 The Society of Jesus had 5000 members in the Americas, the Philippines and the Iberian peninsula at the time of their expulsion. Cuevas 1944 contains Clavigero’s account of the Society in Mexico as it was in 1767; Guedea 2000 and Knight 2002, 202–331 examine the consequences of the Bourbon reforms for Mexico which led to the decree of expulsion. Laird 2012 explains the increasing use of Latin in creole Jesuit literature during the 1700s. 4 Epicurus and Gassendi recur in the authoritative Bibliografía filosófica mexicana (Valverde Téllez 1989–1913), but Lucretius is not named. Abad dismissed Lucretius in his Philosophia (see below) and Lucretius’ theory of mental operation was rejected en passant in Philosophiae Scholae 1774 by José Ignacio Fernández del Rincón, a pupil of Gamarra y Dávalos: Fernández del Rincón 1994.

  Andrew Laird models for composition. 5 Even so, the only explicit reference to the De Rerum Natura in Latin poetry from New Spain in the 1600s was inapposite and incorrect. In a footnote to his Poeticum viridarium (1669), an elaborate composition extolling the Virgin of Guadalupe’s apparition in Mexico, José López de Abilés saw Lucretius’ mention of Flora (DRN 5.539–40) as nothing more than a heathen invention, which López wrongly ascribed to the fourth book of the De Rerum Natura: Flora florum, rosarumque Dea, fictè fuit à Gentilitate vocata. Lucret. lib.4. Apud Victor[inum]. part.1 6 The Goddess of flowers, and of roses, was fictitiously called ‘Flora’ by pagans. Lucretius Book 4. In Victorinus, part 1.

There was a more significant evocation in the first four hexameters of book 1 of José Villerías y Roelas’ Guadalupe (1724), a lengthy epic about the celebrated apparitions of the same Virgin of Guadalupe: 7 Indigenam, dic, Musa, Deam, quam Mexica quondam conspexit tellus, patriis emergere pulchram! floribus, et sese (Veneris miracula contra)! purpureo nitidam decorare cruore rosarum. Guadalupe 1.1–4 Tell of the Indigenous Goddess, Muse, whom the land of Mexico once beheld emerging in her beauty from her native flowers and (in contrast to Venus’ miracles) adorned herself with the purple blood of roses.

This invocation of the Virgin pointedly recalled Lucretius’ address to Venus (DRN 1.7–8):

 5 Osorio Romero 1980, 206 notes that the order in which Latin poets appear reflects their influence: Virgil, Ovid, Horace, Claudian, Martial, Lucan, Manilius, Fortunatus, Propertius, Catullus, Tibullus, Statius, Seneca, Lucretius, Mantovano, Aratus (in Latin translation), Juvenal, Persius, Sedulius, Juvencus, Vida, Sannazaro and Prudentius. 6 The couplet (verses 133–4) glossed by López in his note 22 refers to the ‘rose of Jericho’ or ‘Resurrection plant’: Vtque Ierichò in olympiaco Plantatio FLORIS/Floridus est Hortus, FLOS, ROSA, Dea. [“And like the Planting of the FLOWER in Olympian Jericho, the Garden is flowering, Flower, Rose, Goddess”.] DRN 5.539–40 reads it Ver et Venus et Veneris praenuntius ante/pennatus graditur, Zephyri vestigia propter/Flora quibus mater praespargens ante viai/cuncta coloribus egregiis et odoribus opplet. 7 Osorio Romero 1991a provides a text and translation of the Guadalupe. Laird 2010 surveys the poem, along with López de Ábiles’ Poeticum viridarium and other poems on the same theme.

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adventumque tuum, tibi suavis daedala tellus summittit flores, tibi rident aequora ponti placatumque nitet diffuso lumine caelum.

José de Iturriaga’s so-called Californias (1740), an untitled manuscript epic from the same period, celebrated the life of the Milanese missionary Gianmaria Salvatierra, and echoed the first verse of the De Rerum Natura. Lucretius’ invocation of Venus as Aeneadum genetrix, hominum divomque voluptas was thus recalled in Salvatierra’s petitionary prayer to God himself: Maxime Rex hominum, divumque superna Voluptas, qui miseros larga reples charismate dextra Californias 226–7 Greatest King of Mankind, heavenly Joy of divinities Who lavishes upon the wretched grace from your bountiful hand.

The literary and scientific endeavours of the Spanish American Jesuits in the early 1700s broke from the traditions of the preceding century, with a marked shift towards post-Cartesian methods in science and philosophy from the 1730s onwards. 8 The intellectual ringleader was José Rafael Campoy, who taught at the Colegio Máximo – then the foremost educational institution in the viceroyalty. 9 He reformed and expanded the curriculum by incorporating mathematics, Greek, vernacular languages, and the ideas of Descartes, Bacon, Gassendi, Locke, and Newton. Though no writings by José Rafael Campoy himself survive, he had a profound influence on philosophers of the next generation, which will be made evident in what follows. Campoy’s student Francisco Javier Clavigero exemplified the inclination to reconcile the new with the old in the 1750s. 10 In his teaching, Clavigero “availed himself of all useful insights unveiled by modern authorities from Bacon of Verulanium [St Albans, England] and Descartes to the American [Benjamin] Franklin”. 11 Such eclecticism and originality are displayed in Clavigero’s unpublished treatise, Physica Particularis. That title was the second part of the physics curri-

 8 Beuchot 1996, 138: ‘The period marked an important shift in Mexican philosophy’, citing Davis 1945: compare Navarro 1948, 1983. Osorio Romero 1991b, 40–56 describes the contemporaneous movement from baroque to neoclassical expression in Mexican Latin writing from the 1730s. 9 Maneiro 1988, 276–95 is a Spanish translation of Juan Luis Maneiro’s [Maneirus] life of Campoy in his three-volume De vitis aliquot mexicanorum (Bologna, 1791–1792). 10 Ronan 1977. 11 Maneirus 1791–2, 3: 51–2 = Maneiro 1988, 452.

  Andrew Laird culum: while physica generalis was devoted to Aristotle’s account of natural bodies in the Physics, the Physica Particularis treated themes from his natural philosophy (De Caelo, Meteorologia, De Generatione, De Anima. 12 Clavigero set out an atomic theory in his account of elements, rejecting two scholastic objections: first that it is not atoms but their matter and their form that should be considered as elements and secondly that the atom is not body, since the body exhibits a multiplicity of parts. 13 The repudiation of these positions is tactful and deferential – and Clavigero went on to make a further concession, granting that the name of ‘element’ could still be applied to fire, water, earth and air “as long as we maintain that they are composed of elements”, but the arguments here still look like a neat distillation of Lucretius’ rejection of elemental theory in the De Rerum Natura. 14 While Clavigero was still formulating his physics, his contemporary, Diego José Abad, another pupil of Campoy, produced a coursebook for his lectures on philosophy in Mexico City during 1754–6. Although the Philosophia was never completely finished or published, a frontispiece bearing its elaborate title was printed in 1754. 15 The Philosophia contains discussions of logic, physics and metaphysics in the form of a commentary on Aristotle’s Physics – harmonising the ideas of Descartes and later philosophers with those of the Aristotelians. According to Abad, both traditions agreed that the primary matter which underlies natural bodies endures unchanged, and cannot be destroyed, and both traditions concurred that primary matter could also be identified in one form or another, such as wood or stone. Aristotelians and moderns, however, did not agree on the nature of primary matter and substantial form. This led Abad to provide a detailed account of Gassendi’s atomic theory: atoms were minute and homogeneous, they had shape and extension and could be distinguished from void. But Abad had preceded this account with an attack on the atomists of antiquity – Leucippus, Democritus, Epicurus, Lucretius – for their atheism. That anticipated the charges against Lucretius in Abad’s later writing.

 12 Hellyer 2005, 77–8; compare Home 2003, 355. Schmitt 1983, 10–33 on ‘Renaissance Aristotelianisms’ considers the fluidity of Aristotelian interpretation. 13 Clavigero, Physica Particularis fol. 36. cited in Navarro 1948, 187. 14 Navarro 1948, 188. Compare Lucretius’ dismissal of the four elements in favour of atoms, in DRN 1.705–829 (cf. 5.235–305, 5.380–415). 15 Nascitura Philosophia Adeò immaturo partu, Ut nullum conceptionis tempus praecesserit, Dolores quidem certè afferet peracerbos… reproduced in Navarro 1948.

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 After the 1767 decree expelling them from Spanish territories most of the creole Jesuits settled in northern Italy, and many became prolific authors. 16 The presence of Lucretius became evident in writings they produced in response to the Dutch naturalist Cornelius de Pauw’s polemical Recherches philosophiques sur les Américains (1768) which held that no book worth reading had ever come out of America and which characterised its peoples as an inferior race of human beings. De Pauw relied on Leclerc Buffon’s thesis that America was an immature continent in geological terms, with all forms of life being smaller and weaker than those in Europe. 17 The epigraph for the Recherches, “studio disposta fideli”, was taken from Lucretius DRN 1.46, and De Pauw’s general picture of senility and decay in the New World brings to mind DRN 2.1150–2: 18 Iamque adeo fracta est aetas effetaque tellus vix animalia parva creat, quae cuncta creavit saecla deditque ferarum ingentia corpora partu.

The creole atomists Francisco Javier Clavigero and Diego José Abad both countered the spurious claims of Buffon and De Pauw. Clavigero’s Storia Antica del Messico, published in Italian in Bologna in 1780, provided a natural history of Mexico which preceded a full treatment of the achievements and capacities of its peoples. The work’s movement from material phenomena towards an account of human action resembles the trajectory of Lucretius’ poem. Abad’s Dissertatio ludicro-seria of 1778 was prima facie a response to the Italian savant Giambattista Roberti, who had maintained that “only Italians could write Latin properly”. 19 Abad’s tribute to his late friend and tutor, José Rafael Campoy, recalled Lucretius’ eulogy of Epicurus: 20

 16 Batllori 1953 is the standard work on the Hispano-American Jesuits in Italy; Guasti 2006 is a social historical study. Deck 1976, 96–9 is a bibliography of Jesuit works published in Italy; Burrus 1959, Guzmán 1964, Revelli 1926, Torre Villar 1980 list sources in European collections. 17 Roger 1970. Gerbi 2010 is the standard account of these anti-American polemics and their impact; see also Cañizares Esguerra 2001. 18 Gerbi 2010, 55. 19 The views of the Jesuit Latinist Giovanni Battista Roberti (1719–1786) were expressed in a letter to Francesco Maria Zanotti: Opere (Bassano, 1797), 305–10. Abad’s Dissertatio (note a) cites an original version (Bassano, 1774): Kerson 1991, 363. 20 Abad’s praise is quoted at the close of Maneiro’s Latin biography of Campoy: n. 9 above.

  Andrew Laird Memini tui, Josephe Campoi... Tu sublimiorum et gravissimarum scientiarum cognitione instructissimus... Tu regnorum, provinciarum, urbium distantiam, situm, descriptionem sic animo comprehenderas, tanquam si de specula quadam altissima totum terrarum orbem contueris, Tu longum historiarum filum a mundi exordio ad aetatem nostram tenebas manu, et saniore semper critice adhibita, involutissima quaeque expectabas. I remember you José Campoy... Most learned in the knowledge of both the sublimest and the weightiest sciences... you had comprehended in your mind the distance, place, definition of kingdoms, provinces, cities, as if you gazed upon the whole world from a certain very high place of outlook. You held in your hand the long thread of history from the beginning of the world to our own age, and always by applying sounder critical principles, you had an eye for whatever things were most complicated. 21

But there was more at stake in the Dissertatio than the aptitude of Mexicans for Latin or the general utility of the language. The rejection of the view that being in Italy was conducive to good Latinity hinted at a greater concern about how far climate could determine intellectual achievement: intelligent and unintelligent people, Abad maintained, could be born anywhere. Thus like Clavigero’s history, the Dissertatio ludicro-seria opposed the arguments that a region’s geography determined the capacities of its inhabitants. Abad’s most direct engagement with Lucretius was in his ambitious Latin epic in 43 short books or carmina. The De Deo, Deoque Homine Carmina Heroica, ‘Heroic Cantos on God, and on God as Man’, was refined and expanded through several editions from 1769 until the poet’s death in 1780. 22 The work drew from Scripture, classical literature, and later texts in Spanish and in Latin – the AntiLucretius: De Deo et Natura by the French Jesuit Melchior De Polignac was an obvious model. 23 Contemporary scientific advances of the Enlightenment were celebrated by Abad, and Carmen 18, entitled Deus Scientiarum, ‘God of Sciences’, absorbed modern science into traditional theology. 24 Yet any ideas which might threaten Catholic doctrine were condemned: Carmen 28 caricatured some of the most important ancient philosophers as complicit in pagan idolatry: … Vix Philosophi, vix unus, et alter agnorant Unum; sed turpiter hi quoque multa numina adorabant. Ierant per devia caeci,

 21 Text and translation: Kerson 1991, 391–3. 22 Fernández Valenzuela 1974; Laird 2003; Leeber 1965. 23 On Polignac, see nn. 39, 40 below. 24 Kerson 1988 discussed Abad’s “Enlightened” thought. Abad’s Mexican translator Enrique Villaseñor explains he did not render Carmen 18 into Spanish because nineteenth-century readers would think little of the scientific advances of the 1700s celebrated by Abad: Abad 1896, 16.

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caecorumque duces fuerant cum Socrate, Zeno Pythagoras, Plato, Aristoteles, quae nomina magna inflatis adeo crepitabat Graecia buccis. Abad, De Deo Deoque Homine 28.107–12 Barely had the philosophers, barely had one or another, recognised the One. Rather they too used to worship many divine powers in a disgraceful way. They blindly went along deviant paths, and, along with Socrates, the leaders of the blind were Zeno, Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, names Greece used to blast out with her noisy trumpets.

The inclusion of Aristotle in this list is hardly consonant with Abad’s painstaking engagement with Physics in the coursebook he wrote in the 1750s. The epigraph from the Gospel of John 8:12, “I am the light of the world”, which serves as the title of Carmen 28, has a special significance: this part of the work challenged thinkers who claim to be ‘enlightened’ in other respects. Yet Abad could not claim that either Epicurus or Lucretius were idolaters – and Lucretius turns out to have a significant role in his work. Seven verses of the De Rerum Natura, an amalgam of two separate passages from Lucretius’ third book, were quoted in Carmen 42, entitled Religio Victrix, ‘Religion Victorious’: Dissolvi quoque convenit, omnem animai Naturam, ceu fumus, in altas aeris auras. Et metus ille foras praeceps Acherontis agendus, funditus humanam qui vitam turbat ab imo, omnia suffundens mortis nigrore, neque ullam esse voluptatem liquidam puramque relinquit. Abad, De Deo Deoque Homine 42.726–731 = Lucretius, De rerum natura 3.455–6, 3.37–40 It is natural that the entire nature of the soul should be dissolved even as is smoke, into the high breezes of the air. That fear of Acheron is to be driven headlong away, which utterly confounds human life from the very root, suffusing all things with the blackness of death, and leaves no pleasure pure and unalloyed.

This cutting and pasting does not misrepresent Lucretius’ message: immediately after quoting these lines, Abad made the point that people have accumulated other such verses, and still more like them, which they do not shrink from using to cast aspersions on Holy Scripture (42.732–3: Accumulant alia, atque alia his affinia: et ipsis/nil dubitant sanctis maculas aspergere Libris). The object of citing Lucretius was to show that godless doctrines of the Enlightenment can lead their followers back to the ancient world of the Roman poet: Philosophi hi nostri faciunt, factoque triumphant. Antiquum revocare chaos nituntur: et esse

  Andrew Laird instar brutorum, perituros nos quoque morte totos, persuasum sibi habent, gaudentque ruina: horrentque, ac detestantur sine fine futuram, et nunquam morituram Animam: tuaque illa, Lucreti cantant. Abad, De Deo Deoque Homine 42.720–6 These philosophers of ours are striving to recall the chaos of antiquity, they hold among themselves the persuasion that like beasts we too will all perish with death and they rejoice in our ruin. They shrink from and detest a future without end and a soul that will never die, and yours, Lucretius, are the words that they sing.

All this comes in the penultimate carmen of the De Deo Deoque Homine, which provides the most sustained and explicit condemnation of philosophers opposed to religion. Abad accuses them of “selling the rotten insomniac thoughts of Epicurus to the crowd as though they were new and great discoveries” (42.701–2: nova tanquam essent, et magna reperta;/rancida divendunt Epicuri insomnia vulgo) – unless of course these would-be philosophers are Epicureans themselves. In any case it is only old dreams they are hawking. And for that reason they are always fighting each other and never agree amongst themselves (42.703– 6). Although Abad never named the contemporary thinkers whom he deplored, the trends he was satirising are recognisable enough, as he deprecated the current progression from deism to atheism: Relligionem aliquam naturalem esse, docebant nuper, et esse Deum nonnullum, cui super Orbe cura foret. Satis, aiebant, hoc esse, negabant caetera, et esse anuum male sarta inventa volebant. Nunc etiam hoc rupere iugum, tentantque vel ipsum siderea de sede, thronoque, a vertice Olympi Regnatorem Orbis deturbare Omnipotentem. Abad, De Deo Deoque Homine 42.707–13 Only recently they were teaching that there was some ‘natural religion’ and that there was a kind of God who had responsibility for the World. They used to maintain that this was sufficient and they disbelieved everything else, and wanted it to be the badly botched inventions of old women. Now they have shaken even that restraint off, and they seek to throw the Almighty Ruler of the World from his starry seat and throne, from the summit of Olympus.

Some lines later two opponents of Voltaire, the Jesuit Claude-Adrien Nonnotte and the Parisian canon Nicolas-Sylvestre Bergier, are hailed as ‘exalted warriors’ (who have debunked and defeated the proud philosophers of the day, and made

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them a laughing stock). 25 For Abad this conflict between faith and its opponents had been ‘perpetual’ (42.740). He argued that holy doctrines were only rendered more clearly and lucidly by being contested. Whatever Furies or monsters the forces of Phlegethon or the Styx might unleash, Religion would stand victorious. As these abundant echoes of classical poetry suggest, neither pagan antiquity nor even Lucretius himself were held in contempt so much as the current thinkers who sought to return to them. Virgil was Abad’s principal model but there are more than 300 echoes of Lucretius’ diction in the De Deo Deoque Homine. 26 Most of these were merely lexical given that the poet’s philosophy was antithetical to Lucretius’ own. The influence of the Epicurean poet was also at work on other levels. An earlier attack on the hostility of the French philosophes to religion in Carmen 12 of the De Deo Deoque Homine, entitled Patientia, ‘Suffering’, heralded a poignant description of their prisoner, a personified image of Religio herself: … Qui Philosophos se nomine dicunt, mirum quo prorumpant. Sanctissima quaeque erradicare, et convellere dogmata tentant insani: novi et Enceladi, novi ubique Typhoei sacrilegos armant calamos in sancta, Deumque. En deiecta oculos, vultus deiecta decoros, nuda pedes, trahitur manibuspost terga revinctis Relligio, portans immania vincula collo, inter clamores sceleratos. Impia turba it circum captae insultans, iteransque cacchinos: nec sinit, audiri gemitus, luctusque Piorum. Abad, De Deo Deoque Homine 12.37–47 It is amazing how far those who call themselves Philosophers will go. They endeavour to eliminate or uproot all the most holy doctrines in their madness. New Enceladi and new Typhoei on all sides arm their sacrilegious pens against sanctity and against God. Behold, her eyes downcast, her beautiful face downcast, Religion is dragged along, barefooted, her hands bound behind her back, bearing heavy chains on her neck, amidst sinful shouts. An

 25 Nonnotte published Les erreurs de Voltaire in Avignon in 1762 and throughout his life sought to address the errors in the French philosophe’s attacks on Christianity; in his Les philosophes des trois premiers siècles (Paris, 1789), Nonnotte contrasted ancient and modern philosophers. Bergier’s Le déisme réfuté par lui-même (1768) and L’examen du matérialisme (1772) were produced in the years Abad was working on his poem. 26 The Index auctorum in Fernández Valenzuela 1974, 748–9 lists the citations of Lucretius; compare 749 for those of Ovid, and 750–1 for Virgil.

  Andrew Laird impious throng crowds around the captive, insulting her and repeating their taunts, and it does not allow the groans and laments of the faithful to be heard.

A description like this could recall a number of allegorical scenes from ancient and medieval literature: the personification of Rome in Lucan’s epic Civil War, Boethius’ Lady Philosophy and various figures in Petrarch’s Trionfi. But the most salient model is Lucretius’ famous vignette of Iphigenia being sacrificed by Agamemnon at Aulis, an innocent maiden who is a victim of religion (DRN 1.80–101). Abad availed himself of the pathos in that touching scene, whilst inverting the original moral of his philosophical opponent’s story, by turning Religion herself into the female victim. Lucretius’ point was that religio was responsible for wicked and criminal deeds: tantum religio potuit suadere malorum (DRN 1.101). A particularly repellent quality of the sacrifice of Iphigenia as Lucretius presented it was that she was to die by the hand of her own father: hostia concideret mactatu maesta parentis (DRN 1.99). Abad has not lost sight of this either. The verses directly prior to those quoted above offer a catalogue of horrendous deeds, including the murder of children by their mothers: Nusquam tuta fides. Clam toxica diluit uxor perfida; nec solae norunt aconita novercae. Hic struit insidias frater fratri, ille Parenti impius, extremumque audet, cumulatque furorem. Quin didicere ipsae gnatorum sanguine Matres foedari, suamet effudere viscera ferro. Et superesse malum, et scelus his crudelius ullum? Abad, De Deo Deoque Homine 12.30–6 Nowhere is there safety and trust. Secretly the treacherous wife administers poison: stepmothers have not been the only ones to know about aconite. Here a brother plans to assassinate his brother, there an impious son dares the ultimate and heaps up fury against his father. Even mothers have learned to pollute themselves with the blood of their sons and to put the offspring of their womb to the sword. Is there any further evil left, any crime more cruel?

There is indeed one which remains, according to Abad: “Those who call themselves philosophers seek to uproot all the most holy doctrines in their madness”. (12.36–40: Qui Philosophos se nomine dicunt… Sanctissima quaeque/ erradicare, et convellere dogmata tentant/ insani). It is then that the poet brings on the image of Religio herself, chained and humiliated. The moral is clear: injury to religion is worse than fratricide, patricide or infanticide. At the same time, this manipulation of Lucretius shows the extent to which Abad recognised and esteemed the quality of his predecessor’s poetic powers of persuasion.

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Other Jesuit emigrés were inspired by Lucretius in different ways. The University of Cervera in Catalonia was renowned for its progressive tendencies, and had an important role in the transmission of Lucretius in Iberia in the 1700s. One of its alumni, José Manuel Peramás, a former Jesuit missionary in Paraguay composed a Christian heroic epic about Columbus, De Invento Novo Orbe (1777). In the prose preface, Peramás cited Lucretius as the first of the classical models he professed to follow. 27 The opening of the poem itself praised Columbus for bringing light to hidden parts of the world: Vir mihi magnanimus, duce quo caelestia coenae Munera divinae vasti per murmura ponti In Mundum transvecta Novum, Solemque cadentem Carmen erit. Vatem pavidis te, Musa, sequentem Passibus, ignotas da tecum excurrere in oras, Occiduumque diem, et terrarum invisere fines... … Orbisque sinus lustrare latentes. De Invento Novo Orbe 1.1–6, 1.12 A man of great soul, under whose leadership the heavenly gift of the divine feast was carried over the roaring of the vast ocean to the New World and the setting sun, he will be my song. Muse, allow the poet, following you with fearful steps, to run forth with you to unknown shores, to the setting of the day, and to visit the earth’s bounds... to illuminate the concealed hollows of the globe.

This recalled Lucretius’ eulogy of Epicurus, the audacious inventor, ‘discoverer’, who revealed the nature of the whole universe to mankind: E tenebris tantis tam clarum extollere lumen qui primus potuisti inlustrans commoda vitae, te sequor, o Graiae gentis decus, inque tuis nunc ficta pedum pono pressis vestigia signis. DRN 3.1–4 You, who out of such great darkness first managed to raise so great a light, illuminating the benefits of life, I follow you, O glory of the Greek race, and I now firmly plant my own steps along the trail you laid down.

 27 Arbo and Laird 2014 survey Peramás’ poem with a text and translation of the preliminaries.

  Andrew Laird

 An exiled creole Jesuit from Guatemala, Rafael Landívar, was provoked by the scientific conjectures of Buffon and De Pauw about the inferiority of the Americas. Landívar was a confrère of Abad and he lived in the same house as Clavigero in Bologna. The progression from nature to culture in the first book of Clavigero’s Storia antica del Messico is paralleled in Landívar’s ambitious poem about Mesoamerica, the Rusticatio Mexicana, 28 which moves from physical geography in the early books through forms of production (dyes, precious metals, sugar), to the final sections on zoology and ethnography. Landívar presented his account of gold and silver mining halfway through his didactic poem as a kind of katabasis: Nunc coelum linquo, nunc terrae lapsus ad ima Aggredior cantu, Plutonis regna, fodinas; Regna refulgenti semper radiata metallo, Et quae divitiis complerunt prodiga mundum. Tu, qui pennatis telluris viscera plantis Saepe subis, clara munitus lampade dextram Advenias, monstresque viam, lumenque ministres Obsecro... Now I leave the light of heaven, now descending to the lower parts of the earth with my song, I come upon the realms of Pluto, the mines, realms ever gleaming with shining metal, and which abundantly supply the world with wealth. You, as you often go down to the bowels of the earth on winged feet, I beg you to come equipped with a clear torch, to show the way and provide a light...

The invocation of the torch-bearer in verses 10–12 resembles Lucretius’ appeal to Epicurus at the beginning of his book on death – the same passage recalled by Peramás, and by Abad in his praise of Campoy quoted above. An image of Epicurean enlightenment fits well with Landívar’s book on silver and gold mining, since Lucretius declared that Epicurus’ words were ‘golden’ (DRN 3.12–13: aurea dicta, aurea). Landívar’s mock heroic katabasis is generally reminiscent of Lucretius’ euhemerism: for instance the criminals catalogued in his subterranean realm of the gold mine (RM 7.302–19) are not shades of the dead, but scoundrels and thieves who are very much alive.

 28 Laird 2006 is a study of the Rusticatio Mexicana, incorporating texts and translations of all Landívar’s extant works.

Lucretius in the Spanish American Enlightenment  

An appropriation of Lucretius’ response to the wonders of nature which enabled Landívar to anticipate, in all but name, the notion of the sublime that would be propagated by Immanuel Kant, doyen of the European Enlightenment nearly a decade later in his 1790 Critique of Judgment. 29 For Kant, dramatic natural features, such as volcanoes and waterfalls which induce both fear and pleasure could be conceived as ‘sublime’, while Books 1–3 of the Rusticatio Mexicana were successively devoted to lakes, volcanoes, and waterfalls – majestic phenomena which excite wonder and a sense of nature’s overwhelming power. The way Landívar began his book on volcanoes converges remarkably with Kant’s view that the fear of the destructive power of nature can be ‘attractive’ if one is in a safe place: flammarumque globos, et ruptis saxa caminis impatiens vomuit, gelida formidine gentes concutiens, postrema orbis quasi fata pararet. Nam quamvis animum delectant floribus horti, claraque fertilibus labentia flumina pratis; sunt tamen interdum, vigili quos horrida visu aspectare iuvat longe... Landívar, Rusticatio Mexicana 2.5–11

5

10

(The mountain) has relentlessly vomited forth globes of flame and rocks from its bursting furnaces, striking the people with icy fear, as if it were planning the world’s final fate. For although gardens with their flowers and the clear rivers flowing through the fertile meadows are a delight to the mind, there are those who at times are pleased to watch and study with keen eye scenes of horror observing them from a distance.

But that sentiment was of course a reprise of DRN 2.5 where Lucretius remarked “it is pleasant to see those misfortunes in which you yourself do not have a share” (sed quibus ipse malis careas quia cernere suave est). 30 Longinus’ sublime was in play as much for Landívar as it was for Kant. 31 One exiled associate of Landívar, Agustín Pablo de Castro, closely studied Longinus, while another, Francisco

 29 Critique of Judgment §28: Kant 1987, 120. 30 Blumenberg 1996 explores Lucretius’ topos of shipwreck and its significance. Compare DRN 3.28–30: his ibi me rebus quaedam divina voluptas/percipit atque horror, quod sic natura tua vi/tam manifesta patens ex omni parte retecta est. [“At these things, as it were some god-like pleasure and horror seizes me, to think that thus by your power nature is made so clear and manifest, laid bare to sight on every side”]. 31 Longinus, On Sublimity 35.3–36.1. Porter 2003 and 2007 have drawn attention to the conjunction of Lucretius’ poetry and Longinian sublimity, inherited from Burke and Boileau, in Kant’s Critique of Judgment.

  Andrew Laird Javier Alegre, had translated Boileau into Spanish verse. 32 The Spanish Americans are more likely to have regarded classical sublimity as an adjunct to neoclassical poetics, than as something to destabilise it. 33 Nonetheless the creoles developed an enlarged category of the sublime, as they sought to convey the sense of wonder engendered by awe-inspiring scenes and the natural wonders of the Americas too unruly or irregular to conform to European, classical ideas of beauty. This was calculated response to the polemics of Buffon and De Pauw. 34 Lucretius was not viewed in isolation, but incorporated into a rich interpretative frame.

 Conclusions The readings of Lucretius just surveyed were coloured not only by their authors’ religious convictions but also by their identity as creole Mexicans. While Lucretius’ views were effectively excluded from the accounts of atomic theory Abad and Clavigero had given in New Spain in the mid-1700s, there is, conversely, no mention of atomism in the texts engaging directly with the De Rerum Natura which they produced in Europe. The De Deo Deoque Homine referred only to Lucretius’ views on the finality of death, and there was no explicit mention of Lucretius or his thought in Landívar’s Rusticatio Mexicana. But both compositions emulated some of Lucretius’ strategies in ways which went beyond their fundamental affinity with the De Rerum Natura as a didactic poem. Abad transformed the Iphigenia story in order to make a case directly contrary to the point that the original story was supposed to illustrate. Landívar’s accommodation was more pervasive, and he purloined Lucretius’ aestheticisation of nature in order to convey a sense of wonder at the specifically American landscapes and natural phenomena treated in his own poem.

 32 Alegre produced his posthumously published translation of Boileau in exile: Alegre 1889: see Kerson 1981. Deck 1976 and Kaimowitz 1991 treat Alegre’s broader poetic theory; an account of Castro’s classical influences is in Maneiro 1988, 511. 33 Alegre 1889, 123 classed Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura – with Polignac, Landívar’s Rusticatio Mexicana and other early modern compositions on scientific themes – as didactic (didascálicas) poetry, a genre he noted Boileau did not include. Longinus’ “famoso tratado del Sublime” was mentioned at 99, where Longinus’ quotations of Aeschylus were incorrectly attributed to the Agamemnon. 34 Higgins 2000, 109–66.

Lucretius in the Spanish American Enlightenment  

This accentuation of Lucretius’ poetic technique was quite different from the reception of the De Rerum Natura in many eighteenth-century writers who focused on the poem’s philosophical arguments – and it is different again from the approach of interpreters today who see the work’s form as very much bound up with its content. 35 The Lucretian sublime, for instance, is now coming to be regarded, not as a vehicle of thought in the De Rerum Natura, but as a constituent element of it. 36 Friedrich Nietzsche and Henri Bergson were among those who, in more recent times, indicated that there might be a sublimity in the very idea of atomism. 37 But the eighteenth-century Jesuits, inculcated with the informatio ad eloquentiam, the rhetorical education that was central to their curriculum, presupposed a categorical distinction between res (content) and verba (form). 38 Entertainment of that distinction would naturally encourage appropriating the style of a poet to convey a message different from or even opposed to the message it originally served. Thus Melchior de Polignac’s posthumous Anti-Lucretius: De Deo et Natura (1747) was formally modelled on the De Rerum Natura, the argument of which it refuted, sometimes verse by verse. 39 De Polignac’s work was known to Voltaire and the poems Abad and Landívar wrote in Italy show familiarity with it too, but the Anti-Lucretius does not seem to have been circulated at all in colonial Mexico – doubtless because Lucretius himself had been so little read in the first place. 40 This suggests that these Jesuits from New Spain only engaged with the De Rerum Natura in any depth after they were exiled. Their probable motivation for doing so was to demonstrate that as creoles they could be conversant with an author who was widely known and debated in Europe. 41

 35 Dionigi 1988. 36 Porter 2007, 167: “Lucretius’ relationship to the sublime can shed light on much of his poetry, on his deepest insights into atomism and on his place in the ancient and modern worlds.” Hardie 2009 explores the mediation of the Lucretian sublime by Virgil and Horace in late antique and Renaissance literature. 37 Nietzsche 1933–42, 3: 332 and Bergson 1884, 23 n.7, both in Porter 2003, 21 n. 61. 38 Duminuco 2000. 39 Polignac 1747: Jones 1991 and Tsakiropoulou-Summers 2004 address philosophical and religious themes in the Anti-Lucretius. 40 Mason 2004 introduces Voltaire’s essay on Polignac. 41 Johnson 2000, 79–102, Baker 2007.

  Andrew Laird

References Abad, Diego José (1793), De Deo Deoque Heroica Carmina, Cesena. Abad, Diego José (1896), Cantos epicos a la divinidad y humanidad de Dios, Spanish tr. Enrique Villaseñor, Mexico City. Alegre, Francisco Javier (1889), “Arte poética de Mr. Boileau, traducida a rima castellana”, in: Opúsculos inéditos latinos y castellanos, Mexico City. Alegre, Francisco Javier (1956–60), Historia de la provincia de la Compañía de Jesús de Nueva España, Ernest J. Burrus/Felix Zubillaga (eds.), Rome (orig. Mexico City 1841–2). Baker, Eric (2007), “Lucretius and the Enlightenment”, in: Gillespie/Hardie, 274–88. Batllori, Miguel (1953), La cultura hispano-italiana de los jesuitas expulsos: españoles, hispanoamericanos, filipinos, 1767–1814, Madrid. Bergson, Henri (1884), Extraits de Lucrèce, avec un commentaire, des notes et une étude sur la poésie, la philosophie, la physique, le texte et la langue du Lucrèce, 11th edn., Paris. Beuchot, Mauricio (1998), The History of Philosophy in Colonial Mexico, tr. Elizabeth Millán, Washington DC (Spanish orig. Barcelona 1996). Blumenberg, Hans (1996), Shipwreck with spectator: paradigm of a metaphor for existence, Cambridge, Mass. Burrus, Ernest J. (1959), “Hispanic Americana in the Manuscripts of Bologna, Italy”, in: Manuscripta 3, 131–47. Cañizares-Esguerra, Jorge (2001), How to Write the History of the New World: Histories, epistemologies and identities in the eighteenth century Atlantic world, Stanford. Clavigero, Francisco Javier (1780)= Clavijero (1964), Historia Antigua de Mexico: edición y prólogo de R.P. Mariano Cuevas [Edición del original escrito en castellano por el autor], Vol. 1, Mexico City. Cuevas, Mariano (1944), Tesoros documentales de México, siglo XVIII. Priego, Zelis, Clavijero, Mexico City. Davis, Alexander V. (1945), El Siglo de Oro de la Nueva España (Siglo XVIII), Mexico City. Deck, Allan F. (1976), Francisco Javier Alegre: A Study in Mexican Literary Criticism (Sources and Studies for the History of the Americas, Vol. 13), Rome/Tucson. Dionigi, Ivano (1988), Lucrezio: Le parole e le cose, Bologna. Duminuco, Vincent J. (ed.) (2000), The Jesuit Ratio Studiorum: 400th Anniversary Perspectives, New York. Fernández del Rincón, Josephus Ignatius (1774)=(1994), Philosophiae scholas (Mexico City: Zuñiga y Ontiveros): ed./Spanish tr. Bulmaro Reyes Correa, Lecciones de Filosofía, Mexico City. Fernández Valenzuela, Benjamin (1974), Diego José Abad: Poema Heroico, Mexico City. Gerbi, Antonello (2010), The Dispute of the New World: The History of a Polemic 1750–1900, tr. Jeremy Moyle, Pittsburgh (Italian orig. 1955). Gillespie, Stuart/Philip Hardie (eds.) (2007), Cambridge Companion to Lucretius, Cambridge. Guasti, Niccolò (2006), L’esilio italiano dei gesuiti spagnoli Identità, controllo sociale e pratiche culturali (1767–1798), Rome. Guedea, Virginia (2000), “The Old Colonialism Ends, the New Colonialism Begins”, in: Michael C. Meyer/ William H. Beezley (eds.), The Oxford History of Mexico, Oxford, 277–99. Guzmán, Eulalia (1964), Manuscritos sobre México en Archivos de Italia, Mexico City. Hardie, Philip (2009), Lucretian Receptions: History, the Sublime, Knowledge, Cambridge.

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Hellyer, Marcus (2005), Catholic Physics: The Jesuit Natural Philosophy in Early Modern Germany, Notre Dame. Higgins, Antony (2000), Constructing the Criollo Archive: Subjects of Knowledge in the Bibliotheca Mexicana and the Rusticatio Mexicana, Lafayette, Indiana. Home, Roderick Weir (2003), “Mechanics and Experimental Physics”, in: R. Porter (ed.) Cambridge History of Science, vol. 4, Cambridge, 354–74. Johnson, Walter Ralph (2000), Lucretius and the Modern World, London. Jones, Howard (1991), “An Epicurean refutation of Epicurean physics: the Anti-Lucretius of Melchior de Polignac (1747)”, in: Acta Conventus Neo-Latini Torontonensis (ed.) Alexander Dalzell et al, Binghamton, New York, 393–401. Kaimowitz, Jeffrey (1990), “Translation of the Apologetical Essay appended to the Alexandriad of Francisco Javier Alegre” in: Dieciocho 13.1–2, 135–48. Kant, Immanuel (1987), Critique of Judgment, tr. W.S. Pluhar, Indianopolis-Cambridge. Kerson, Arnold L. (1981), “Francisco Javier Alegre’s Translation of Boileau’s Art Poétique”, in: Modern Language Quarterly 42, 153–165. Kerson, Arnold L. (1988), “Enlightened Thought in Diego Jose Abad’s De Deo Deoque Homine Heroica”, in: Acta Conventus Neo-Latini Guelpherbytani: Proceedings of the Sixth International Congress of Neo-Latin Studies, 617–23, Binghamton, New York. Kerson, Arnold L. (1991), “Diego José Abad, Dissertatio Ludicro-Seria”, in: Humanistica Lovaniensia 40, 357–422. Knight, Alan (2002), Mexico: The Colonial Era, Cambridge. Laird, Andrew (2003), “Selenopolitanus: Diego José Abad, Latin and Mexican Identity”, in: Studi Umanistici Piceni 24, 231–7. Laird, Andrew (2006), The Epic of America: An introduction to Rafael Landívar and the Rusticatio Mexicana, London. Laird, Andrew (2010), “The Aeneid from the Aztecs to the Dark Virgin:Vergil, Native Tradition, and Latin Poetry in Colonial Mexico from Sahagún’s Memoriales (1563) to Villerías’ Guadalupe (1724)”, in: Joseph Farrell/Michael C.J. Putnam (eds.), Companion to Vergil’s Aeneid and its Tradition, Chichester. Laird, Andrew (2012), “Patriotism and the Rise of Latin in Eighteenth-Century New Spain: Disputes of the New World and the Jesuit Constructions”, in: Renaissanceforum 7, 163–93. Landívar, Rafael (1782), Rusticatio Mexicana, Bologna. Leeber, Victor F. (1965), El Padre José Abad SJ y su obra poética, Madrid. Maneiro, Juan Luis =Maneirus, Joannes Aloysius (1791–2), De vitis aliquot mexicanorum, Bologna. Maneiro, Juan Luis (1988), Vidas de algunos mexicanos ilustres, vol. 1, trans. Alberto Valenzuela Rodarte, Mexico City. Mason, Adrienne (2004), “Introduction”, Voltaire, Sur L’Anti-Lucrèce de monsieur le cardinal de Polignac in Voltaire, Complete Works, vol 30C, Geneva, 321–35. Navarro, Bernabé (1948), La introducción de la filosofía moderna en México, Mexico City. Navarro, Bernabé (1983), Cultura mexicana moderna en el siglo XVIII, 2nd ed., Mexico City. Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm (1933–42), Historisch-kritische Gesamtausgabe: Werke, Hans Joachim Mette/Karl Schlechta/Carl Koch (eds.), 5 vols., Munich. Osorio Romero, Ignacio (1980), Floresta de gramática, poética y retórica en Nueva España (1521–1767), Mexico City. Osorio Romero, Ignacio (1991a), El sueño criollo: José Antonio de Villerías y Roelas (1695–1728), Mexico City.

  Andrew Laird Osorio Romero, Ignacio (1991b), “Latín y Neolatín en México”, in: Ignacio Osorio Romero/ Tarsício Herrera Zapién/Mauricio Beuchot (eds.), La tradición clásica en México, Mexico City, 7–76. Parodi, Claudia (ed.) (1976), Cayetano Javier de Cabrera y Quintero: Obra dramática. Teatro novohispano del siglo XVIII, Mexico City. Polignac, Melchior de (1747), Anti-Lucretius sive De Deo et Natura, Libri novem, 2 vols., Paris. Porter, James I. (2003), “Lucretius and the poetics of void”, in: Annick Monet (ed.) Le Jardin romain: Epicurisme et poésie à Rome. Mélanges offerts à Mayotte Bollack (Villeneuve d’Ascq), 193–226. Porter, James I. (2007), “Lucretius and the Sublime”, in: Gillespie/Hardie, 227–41. Revelli, Paolo (1926), Terre d’America e Archivi d’Italia, Milan. Ronan, Charles E. (1977), Francisco Javier Clavigero SJ (1731–1787). Figure of the Mexican Enlightenment: His life and works, Rome. Schmitt, Charles B. (1983), Aristotle and the Renaissance, Cambridge, Mass./London. Torre Villar, Ernesto de la (1980), Testimonios Históricos Mexicanos en los Repositorios Europeos: Guía para su studio, Mexico City. Traver Vera, Ángel (2009), Lucrecio en España [Universidad de Extremadura Ph.D. thesis], Cáceres. Tsakiropoulou-Summers, Tatiana (2004), “Tantum potuit suadere libido: religion and pleasure in Polignac’s Anti-Lucretius”, Eighteenth-Century Thought 2, 165–205. Valverde Téllez, Emeterio (1989), Bibliografía filosófica mexicana, 2 vols., 2nd ed., Zamora/Michoacán (orig. Mexico City, 1913).

Stephen Harrison

Victorian Lucretius: Tennyson and Arnold Abstract: This contribution considers Lucretius’ reception by two of the most important English Victorian poets, Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) and Matthew Arnold (1822–1888). Tennyson’s poem ‘Lucretius’ (1868) is a dramatic exploration of Jerome’s apocryphal story about the poet’s suicide for love; when it was published, his rival Matthew Arnold had long been working on a tragedy on the Roman poet, which was never finished. Here I consider these two poetic projects and the interactions of their authors within the context of the relationships and rivalries of the Victorian literary world. In particular, I look at the surviving few fragments of Arnold’s tragedy Lucretius which can be found in his manuscript notebooks and reconstructions of their possible speakers, and the relationship between Arnold’s published play Empedocles on Etna (1852) and his unpublished drama: both are plays about classical philosopher/poets who give expositions of their views and end up committing suicide. Keywords: Arnold, Matthew, Britain, poetic drama, Alfred Tennyson, Victorian period

 Introduction This contribution looks at the reception of Lucretius by two of the most important English Victorian poets, Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) and Matthew Arnold (1822–1888). Tennyson’s poem ‘Lucretius’ (1868) is a dramatic exploration of Jerome’s (apocryphal) story about the poet’s suicide for love; at the same time his poetic rival Arnold had long been working on a tragedy on the Roman poet, which was never finished, and clearly felt that Tennyson had appropriated his subject. Here I consider these two poetic projects and the interactions of their authors within the context of the literary world of Victorian England.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110673487-017

  Stephen Harrison

 Tennyson and Arnold as Previous Rivals in Classical Reception In the early 1860s Tennyson and Arnold had publicly clashed on the subject of the role of the hexameter metre in English poetry and in particular on the appropriateness of using it in translating Homer. 1 In his lectures as Oxford Professor of Poetry in 1860–61, the first parts of which were published in 1861 as On Translating Homer, Arnold argued strongly for the English rhythmical hexameter as the best metre for rendering the Homeric epics; he also expressly stated that Tennyson’s style of blank verse was unsuitable for Homer because of its slow pace and dense poetic texture. 2 This led to a number of now-forgotten Homeric translations into English hexameters, 3 but also to Tennyson’s scornful rejection of the idea in an 1863 poem ‘On Translations of Homer: Hexameters and Pentameters’: These lame hexameters the strong-winged music of Homer! No – but a most burlesque barbarous experiment. When was a harsher sound ever heard, ye Muses, in England? When did a frog coarser croak upon our Helicon? Hexameters no worse than darling Germany gave us, Barbarous experiments, barbarous hexameters.

Tennyson’s elegiac couplets (originally published together with his versions of Horatian hexameters and Catullan hendecasyllables in a group of poems called ‘Attempts at Classical Metres in Quantity’) 4 directly attack Arnold’s promotion in On Translating Homer of the English hexameter in Homeric translation, and pick up his criticism there of Voss’ Homeric translations in German hexameters. 5 The same group of poems also contains Tennyson’s version of Iliad 8.542–61 in the very blank verse which Arnold had expressly dismissed as unsuitable for Homeric translation, of which I quote the opening lines: So Hector spake; the Trojans roar’d applause: Then loosed their sweating horses from the yoke,

 1 See Markley 2004, 101–3. 2 See Arnold 1896, 76. 3 Discussed by Prins 2005. 4 In the Cornhill Magazine for December 1863. 5 For Arnold on Voss see Arnold 1896, 7–8. The image of the croak of the frog for a bad poet is a pointed classical reference (cf. Theocritus Idylls 7.41), showing Tennyson’s classical learning in this classical confrontation.

Victorian Lucretius: Tennyson and Arnold  

And each beside his chariot bound his own; And oxen from the city, and goodly sheep In haste they drove, and honey-hearted wine And bread from out the houses brought, and heap’d Their firewood, and the winds from off the plain Roll’d the rich vapour far into the heaven.

These initial hostile exchanges about Homer in the early 1860s set a background for the pair’s ensuing rivalry on Lucretius a few years later. 6

 Arnold’s Unfinished Lucretius Drama Like Homer, 7 Lucretius was a poet who offered much to Victorian culture. It was natural that the age of Charles Darwin’s theories of evolution (On The Origin of Species, 1859) should show interest in a poet of scientific materialism who saw the development of flora and fauna as a gradual and godless process (cf. De Rerum Natura 5. 772–1104), while Lucretius’ atomic theory (cf. De Rerum Natura 1 and 2) was close to the current Victorian model of ‘Brownian motion’ for atoms, first proposed in 1828, 8 and his questioning of traditional religious values (cf. Lucretius 1.1–148) suited the mood of the time. 9 It is not perhaps surprising that Lucretius forms the second classical battlefield after Homer for the two great Victorian poets. In a letter to his mother of 17th March 1866, Arnold expresses worry about his rival’s latest project: I am rather troubled to find that Tennyson is at work on a subject, the story of the Latin poet Lucretius, which I have been occupied with for some 20 years; I was going to make a tragedy out of it; and the worst of it is that everyone, except the few friends who have known that I had it in hand will think I borrowed the subject from him. So far from this, I suspect the subject was put into his head, by Palgrave, who knew I was busy with it. I shall probably go on, however, but it is annoying; the more so as I cannot possibly go on at present, so as to be ready this year, but must wait until next. 10

 6 For more on their rivalry see e.g. Martin 1983, 390, 423, 455 and 535. 7 For Homer’s popularity in Victorian England see Jenkyns 1980, 190–226 and Turner 1981, 135– 86. 8 See Brown 1828. 9 See Turner 1993, 261–83, Rudd 1994, 91–116, and Vance 1997, 83–111. 10 See Machann and Burt 1993, 190–1.

  Stephen Harrison It is indeed clear from Arnold’s correspondence and preserved notebooks that he had been thinking about his Lucretius project since at least 1845; 11 and he had written a brief account of Lucretius in his inaugural lecture as Oxford Professor of Poetry, ‘On The Modern Element in Literature’ (1857). 12 The standard modern edition of Arnold preserves a series of nine fragments of what is evidently planned as a verse drama. The first of these, (i), plainly echoes the De Rerum natura: For while we are, Lucretius, death is not And when death is, why, we have ceased to be – So death can touch us never.

This picks up 3.830–42, the famous passage asserting that death is nothing to us: Nil igitur mors est ad nos neque pertinet hilum, quandoquidem natura animi mortalis habetur. et velut anteacto nihil tempore sensimus aegri, ad confligendum venientibus undique Poenis, omnia cum belli trepido concussa tumultu horrida contremuere sub altis aetheris auris, in dubioque fuere utrorum ad regna cadendum omnibus humanis esset terraque marique, sic, ubi non erimus, cum corporis atque animai discidium fuerit, quibus e sumus uniter apti, scilicet haud nobis quicquam, qui non erimus tum, accidere omnino poterit sensumque movere, non si terra mari miscebitur et mare caelo.

In Arnold’s fragment Lucretius is the addressee not the speaker, and this raises the issue of the likely identity of the speaker amongst the other characters projected for the play: in correspondence, Arnold names Clodius, Milo, Caesar and Cicero as well as Lucretius as potential participants, and Memmius and Oppius are found in other fragments (see below). 13 Clearly, this was not just a play about Lucretius, but a broader drama involving a number of the most important figures in the Rome of the 50s BCE. This first fragment is clearly Epicurean in tone, and of the characters known it is perhaps most likely to have been spoken by Caesar, whom Sallust represents in his Catiline as expressing similar Epicurean views about the oblivion of death in a speech to the Senate (51.20):  11 See Tinker and Lowry 1940, 340–45, Allott and Allott 1979, 647–51. 12 For Arnold’s general engagement with Lucretius see Mackenzie 2007. 13 See Allott and Allott 1979, 648.

Victorian Lucretius: Tennyson and Arnold  

De poena possum equidem dicere, id quod res habet, in luctu atque miseriis mortem aerumnarum requiem, non cruciatum esse; eam cuncta mortalium mala dissolvere; ultra neque curae neque gaudio locum esse.

Fragment (ii) seems to address a figure who has had an interesting but unreflective life, which sounds most like Clodius or Milo from those named: Thou mirror that has danced through such a world, So manifold, so fresh, so brave a world, That hast so much reflected, but, alas, Retained so little in thy careless depths.

Fragment (iii) presents seventeen lines addressed to Oppius, very likely Caesar’s friend and author of a biography of him used by Plutarch, 14 and reflects on the pains of frustrated ambition. I cite the opening lines: It is a sad sight when the world denies A gifted man the power to show his gift; When he is tied and thwarted from his course; When his fine genius foams itself away Upon the reefs and sandbanks of the world, And he dies fruitless, having found no field.

This has some affinity with Lucretius’ interpretation in Book 3 of the myth of Sisyphus as representing the tribulations of the unsuccessful politician (3.995– 1002), and a firm link with Lucretius’ symbolic interpretation of the myths of the Underworld as representing key features of life on earth is found in the fragment’s last two lines: These, these are pangs which make the mind a hell, And rend his heart who sees them.

This is precisely the overall argument of Lucretius in his account of the traditional stories about hell, that they stand for mental torments experienced in everyday life: Sisyphus symbolises political frustration and failure (above), Tantalus vain fear of the gods (3.980–3), Tityos lust (3.992–4), the Danaids dissatisfaction (3.1003–10). Arnold’s two lines in fact pick up the beginning and end of Lucretius’ section on the Underworld, where it is stressed that the supposed sufferings of hell are in fact to be found on earth and in the unphilosophical human mind (3.978–9 and 3.1018–23):  14 For Oppius’ career and writings see Cornell 2013, 380–2.

  Stephen Harrison Atque ea nimirum quaecumque Acherunte profundo prodita sunt esse, in vita sunt omnia nobis.

*** mens sibi conscia factis praemetuens adhibet stimulos torretque flagellis, nec videt interea qui terminus esse malorum possit nec quae sit poenarum denique finis, atque eadem metuit magis haec ne in morte gravescant. hic Acherusia fit stultorum denique vita.

Given that the fragment paraphrases ideas from the De Rerum Natura, it seems likely that Lucretius himself is the speaker, though the addressee Oppius and Caesar’s Epicurean sympathies suggest that Caesar too is a possibility. Fragment (iv), eleven lines addressed to Lucretius, arguing that man should not fret about his weaknesses, whether bodily or intellectual, but should accept them, is not specifically Epicurean or Lucretian; indeed, it stands directly counter to the assumption of Epicureans (and Stoics) that mental health can be achieved by mental effort. The fatalism and providentialism here might suggest the Platonising Cicero as speaker, especially in its final assertion that unhappiness with one’s lot suggests that man was destined for a better existence: The discontent itself is argument That we were destined to a happier state.

This looks like the world of transmigration where souls can learn from their previous existences and seek a better one next time, as prominently narrated in the Myth of Er at the end of Plato’s Republic. Fragment (v) is addressed to Memmius like Lucretius’ poem, but seems to give the universe a divine creator, very anti-Lucretian: Ours is the reflex image of the world, His is the prior pattern; he designed, We but behold. He is the architect In whose prophetic spirit lay the plan Before a stone was lifted; and we, Memmius, Are but the casual passers-by who come In front of some great fane whereof we know Nothing but that we see it. What respect Of likeness or comparison can be Betwixt such unlike powers?

Victorian Lucretius: Tennyson and Arnold  

The assertion of divine creation and the metaphor of the divine architect recall the language of the Stoic speaker Lucilius in the second book of Cicero’s De Natura Deorum (2.90): sic philosophi debuerunt, si forte eos primus aspectus mundi conturbaverat, postea, cum vidissent motus eius finitos et aequabiles omniaque ratis ordinibus moderata inmutabilique constantia, intellegere inesse aliquem non solum habitatorem in hac caelesti ac divina domo, sed etiam rectorem et moderatorem et tamquam architectum tanti operis tantique muneris.

Given that this fragment reflects a Ciceronian character and that Cicero had himself translated the passage of Plato’s Timaeus in which the image of the divine creator as craftsman most prominently appears (Timaeus 28C–29A = Cicero Timaeus 6, using the term artifex), Cicero himself seems likely to be the speaker here. Fragment (vi) may be spoken by Lucretius himself: What are we all But travellers in a hurry to arrive, To whom their destination when ‘tis reached Soon seems as tedious as each tedious stage They posted through to reach it?

This recalls De Rerum Natura 3.1060–2, where we see the discontented man rushing to leave his city house on a journey with horses (cf. ‘stage’) but finding no relief in travel: exit saepe foras magnis ex aedibus ille, esse domi quem pertaesumst, subitoque revertit, quippe foris nilo melius qui sentiat esse.

Fragment (vii), general moralising about only regretting a good when it is lost, befits a thoughtful character, perhaps Caesar or Cicero as well as Lucretius himself: Many’s the good We prize not when ‘tis present, but when lost, Desire it bitterly…

Fragment (viii), thirteen lines on the power of man’s spirit to float free and on the unreality of bodily pain and fear, looks Epicurean enough to be voiced by Lucretius, especially in its final three lines:

  Stephen Harrison … We too lay hold on all things with our mind, Not with our body; pain, therefore, and fear Which are our body’s part, have passed away.

These resemble De Rerum Natura 2.16–19: nonne videre nihil aliud sibi naturam latrare, nisi ut qui corpore seiunctus dolor absit, mente fruatur iucundo sensu cura semota metuque?

Fragment (ix), by contrast, stresses the idea of providential divine control of human life which is generally missing from the De Rerum Natura and may be spoken by the Platonising deist Cicero: Thus yesterday, to-day, to-morrow come, They hustle one another and they pass; But all our hustling morrows only make The smooth to-day of God.

This last fragment was the only one published in Arnold’s lifetime, perhaps in response to the news that Tennyson was now working on ‘his’ subject of Lucretius. It appears as the epigraph to his major poem ‘Thyrsis, A Monody, to commemorate the author’s friend, Arthur Hugh Clough, who died at Florence, 1861’, published in Macmillan’s Magazine, April, 1866, a month after the letter to his mother quoted above, and is cited ‘From LUCRETIUS, an unpublished Tragedy’. This looks like Arnold marking out Lucretius as his own territory in defiance of his rival’s current project. Another element which points in this same direction is that in 1867 Arnold also republished his verse drama ‘Empedocles on Etna’ (1852), which he had famously rapidly withdrawn in the preface to his Poems of 1853 as being too negative and depressing. 15 He claimed in 1867 that this republication of the play was at the suggestion of his fellow-poet Robert Browning; 16 but it must be at least possible that his decision to republish his verse play about the classical world was an attempt to claim this genre for himself as a response to Tennyson’s intentions on Lucretius. There are clear links between Tennyson’s Lucretius and Arnold’s Empedocles as protagonists: both are classical poets and philosophers of the universe who despair of their life’s work and choose suicide as a solution in a manner

 15 See Allott and Allott 1979, 654–6, Dietrich 1976. 16 Allott and Allott 1979, 156.

Victorian Lucretius: Tennyson and Arnold  

viewed as irrational. Arnold’s desire to reassert his ‘right’ to Lucretius through this republication is also perhaps suggested by the presence in it of material for the planned ‘Lucretius’ in Empedocles on Etna as originally published in 1852 (it seems that Arnold gave up work on his Lucretius project for the moment in 1849 and transferred the material to his Empedocles project). 17 The ideas in one of the ‘Lucretius’ fragments are evidently there in Empedocles’ first monologue, Empedocles on Etna I.2.82–6, echoing ‘Lucretius’ fragment (ii), already cited above: Hither and thither spins The wind-borne mirroring soul, A thousand glimpses wins, And never sees a whole;

Thou mirror that has danced through such a world, So manifold, so fresh, so brave a world, That hast so much reflected, but, alas, Retained so little in thy careless depths.

And an early draft of Empedocles on Etna 1.2.397–411 appears on a sheet marked ‘Lucretius’ in Arnold’s working papers, 18 showing the clear affinity of the two philosopher-poets. Other passages of ‘Empedocles on Etna’ clearly pick up lines of Lucretius himself, a path Tennyson will follow, e.g.: 173–6 Man errs not that he deems His welfare his true aim, He errs because he dreams The world does but exist that welfare to bestow.

5.156–7 dicere porro hominum causa voluisse parare praeclaram mundi naturam … cetera de genere hoc adfingere et addere, Memmi desipere est…

252–5 Streams will not curb their pride The just man not to entomb, Nor lightnings go aside To leave his virtues room;

2.1103–4 saeviat exercens telum quod saepe nocentes praeterit exanimatque indignos inque merentes.

Both acts of Arnold’s drama climax in a long monologue from Empedocles, the first giving an exposition of his pessimistic world-view (1.2.77–426), the second with much the same content before he throws himself into the volcano (2.2.191– 416); this feature of the suicidal monologue is of course the central scenario of Tennyson’s poem (see below).

 17 Allott and Allott 1979, 154. 18 Tinker and Lowry 1940, 293–4.

  Stephen Harrison

 Tennyson’s ‘Lucretius’ (1868) This 280-line poem takes as its starting-point the famous biographical notice in Jerome, Chronica on Ol.171.3 (=94 BCE) Titus Lucretius poeta nascitur. qui postea amatorio poculo in furorem uersus, cum aliquot libros per interualla insaniae conscripsisset, quos postea Cicero emendauit, propria se manu interfecit anno aetatis XLIIII. Tennyson’s work on Lucretius seems to have been partly stimulated by the important edition of the poet by his friend H.A.J. Munro (1864), who checked Tennyson’s poem in draft; Munro cites Jerome’s story but does not discuss it. 19 Tennyson’s poem takes up and romantically embroiders Jerome’s suggestion that Lucretius died raving mad after drinking a love-potion, but also shows considerable knowledge and appreciation of the De Rerum Natura. 20 It adds a frame-plot in which Lucretius has an otherwise unknown wife Lucilia (whose name seems to come ultimately from another passage of Jerome, probably via Lachmann’s 1853 commentary on Lucretius) 21 who administers the potion to increase her philosophic husband’s apparently cooling love. Here we can see a Greek tragic motif: compare the similarly disastrous use of the supposedly aphrodisiac blood of Nessus by Deianeira in Sophocles’ Trachiniae. The poem largely consists of Lucretius’ dying monologue which gives some account of his philosophy as well as of his disturbed state of mind (lines 26–273); this matches the two long monologues of the distracted poet/philosopher in Arnold’s ‘Empedocles on Etna’, the second of which similarly immediately precedes the protagonist’s suicide. The extensive close and verbal parallels between Tennyson’s poem and Lucretius have often been investigated, and I will not give another full catalogue of them here. 22 But I want to suggest one as yet unnoticed, which appears in the narrative frame inserted by Tennyson at the beginning, adding the story of the wife and unsatisfactory marriage (1–11): Lucilia, wedded to Lucretius, found Her master cold; for when the morning flush Of passion and the first embrace had died Between them, tho’ he lov’d her none the less,

 19 The story is still occasionally countenanced by scholars but surely derives from a confusion with the similar death of Lucullus (cf. Plutarch Lucullus 43); see Wilkinson (1949). 20 See Rudd 1994, 91–116, Vance 1997, 108–10, Markley 2004, 140–7; I use the text of Ricks 1987 (with rich commentary). 21 See Chambers 1903, Mustard 1904, 65–6. 22 For collections of parallels in addition to the works cited in n.21 see Jebb 1868, Mustard 1904, 65–84 and Wilner 1930.

Victorian Lucretius: Tennyson and Arnold  

Yet often when the woman heard his foot Return from pacings in the field, and ran To greet him with a kiss, the master took Small notice, or austerely, for―his mind Half buried in some weightier argument, Or fancy-borne perhaps upon the rise And long roll of the Hexameter …

Here Lucilia’s loving greeting to her returning husband echoes Lucretius’ famous representation in the mouth of an objector of the domestic joys which the dead paterfamilias can no longer share (3.894–6): Iam iam non domus accipiet te laeta neque uxor optima, nec dulces occurrent oscula nati praeripere…

There may be some autobiographical colour in Tennyson’s characterisation of the Latin poet’s creative ‘pacings in the fields’: Tennyson often composed poetry orally on long walks. 23 Little more than a month after the publication of Tennyson’s ‘Lucretius’ as the lead item in Macmillan’s Magazine for May 1868, 24 there appeared in the same widely-read journal a long and enthusiastic review of the poem by R.C. Jebb (18411905), then a young and rising Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and later a knight, Member of Parliament and famous classical scholar as editor of Sophocles and Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge. 25 Jebb praises the poem’s convincing portrait of the Roman poet (giving at least some credence to Jerome’s story of the love-philtre: 103), sets out a general account of Lucretius’ philosophy and poetic character, and points to a number of parallel passages in the Latin poem, stating that ‘the best commentary on Mr. Tennyson’s Lucretius is the De Rerum Natura itself’ (97). On its last page (103) appears the following: In reading the poem which has permanently enlarged the circle of those for whom Lucretius will have an interest, it is natural to think of another name alluded to there, to which another living English poet, Mr Matthew Arnold, has drawn sympathy; the name of a man most unlike Lucretius in bent of genius, but like him in this, in that his troubles, too, were

 23 Hair 1991, 72–3. 24 Pp. 1–9. For the poet’s hesitations surrounding the publication in a large-circulation magazine of this potentially controversial poem with its strong erotic colour, and for its warm initial reception, see the detailed discussion by Shannon 1981. Jebb had recently met Tennyson for the first time and they would develop a friendship over the following decades (Shannon 1981, 171). 25 Jebb 1868.

  Stephen Harrison of the intellect, and that he is said to have taken refuge from them in death. When Empedocles stood on Etna, on the brink of his fiery grave, his thoughts were not those of Lucretius … Empedocles died because he could not find peace; Lucretius, because he had found it and lost it.

It seems unlikely that Jebb knew that Arnold had indeed incorporated ideas about Lucretius into his Empedocles; it is interesting to see that an acute critic could make the connection between the two independently. If Tennyson’s poem was an irritation to Arnold, this comparison would not have made that irritation any less.

 Conclusion This piece has described an episode of the literary rivalry of Arnold and Tennyson on the subject of Lucretius in the years 1866–1868, following their clash over Homer in 1863, setting out for the first time the likely Lucretian allusions in the remaining fragments of Arnold’s projected drama on Lucretius, and suggesting a further Lucretian allusion in Tennyson’s poem. This episode shows how classical reception had a place right at the centre of Victorian intellectual life, and how two major poets of the time could use their response to classical authors as a vehicle for competitive self-promotion in the British literary world.

References Allott, Kenneth/Allott, Manfred (1979), The Poems of Matthew Arnold, London. Arnold, Matthew (1896), [first published 1861], On Translating Homer, London. Brown, Robert (1828), “A brief account of microscopical observations on the particles contained in the pollen of plants and the general existence of active molecules in organic and inorganic bodies”, in: Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal 5, 358–371. Chambers, D. Laurance (1903), “Tennysoniana”, in: Modern Language Notes 18, 227–33. Cornell, Timothy J. (2013), The Fragments of Roman Historians. Volume I: Introduction, Oxford. Dietrich, Manfred (1976), “Arnold’s ‘Empedocles on Etna’ and the 1853 Preface”, in: Victorian Poetry 14, 311–324. Hair, Donald S. (1991), Tennyson’s Language, London. Jebb, Richard C. (1868), “On Mr Tennyson’s ‘Lucretius’”, in: Macmillan’s Magazine, June 1868, 97–103. Machann, Clinton/Burt, Forest D. (eds.) (1993), Selected Letters of Matthew Arnold, Basingstoke. Mackenzie, Donald (2007), “Two Versions of Lucretius: Arnold and Housman”, in: Translation and Literature 16, 160–177.

Victorian Lucretius: Tennyson and Arnold  

Markley, Arnold A. (2004), Stateliest Measures: Tennyson and the Literature of Greece and Rome, Toronto. Martin, Robert Bernard (1983), Tennyson: The Unquiet Heart, London. Mustard, Wilfred P. (1904), Classical Echoes in Tennyson, New York. Prins, Yopie (2005), “Metrical Translation: Nineteenth-Century Homers and the Hexameter Mania”, in: Sandra Berman/Michael Wood (eds.), Nation, Language, and the Ethics of Translation, Princeton, 229–56. Ricks, Christopher (1987), The Poems of Tennyson [3 vols], London. Rudd, Niall (1994), The Classical Tradition In Operation, Toronto. Shannon, Edgar F. (1981), “The Publication of Tennyson’s ‘Lucretius’”, in: Studies in Bibliography 34, 146–186. Tinker, Chauncey Brewster/Lowry, Howard Foster (1940), The Poetry of Matthew Arnold: a commentary, Oxford. Turner, Frank M. (1981), The Greek Heritage in Victorian Britain, New Haven. Turner, Frank M. (1993), Contesting Cultural Authority: Essays in Victorian intellectual Life, Cambridge. Vance, Norman (1997), The Victorians and Ancient Rome, Oxford. Wilkinson, Lancelot Patrick (1949), “Lucretius and the Love-Philtre”, in: The Classical Review 63, 47–48. Wilner, Ortha L. (1930), “Tennyson and Lucretius”, in: The Classical Journal 25, 347–366.



Part V: Images of Lucretius

Giuseppe Solaro

The Story of Lucretius Cette sombre histoire a tout l’air d’un roman. H. Bergson

Abstract: We do not know much about Lucretius' life, and for this reason scholars have always been forced to fantasize in an effort to fill the gaps in the tradition. But perhaps the poem itself can provide more reliable information about the life and personality of the poet, and especially about his travels. This is not to follow, for example, in the steps of the French psychiatrist J. B. Logre, who believed that what Lucretius writes on the subjects of death or boredom could confirm the reports of his madness or dramatic suicide. The Lucretian legend, or 'novel' (as defined by Bergson), was fueled mainly by the poverty of our knowledge about his life, although the poet was long appreciated and imitated, at least until the time of Fronto, who indeed considered him a sublime author, as Ovid had already labelled him in the Augustan age. Keywords: Virgil, Lucretius, Cicero, Epicureanism, Venus

A Very Important Author With some naivety Karl Lachmann, the great German scholar, was still convinced of the complete reliability of what we are told regarding Lucretius’ life by Saint Jerome. 1 But if Lucretius had actually been mad, as the Chronicon says, he would certainly not have been the elegant poet held in high regard in Rome together with Catullus, as we can read in his contemporary Cornelius Nepos’ Life of Atticus (12.4). 2 Indeed, it would be curious that no surviving source, except Saint Jerome, was informed of the dreadful desease of the poet, who, moreover, would have acquired his considerable prestige despite being a follower of Epicureanism. Another very well-known contemporary of Lucretius, Cicero, in a famous letter sent in February 54 BC to Quintus, makes the following judgment: “Lucretius’ poetry (Lucreti poemata) is as you wrote me: it has many lights of genius, but

 1 Ego vero in Hieronymianis nihil omnino quod credi non possit invenio (Lachmann 1850, 63). 2 On the basis of this evidence, Francesco Della Corte hypothesised that the two poets died almost at the same time (Della Corte 1965, 419). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110673487-018

  Giuseppe Solaro much art”. 3 Some scholars, conditioned by the alleged syntactic hardness of tamen, which is certainly due here to Marcus’ need to incorporate his own judgment (multae tamen artis) with his brother’s (multis luminibus ingeni), 4 wrongly modified the text of the letter and made Cicero criticise both Lucretius’ talent and the artistic value of his work, 5 while the orator certainly intended to say that the poet had both qualities. 6 When Saint Jerome, and therefore Suetonius, 7 his main source, says that Lucretius had composed “a certain number of books” (aliquot libri), which Cicero published after the sudden death of the poet, precisely reworks the ambiguous expression Lucreti poemata which we read in Cicero’s letter to Quintus. According to R.Y. Tyrrell (Tyrrell/Purser 1886, 106), at the time of this famous epistle, Lucretius was already dead, because, according to Aelius Donatus’ chronology, the poet died on the same day Virgil wore the toga virilis, namely, 15th October 55 BC, the year in which Pompey and Crassus had been elected consuls for the second time. This synchronism is, however, unlikely, particularly because Donatus’ text contradicts itself when it asserts that Virgil wore the toga on his seventeenth birthday (XVII anno natali suo) and consequently not in 55 but in 53 BC. 8

 3 QFr. 2.10.3 Lucreti poemata, ut scribis, ita sunt, multis luminibus ingeni, multae tamen artis. This famous passage has always been the subject of numerous interpretations and amendments (one of the last ones is Cowan 2013). The epistle continues with another literary judgment, which is also focused on the same pairing ingenium/ars: “but when you come back again, if you read Gnaeus Sallust’s Empedoclea, I will think that you are a strong man, but not that you are a refined person” (sed cum veneris virum te putabo si Sallusti Empedoclea legeris, hominem non putabo). 4 Tescari 1935, 8 had same opinion. 5 In fact, Ernesti recommended reading multis luminibus ingeni, Bergk multae tamen artis. Against these two additions to the text, see Tyrrell/Purser 1886, 106. 6 The young Bergson 1884, XXIX, on the basis of Bergk’s conjecture (non multae tamen artis), was convinced that Cicero had talked of Lucretius “bien froidement”. In his biography of Lucretius (1502), Girolamo Borgia more simply had interpreted Cicero’s letter as proof that the poet used to submit his carmina to the orator’s evaluation (see Solaro 2000, 33). Borgia’s interpretation was certainly influenced by an epistle in which Pliny the Young reminds Cicero’s benevolence toward his generation’s poets (Ep. 3.15.1 adicis M. Tullium mira benignitate poetarum ingenia fovisse). Also Pliny was willing to publish the poetic work of his addressee, Proculus, who had already recited to him some parts of it. This is thus a very similar case to that of Cicero’s letter, where the use of the vague poemata certainly shows that Lucretius read excerpts from his still unpublished poem to Marcus and Quintus. 7 Ziegler 1936 did not believe the Suetonian origin of Saint Jerome’s information about Lucretius (his opinion goes back to Adolf Brieger). Indeed, Saint Jerome, in the preface to the Chronicon, states that he drew on “other famous historians” (p. 6.19–20 H.). 8 Reifferscheid tried to remedy the contradiction by changing the year of wearing the toga (from XVII to XV). Other scholars have preferred to consider the reference to the second consulate of

The Story of Lucretius  

Accordingly, in his Lucretian biography (1570), the French humanist Denis Lambin suspiciously cited Donatus’ evidence as a more general coincidence between the day of birth of the Augustan poet and the day of Lucretius’ death. Petrus Crinitus had previously written that the Epicurean poet actually died in the same year in which Virgil was born. 9 After all, the only Lucretian chronology to which we must look to remains today the one suggested in the Chronicon (94–50 BC): 10 so Lucretius must have been alive when Cicero formulated his famous judgment. Saint Jerome was able to collect some useful information on the dates of Lucretius’ birth and death from Cornelius Nepos, who he mentions in the preface of his De viris illustribus, but apart from being praised in the dedicatory poem by Catullus, Nepos was considered by some ancient authors as a not very reliable source. 11

The Alleged Madness Saint Jerome’s reference to Lucretius’ madness has always raised much perplexity among the philologists, although the use of love filters, which is the reason for Lucretius’ insanity described in the Chronicon, was in the ancient times completely normal (see Juv. 6.610–614). Saint Jerome does not specify what kind of substance the poet might have taken, nor where he might have got it from, nor for what purpose. He only says that, because of it, Lucretius lost his mind and therefore his work was written during periods of madness, until he committed suicide, the final act of a story so far away from that peaceful lifestyle that Lucretius suggests as his ideal of life in his own poem. In L’anxiété de Lucrèce (1946), the French psychiatrist Benjamin-Joseph Logre exploits passages from De Rerum Natura in which Lucretius deals with

 Pompey and Crassus as an interpolation and to date both the wearing of the toga and Lucretius’ death to 15th October 53 BC. On the reliability of Donatus’ evidence, Rostagni 1961, 42, note 22 was very doubtful; Marchesi 1925, 322 had a different opinion. Thomas Creech (1659–1700) ironically wrote that a Pythagorean philosopher might have thought that Lucretius’ soul had moved into Virgil’s body to generate the perfect poet. 9 See Angeleri 1955, 453. 10 About the errors however contained in this work, see Sandbach 1940, 73. Saint Jerome – as he in the preface says – considered responsible for these errors his future copyists. 11 See Ausonius, Ep. 10.1 Prete, where Nepos’ Chronica are considered similar to Titianus’ apologi.

  Giuseppe Solaro boredom and death 12 to affirm that the poet was a manic depressive, thus matching, in Logre’s opinion, the intervalla insaniae Saint Jerome writes about. 13 In 1884, Bergson had also referred to the Lucretian sadness as being due to his sick soul. 14 However, the impression we get from Lucretius’ poem is not just of an austere personality but of someone also showing remarkable enthusiasm for natural phenomena or for his master, the divine Epicurus. After all, the same tragic conclusion of the work, that is, the description of the plague of Athens, must be considered in the light of Epicurus’ hedonistic message, which in Lucretius’ opinion represented the only possible source of consolation for all the human beings and conditions, also in those cases in which religion and medicine had failed. According to Kate Sanborn (1886, 110), the “extraordinary vividness” that the poem shows is likely due to Lucretius’ all-night vigils (1.142) and to his obsessive nature, under which the poet would always return to the same issues, a propensity to repetition which therefore has no didactic explanation. But other than that, Lucretius was a perfectly normal person. 15 On the other hand, if Saint Jerome is right, it would be curious that Statius, who died in 96 AD, in a famous passage (Silv. 2.7.76 et docti furor arduus Lucreti), praising Lucretius’ artistic talent, uses the word furor, which is the same term used by Saint Jerome to describe the poet’s madness. This is clearly due to a misinterpretation of the passage of the Silvae, a mistake which can be traced back to Suetonius. In the humanistic age it was still unclear if Statius’ words should be considered as factual or not. In fact, Lilio Gregorio Giraldi would have written (1545): “some think they regard the poet’s madness, others his poetry: both interpretations are certainly possible”. 16

 12 3.37–42 and 3.870–1094. On this subject, see Bénézech 2016. 13 On this subject, a milder stance adopted Perelli 1969. Stampini 1917, 126–134 (in his 1896’s essay Il suicidio di Lucrezio) was convinced that the poet suffered from epilepsy, like Julius Caesar and Napoleon. 14 See also Guillemin 1945. According to Giussani 1896, XXIII Lucretius, a Leopardian type of poet, would have transformed Epicurus’ comedy of nature in a tragedy. In general, on the personality of the poet, see Leroy 1955 and Wormell 1960. 15 See also Masson 1907, 47. 16 Solaro 2000, 56. Statius expressed Democritean and Platonic concepts on poetic inspiration (see Cic., Div. 1.80). Another passage that was certainly misunderstood as a biographical note is Lact. De ira dei (10.17 Quis hunc putet habuisse cerebrum...), on the contradictions which are found in the Lucretian poem. In 3.828 Lucretius refers to the furor as a typical human condition and to the loss of memory (oblivia rerum).

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A Long-Awaited Birth The equally famous alleged suicide must have been suggested by one of those passages of the poem (3.933–945), in which the poet urges bored humanity to abandon, if necessary, its own life. 17 Moreover, in the third book, Lucretius mentioned Democritus, who, nearing the end of his life, spontaneously went to meet his destiny (3.1039–1041), an example that could also indicate the poet’s propensity to commit suicide. However, Lactantius, who quotes this passage from Lucretius (Div. inst. 3.18), does not say anything about the poet’s life. In the same book Lucretius also invited the reader never to hesitate before death (3.1045), because compared to that of the great men of the past our life has no value and our mind is also troubled by pointless fears (3.1049 sollicitamque geris cassa formidine mentem) and our soul continuously wanders in full uncertainty (3.1052 atque animi incerto fluitans errore vagaris). This famous passage, which begins with Lucretius apparently exhorting himself (3.1024 “sometimes you can even propose this”), must have certainly been understood just as a confession of Lucretius on his own state of mind, in particular the last verse, which refers to our inner fluctuations, that seem so similar to Saint Jerome’s intervalla insaniae. But Donatus’ silence is the strongest evidence against Lucretius’ purported suicide. In fact, if Donatus had been aware of it, he would have no doubt mentioned it in his famous synchronism. According to Lambin, by alluding to suicide the ancients had merely wanted to make the poet's death more tragic (ut eius obitum τραγικώτερον faciant, scribunt, eum sibi ipsum manus attulisse). Lambin referred to further possible causes of suicide, beyond that of the furor: for example Lucretius’ disillusion with the political crisis of the Roman republic or his disappointment (aegritudo animi) due to the collapse of Memmius’ career, his distinguished dedicatee, who, after having been sentenced for election fraud, had travelled to Greece in voluntary exile. 18 Previously, in 1502, Girolamo Borgia had seemed very well informed even

 17 Giri 1895 and Giri 1896 did not believe in the historicity of the poet’s suicide. 18 This hypothesis was formulated again by Brind’Amour 1969.

  Giuseppe Solaro on the way in which the poet supposedly took his life, hanging or stabbing himself, 19 but his were only misreadings of recent sources. 20 Borgia also mentions that Lucretius had been born after a long period of infertility of his mother (matre natus diutius sterilis). This detail stemmed from a passage of Quintus Serenus Sammonicus’ Liber medicinalis (32.606), where in the editio princeps, instead of the correct reference to “Lucretius’ fourth book” (quartus Lucreti), in which this subject is actually treated (see particularly vv. 1251–1253), because of an apparent clerical error we find partus Lucreti.

Caesonia and Lucilia A famous case of taking love filters is told in Suetonius’ Life of Caligula (50.2–3). The mental state of the notorious emperor – due to epilepsy and insomnia, as Suetonius recalls in detail – was so evident to everyone in his countenance that everyone was forbidden from looking at him even from afar. It was however made even worse when Caesonia, his fourth wife, gave him – as the only Juvenal says – hippomanes, making him totally lose his mind (creditur potionatus... sed quod in furorem verterit: in furorem vertere is the phrase used by Saint Jerome about Lucretius). Lucretius’ nights were certainly much less troubled than Caligula’s, during which the Roman emperor thought that he was talking with the ghost of the sea or that he had sexual relations with the moon. On the other hand, Lucretius was always intent on translating Greek culture into Latin poetry (1.140–145). The Roman language was unequal to the task because it lacked a philosophical vocabulary and Greek science was very difficult to understand (Graiorum obscura reperta). However, the poet willingly submitted himself to such a difficult enterprise for the sake of his friendship with Memmius. In his poem, Lucretius often employs images of darkness and light as metaphors of ignorance and knowledge, respectively. Consequently it would seem unlikely that he devoted

 19 Augusto Rostagni 1956, 128 observed that “il riferire versioni disparate, senza decidere fra entrambe” was typical of reliable ancient biographers such as Suetonius (the article dates back to 1939). Leo 1912, 40, note 3 had already adopted a position in favour of the Suetonian origin of Borgia's life of the poet. On the source of Lucretius’ hanging, see Scarcia 1966. 20 Petr., De rem. 2.121; Marsilio Ficino, De imm. an. (Florence 1482, 14.10); Poliziano, Nutr. (1486, vv. 487–491). In all these passages the reference to the gladius as a last resort used by Lucretius to put an end to his unhappy condition (gladio uti, corpus gladio perdere, ferro incumbere) was not a biographical term, but only an emphatic way of alluding to the poet’s willing death.

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himself to literary activity only at night. So Lucretius’ example of his work carried out at night is actually just an image, like that of the difficult concepts of Greek wisdom which he tries to clarify by translating them for his dedicatee. It would be surprising if the poet only composed in times of clear skies (noctes vigilare serenas), another image not to be taken literally and that once more alludes to the inner peace which he aspired to achieve through adherence to Epicureanism. 21 According to Borgia, the deadly brew was administered to Lucretius by an improba foemina, a vague term that certainly alludes to a witch, in a somewhat natural completion of Saint Jerome’s version. Subsequently, some humanists mentioned a woman called Lucilia (in Lambin’s opinion Lucretius’ wife or lover), who, not with the intention of hurting the poet, but to be loved more by him, gave him the fatal love potion. Lucilia was even quoted by Alfred Tennyson (1809– 1892) in his Lucretius, where she proposes to win back Lucretius, who, absorbed in continuous meditations, looks “cold” to the point of making her groundlessly suspicious that she was being betrayed. Therefore, Lucilia asks a witch for help and repeatedly administers the poet the brew, which changes the poet’s mind forever, to such an extent that, like the husbands of Juvenal’s satire, he loses his mind completely coming to hate himself, a pathological condition even worse than that of intervalla insaniae described by the Chronicon. 22 But Lucilia was not a figment of the humanists’ imagination. Her name is found for the first time in the famous misogynistic letter ad Rufinum philosophum ne uxorem ducat written by the Welsh Archdeacon Walter Map (about 1140 – 1209), who, without citing Lucretius, mentions Lucilia as having unintentionally driven her man crazy by using a love potion (decepta furorem propinavit pro amoris poculo). The epistle, because of some confusion with Rufinus of Aquileia, Saint Jerome’s famous opponent, was incorrectly attributed to the latter and it was therefore easy to conclude that Lucilia, who it was commonly believed had been quoted not by Map but by Saint Jerome, had in fact given the deadly potion to our poet. As for the famous misidentification of Lucretius with Lucullus, the Sulla’s general, Plutarch (Luc. 43.2) states that Lucullus lost his mind because of a love potion, given to him by his freedman Callisthenes. The Greek biographer writes that Lucullus’ psychic conditions worsened “little by little” (τὴν διάνοιαν κατὰ

 21 On Lucretius’ aspiration to light, see Boyancé 1985, 74. 22 According to Marcel Schwob, the author of Vies imaginaires (1896), after drinking the potion, Lucretius would forget all about Epicurus but finally understood what love was, nevertheless dying that very night. In general, on Tennyson and Latin poetry, see Pollard 1973.

  Giuseppe Solaro μικρὸν ἀπομαραινομένην), thus in a similar way to what allegedly happened to Lucretius. 23 Without referring to Lucullus, Pomponius Laetus (1428–1498) affirmed that the poet lost his strenght gradually (paulatim tabescens): in fact, according to Laetus, Lucretius only went crazy at the end of his life (tandem) and consequently committed suicide. 24 While, in Jerome’s Chronicon, the loss of reason, although intermittent, occurs immediately after the poisoning and alters Lucretius’ life irreversibly, Laetus makes it clear that he deems it impossible for Lucretius to have composed the De Rerum Natura in the respites of his madness. C’est un livre écrit au crayon à Milan, dans mes intervalles lucides (Stendhal, Souvenirs d’égotisme, Paris 1892, p. 52, on his book De l’amour)

Two Different Poems After the author’s suicide, the unfinished Lucretian poem was published with the necessary corrections by Cicero or perhaps by his brother Quintus if Lachmann is right in his interpretation of the name Cicero in the Chronicon. 25 In Borgia’s opinion, though, the De Rerum Natura had in reality been completed by its author, as demostrates the fact that in the first book Lucretius indicates very clearly in advance all the topics that he proposes to deal with (vv. 54–61). On the other hand, Sicco Polenton (1375/76–1446/1447) had stated previously that Lucretius’ illness would have prevented the poet from manifesting more fully his talent. And later also Hubert van Giffen (1534–1604) said that because of his disease Lucretius’ genius almost would have vanished completely, had he not turned to Epicurean philosophy, which he cultivated as an antidote observatis intervallis, i.e. in the respites of his chronic madness. Further evidence helped to raise doubts whether Lucretius had completed his poem. Varro, Ling. 5.17 quoted an incipit of the poem which was different from the one handed down in the Lucretian manuscripts (Aetheris et terrae genitabile  23 See Wilkinson 1949. Of a different opinion Perelli 1969, 18, according to whom since the circumstance is already attested in Cornelius Nepos, Plutarch's source, there cannot be any confusion between these two circumstances. 24 In Borgia’s life of Lucretius we read: “after losing his mind for having been given a love potion by a wicked woman, he finally killed himself” (Solaro 2000, 33). 25 Munro 1864, II, 94 objected that, at the time of Marcus’ letter (54 BC), Quintus was in Gaul as a Caesars’ legate. However, according to Lachmann 1850, 63, aliquot libri would mean that the poet had written a part of his poem after having lost his mind.

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quaerere tempus instead of Aeneadum genetrix...). Furthermore, Varro cited it as the beginning of “twenty-one books” instead of the well-known six books. The solution to the apparent mystery was found by Scaliger (1575), 26 who noted that in Varro’s passage there was simply confusion between Lucretius and Lucilius. 27

Further Flourishes A few years before Scaliger’s conjecture, Lambin observed that sources on Lucretius’ life were not only pauca admodum but also unclear (incerta) and that therefore the treatment of this subject was necessarily better suited to magic than to science (he uses here the Latin verb ariolari, typical of fortune tellers). So Lambin allowed himself to be persuaded by some friends to write another biography of the poet not because he had found something new in this field, but because they had convinced him it was not merely what he said that was important, but the way he would say it (non quid diceretur, sed quo modo diceretur). In his biography of Lucretius (not later than 1492), Pomponius Laetus referred to an alleged love relationship between the poet and a puer called Astericus, a name that, according to him, Lucretius had probably chosen for the boy because of his exceptional beauty (ab candore et forma egregia), evidently like that of a star. 28 But this story (asserunt...) is certainly groundless, deriving as it does from some spurious couplets, attributed to Lucretius, in the manuscripts of Ovid’s Ibis (v. 419), where our poet urges a boy called Almenicus not to reject Astericus’ love. 29

 26 Frachetta 1589 would have tried to shed light on this matter, that was further complicated by quotes from the poem beyond the sixth book contained in Priscian’s and Macrobius’ incorrect editions (Lettione prima, 2–3). On Frachetta, see Gambino Longo 2010. 27 Giambattista Marino, in his poem Adone, imagines that Mercurius’ library houses various works that had disappeared “per caso empio e sinistro”, such as all of Aristotle’s books and “tutte di Livio le bramate deche”, but in particular the alleged lost books of the De Rerum Natura (Marino, Adone, 1623, X, 158, 4–7). Alfred Tennyson simply considered Lucretius’ poem as we read it today as being unfinish’d. Possible proof of the poem’s incompleteness is the announcement without follow-up of an ample treatment about the dwellings of the gods (5.155) or also its numerous repetitions (Santini 2012 proposes to consider each of them as a separate case). 28 In classical Latin, candor was used for the brightness of the sky, of the sun and of the stars (Cic., Tusc. 1.68.1; Lucr. 5.28). 29 On this subject, see Solaro 1993, 60–62. On homosexual love, see De Rerum Natura 4.1053.

  Giuseppe Solaro

Travel Diary In his biography of Lucretius, van Giffen (1565/1566) wrote that given that the the poet’s family belonged to the very ancient and noble gens Lucretia, 30 his education would have entailed a grand tour of the East. Lucretius would thus have gone to Athens, that had been destroyed by Sulla in 86 BC, to attend the lessons of the Epicurean scholar Zeno and later those of his successor Phaedrus (van Giffen quoted here Cic. Nat. D. 1.93 nam Phaedro nihil elegantius nihil humanius; in order to make himself stand out from van Giffen, Lambin quotes Cicero’s judgment on Zeno: Nat. D. 1.59 Epicureorum coryphaeus). Brucker further emphasized that there could be no doubt that the poet had learned Epicureanism in the capital city of Attica (forte in ipsis Epicuri hortis). 31 But the real clues to this possible journey can only be found in the poem. For example, the description of the Nile river might suggest a direct knowledge of Egypt, because, apart from the flooding, the poet also alludes to the skin color of the inhabitants (6.722 nigra virum saecla percocto color). Nevertheless Lucretius could have simply based this affirmation on hearsay. 32 When he refers to elephantiasis and states that the disease was widespread in the area of the African river particularly Aegypto in media (6.1114 est... ), 33 here too he probably says it only by

 30 On Lucretius’ birthplace, the humanists, on the basis of the proem and of the poets’ nods to the patrius sermo, stated that he was a Roman citizen. In more recent times Holland 1979 believed that Lucretius, like Catullus and Virgil, had a cisalpine origin. On the other hand, according to Guido Della Valle, the poet was a farmer from Campania, educated in Herculaneum by Philodemus of Gadara. Others, such as Marx 1881, 11–13, on the basis of his surname, speculated that he was a freedman of Celtic origin, but this hypothesis was dismissed by Frank 1930 and by Waltz 1953, 46. 31 Brucker 1742, 67. About the Greek-Oriental journey of the young Lucretius, see also Moréri 1759, VI, 494. In 1895 among the new fragments of Diogenes of Oenoanda’s inscription, in the Letter to Menneas (fr. 128 Smith), concerning Diogenes’ travel to Rhodes, a thaumásios Káros was mentioned, who was immediately identified with the Latin poet. In fact, at the beginning, it seemed decisive evidence that Lucretius had been in Greece, but then it was definitively denied because the epigraph dates back to the second/third century A.D. For more recent discussions, see Smith 1993 and Canfora 1993b. 32 Regarding the sources on this subject, we can be informed by Seneca’s Naturales Quaestiones, who instead went certainly to Egypt to cure his asthma. 33 With regard to the freshwater springs of Aradus, the city built in the only island of the Syrian coast, Lucretius uses the same verb esse (6.890). The poet uses again the verb esse when mentioning the Helicon (6.786–787), where, however, he hardly touched the tree given that merely smelling it could be fatal.

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virtue of indirect knowledge. Sicily, with Etna, and Cumae, the seat of the Avernus, which he mentions in terms of its sulphur mountains, were instead sites that he knew from experience. In the sixth book, the poet refers to a famous place on the acropolis of Athens, similar to Cumae, which was avoided by crows, and he says est, since presumably he personally observed the phenomenon (6.749–752), while, for example, about Syria he says only fertur. 34 When finally the poet uses the phrase nonne vides..., 35 as with the mines of Skaptè Hyle, it is unlikekly that he experienced these places directly. “You must have seen or heard how they usually die in no time” (6.813 Nonne vides audisve perire in tempore parvo / quam soleant). Lucretius speaks here clearly to the reader, who was certainly well informed of the events. 36

The Restless God Apparently indicative of Lucretius’ madness could be the presence of Venus in the proem of the De Rerum Natura. In fact, the beginning of the poem has always seemed at odds with Epicureanism, according to which gods live separately from humans, as is clearly shown by the first of the Κύριαι Δόξαι, which the poet himself translates (1.44–49), after having invoked the goddess’ intervention. Since in the sixth book, where, using epithets similar to those used in the proem, Lucretius refers to the muse of the epic poetry, Calliope, one might assume that Venus has simply a symbolic or rhetorical function and that the poet intended to ask her, as indeed he does, to help him in the drafting of the work (v. 24 te sociam studeo scribendis versibus esse). But this explanation is not completely satisfactory since in the first verses she also has the task of restoring peace in a period of great difficulty for the Roman republic, so that Memmius can dedicate himself to philosophical studies. A new way to solve the problem of the invocation to Venus may be to interpret 1.44–49, in which Lucretius paraphrases the first Epicurus’ principle on divine imperturbability, and which so many philologists, starting from Pontano

 34 The same verb is used for the Libyan temple of Ammon in 6.849. 35 See Schiesaro 1984. 36 Canfora (1993a, 66–67 and 2016, 39) is convinced that this passage has an autobiographical meaning. See also Romano 1997, 63–71, according to whom Lucretius visited places like this by following Memmius to Bithynia.

  Giuseppe Solaro and Marullus, deleted because it goes against the invocation to Venus, 37 in respect no longer to her but to Mars, the other divinity present in the proem, who Venus is merely trying to appease. So, according to the poet’s auspices, and as Epicureanism demanded, the god of war, soothed by the goddess of love, let go of his wrath against Rome. In fact, as implied by some passages of his poem (2.29–33), Lucretius certainly preferred a quiet life and to have few friends. 38 Lucretius considered the exercise of power not only to be pointless but also harmful, so much so he compared it to Sisyphus’s punishment (3.995–997). Moreover, he expresses himself with great contempt on war and weapons (5.1290–1307). But he also considered love as a cause of notable sufferance and therefore something one would not wish to experience (4.1063–1072). Consequently he recommends only having occasional relationships (corpora quaeque), a suggestion that in the Christian era cannot have failed to damage him. However, at the end of the fourth book, almost contradicting himself, he states that – when appropriate (v. 1278 interdum) – he was in favour of a love affair with a woman maybe not pretty (deteriore forma), but who with her kind manner (morigeris modis) and her delicate body (munde corpore culto) can improve one’s life. 39

References Angeleri, Carlo (ed.) (1955), Pietro Crinito, De honesta disciplina, Rome. Bénézech, Michel (2016), “Du désespoir existentiel: le Docteur Logre et la bipolarité de Lucrèce (1946)”, in: Annales médico-psychologiques. Revue psychiatrique 174,4, 313–316. Bergson, Henri (1884), Extraits de Lucrèce: avec un commentaire des notes et un étude sur la poésie, la philosophie, la physique, le texte et la langue de Lucrèce, Paris. Boyancé, Pierre (1985), Lucrezio e l’epicureismo, Brescia.  37 See Deufert 1996, 32–40. Lachmann 1850 suspected an interpolation by a lector frustra curiosus. 38 According to Syme 1968, 256 Lucretius was a Roman knight, a conjecture which dates back to Lambin. Two passages in the DRN would seem endorse this: the famous description, in the fourth book, of the shading curtains of the Roman theatre, where the point of view of the poet is from the seats of the equites; moreover, in the same book, Lucretius gives the example of “our strong horse” (v. 420 nobis equus acer), which has been apparently overwhelmed by a river flow. The equus publicus was the main privilege of the knights, to whom it was guaranteed at the State's expense. Here, also due to the intensity of the scene described, the poet seems to allude to a truly lived through experience and to the horse that the commonwealth had given him. 39 Of course coniugibus nostris (4.1277) does not imply that the poet was married. Previously, he referred to Roman prostitutes calling them Veneres nostrae (v. 1185). On Lucretius and love, see Brown 1987.

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Brind’Amour, Pierre (1969), “La mort de Lucrèce”, in: Jacqueline Bibauw (ed.), Hommages à Marcel Renard, I, Bruxelles, 153–161. Brown, Robert Duncan (1987), Lucretius on Love and Sex: A Commentary on De Rerum Natura IV, 1030–1287, With Prolegomena, Text, and Translation, Leiden/New York. Brucker, Johann Jakob (1742), Historia critica philosophiae, II, Lipsiae. Canfora, Luciano (1993), Vita di Lucrezio, Palermo. Canfora, Luciano (1993), “Non giova l’impressionismo epigrafico. Ancora su Diogene di Enoanda e Lucrezio”, in: RFIC 121, 493–499. Canfora, Luciano (2016), Tucidide. La menzogna, la colpa, l’esilio, Bari. Cowan, Robert (2013), “Of gods, men and stout fellows: Cicero on Sallustius’ Empedoclea (Q. fr. 2.10[9].3)”, in: CQ 63,2, 764–771. Della Corte, Francesco (1965), “Il poeta Lucio Giulio Calido”, in: RCCM 7, 416–431. Deufert, Marcus (1996), Pseudo-Lukrezisches im Lukrez. Die unechten Verse in Lukrezens “De rerum natura”, Berlin/New York. Frachetta, Girolamo (1589), Breve Spositione di tutta l’opera di Lucretio, In Venetia. Frank, Tenney (1930), “On the Name of Lucretius”, in: Studies in honor of Hermann Collitz, Baltimore, 63–66. Gambino Longo, Susanna (2010), “La Spositione de Lucrèce par Girolamo Frachetta et les théories poétiques de la fin du XVIe siècle en Italie”, in: Frank Lestringant/Emmanuel Naya (eds.), La Renaissance de Lucrèce, Paris, 185–200. Gesner, Konrad (1583), Biblioteca instituta et collecta..., Zürich2. Giri, Giacomo (1895), Il suicidio di T. Lucrezio. La questione dell'emendatore ed editore della «Natura», Palermo. Giri, Giacomo (1896), Ancora del suicidio di Lucrezio, Palermo. Giussani, Carlo (1896), Studi lucreziani, Turin. Guillemin, Anne-Marie (1945), “Le pessimisme de Lucrèce”, in: Cahiers de Neuilly 11, 15–29. Holland, Louise Adams (1979), Lucretius and the Transpadanes, Princeton. Lachmann, Karl (1850), In T. Lucretii Cari De rerum natura libros Commentarius, Berolini. Leo, Friedrich (1912), Plautinische Forschungen. Zur Kritik und Geschichte der Komödie, Berlin2. Leroy, Lucien (1955), “La personnalité de Lucrèce”, in: BAGB 1,3, 20–31. Marchesi, Concetto (1925), Storia della letteratura latina, I, Messina/Rome. Marx, Friedrich (1881), Exercitationis grammaticae specimina, Bonnae. Masson, John (1907), Lucretius. Epicurean and Poet, I, London. Moréri, Louis (1759), Le grand dictionnaire historique ou Le mélange curieux de l’histoire sacrée et profane, nouv. éd., A Paris. Munro, Hugh Andrew Johnstone (1864), T. Lucreti Cari De rerum natura libri sex with a translation and notes, 2 voll., Cambridge. Perelli, Luciano (1969), Lucrezio poeta dell’angoscia, Florence. Pollard, Arthur (1973), “Tennyson and the Roman poets”, in: Tennyson Research Bulletin 2,2, 58–62. Ribbeck, Otto (1855), Scenicae Romanorum poesis fragmenta, II, Lipsiae. Romano Domenico (1997), Lucretiana, Palermo. Rostagni, Augusto (1956), Scritti Minori, II, 2, Romana, Turin. Rostagni, Augusto (1961), Virgilio minore, second edition, Rome. Sanborn, Kate (1886), The Vanity and Insanity of Genius, New York. Sandbach, Francis Henry (1940), “Lucreti poemata and the poet’s death”, in: CR 54,2, 72–77.

  Giuseppe Solaro Santini, Carlo (2012), “Sulla ripetizione in Lucrezio: la legge suprema e la metafora della pietra di confine”, in: GIF n.s. 3, 83–98. Scarcia, Riccardo (1966), “Varia Latina. V. Note alla ‘vita Borgiana’ di Lucrezio”, in: RCCM 8, 74–77. Schiesaro, Alessandro (1984), “«Nonne vides» in Lucrezio”, in: MD 13, 143–157. Smith, Martin Ferguson (1993), “Did Diogenes of Oinoanda know Lucretius? A Reply to Professor Canfora”, in: RFIC 121, 478–492. Solaro, Giuseppe (1993), Pomponio Leto. Lucrezio, Palermo. Solaro, Giuseppe (2000), Lucrezio. Biografie umanitstiche, Bari. Stampini, Ettore (1917), Studi di letteratura e filologia latina, Turin. Syme, Ronald (1968), Sallustio, ed. by E. Pasoli, Brescia. Tescari, Onorato (1935), Lucretiana, Torino. Tyrrell, Robert Yelverton/Purser, Louis Claude (eds.) (1886), The correspondence of Marcus Tullius Cicero arranged according to its chronological order with a revision of the text, a commentary and introductory essays, II, Dublin/London. Waltz, René (1953), “Lucrèce dans Lucrèce”, in: BAGB 12,4, 43–63. Wilkinson, Lancelot Patrick (1949), “Lucretius and the love-philtre”, in: CR 63,2, 47–48. Wormell, Donald Ernest Wilson (1960), “Lucretius: the Personality of the Poet”, in: Greece & Rome 7,1, 54–65. Ziegler, Konrat (1936), “Der Tod des Lukretius”, in: Hermes 71, 421–440.

Gavina Cherchi

Simulacra Lucretiana: The Iconographic Tradition of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura Abstract: Lucretius, following Bracciolini’s recovery of the De Rerum Natura in 1417, becomes ubiquitous in European culture: praised and imitated as a poet, condemned as an Epicurean, such ambivalence is mirrored by the frontispieces and illustrations of the printed sixteenth–seventeenth century editions and translations of the poem. Such imagery, often beautifully engraved by famous artists, is sometimes also reused, serio ludens, as a sort of “dissimulatory code”, within heterodox philosophical works possibly designed for a European “Lucretian network” of cultivated freethinking readers. Lucretius’ fortune and influence appear therefore to be due in part to the extraordinary iconographical collection of simulacra inspired by his poem and to their dissemination. This chapter will analyze in depth some images and illustrations of Lucretius to shed light on their philosophical and cultural meanings. Keywords: images, simulacra, melancholy, pantheism, two-fold philosophy

The literary reception of Lucretius’ poem, extensively investigated by scholars, 1 shows beyond question how, despite the overt impiety of its philosophical contents (materialism, anti-teleological denial of a Providence, mortality of the soul, hedonism), the De Rerum Natura, since the 1417 recovery of its manuscript in Germany by Poggio Bracciolini, has become an ineludible influential presence within Western culture. Obviously, distancing strategies for circumventing and thwarting the manifold snares of censorship (both ecclesiastical and secular, starting with the condemnation of the 1517 Florentine Synod), became necessary for editors, translators and printers of this pivotal text. Well-tested rhetorical tactics (a “dissimulatory code” 2 made of preliminary apologies, critical exegesis, glossae, 

I wish to thank Carol Berényi for her help in revising the final version of this paper.  1 The Lucretian bibliography is boundless: see for instance Gordon 1985; Haskell 2007, 196–216; Reeve 2007, 217–25; Brown, A. 2010; Greenblatt 2011; Butterfield 2013; Beretta 2016. 2 Butterfield 2012, 95–114 (99–100, 105–6); Grendler 1988, 303–86; Barbieri 1996, 130–7; Zagorin 1991; Prosperi 2004, 97–117; ead., 2007, 222–38; Manuzio 1975, vol. 1, 33–4, 152–3, defined Lucretius in the preface of the poem’s 1515 edition, et poeta et philosophus quidem maximus vel antiquorum iudicio, sed plenus mendaciorum, and later argued Nam multo aliter sentit de Deo, de creatione rerum, quam Plato, quam caeteri Academici, quippe qui Epicuream sectam secutus est. Quamobrem https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110673487-019

  Gavina Cherchi distinguo, postillae) were emphatically displayed as antidotes intended to deter, neutralize and avert the contagion of Epicurean atheism, which Lucretius’ sublime poetry made even more dangerous. Thus, if the poet was openly admired (and often imitated), the philosopher was (often rather conventionally) exorcised for his Epicurean atheism. Lucretian iconography, as the visual expression of this dilemma, recalls this ambivalent attitude of praise and concern: constellations of symbols, myths and allegories are evoked or fashioned as reassuring images designed to describe, encompass (and challenge) the daring heterodox Lucretian view of an ever-changing nature self-ruled by unchangeable laws, whose eternal becoming was but the visible epiphenomenon, the simulacrum et imago (2.112), of the (otherwise indiscernible, and unintelligible) unceasing invisible turbulence of infinite corpora in constant motion, of the infinite flow of genitalia materiai corpora (2.62–63), of their eternal kinetic flux. 3 Still, the poem itself appears to be ‘inhabited’ by images since its commencement: the invisible power of Nature omniparens is described (and therefore imagined) by way of the visible form, the (conventional) simulacrum et imago of the divine body of the Alma Venus, Aeneadum genetrix, hominum divomque voluptas. Beyond the Proem, with this much discussed (and imitated) 4 personification, the philosophical intelligibility of the nature of atoms depends on a complex repertoire of verbal images: metaphors, similitudes, symbols, analogies are the necessary didactic and cognitive rhetorical expedients (“the sweet honey of poetry”) 5 by which the presence, action and interaction of the invisible first bodies, principia rerum, or prima corpora, could be described and imagined as other corpora, or visible forms, figures, representations, effigies, simulacra. 6 Lucretius’ philosophical visual imagery 7 can therefore be regarded as the matrix of lucretian iconography. Indeed, Lucretius regards the visible, ever-changing weave 8 of the cosmos as intrinsically interwoven with images of things, imagines, rerum simulacra (4.34  sunt qui ne legendum quidem illum censent Christianis hominibus, qui verum Deum adorant, colunt, venerantur; Citti 2008, 97–139 (98); Paladini 2011, 177–90 (Ch. 6: “La censura e i Gesuiti”). 3 Serres 1980, 35, 57; Nail 2018, 72–82, 173–93, 194–205. 4 Sedley 1998, 10–34 (with bibliography); Gale 1994, 208–28; Asmis 2007, 88–103; Castellano Ruiz 2015, 235–261. See also Prosperi 2008, 145–62. 5 On this immensely popular topos, see Prosperi 2004, 5–95. 6 On the simulacra and the importance of vision, Sedley 1998, 38–42; Kenney, 2007, 92–110; Beretta 2015, (Ch. 5 “vedere è sapere”) 166–87; Maso 2016, 173–82 (176). 7 See the seminal work by West 1969. 8 On the weaving imagery: McIntosh Snyder 1983, 37–43 (39–41).

Simulacra lucretiana: The Iconographic tradition of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura  

ff.): better still, he holds that the texture 9 of the Whole is “full of simulacra”, which wander hither and thither (4.724: Principio hoc dico, rerum simulacra vagari / multa modis multis in cuncta undique partis…). From such atomic (natural) simulacra, subtle (parva) traces, mobile vestigia certa (4.88–89; cf. 1.401–2; 2.123–4; 5.1446–7) of things, from the trajectories of such “chimerical bodies”, 10 from their sensiferi motus, 11 depend any possible experience, cognition, representation of the world, our ephemeral presence within it, our perceptions, our thoughts and our dreams. The imagery of the poem, which is in itself (as the well-known alphabet metaphor suggests) an analogical verbal/pictorial representation of the universe, 12 “a simulacrum of the rerum natura”, 13 has, in short, engendered an iconosphere whose numberless images mirror, interpret, emulate, i.e. symbolically and figuratively signify, the lucida carmina (1.933–4) of its literary and philosophical contents: the enlightening 14 vision of naturae species ratioque (1.148). This is why Lucretian iconography is an inexhaustible repertoire of artificial simulacra which share the same restless mobility of the natural simulacra, due to the all-pervasive wandering, jostling, propagating and weaving of Lucretian atomic principles, metaphorically termed seeds and first-threads of things (semina […] rerum primordiaque, 1.501), and of rerum simulacra which feruntur undique, / et in cunctas iaciuntur didita partis (4.239–40). 15 Thus, countless images stemming from the poem emerge everywhere as mobile nets or costellations forming a field of analogies, symmetries, oppositions; they can thereby easily migrate from a text to another, according to the common practice of reuse or plagiarism. 16 Transferred within new contexts, they can be

 9 Kenney 2007, 92–110; Nail 2018, 108–9. 10 Cherchi 2012, 61–109. 11 On sensiferi motus, Lucr., 3.237 ff., 245, 272, 379, 570, 924. 12 Since the letters of the alphabet (verbis elementa, I 139) operate in the same way as the elementa (2.393) of matter (by changing their order and mutual position concursus, motus, ordo, positura, figura, 2.1021) the poem is an analogical and realistic representation of the nature of things (1.823–29; 2.1113–22): Bollack 1978, 246–59; Dionigi 1988, 11–38; Schiesaro 1990, passim; Piazzi 2000, 11–25 (19–21); Dionigi 2000, 27–34; on Lucretian “thinking by analogy”, Garani 2007 (chpts I and III in particular). “Analogy is perhaps the key tool in Lucretius’ argumentative armoury”: Gale 2007, 1–17 (4, and 6–8); Schrijvers 2007, 255–85; Kennedy 2007, 376–96. On visionary and figurative language Lyotard 1988, 41–2, 313 ff.). 13 Thury 1987, 270–94 (274, 279–8, 280, 288, 291). 14 Milanese 1989, 107–30 (111–4). 15 Beretta 2015, ch. 4 “la scienza dei semi”, 133–165 (bibliography, 276–303). 16 Cherchi, P. 1998a; id., 1998b, 53–68; Bolzoni 1987, 171–206; Wittkower 1987.

  Gavina Cherchi adapted and converted into “signifiers” of new “signified”, which can be nonetheless traced back to the original philosophical matrix of the poem. An iconological survey (however brief and summary) of the dissemination of Lucretian imagery across the early modern printed editions or translations of the De Rerum Natura suggests that Lucretius’ cultural influence operated not only per verba but also per figuras (4.42–43): since the rediscovery of the poem, six centuries ago, together with his visionary sculpted hexameters, 17 his wandering pictorial simulacra have been engrafted into our iconosphere, where we still encounter them. 18 Lucretian simulacra soon appear on the antiporta of the edition of the poem (fig. 1) Denys Lambin offered in 1563 to the French King Charles IX, 19 an iconographic mise-en-scène of Lambin’s apologetical concerns, which ideologically emphasizes his devotion to God and loyalty to the King, so to legitimize his commitment to Lucretius, (mildly) censured as “foolish” philosopher, but highly commendable as a poet. 20 On either side of the title page, the avatars of Mars and Venus, here significantly rebaptized Rex and Lex, stretch up their arms towards the light of the Sun, whose rays, piercing through the clouds, do not stand here for the Epicurean ratio dispelling the darkness of ignorance, 21 but for God himself, whose name, repeated in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin (the languages of Judeo-Christian revelation) is inscribed within a mystic triangle above. Just a few decades later, the face of the Sun would reappear (fig. 2) behind Nature multimammia, surrounded by the four Empedoclean elements, in the more audacious and “Lucretian” title page of the 1620 Janson edition published in Amsterdam, and transplanted to Paris in 1650 by Michel de Marolles, Abbé de Villeloin (how many churchmen have committed themselves to Lucretius!), who modified it by adding an imaginary portrait of the poet (fig. 3). 22

 17 Naughtin 1952, 152–167; Kenney 2007, 105–23; and obviously, on the proselytizing role ascribed to images in the Epicurean Garden, Frischer 1982, chapters III and V. 18 See, for instance, for the reception and influence of Lucretius in contemporary art, Beretta et al., 2017. 19 Palmer 2014a, 176–91 (Lambin), 192–233 (The Lucretian Print Tradition). 20 Palmer 2014a, 182–4. 21 DNR 2.59–61. 22 What follows is an updated reassessment of earlier studies to which I would like to refer: Cherchi 1985; ead. 1990, 264–365; ead. 2002, 79–119, 121–56 (footnotes and commentary 173– 275); on epicurean corporeal simulacra Pigeaud 1995, 125–35; Ford 2007, 239–54 (240–1); on Epicurean/Lucretian iconography see now Beretta 2015a, 193–225; Giallombardo 2017, 127–60.

Simulacra lucretiana: The Iconographic tradition of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura  

This Lucretian pictographic manifesto soon migrates, together with the poem, to England, 23 where the title page of the 1656 English translation of Book I of the De Rerum Natura published by John Evelyn, designed by his wife Mary (fig. 4), is but De Marolles’ frontispiece plagiarized and revisited. In the great portrait lifted by Fire and Air, under the milk-sprinkling breasts of Diana Multimammia, a popular personification of Natura omniparens (V 260), 24 Mary Evelyn blended, with the (imaginary) features of the Poet, those of the Translator who, for the first time, “interpreted and made in English verse” Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura. 25 Evelyn’s 1656 (however partial) translation, highly praised by his fellow contemporaries, overshadowed an earlier (unpublished but nevertheless known) manuscript translation of Lucretius, whose authorship was claimed by Lucy Hutchinson in 1675. In a clearly irritated private letter, the now mature lady vindicated her own translation in a paradoxical way of recantation: around 1630– 1640, when she was young and heedless, 26 she had engaged herself with this poem due to a “Lunatick” imbued with vain and impious philosophy, whose execrable ideas she decided should not be made public. Thus, for scruples of conscience, she had abstained from publishing her literary exploit, which had, for years, as herself, remained anonymous and obscure, unlike Evelyn, inspired by a “masculine Wit” who “thought it worth printing his head in a laurel crowne for the version of one of these bookes”. 27 The laurel crown visually corresponds to the stream of encomiums and eulogies which welcomed Evelyn’s Essay: if Lucretius is exalted as “Nature’s Secretary”, Evelyn is a new Galilaeus: his translation made accessible “Nature’s Great Code […] unveil’d of the Cloud of Seventeenth Hundred Years”. The Epicurean poet Edmund Waller daringly goes further: now “Lucretius […] translated, / comes to proclaim in English Verse, / No Monarch rules the Universe; / But Chance an Atomes make this All in order Democraticall, / Where Bodies freely run their Course, / Without design or Fate or Force”. 28

 23 Hopkins 2007, 268–85; Beretta 2008, 177–224; id., 2015b, 219–64; Cottegnies 2015, 223–58. 24 Cartari 2004, Pref. Alessandro Grossato VIII–XXI, and “Diana”, 55–71 (65: “Imagine della Dea Natura tutta piena di poppe, per mostrare che l’universo piglia nutrimento dalla virtù occulta della medesima”). 25 Lucretius 1656 (Hollar, Wenceslaus, 1607–1677, engraver); Beretta 2015a, 193–225, 214–5. 26 Zerbino 2013, 88–114. 27 de Quehen 1996; Munro 1957, 121–45; see also Hutchinson 1675, 399–405; Jones 1992, (Epicurus britannicus), 195–6, 257 (n. 34); Norbrook 2000, 257–91; Hutchinson 2001, 4, on teachings that carry the taint of “vain, foolish, atheistical poesy.” Palmer 2014b, 331–56. 28 Lucretius 1656, 1–3; Clucas 1991, 327–40.

  Gavina Cherchi This was a little too much for Evelyn, who distanced himself from such philosophically, as well as politically, embarrassing positions with Animadversions added to his translation as “a sufficient antidote” against the irreligious and subversive potential of a dangerous philosophy, whose views were to be condemned, atomism (or corpuscularianism) excepted: prominent scientists of the time, such as Bacon, Gassendi, Charleton, Boyle, Bentley, Newton, adopted it (with adequate correctives), as a useful “tool for thinking”. 29 Accordingly, the 1685 first French translation of Lucretius by Jacques-Parrain de Coutures (fig. 5), since the title page, where reappears (reversed) de Marolles’ portrait of Lucretius, now led in flight by Fame, (which in turn will later be transported to England and reemployed in a London edition to which I shall refer later), insists on the importance of Lucretian “philosophie de la physique”. 30 However, in England, an interesting mise en image of Democritean-Epicurean atomism had been ‘inspired’ by the almost complete English translation of Lucretius 31 (the lines on love and sex of Book 4 are omitted, and Dryden 32 will masterfully deal with them), produced in 1682 by the Reverend Thomas Creech. Creech is both anxious and prudish: his apology for having made Lucretius accessible even to those who do not read Latin, even to women (as Aphra Behn emphasizes) 33 is based on the idea that the best way to defeat the Epicurean hypothesis, as it contrasts religion, is “to expose” it. Notwithstanding his apologetic efforts and the 60 pages of postillae to his translation, Creech could not avoid the charge of having made public (and with the praise of a number of ecclesiastics!) the only “compleat Antient System of Atheism (viz. Epicurus’s System written by Lucretius) left us upon Record, and the Priests will not suffer that to lie hid in a learned Language”. 34

 29 Palmer 2014a, XII–XIII; Kargon 1966; Lüthy 2000, 443–79; Norbrook 2015, 223–58; Beretta 2015b, 219–64; Cherchi 1990, 264–365. 30 Coutures 1682. 31 Lucretius 1682; Fleischmann 1963, 109–13; Fabian 1980, 107–29; Kramnick 2012, 13–38. 32 Dryden 1685, 80–97; Gallagher 1964, 19–29; Hammond 1983, 1–23; id., 2001, 158–76; Hopkins 2007, 268–85 (280 ff.), id., 2018, 1–29. 33 Behn 1684, 51–57; To Mr. Creech (under the Name of Daphnis) on his Excellent Translation of Lucretius, 51–57. 34 Collins 1713, 91; Sheppard 2015, 90–136 (“Atheist Epicurus”).

Simulacra lucretiana: The Iconographic tradition of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura  

The title page of the second edition [(1683) 35 (fig. 6)], engraved under Creech’s supervision, is a visual transposition of his anxieties: in a desolate moor, a solitary and melancholy Lucretius, 36 wearing a laurel wreath and wrapped up in a sort of ecclesiastical robe, (again the Poet and his Translator?), sits heavily on a roughly squared stone bench. His right hand lies on an open booklet abandoned on his lap, and his left points to the sky, towards the origin of the stream of minute corpuscles flowing onto him from above. They are the visible epiphany of the (otherwise invisible) lucretian atomical principles: as infinite semina rerum, genitalia corpora, they are springing from a mysterious dark celestial body, a black sun bearing the inscription “Casus”, Chance, which he pensively contemplates, either oblivious or indifferent to the disquieting presence of strange heads of wild animals (beheaded?) lying at his feet around him. A similar cosmological simulacrum picturing the invisible atomical turbulence, but in a very different setting, can be found in the frontispiece (fig. 7) of a London 1713 De Rerum Natura, edited, for the famous printer and bookseller Jacob Tonson, by the Huguenot refugee Michel Mattaire with meticulous typographical care (quam pro modulo meo ornatam prodire volui). 37 Here the Poet, a sort of muscular athlete (or philosophical hero) clad in garments à l’ancienne, sits in his home, at his writing desk, equipped with the works of Empedocles and Epicurius (sic!). Totally immersed in his thoughts, and concentrated on the making of his poem, he no longer observes the motion of atoms in the sky beyond the portico, which flow in a sort of rain from a dark cloud inscribed with the word “Casus”: he imagines and describes it in poetical words (an ekphrasis of that metaphysical insight). The iconogical and ideological shift between the two title pages is manifest. Interestingly enough, however, from Creech’s frontispiece, when chosen for the cover of a recent Lucretius focused book (fig. 8), 38 has been cut off from the Black Sun with the incription Casus. This Black Sun is the Sol niger which the alchemical tradition associated with the saturnine temperament of Melancholy, characterized by the paradigmatic posture which Dürer made popular with his 1514 engraving (fig. 9–11). 39 Such posture, which Aby Warburg would  35 The frontispiece, engraved by Michael Burghers under the supervision of Creech himself, appears in the second edition: Lucretius 1683. 36 On Lucretius’ melancholic insania, Logre 1946, 51 ff.; Kinsey 1964, 115–130; Bradley 1972, 317–322; Segal 1990, 9–11, 78; Palmer 2014a, 140–91; Citti 2008, 97–139. 37 Lucretius 1713 (designed by L. Laguerre, engraved by L. Du Guernier), F. A4r–A5r; ; Cherchi 2002, 112 ff., 131 ff.; Papali 1968; Johns 1998, 120–7, 355 ff. 38 Norbrook, Harrison, Hardie (eds.) 2015. 39 See, for instance, the illuminated alchemical treatise Splendor Solis, Trismosin, 1582; Marlan 2005, 148 ff.; see also Klibansky et al. 1964, 284–365; Calvesi 1993; Kristeva 2013, 117–43.

  Gavina Cherchi term as the Pathosformel of Melancholy (fig. 12), 40 inspires several Lucretian ‘portraits’. Besides the solitary seated Poet of Creech’s frontispiece, Lucretius is, decades later, depicted in the solitude of an arcadic Garden, pensively writing under the protection of the effigies of Venus, Diana multimammia and Epicurus (fig. 13). The wild-eyed Poet of a rare 1820 italian translation (fig. 14), 41 also features the same gestus melanchonicus, which, a rich physiognomic and figurative tradition ascribed to the proto-atomist Democritus from Abdera. Democritus, in Salvator Rosa’s engraving (fig. 15) 42 a solitary meditating hominum derisor, is sometimes shown in company of Hippocrates (fig. 16), whose intervention (recorded by apocryphal Letters) had been required by the Abderites in the hope he could rescue from his manifest folly their most famous citizen. 43 The symptoms are alarming: Democritus, having scornfully left the city, in absolute isolation, surrounded by the carcasses of the animals he had dissected in order to “discover the cause of folly” by which mankind is affected, apparently without reason, laughs wildly and derisively (hominum derisor) over all sorts of human foolish behaviours. Democritus’ laughter, 44 as combined with the typical signs of melancholy, in a paradoxical atrabiliaris concordia discors, dialectically opposed and connected to the weeping of Heraclitus: Democritus et Heracletus. Et risu pariter digni fletuque videmur (fig. 17). 45 Thus, since in Democritus two conflicting temperaments are combined, he can be termed a Melanconichus sanguineus. 46 Not surprisingly, then, the frontispiece of the Anatomy of Melancholy published by Robert Burton (alias Democritus Junior) in 1621 (fig. 18) stages melancholichally smiling (fig. 19), “Old Democritus under a Tree /sits on a stone with a book on knee. /About hang there many features / of Cats, Dogs and such like Creatures / of which he makes Anatomy. /The seat of black Choler to see / over his head appear in the skie / and

 40 Centanni et al. 2017; Forster/Mazzucco 2002, 224–8; Bertozzi 2016, 13–20; Cacciari 2016, 21– 6; Wedepohl 2016, 27–40; and Ripa 1603: “Malinconia: Donna mesta, e dogliosa (…), starà a sedere sopra un sasso, co’ gomiti posati sopra i ginocchi, e ambe le mani sotto'l mento, e vi sarà a canto un albero senza fronde (…)” (image from Padua edition, 1611, 324); Maffei 2013, 145–71. 41 Lucretius 1750 (frontispiece engraved by L. Le Mire, designed by Ch. Eisen); and Lucretius 1820 (Marchetti translation); Cherchi, G. 2002, 222. 42 Brandt 2003, 112–25, 119–23 on Salvator Rosa’s engraving (1600); Holly 2013. 43 Lewin 1968; Ippocrate 1991; Roselli 1998; see also Flashar 1966; painting by Jan Pynas, Hippocrates visiting Democritus in Abdera, 1614. 44 Starobinski 2014, 125–40. 45 Bry de, 1627, XVII, 25; Lepage 2012, 81–136. 46 Rütten 1992, 100, 219 ff.; Brandt 2003, 80–111, 121–2.

Simulacra lucretiana: The Iconographic tradition of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura  

Saturn Lord of melancholy”. 47 No reference to the well kept garden in the background, clearly evoking the epicurean Kepos, which a few decades later, Sir William Temple, who took pleasure in being portrayed, together with his wife, in the same melancholic posture (fig. 20), will explicitly recall in his Upon the Garden of Epicurus (1685). His retirement from political life to his vast country estate at Moor Park (Farnham) was ascribed to the doctrines of Epicurus. 48 A small orchard-like garden, a kepos, is shown on the contrary by the engraving ‘opening’ book I of the 1713 Tonson edition of Lucretius (fig. 21). This is almost a replica of Burton’s, where, in solitary meditation, Epicurus sits under a tree, in the same gestus melanchonicus traditionally ascribed to Democritus. This is the Graius Homo celebrated by Lucretius. 49 And Lucretius himself, in this edition, (where, incidentally, also the flying Fame from de Coutures’ frontispiece also landed) is twice portrayed (fig. 22) by an engraver other than du Guernier, the author of the title page. This author also produced a number of sophisticated lucretian illustrations for the luxurious in quarto and in folio (fig. 23) Tonson editions, destined for wealthy bibliophiles. 50 Most of the vignettes of the 1713 Tonson edition of Lucretius, edited, as we said above, by Mattaire with special iconographical care, will migrate unexpectedly a few years later into a book from which Lucretius had apparently been banned: the Pantheisticon (fig. 24) 51 published in 1720 by the Irish freethinker John Toland with the pseudonym of Janus Junius Eoganesius in an imaginary Cosmopolis-London. Toland, a man of obscure birth but brilliant mind, connoisseur and purveyor of rare books (for instance Bruno’s Italian Dialogues for his patron Prince Eugene of Savoy), a diplomat (and a spy) in Europe, a heterodox thinker defined by Swift “the great Oracle of the Anti-Christians”, 52 has always played with paradoxes. Emarginated by the Whig party (where he had actively campaigned) now in power, and therefore disturbed by his indomitable critical attitude, Toland is isolated, ill, in poverty, abandoned by most of his old powerful

 47 Burton 1628: “Argument of the frontispiece”; Brandt 2003, 121–2; Minois, 2003, 104–18; Starobinski 2014, 141–75. 48 Sieveking 1908; Miller 2006, 229–344; Campbell 2010, 210–31. Portraits: “Sir William Temple e Dorothy, Lady Temple” by Gaspar Netscher 1675 and 1671. 49 Lucretius 1713, Bk I; Erler 2001, 159–81. 50 Tonson 1712 (fol.), Tonson 1713. 51 Toland 1720. 52 Swift 1856, vol. II, 171–4; Daniel 1969, 304–20; id., 1991, 1–12; Malssen 2013, 274–90; Brown 2016, 16; Heinemann 1944, 125–46 (139–41); Giuntini 1979, 291–316; Jacob 1981, 151–3; and Cherchi, G. 1990, 68–165 (151), 187–9.

  Gavina Cherchi bibliophile friends and political patrons. 53 His Pantheisticon is a sophisticated philosophical enigma designed to attract their interest again. Disguised as a bizarre prayer-book, 54 it “describes” the esoteric rituals of a misterious Sodalitas socratica of pantheists (a neologism he is said to have coined), 55 a temperate cenacle of amici 56 who secretly (conformably to the Epicurean lathe biosas) 57 celebrate their Numen, the Universe infinite and eternal, framed by atoms in unceasing spontaneous motion; they cultivate a tolerant and hedonist philosophy, aiming at living cheerfully without the fear of death: Rerum scrutemur causas/ ut vitam hilare, ut mortem tranquille obeamus. 58 The Epicurean flavour 59 of this agenda is ostensibly disclaimed by Toland, who omits to name Lucretius while openly censuring Epicurus. Nevertheless, he was well acquainted with Lucretius as witness the epigraph to the most important of his Letters to Serena (1704), where he asserted that “Motion is essential to matter” is Lucretian: Nunc quae mobilitas sit reddita materiai corporibus, / paucis licet hinc cognoscere Memmi… (2.142–43). Here he also refers to the atomical swerve (declinatio) described in Book II, regarded as the keystone of Epicurean atheism by Thomas Creech, whom Toland had been acquainted with at Oxford: in hoc libro positae sunt omnes Epicuri fortunae. 60 Two Lucretian topoi (Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum, and Religio peperit scelerosa atque impia facta: 1.83, 101) are later employed by Toland in his 1709 Adeisidaemon (the Unsuperstitious, 1709). He was so interested in Lucretius, that, in the Putney room where he died in poverty, he still kept a “Lucretius”, and a “Lucretius in Italian”: the translation undertaken from 1667 by Alessandro Marchetti, printed posthumously in London in 1717 by Paolo Rolli, who dedicated it to Toland’s former patron, the bibliophile Prince Eugene of Savoy (fig. 25). 61 For his erudition, wit and elegant paradoxes, Toland’s last work was designed to fit in this “Lucretian network”.

 53 Champion 2003, 1–44, 136–54. 54 Walther 2018, 433–8. 55 In Socinianism truly stated (1705); Sullivan 1982, 276; yet this is controversial: McGuinness et al., 1997, 306. 56 Anderson 2012, 114–52. 57 Roskam 2007, 33–65, 83–100, 155–88. 58 Pantheisticon 1720, 50; see, Hardie 2009, 153–9, 180–227; Bergsma 2008, 397–423; Yona 2018. 59 Kraye 1988, 303–86 (374–86). 60 Toland 1704, 163; Lucretius 1695, 14, 126; Leask 2013; see Cherchi, G. 1990, 359–73. 61 Toland 1726; Lucretius 1717; Saccenti 1966; Bianchi 185–207.

Simulacra lucretiana: The Iconographic tradition of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura  

Thus, serio ludens, he abstains from even naming Lucretius as prescribed by the pantheist two-fold philosophy (loquendum cum vulgo, sentiendum cum philosophis), 62 but deliberately disseminates the Pantheisticon with Lucretian traces, clues, allusions. He engrafts his book with quotations from Horace and Vergil (i.e., Georg. 2.490: Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas…) 63 (fig. 26), and above all with simulacra lucretiana picked up from 1713 Tonson edition of Lucretius, which ends (p. 214) with the same engraving by which Toland begins his Pantheisticon (p. A3r): a stormy sky with lightnings, a conventional pictogram of irreligion, for the absence, immediately noticed by the observer, 64of a divine hand throwing the bolts (fig. 27). Likewise, Toland appropriates the image of a ‘contemporary’ Eros (fig. 28) pointing a telescope to the Sun (Epicurean ratio dispelling the darkness of ignorance); he also reuses (fig. 29) the vignette where the Sun, as Pater Aether, with a rain of almost imperceptible genitalia semina renders fecund “gremium matris terrai” (p. 66 and p. 46 respectively), imagined both in Lucretius (1.248–64), and Vergil (Georg., 2.325–6); the Lucretian image of the Universe (Bk. V) in its visible form (fig. 30), earth and sky full of living creatures, a naked helpless infant child representing mankind, is also re-employed; and, with the picture of Venus on chariot pulled by doves, picked from the end of Book 1 (fig. 31), he emblematically alludes to the philosophical Numen of the sodalitas. Thus, by means of simulacra lucretiana, Toland-Janus creates a complex dissimulatory and simulatory iconographic repertoire by which he encoded his (heterodox) view of a universe made of atoms of matter intrinsically endowed with spontaneous motion, 65 of Nature divine and self-sufficient, since, as Lucretius, the most important of his ancient sources 66 proclaimed, ipsa sua per se sponte omnis dis agere expers (2.1092). Ancient atomism, as a model inspiring the pantheists’ Sodalitatis mores et axiomata, is also implied by an engraving not belonging to the Tonson edition (fig. 32): the solitary man wearing a tricorn hat (Toland himself?), seated on a squared stone, under a tree, 67 busy writing (or drawing the

 62 Toland 1720, 41; Cherchi, G. 1990, 69 ff., 179–259. 63 Toland 1720, A3r; Cherchi, G. 1990, 104–9; the same lines were translated by Collins 1713, 37, one of Toland’s friends and patrons. 64 Bibliothèque Angloise 1720, 381–421. 65 Cherchi 1990, 349–410. 66 This source of Toland’s eclectic philosophy has been often underestimated; for his other sources, (such as Anaxagoras, Cicero, Berigardus, Bruno, Spinoza), Colie, R.L. 1959, 23–46; Heinemann 1944, 125–46; Iofrida 1983; Daniel 1984, 211–26; Vermij 1995, 275–88; Giuntini, 2001, 327–51; Wigelsworth 2008, 61–5; East 2014, 965–83. 67 In the context of Toland’s eclecticism this tree could also allude to the famous platanos near the Ilisso described by Plato in Phaedrus 229–30, whose shade, however, Socrates regarded not

  Gavina Cherchi ruins of a temple), is a déjà-vu, an early-modern epigone of the melanchonicus sanguineus Democritus, named (in the place of the systematically unmentioned Lucretius) as one of the philosophical ‘ancestors’ of the pantheist Sodalitas (fig. 33). Finally, in unquestionable Lucretian flavor the self-penned epitaph Tolandthe-pantheist writes, a few days before his death, in 1722: Spiritus cum æthereo patre, a quo prodiit olim, conjungitur; corpus item, Naturæ cedens, in materno gremio reponitur. Ipse vero æternum est resurrecturus, at idem futurus TOLANDUS nunquam. 68

Concocted in such a way as to recall both the De Rerum Natura 69 and the Pantheisticon itself as it enshrines the corresponding emblematic simulacrum [fig. 34], this epitaph is the finishing touch of Toland-Janus’ personal contribution to the fortuna of Lucretius’ poem, conforming to a studied dissimulatory code which combines both literary and iconographical clues.

References Anderson, Penelope (2012), “The Garden of Epicurus and the Garden of Eden: Friendship’s Counsel in De Rerum natura and Order and Disorder”, in: ead., Friendship’s Shadows: Women’s Friendship and the Politics of Betrayal in England, 1640–1705, Edinburgh, 114– 52. Asmis, Elizabeth (2007), “Lucretius’ Venus and Stoic Zeus”, in: Monica R. Gale (ed.), Oxford Readings in Classical Studies: Lucretius, Oxford, 88–103.

 as propitious for solitary meditation, but as an idyllic condition for philosophical conversation: see Cotton 2010, 233–44; Pilipovic 2013, 221–44; Marder 2014, 3–18. 68 His spirit is joined with its ethereal father/ from whom it originally proceeded;/his body likewise, yielding to Nature, is again laid in the lap of its mother:/but he is about to rise again in eternity,/yet never to be the same Toland more: see B.L. ADD.MS. 4925, ff.76r–77r; Toland 1726, vol. I, LXXXVIII; Daniel 1984, 13–4; Cherchi 1985, 32–5. 69 For instance to DNR 2.999–1000 (Cedit item retro de terra quod fuit ante/ In terris, et quod missum’st ex aetheris oris/ id rursum coeli rellatum templa receptant), and 3.830–851 (Nil igitur mors est ad nos neque pertinet hilum,/[…] nec, si materiem nostram collegerit aetas/post obitum rursumque redegerit ut sita nunc est,/atque iterum nobis fuerint data lumina vitae,/pertineat quicquam tamen ad nos id quoque factum,/interrupta semel cum sit repetentia nostri).

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  Gavina Cherchi Hutchinson, Lucy (1675), Letter (B.L. Add. Mss 19333), published in Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson by his widow Lucy, Firth, C., H. (ed.), London 1885, vol. II, Appendix VX, pp. 399–405. Hutchinson, Lucy (2001), Order and Disorder, David Norbrook (ed.), Oxford. Iofrida, Manlio (1983), La filosofia di John Toland, Milano. Ippocrate, (1991), Sul riso e la follia, Yves Hersant (ed.), Palermo (Sur le rire et la folie, Paris 1968). Jacob, Margaret C. (1981), The radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons and Republicans, London. Jones, Howard (1992), The Epicurean Tradition, London/New York. Johns, Adrian (1998), The Nature of the Book. Print and Knowledge in the making, Chicago/London. Kargon, Robert H. (1966), Atomism in England from Hariot to Newton, Oxford. Kennedy, Duncan (2007), “Making a text of the Universe: Perspectives on a Discursive Order in the De Rerum Natura”, in: Monica R. Gale (ed.), Oxford Readings in Classical Studies, Oxford, 376–96. Kenney, Edward J. (2007), “Lucretian Texture: Style, Metre and Rhetoric in De rerum natura”, in: Stuart Gillespie/and Philip Hardie (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Lucretius, Cambridge, 92–110. Kinsey, T.E. (1964), “The Melancholy of Lucretius”, in: Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics 3, 115–130. Klibansky, Raymond/Panofsky, Erwin/Saxl, Fritz (1964), Saturn and Melancholy, New York. Kramnick, Jonathan (2012), “Living with Lucretius”, in: Helen Deutsch/Mary Terrall (eds.), Vital matters. Eighteenth Century Views on Conception, Life and Death, Toronto, 92–110. Kraye, Jill (1988), “Moral Philosophy”, in: Charles B. Schmitt/Quentin Skinner (eds.), The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, Cambridge, 303–86. Kristeva, Julia (2013), “Nerval, El Desdichado”, in: ead., Sole nero. Depressione e melanconia, Rome, 117–143 (Le Soleil noir. Dépression et mélancholie, Paris 1997). Leask, Ian (ed.) (2013), John Toland’s ‘Letters to Serena’, Dublin. Lepage, John L. (2012), The Revival of Antique Philosophy in the Renaissance, New York. Lewin, Arnold H., (ed.) (1968), Hippocrates Visits Democritus: Letters 10–17 of the Hippocratic Corpus, Translated, with Introduction and Notes, Ithaca/New York. Logre, Benjamin J. (1946), L’anxiété de Lucrèce, Paris. Lucretius (1472–73), De rerum natura Editio Princeps (1472–3), see Beretta 2016. Lucretius (1620), De rerum natura, Gulielmus Janson, Amsterdam. Lucretius (1656), Evelyn, John (ed.), An Essay on the First book of T. Lucretius Carus De rerum natura. Interpreted and made English verse by J. Evelyn Esq;, London; see also Michael Repetzki (2000), ed., John Evelyn’s Translation of T. Lucretius Carus de Rerum Natura; an Old Spelling Critical Edition, Frankfurt. Lucretius (1682), Coutures, Jacques Parrain de (ed.), Les Œuvres de Lucrèce, contenant la philosophie sur la physique, ou l’origine de toutes choses, Paris. Lucretius (1683), Creech, Thomas (1683), (ed.), T. Lucretius Carus, The Epicurean Philosopher, His Six Books De Natura Rerum Done into English Verse, with Notes, Oxford. Lucretius (1685), Creech, Thomas (ed.), Lucretius de Rerum Natura libri sex, Oxford. Lucretius (1713), Mattaire Michel (ed.), T. Lucretii Cari de Rerum Natura libri sex. Ex Officina Jacobi Tonson and Johannis Watts, London.

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Lucretius (1717), Marchetti, Alessandro (ed.), Lucrezio, Della natura delle cose Libri Sei. Tradotti da Alessandro Marchetti, London. Lucretius (1754), Marchetti Alessandro (ed.), Di Tito Lucretio Caro della natura delle cose libri sei, tradotti in italiano da Alessandro Marchetti, Amsterdam (frontispiece engraved by L. Le Mire, designed by Ch. Eisen). Lucretius (1820), Tito Lucrezio Caro tradotto da Alessandro Marchetti, Firenze. Lüthy, Christoph (2000), “The Fourfold Democritus on the Stage of Early Modern Science”, in: Isis 91, 443–479. Lyotard, Jean-François (1971), Discours, Figure, Paris (ital. transl. by Elio Franzini/Francesca Mariani Zini, Discorso, figura, Milan 1988). Maffei, Sonia (2013), “La Malinconia: tracce di una storia per immagini fino all’Iconologia di Cesare Ripa,” in: Emilio Gattico/Silvana Bonanni/Giovanni Ferrari (eds.), Bile nera: nove saggi sulla malinconia, Bergamo, 145–71. Malssen van, Tom (2013), “Pantheism for the Unsuperstitious: Philosophical Rhetoric in the Works of John Toland”, in: International Journal of Philosophy and Theology 24, 274–290. Marder, Michael (2014), The Philosopher’s Plant: an Intellectual Herbarium, New York. Marlan, Stanton (2005), The Black Sun: the Alchemy and Art of Darkness, Texas, College station. Maso, Stefano (2016), “L’atomo di Lucrezio”, in: Lexicon philosophicum 4, 173–82. Manuzio, Aldo (1975), Aldo Manuzio editore, Carlo Dionisotti/Giovanni Orlandi (eds.), 2 volls., Milan. McGuinness, Philip/Harrison, Alan/Kearney, Richard (eds.) (1997), John Toland. Christianity not Mysterious (1695), Dublin. McIntosh Snyder, Jane (1983), “The Warp and Woof of the Universe in Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura”, in: Illinois Classical Studies VIII.1, 37–43. Milanese, Guido (1989), ‘Lucida carmina’. Comunicazione e scrittura da Epicuro a Lucrezio, Milan. Miller, Eric (2006), “Epicurean Gardens in William Temple and John Wilmot”, in: The Dalhousie Review 86, 3, 229–344. Minois, Georges (2003), Histoire du mal de vivre. De la mélancolie à la dépression, Paris. Munro, Hugh A.J. (1957), “Mrs. Lucy Hutchinson’s Translation of Lucretius”, in: Journal of Classical and sacred Philology 4, 121–45. Nail, Thomas (2018), Lucretius I. An Ontology of Motion, Edinburgh. Norbrook, David (2000), “Lucy Hutchinson and Order and Disorder: The Manuscript Evidence,” in: English Manuscript Studies 1100–1700, IX, 257–91. Norbrook, David/Harrison, Stephen/Hardie, Philip (eds.) (2015), Lucretius and the Early Modern, Oxford. Norbrook, David (2015), “Atheists and Republicans. Interpreting Lucretius in Early Modern Revolutionary England”, in: Lucretius and the Early Modern, David Norbrook/Stephen Harrison/Philip Hardie (eds.), Oxford, 223–58. Paladini, Mariantonietta (2011), Lucrezio e l’epicureismo tra Riforma e Controriforma, Naples. Palmer, Ada (2014a), “The Lofty Madness of Wise Lucretius. Docti furor arduus Lucretius. The Renaissance biographies”, in: ead., Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance, Cambridge, Mass./London 2014, 140–91.

  Gavina Cherchi Palmer, Ada (2014b), “T. Lucretius Carus, Addenda et Corrigenda”, in: Greti Dinkova-Bruun/ James Hankins/Robert A. Kaster (eds.), Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum: Mediaeval and Renaissance Latin Translations and Commentaries, vol. 10, Washington D.C., 331–56. Papali, George F. (1968), Jacob Tonson Publisher. His Life and Works (1656–1736), Auckland. Piazzi, Lisa (2000), “Atomismo e polemica filosofica: Lucrezio e I presocratici”, in: Marco Beretta/Francesco Citti (eds.), Lucrezio. La natura e la scienza, Florence, 11–38. Pigeaud, Jackie (1995), La follia nell’antichità classica. La mania e i suoi rimedi), Venice (Folies et cures de la folie chez les médecins de l’antiquité gréco-romaine. La manie, Paris 1987). Pilipovic, Jelena (2013), “Ad sidera: Tree-space symbolism in Plato’s Phaedrus and Vergil’s Eclogues”, in: Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 53, 221–44. Prosperi, Valentina (2004), Di soavi licor gli orli del vaso. La fortuna di Lucrezio dall’Umanesimo alla Controriforma, Turin. Prosperi, Valentina (2007), “Lucretius in the Italian Renaissance”, in: Stuart Gillespie/Philip Hardie (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Lucretius, Cambridge/New York, 222–38. Prosperi, Valentina (2008), “Proemi lucreziani nella poesia italiana del Cinquecento”, in: Materiali e Discussioni 59, 145–162. Quehen de, Henri (ed.) (1996), Lucy Hutchinson’s Translation of Lucretius’ ‘de rerum natura’, London. Reeve, Michael (2007), “Lucretius in the Middle Ages and early Renaissance: transmission and scholarship”, in: Stuart Gillespie/Philip Hardie (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Lucretius, Cambridge/New York, 217–25. Ripa, Cesare (1603), Iconologia, Rome. Roselli, Amneris (ed.) (1998), Lettere sulla follia di Democrito di Ippocrate, Naples. Roskam, Geert (2007), Living unnoticed (Lathe Biosas): on the Vicissitudes of an Epicurean Doctrine, Leiden/Boston. Rütten, Thomas (1992), Demokrit. Lachender Philosoph uns sanguinischer Melancholiker. Eine pseudohippokratische Geschichte, Leiden/New York/Copenhagen/Köln. Saccenti, Mario (1966), Lucrezio in Toscana. Studio su Alessandro Marchetti, Florence. Segal, Charles (1990), Lucretius on Death and Anxiety: Poetry and Philosophy in ‘De rerum natura’, Princeton. Sheppard, Kenneth (2015), Anti-atheism in Early Modern England 1580–1520. The Atheist answered and his error Confuted, Leiden/Boston. Schiesaro, Alessandro (1990), Simulacrum et imago. Gli argomenti analogici nel de Rerum Natura, Pisa. Schrijvers, Piet H. (2007), “Seeing the Invisible: a Study of Lucretius’ Use of Analogy in the De Rerum Natura”, in: Monica R. Gale (ed.), Lucretius. Oxford Readings in Classical Studies, Oxford, 255–85. Sedley, David (1998), Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom, Cambridge Mass./ London. Serres, Michel (1980), Lucrezio e l’origine della fisica, Palermo (La Naissance de la physique dans le texte de Lucrèce, Paris 1977; English transl., The Birth of Physics, Manchester 2000). Sieveking, Albert F. (1908), Sir William Temple upon the Gardens of Epicurus, with other XVIIth century garden essays, London. Starobinski, Jean (2014), L’inchiostro della malinconia, Turin (L’Encre de la mélancolie, Paris 2012).

Simulacra lucretiana: The Iconographic tradition of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura  

Stuart Gillespie/Philip Hardie (eds.) (2007), The Cambridge Companion to Lucretius, Cambridge/New York. Sullivan, Robert E. (1982), John Toland and the Deist Controversy: A Study in Adaptations, Cambridge, Mass. Swift, Jonathan, (1856), “An Argument against abolishing Christianity” (1708), in: The Works, London, vol. II, 171–174. Thury, Eva M. (1987), “Lucretius’ Poem as a Simulacrum of the Rerum Natura”, in: The American Journal of Philology 108.2, 270–294. Toland, John (1704), Letters to Serena, London; (see also John Toland’s ‘Letters to Serena’, Ian Leask (ed.), Dublin 2013). Toland, J. (Janus Junius Eoganesius ), (1720), Pantheisticon, sive Formula Celebrandae Sodalitatis Socraticae, in tres particulas divisa; quae Pantheistarum, sive Sodalium, Continent I, Mores et Axiomata: II, Numen et Philosophiam: III, Libertatem et non Fallentem Legem, neque fallendam. Praemittitur de Antiquis et Novis Eruditorum Sodalitatibus, ut de Universo infinito et aeterno Diatriba. Subijcitur de Duplici Pantheistarum Philosophia sequenda, ac de Viri Optimi et Ornatissmi Idea, Cosmopolis (London) 1720 (online: the English, not illustrated translation, London 1751). Toland, J. (1726), “Miscellaneous Letters and Papers by John Toland”: B.L. ADD.MS. 4925, ff. 41–2; (1726), A Collection of Several Pieces of Mr. John Toland. Now first published from his original manuscripts with some memoirs of his Life and Writings, London, Des Maizeaux, Pierre (ed.). Trismosin, Salomon (1582), Splendor Solis, Julius Kohn (ed.), 1920, London. Vermij, Rienk (1995), “Matter And Motion: Toland and Spinoza”, in: Wiep van Bunge/Wim Klever (eds.), Disguised and Overt Spinozism around 1700, Leiden/Boston, 275–88. Walther, Ludwig (2015), “Philosophy and Theology not in a Burlesque Mode – The Pantheisticon of John Toland”, in: Astrid Steiner-Weber/Franz Römer (eds.), Acta Conventus NeoLatini Vindobonensis, Leiden/Boston, 433–8. Wedepohl, Claudia (2016), “Warburg, Saxl, Panofsky and Dürer’s Melencolia I”, in: Marco Bertozzi/Andrea Pinotti (eds.), “La “Melencolia” di Albrecht Dürer cinquecento anni dopo (1514–2014), Pisa/Rome, 27–44. West, David (1969), The Imagery and Poetry of Lucretius, Edinburgh. Wigelsworth, Jeffrey R. (2008), “A pre-Socratic source for John Toland’s Pantheisticon”, in: History of European Ideas 34, 1, 61–65. Wittkower, Rudolf (1987), Allegoria e migrazione dei simboli, (Allegory and the Migration of Symbols, New York 1987), Turin. Yona, Sergio (2018), Epicurean Ethics in Horace. The Psychology of Satire, Oxford. Zagorin, Perez (1991), Ways of Lying: dissimulation, Persecution and Conformity in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge, Mass. Zerbino, Maria Cristina (2013), “Peccati di gioventù: Lucy Hutchinson e la prima traduzione inglese del De rerum natura”, in: Gilberto Marconi (ed.), Riscritture. La traduzione nelle arti e nelle lettere, Milan/Turin, 88–114.

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Figures

Fig. 1: Denis Lambin (1563), Titi Lucretii Cari De rerum natura libri sex, Paris. Title page.

Fig. 2: Gulielmus Janson (1620), Lucretius, De rerum natura, Amsterdam. Title page.

Simulacra lucretiana: The Iconographic tradition of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura  

Fig. 3: Michel de Marolles (1650), Les oeuvres du Poète Lucrèce, Latin et Franςois, Paris. Frontispiece.

Fig. 4: John Evelyn (1656), An Essay on the First book of T. Lucretius Carus De rerum natura. Interpreted and made English verse by J. Evelyn Esq;, London, Title page.

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Fig. 5: Jacques Parrain de Coutures (ed.) (1682), Les Œuvres de Lucrèce, contenant la philosophie sur la physique, ou l’origine de toutes choses, Paris. Title page.

Fig. 6: Thomas Creech (ed.) (1683), T. Lucretius Carus, The Epicurean Philosopher, His Six Books De Natura Rerum Done into English Verse, with Notes, Oxford. Frontispiece.

Simulacra lucretiana: The Iconographic tradition of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura  

Fig. 7: Lucretius (1713), Michel Mattaire (ed.), T. Lucretii Cari de Rerum Natura libri sex. Ex Officina Jacobi Tonson and Johannis Watts, London. Frontispiece and title page.

Fig. 8: David Norbrook, Stephen Harrison, Philip Hardie (eds.) (2015), Lucretius and the Early Modern, Oxford.

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Fig. 9: Albrecht Dürer, Sol niger, (Melencholia I, 1514, detail).

Fig. 10: Albrect Dürer, Melencholia I, 1514.

Fig. 11: Salomon Trismosin (1582), Splendor Solis, Julius Kohn (ed.), 1920, London.

Simulacra lucretiana: The Iconographic tradition of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura  

Fig. 12: Cesare Ripa (1603), Iconologia, Rome. Malinconia.

Fig. 13: Alessandro Marchetti (1754), Di Tito Lucretio Caro della natura delle cose libri sei, tradotti in italiano da Alessandro Marchetti, Amsterdam; frontispiece engraved by L. Le Mire, designed by Ch. Eisen.

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Fig. 14: Lucretius (1820), Tito Lucrezio Caro tradotto da Alessandro Marchetti, Florence. Frontispiece.

Simulacra lucretiana: The Iconographic tradition of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura  

Fig. 15: Salvator Rosa, Democritus “hominum derisor”, 1600.

Fig. 16: Jan Pynas, Hippocrates visiting Democritus in Abdera, 1614 (Rembrandt House Museum, Amsterdam).

Fig. 17: Johann Theodor de Bry (1627), Proscenivm vitae hvmanae, Antwerp.

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Fig. 18: Robert Burton (Democritus Junior) (1628, first ed. 1621), The Anatomy of Melancholy, What it is: With all the Kinds, Causes, Symptomes, Prognostickes, and Several Cures of it, Oxford. Title page.

Simulacra lucretiana: The Iconographic tradition of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura  

Fig. 19: Burton (1620), Democritus in the Garden (detail of the frontispiece).

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Fig. 20: Gaspar Netscher, Sir William Temple and Dorothy, Lady Temple, 1675 and 1671 (National Portrait Gallery, London).

Fig. 21: Lucretius (1713), Mattaire Michel (ed.) T. Lucretii Cari de Rerum Natura libri sex. Ex Officina Jacobi Tonson and Johannis Watts, London. Book I: Epicurus in the Garden.

Simulacra lucretiana: The Iconographic tradition of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura  

Fig. 22: Lucretius (1713), Mattaire Michel (ed.), T. Lucretii Cari de Rerum Natura libri sex. Ex Officina Jacobi Tonson and Johannis Watts, London. Portraits of the Poet and personification of Fame.

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Fig. 23: Lucretius (1743), T. Lucretius Carus Of The Nature of Things in Six Books, […] adorned with copperplates, curiously engraved by Du Guernier, in two volumes, Printed for Daniel Browne, London. Frontispiece and title page.

Simulacra lucretiana: The Iconographic tradition of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura  

Fig. 24: Toland, J. (Janus Junius Eoganesius ), (1720), Pantheisticon, sive Formula Celebrandae Sodalitatis Socraticae, in tres particulas divisa; quae Pantheistarum, sive Sodalium, Continent I, Mores et Axiomata: II, Numen et Philosophiam: III, Libertatem et non Fallentem Legem, neque fallendam. Praemittitur de Antiquis et Novis Eruditorum Sodalitatibus, ut de Universo infinito et aeterno Diatriba. Subijcitur de Duplici Pantheistarum Philosophia sequenda, ac de Viri Optimi et Ornatissmi Idea, Cosmopolis (London): Title page and Toland’s portrait.

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Fig. 25: Alessandro Marchetti (1754), Di Tito Lucretio Caro della natura delle cose libri sei, tradotti in italiano da Alessandro Marchetti, Amsterdam (frontispiece engraved by L. Le Mire, designed by Ch. Eisen).

Fig. 26: Toland, J. (1720), Pantheisticon, p. A3: Vergil’s Lucretian quotation “Felix qui potuit…”

Simulacra lucretiana: The Iconographic tradition of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura  

Fig. 27: The stormy sky of superstition at the end of Mattaire’ 1713 Lucretius and at the beginning of Toland’s 1720 Pantheisticon.

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Fig. 28: Eros pointing a telescope to the Sun in Mattaire’s 1713 Lucretius and in Toland’s 1720 Pantheisticon.

Simulacra lucretiana: The Iconographic tradition of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura  

Fig. 29: The Sun as Pater Aether, in Mattaire’s 1713 Lucretius and in Toland’s 1720 Pantheisticon.

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Fig. 30: Earth and sky full of living creatures, a naked helpless infant child representing mankind, in Mattaire’s 1713 Lucretius and in Toland’s 1720 Pantheisticon.

Simulacra lucretiana: The Iconographic tradition of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura  

Fig. 31: Venus on a chariot pulled by doves, in Mattaire’s 1713 Lucretius and in Toland’s 1720 Pantheisticon.

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Fig. 32: The solitary man wearing a tricorn hat (Toland himself?), seated on a squared stone, under a tree: early-modern epigone of the melanchonicus sanguineus Democritus, in Toland’s Pantheisticon.

Simulacra lucretiana: The Iconographic tradition of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura  

Fig. 33: The philosophical ‘ancestors’ of the pantheist Sodalitas in Toland’s Pantheisticon, p. 63.

Fig. 34: Emblem of Toland’s “Lucretian” cosmology in Pantheisticon 1720.

List of Contributors Andrea Ceccarelli studied the history of philosophy and the history of ideas at the Sapienza University in Rome (Ph.D. 2013), at the Warburg Institute in London and at the Institute for Historical Studies in Naples. He is currently a history and philosophy high school teacher. His research focuses on the reception of ancient atomism in the Renaissance; he published articles on the humanist and book collector Gian Vincenzo Pinelli (1535–1601) and on the medical environment at the University of Padua during the last decades of the sixteenth century. Gavina L. Cherchi, born in Sassari (Sardinia), lived in Algeria, Ethiopia and South Yemen, where she attended French and English schools. Returning to Italy she studied Greek and Latin at the Liceo Classico. She graduated magna cum laude in Philosophy in 1982 at the University of Pisa (supervisor Prof. V. Sainati). In 1994, after several years of research (thanks to a scholarship awarded by the Italian Ministry of Education) spent at the Warburg Institute (University of London), she obtained a PhD in “Combined Historical Studies” (Supervisor Prof. Jill Kraye). Associate Professor in Aesthetics, University of Sassari. Member and co-founder of Association Warburg-Italia established in Siena (1999). Member of the scientific board of the “Giornale critico di Storia delle Idee”, and of the journal “Fontes”. Member of the SIE (Società Italiana di Estetica). Founder and President of “Ammentos. Archivio memorialistico della Sardegna” which is actively operating in connection with a network of important national and international scientific partners. She collaborates with the Music and Art Academies in Sassari and writes on contemporary artists. Her scientific research, characterized by an interdisciplinary survey of history of ideas, iconology and philosophy, investigates the power of images in dialectical connection with the power of words, i.e. the iconosphere and the logosphere in their mutual, osmotic – and problematic – relationship, within the complex framework of Visual Culture. Mario De Caro is Professor of Moral Philosophy at Università Roma Tre and Visiting Professor at Tufts University, where he has been teaching since 2000; previously he was a Fulbright Fellow at Harvard University. A former president of the Italian Society for Analytic Philosophy, he is Hilary Putnam’s literary executor, associate editor of the Journal of the American Philosophical Association, and one of the founders of the International Machiavelli Society. He has written on naturalism, free will, moral philosophy, and early Italian thought. Matteo Favaretti Camposampiero, PhD, is Associate Professor at the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage of the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice (Italy). He studies the history of early modern philosophy from Descartes to Kant with a special interest in metaphysics, logic, rational theology, the philosophy of biology and medicine, the mind-body problem, and the theories of knowledge, language, and modalities. His publications include two books (Filum cogitandi: Leibniz e la conoscenza simbolica, Milan: Mimesis, 2007; Conoscenza simbolica: Pensiero e linguaggio in Christian Wolff e nella prima età moderna, Hildesheim: Olms, 2009), six co-edited volumes, and several articles and essays primarily focused on Leibniz, Wolff, their sources, and their influence. Recent journal articles: ‘Machines of Nature and Machines of Art: Christian Wolff’s Reception of Leibniz’, Rivista di Storia della Filosofia, 74 (2019), 431–452; ‘Mereology and Mathematics: Christian Wolff’s Foundational Programme’, British Journal for

  List of Contributors the History of Philosophy, 27 (2019), 1151–1172; ‘Infinite Regress: Wolff’s Cosmology and the Background of Kant’s Antinomies’, Kant-Studien (forthcoming). Myrto Garani (BA Thessaloniki, MA and PhD London) is Assistant Professor in Latin Literature at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. She is the author of Empedocles Redivivus: Poetry and Analogy in Lucretius (London and New York, 2007), co-editor with D. Konstan of The Philosophizing Muse: The Influence of Greek Philosophy on Roman Poetry (Pierides III. Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 2014) and co-editor with A.N. Michalopoulos and S. Papaioannou of Intertextuality in Seneca’s Philosophical Writings (London and New York: Routledge, 2020). She has also published articles on Empedocles’ reception in Latin literature, especially in Ovid’s Fasti. Her other publications include articles on Lucretius, Propertius, Ovid and the Pseudo-Vergilian Aetna. She is currently working on the first Greek translation of Aristotle’s Meteorology, a monograph on Seneca’s Naturales quaestiones Book 3 and a commentary on Lucretius’ De rerum natura 6. Philip Hardie is a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. He is the author of Lucretian Receptions: History, The Sublime, Knowledge (2009), and co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to Lucretius (2007). S.J. Harrison is Fellow and Tutor in Classics at Corpus Christi College, Oxford and Professor of Latin Literature in the University of Oxford. He is author of books and commentaries on Vergil, Horace and Apuleius and editor of a number of volumes on Latin literature and its reception. Andrew Laird moved from the United Kingdom in 2016 to Brown University, Rhode Island, where he is John Rowe Workman Distinguished Professor of Classics and Humanities. His publications on classical literature, Latin humanism and history of scholarship include Powers of Expression, Expressions of Power (1999), A Companion to the Prologue of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses (2001), Ancient Literary Criticism (2006), The Epic of America (2006), Italy and the Classical Tradition (2009), The Role of Latin in the Early Modern World (2012) and Antiquities and Classical Traditions in Latin America (2018). Francesca Masi is Associate Professor in the History of Ancient Philosophy at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. She is author of a book on Epicurus’ philosophy of mind (Epicuro e la filosofia della mente. Un’introduzione al XXV libro dell’opera Sulla natura, Academia Verlag, 2006) and of many papers on Epicurus’ psychology and ethics. She has also written books and papers focused on Aristotle’s ontology, physics and ethics. Elena Nicoli received her Master’s degree in Classics at Bologna University in 2013. In September 2017, she obtained her PhD at the Center for the History of Philosophy and Science (Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands) with a dissertation entitled “The Earliest Renaissance Commentaries on Lucretius and the Issue of Atomism”. Elena’s research focuses mainly on the reception of Lucretius and Epicureanism in the Renaissance.

List of Contributors  

Ada Palmer is a cultural and intellectual historian focusing on radical thought and the Renaissance recovery of the classics. She works on the history of science, religion, heresy, freethought, atheism, censorship, books, printing, and on patronage and the networks of power and money that enabled cultural creation in early modern Europe. She teaches in the History Department at the University of Chicago. Her first monograph Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance explores the impact of the rediscovery of classical atomism on the birth of modern thought. Valentina Prosperi is Associate Professor of Classical Philology at the University of Sassari. She is the author of two books, on the reception of Lucretius (Di soavi licor gli orli del vaso: la fortuna di Lucrezio tra Umanesimo e Controriforma, Rome, 2004) and on the Trojan myth between antiquity and the Renaissance (Omero sconfitto. Ricerche sulla Guerra di Troia dall’antichità al Rinascimento. Rome, 2013). Mauro Sarnelli graduated from the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy of La Sapienza University in Rome under Prof. Mario Costanzo Beccaria, and received his Ph.D. at Roma Tre University supervised by Prof. Maria Teresa Acquaro Graziosi. He is currently a confirmed Associate Professor in the Department of History, Human and Education Sciences of the University of Sassari. David Sedley (b. 1947) was Laurence Professor of Ancient Philosophy at the University of Cambridge, from 2000 to 2014. He has edited Classical Quarterly (1986-1992), and Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy (1998-2007). His monographs include Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom (1998). Giuseppe Solaro is full Professor of Classical Philology at the University of Foggia. His main research interests are poetry and prose of Caesar's age, the Greek historiography of the classical age, the tradition of Greek and Latin texts during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the myth of the library of Alexandria, the history of German classical philology, and the reception of ancient authors in the modern, contemporary world. His main publications include Lucrezio. Biografie umanistiche (Bari 2000); Omero a Spoon River (Bari 2003); Il mistero Democrito (Rome 2012); La Roma di Cornelio Nepote (ed. by, Rome 2013). Chiara e le sue piccole domande (Rome 2017) is his first work of fiction. Richard Stoneman is an Honorary Visiting Professor at the University of Exeter. Most of his research and his publications have been on Alexander the Great and the legends surrounding him. His most recent books are Xerxes: a Persian Life (2015) and The Greek Experience of India, from Alexander to the Indo-Greeks, which ranges from botany to art and philosophy: two chapters discuss connections of Greek and Indian philosophy. Francesco Verde (Rome, 1983) is currently tenure-track Assistant Professor of the History of Ancient Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy of Sapienza – University of Rome. In 20172018 he was Experienced Researcher (Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung) at the Institut für klassiche Philologie of Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg. His interests are ancient atomism, ancient physics, Hellenistic philosophy, early Peripatetic philosophy, Hellenistic Academy, and Herculaneum Papyrology. He has published books and articles on Epicureanism.

  List of Contributors Diego Zucca is tenure-track Assistant Professor in the History of Ancient Philosophy at the University of Sassari, Italy. He holds a PhD in History of Philosophy (University of Venice) and a PhD in Philosophy of Mind (University of Edinburgh). His publications include books on Aristotle and on contemporary philosophy of perception. His current research mainly focuses on the psychology and epistemology of Plato and Aristotle.

Index Nominum All names mentioned in the book, with the exception of Lucretius, are included in this index. Abad, Diego José 289, 291n, 294–300, 302, 304–307 Abilés, José López de 292 Acerbi, Fabio 88n, 99 Achillini, Alessandro 236 Acquaro Graziosi, Maria Teresa 251 Aenesidemus 63, 81 Aetius 227, 227n Agamemnon 300, 304n Alamanni, Luigi 158, 164 Albl, Stefan 353 Albrecht, Michael von 126 Aldrovandi, Ulisse 222 Alegre, Francisco Javier 304, 306, 307 Alesse, Francesca 42, 60 Alexander VII (Ugo Chigi), pope 254, 256n, 260n, 262 Alexander Aphrodisiensis 59, 47n. Alexander the Great 66, 113–115, 116n, 118, 120, 121, 123, 125, 126 Algra, Keimpe A. 59, 80, 81, 85 Alletz, Pons Augustine 193 Allott, Kenneth 312n, 316n, 317n, 320 Allott, Manfred 312n, 316n, 317n, 320 Almenicus 333 Ament, Ernest J. 187, 193 Amphinomus 93 Anacreon 147, 164 Anapia 93 Anaxagoras 349n Anaxarchus 65, 66, 67, 68, 79 Ancarani, Giovan Pietro 160n Anchises 130 Anderson, Penelope 348n, 350 Andrioli, Paola 270 Angeleri, Carlo 327n, 336 Anna of Austria, Queen of France 263n Anselmo, Francesco 256n, 259n, 262n, 267, 268 Antiochus the Great 121 Antognazza, Maria Rosa 273n, 276n, 287 Aphrodite see Venus https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110673487-021

Apollo 135, 136n; Helios 109 Aratus 292n Arcesilaus 64n, 74 Arcioni, Angelo Maria 263, 267 Ares see Mars Ariew, Roger 287 Aristotle 25n, 31n, 38n, 37n, 42, 77, 84, 86, 94, 95, 96, 99, 101, 153, 160n, 165, 172, 185, 186, 189, 223, 226n, 232, 235, 238, 243, 245, 246, 248, 249, 256n, 257, 266n, 267, 282, 291, 294, 297, 308, 333n Armisen–Marchetti, Mireille 108n, 113n, 123 Arnauld, Antoine 274 Arnold, Matthew 309, 310, 311, 312, 316, 317, 319, 320, 321 Aron-Beller, Katherine 174n, 182n, 193 Arnobius 127, 128, 142, 179 Aronadio, Francesco 60 Arrighetti, Graziano 91n Asmis, Elizabeth 24n, 26n, 30n, 32n, 33n, 37n, 41, 63n, 68n, 70n, 72n, 73n, 74n, 75n, 77n, 79n, 80, 340n, 350, Asor Rosa, Alberto 165 Astericus 333 Atkinson, James B. 215 Atticus 325 Augustine 100, 203 Ausonius 127, 129, 130, 142, 327 Austin, John Langshaw 69, 72n, 76, 77n, 80 Austin, Roland G. 130, 141 Averroes 189 Avicenna 195 Avotins, Ivars 55n, 59 Bacchini, Benedetto 263 Bacchus 128 Bacon, Francis 173, 190, 293 Bailey, Cyril 35n, 36n, 41, 48, 49n, 57n, 59, 90n, 99

  Index Nominum Baker, Erik 305n, 306 Bakker, Frederik A. 83n, 85, 86n, 88n, 89n, 91, 94, 97n, 99, 101 Balbus, Quintus Lucilius 15n Ball, Philip 175n, 193 Banderier Gilles 269 Barberini, family 269 Barberini, Francesco 258 Barberini, Maffeo Vincenzo (pope Urbano VIII) 258 Barbieri, Edoardo 339n, 351 Barchiesi, Alessandro 106n, 123 Barnes, Jonathan 42, 59, 64n, 65n, 66n, 69n, 71n, 82 Bartoli, Daniello 165, 262 Bartsch, Shadi 125 Baruffaldi, Girolamo 161n, 164 Basile, Bruno 160n, 164, 253n, 257n, 267 Basore, John W. 109, 123 Bates, Richard 251 Batteaux, Charles 187, 193 Battistini, Andrea 258n, 267 Batllori, Miguel 295n, 306 Baumer, Franklin L. 167n, 194 Bausi, Francesco 209n, 215, 216 Bayle, Pierre 278, 283n Beagon, Mary 114n, 123 Beccaria, Mario Costanzo 251 Beckwith, Christopher 66n, 67, 80 Beer, Susanna de 189n, 194 Beezley, William H. 306 Behn, Aphra 344, 351 Bellagranda, Carl’Antonio 261n Belluso, Rossella 100 Bembo, Pietro 154 Bénatouïl, Thomas 94n, 99 Bénézech, Michel 328n, 336 Bentley, Richard 144, 344 Berényi, Carol 339 Beretta, Marco 3, 123, 196, 219n, 221n, 233, 236n, 249, 339n, 340n, 341n, 342n, 343n, 344n, 351, 352, 354, 356 Bergerac, Cyrano de 190 Bergamo, Maria 352 Bergier, Nicolas-Sylvestre 298, 299n Bergk, Theodor 326n Bergsma, Ad 348n, 351

Bergson, Henri 287, 305, 306, 325, 326n, 328, 336 Beroaldo, Filippo, senior 236, 250 Bertelli, Sergio 201, 213, 215 Berno, Francesca Romana 108n, 115n, 123 Berkeley, George 69 Berman, Sandra 321 Bertozzi, Marco 346n, 351, 357 Bett, Richard 65n, 66n, 68n, 80 Beuchot, Mauricio 290n, 293n, 306 Bianchi, Marco 348n, 351 Bianchi, Olivier 141 Biasiori, Lucio 209n, 215 Bibauw, Jaqueline 337 Bigi, Stefano 256n, 267 Black, Christopher 171n, 174n, 176n, 178n, 179n, 182, 183n, 193, 194 Blake, Liza 3n, 42, 142, 249 Blake, William 76 Blount, Charles 174n, 192, 194 Blumenberg, Hans 303n, 306 Bobzien, Susanne 208n, 215 Boccardo, Giovan Francesco (Pilade) 237 Bocchi, Achille 249 Bogun, Volker 113n, 123 Boeri, Domenico 270 Boethius 128, 142, 203, 300 Boileau, Nicolas 303n, 304, 306 Bollak, Jean 60, 87n, 99 Bollack, Mayotte 308, 341n, 351 Bolzoni, Lina 268, 341n, 351 Bömer, Franz 114n, 123 Bonanni, Silvana 355 Bordignon, Giulia 352 Borghini, Vincenzio 156, 164 Borgia, Girolamo 326n, 329, 330n, 331, 332 Borromeo, Carlo 253 Borromeo, Federico 222, 253 Borsetto, Luciana 166 Borzelli, Angelo 154n, 164, 269 Bothmer, Johann Caspar von 275n Bowers, Fredson 252n, 268 Bown, Alexander 28n, 41 Boyancé, Pierre 331n, 336 Boyle, Robert 344

Index Nominum  

Bracciolini, Poggio 6, 168, 192, 187n, 193, 214, 339 Bradley, Edward M. 345n, 351 Brahe, Tycho 194 Brakman, Cornelius 141 Brancaleone, Giovan Francesco 154n, 164 Brandt, Reinhardt 346n, 347n, 351 Brewster, David 175n, 194 Brieger, Adolf 326n Brind‘Amour, Pierre 329n, 337 Briscoe, John 121n, 123 Brown, Alison 3n, 169n, 189n, 194, 214n, 215, 219n, 233, 339n, 347n, 351 Brown, Michael 351 Brown, Robert 311n, 320 Brown, Robert Duncan 336n, 337 Brown, Stuart 287 Browning, Robert 316 Brucker, Johann Jakob 334, 337 Bruno, Giordano 165, 169–178, 181, 182, 185, 189, 190–194, 197, 248n, 249, 347, 349n Bry, Johann Theodor de 346n, 351 Bucciantini, Massimo 222n, 233 Buchheit, Vinzenz 114, 123 Buddha 65–67, 68n, 69, 70, 80, 81 Bujanda, Jésus Martinez de 179n, 181n, 194 Bullivant, Stephen 197 Buono, Iacopo Antonio 160n, 161, 164 Burnyeat, Miles 42, 64n, 66n, 71n, 82 Burck, Erich 125 Burghers, Michael 345n Burnett, Thomas 277n Burrus, Ernest J. 295n, 306 Burt, Forest D. 311n, 320 Burton, Robert 190, 346, 347, 351, 369, 370 Burtt, Edwin Arthur 65n, 81 Burzacchini, Gabriele 101 Businarolo, Luigi 269 Buttay-Juties, Florence 212n, 215 Butterfield, David 3n, 169n, 184n, 185n, 188n, 194, 339n, 351

Cabrera y Quintero, Cayetano Javier de 290, 308 Cacus 135, 136, 141 Caesar 312–315, 328n Caesonia Milonia 333 Caferro, William 168n, 194 Caimo, Giacomo 253n Caimo, Pompeo 253n Calanus 66, 68 Calcidius 242 Calenda, Corrado 164 Calidus 337 Caligula 330 Calliope 335 Calvesi, Maurizio 346n, 352 Calvin, John 181 Camerino, Giuseppe Antonio 270 Camerarius, Joachim 222 Cameron, Alan 131n, 141 Campanella, Tommaso, 164, 178, 182, 259, 268 Campbell, Gordon 72n, 75n, 81, 347, 352 Campoy, José Rafael 293–296, 302 Canali, Luca 100, 269 Canfora, Luciano 269, 334n, 335n, 337, 338 Cañizares-Esguerra, Jorge 295n, 306 Canone, Eugenio 60 Cantelmo, Giacomo 3n Capece, Scipione 147, 148n, 152, 154, 164, 186, 190, 191, 194 Cappelli, Adriano 252n, 268 Capucci, Martino 251 Carafa, Carlo 259n, 260n Cariou, Marie 273n, 287 Carney, Elizabeth D. 126 Cartari, Vincenzo 343n, 352 Castellaneta, Stella 270 Castellano Ruiz, Antonio 340n, 352 Castelvecchi, Alberto 252n, 270 Castelvetro, Ludovico 257, 258, 259n, 268 Castro, Agustín Pablo de 303, 304n Cataneo, Baldo 253 Catiline 312 Catullus 219, 292n, 327, 334n Cavendish, Margaret 190

  Index Nominum Cavina, Marco 155n, 164 Centanni, Monica 346n, 352 Ceres 128 Chambers, D. Laurance 318n, 320 Champion, Justin 348n, 352 Charles V, Emperor 149 Charles IX, King of France 180, 342 Charlet, Jean Louis 142 Charleton, Walter 190, 344 Chaudhuri, Pramit 117n, 123 Cherchi, Gavina 341n, 343n, 344n, 345n, 346n, 348n, 349n, 350n, 352 Cherchi, Paolo 342n, Chiurlo, Bindo 263n, 265n, 268 Chométy, Philippe 147n, 164 Christ 127, 134, 135, 136n, 137, 142, 180, 220, 258, Cicero, Marcus Tullius 11n, 14, 15, 23n, 29n, 62, 64n, 68n, 23n 74n, 75n, 81, 116n, 124, 130n, 142, 160n 179, 184, 189, 223, 227–229, 230n, 234, 265, 285, 312, 314–316, 318, 325–327, 328n, 333n, 334, 337, 338, 349n, 352 Cicero, Quintus Tullius 325, 326, 332 Cicognara Leopoldo 161n, 164 Císař, Karel 32n, 35n, 36n, 41 Citti, Francesco 3n, 123, 196, 219n, 221n, 233, 340n, 345n, 351, 352, 356 Claudian 127, 128, 131–133, 141, 142, 164, 257, 292n Clarke, Samuel 285, 287 Clarendon Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of 187n, 194 Clavigero, Francisco Javier 289, 291n, 293–296, 302, 304, 306, 308 Clay, Diskin 24n, 37n, 41 Clement VIII (Ippolito Aldobrandini), pope 252 Clement IX (Giulio Rospigliosi), pope 258n, 261, 270 Cleomedes 223–226, 233 Clodius 312, 313 Clough, Arthur Hugh 316 Clucas, Stephen 343n, 352 Clusius, Carolus 222 Colapietra, Raffaele 154n, 164 Colie, Rosalie L. 349n, 352

Collins, Anthony 344n, 349n, 352 Collitz, Hermann 337 Colombo, Angelo 268 Columbus, Christopher 301 Colonna, Vittoria 154 Colotes 26n, 29n, 61, 62, 64n, 66n, 67n, 68n, 69, 71, 73n, 75n, 76n, 78n, 80 Conche Marcel 79n, 81 Conte, Gian Biagio 106n, 123, 269 Cooper, John 13n, 21 Copernicus, Nicolaus 171, 172n Corbinelli, Jacopo 222 Corcoran Thomas H. 108, 109, 113, 119, 120, 123 Cordemoy, Géraud de 273n Corneille Pierre 263 Cornelius Nepos 325, 327, 332n Cornell, Timothy J. 313n, 320 Corsaro, Antonio 253n, 268 Corti, Aurora 25n, 41, 55n, 59 Cosimo II de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany 269 Cosimo III de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany 146, 185, 260n, 268 Costa, Gustavo 146n, 164 Costa, Stefano 113n, 123 Costanzo, Mario 251, 258n, 268 Costazza, Alessandro 126 Costil, Pierre 223n, 234 Costo, Tommaso 155n, 164 Cotta Ramusino, Elena 125 Cottegnies, Line 185n, 343n, 352 Cotton, Anne 350n, 352 Courtney, Edward 108 Coutant, Victor 95n, 99 Coutures, Jacques Parrain de 344, 347, 354, 362 Cowan, Robert 326n, 337 Cranz Franz Edward 164 E. Crassus 326, 327n Creech Thomas 62n, 71n, 181, 327n, 344–346, 348, 354, 363 Crevani, Natalina 151n, 165 Crinitus, Petrus (Piero del Riccio–Baldi) 327, 336 Cristante, Lucio 132n, 141 Crowley, Timothy J. 243n, 249

Index Nominum  

Cudworth, Ralph 284, 285n, 287 Cuevas, Mariano 291n, 306 Cupid see Eros D’Elci, Orazio 260n Daiber, Hans 97, 99 Dalfino, Maria Cristina 60 Dalzell, Alexander 195, 307 Damschen, Gregor 123 Danaids 313 Daniel, Stephen H. 347n, 349n, 350n, 352 Dante Alighieri 166, 172, 179, 191, 269 Darwin, Charles 168, 193, 311 Dascal, Marcelo 287 Dati, Carlo Roberto 263 Davidson, Donald 208 Davidson, Nicholas 169n, 172n, 183n, 185, 194 Davis, Alexander V. 293n, 306 De Caro, Mario 6, 208n, 215, 216, 217 De Lacy, Philip Howard 63n, 70n, 81, 92, 97n, 99 De Lacy, Estelle Allen 63n, 70n, 81 De Sanctis, Dino 85n, 99, 100 De Smet, Rudolf 197 Decio, Antonio 253, 271 Deck, Allan F. 295n, 304n, 306 Deianeira 318 Del Lucchese, Filippo 214n, 215, 216, 219n, 234 Del Nero, Valerio 236n, 249 Del Sera, Paolo Delfino, Daniele 261n Delfino (Dolfin), Giovanni 251, 252, 253n, 254–257, 259, 260n, 261, 262, 263n, 264–268, 270 Della Corte, Francesco 325n, 337 Della Persa, Vincenzo 159n Della Porta, Giovan Battista 351 Della Valle, Guido 334n Delpiano, Patrizia 146n, 153n, 164 Demetrius Lacon 30n, 31n, 63n, 70n, 73, 74, 77n, 82, 91n Democritus 48, 63, 66n, 69n, 78n, 79, 228, 229, 232, 233, 241, 256n, 282,

294, 329, 346, 347, 350, 354–356, 368, 370, 381 Denon, Liliana 74, 81 Dennett, Daniel 208 Descartes, René 173, 277, 283, 293, 294 Deufert, Marcus 128n, 141, 336n, 337 Deutsch, Helen 354 De Witt, Norman W. 29n, 57n Diana 343, 346 Diano, Carlo 44n, 49n, 59 Dido 130 Digges, Thomas 172n, 173, 176–178, 191 Dick, Bernard F. 114n, 123 Diderot, Denis 191 Diels, Hermann 228n Distelzweig, Peter 249 Dietrich, Manfred 316n, 320 Dinkova-Bruun, Greti 356 Diogenes Laertius, 20n, 24n, 29n, 28, 30n, 31n, 34n, 35n, 40n, 60, 64, 65n, 66, 67n, 68n, 71n, 83, 84, 89n, 93, 100, 184, 223, 228 Diogenes of Oenoanda 41, 58n, 60, 65n, 76, 82, 91, 92, 100, 334, 338 Dionigi, Ivano 269, 305n, 306, 341n, 352 Dionisotti, Carlo 237n, 249, 355 Dionysius of Halicarnassus 77 Distaso, Grazia 270 Donatelli, Piergiorgio 99 Donati, Alessandro 258, 259, 268 Donato, Maria Pia 174, 194 Donatus, Aelius 326, 327, 329 Doni, Anton Francesco 351 Doody, Aude 101 Driesch, Hans 273n, 276n Druyan, Ann 171n, 172n, 173n, 175n, 194 Dryden, John 344, 352, 353 Du Bellay Joachim 275n Du Guernier, Louis 345n, 347, 373 Dudith Andreas 222, 233, 234 Duff, Arnold M. 95n, 99 Duff, John W. 95n, 99 Duminuco, Vincent J. 305n, 306 Duns Scotus 203, 242 Dunston, Arthur John 189n, 194 Dupuy, Claude 222

  Index Nominum Dürer, Albrecht 345, 351, 352, 357, 364, 365 Dykes, Anthony 138n, 141 East, Katherine A. 349n, 352 Eckhart, Johann Georg von 275n Edelstein, Ludwig 93 Edwards, Catharine, 108n, 123 Eichenlaub, Val V. 95n, 99 Eisen, Charles 346n, 355, 363, 372 Emery, Jacques André 279, 280, 282 Empedocles 73, 74n, 81, 99, 127, 133, 235, 238–240, 244, 245, 257n, 309, 316–318, 320, 345, 353 Engels, Friedrich 70n, 81 Ennius 115, 117, 118, 122, 125, 127 Epicurus 2, 3n, 4, 13–17, 19– 22, 24, 25n, 33n, 34n, 35, 41, 42, 45, 59–66, 68, 71– 75, 77, 79, 80–88, 90–92, 94, 97–101, 107, 111, 112, 114, 116–118, 121–123, 125, 128–130, 132, 135–137, 139–141, 147, 159, 180, 181, 183, 187, 188, 190, 192, 193, 196, 197, 214, 224, 225, 227, 228–230, 233, 234, 236, 238, 239, 241, 243–245, 254, 262, 269, 274, 277, 280, 283, 285, 286, 291n, 294, 295, 297, 298, 301, 302, 328, 331n, 335, 343, 345–348, 350–353, 355, 356, 368 Erler, Michael 88n, 99, 347n, 353 Ernesti, Johann August 326n Ernout, Alfred 88n, 94n, 99 Ernst, Germana 211n, 215 Eros 349, 374; Cupid 132n Erwin, Sean 214n, 215 Eugene, prince of Savoy 347, 348 Evander 135, 136 Evelyn John 343, 344, 354, 359 Evelyn Mary 343 Everson, Jane E. 152n, 164 Everson, Stephen 28n, 29n, 32n, 34n, 39n, 41, 44n, 59n Fabian, Bernhardt 344n, 353 Fabiani, Giuseppe 159n, 164 Fabricius, Johannes 276n Fahy, Conor 252n, 268 Falcon, Andrea 84n, 99

Fantazzi, Charles 195 Fantuzzi, Giovanni 236n, 249 Farrell, Joseph 235n, 249, 307 Favaretti Camposampiero, Matteo 7 Favaro, Antonio 269 Favoriti, Agostino 262 Fears, J. Rufus 114n, 123 Feddern, Stefan 116n, 123 Federici, Domenico 261n Feldherr, Andrew 116, 118, 119, 123 Feliciani, Porfirio 253 Feraboli, Simonetta 269 Fermani, Arianna 42, 60 Fernández del Rincón, José Ignacio 291n, 296n, 299n, 306 Ferrari, Giovanni 355 Fichant, Michel 276n, 287 Ficino, Marsilio 173, 186, 189, 192, 195, 201, 211, 212n, 214, 216, 217, 246–248, 250, 253, 330n Finch, Chauncey E. 213, 216 Fish, William 72, 73n, 76, 78, 81 Fitch, John G. 125 Flaminio, Marcantonio 159 Flammarion, Camille 173 Flashar, Helmut 346n, 353 Fleischmann Wolfgang B. 149n, 164, 344, 353 Flintoff Everard 66n, 81 Flores, Enrico 269 Florus 114 Florimonte, Galeazzo 156n Foà, Simona 161n, 164 Folena, Pietro 351 Ford, Philip 343n, 353 Forster, Kurt W. 346n, 353 Fortenbaugh, William W. 99 Foster, Benjamin Oliver 116, 124 Foster, Howard 321 Fowler, Don Paul 38n, 41, 63n, 72n, 74n, 75n, 81 Foxe, John 175n Fracastoro, Girolamo 165, 193n, 194, 196, Frachetta, Girolamo, 149n, 186, 194, 253, 254n, 269, 333n, 337 Francis de Sales, Saint 262

Index Nominum  

Francus Raphael (Raffaele Franchi) 184, 188, 192, 194, 238 Frank, Tenney 334n, 337 Franklin, Benjamin 293 Franzini, Elio 355 Frede, Dorothea 353 Frederick II, King of Prussia 187, 194 Frischer, Bernhardt 342n, 353 Fronto 325 Fumaroli, Marc 259n, 269 Fubini, Riccardo 167n, 194 Fuhrmann, Manfred 142 Fuoco, Ornella 132n, 141 Gale, Monica R. 62n, 72n, 117, 119n, 123, 124, 340n, 341n, 350, 353, 354, 356 Galen 245n, 277, 279 Galilei, Galileo 153, 175, 177, 178, 181, 182, 190, 194, 196, 222, 233, 251, 256, 264, 266n, 269 Galinsky, Karl G. 114n, 124 Gallagher, Mary 344n, 353 Galli Pavarelli, Giambattista 270 Gallo, Valentina 160n, 164 Gamarra y Dávalos, Juan Benito Díaz de 291n Gambara, Veronica 154 Gambino Longo, Susanna 3n, 219n, 234, 333n, 337 Ganeri, Jonardon 77, 81 Ganguli, Mrinal Kanti 70n, 81 Ganzarini, Aurelio 162 Ganzarini, Tito Giovanni (Scandianese), 145, 148, 149n, 158–162, 166 Garambois-Vasquez, Florence 141 Garani, Myrto 4, 83n, 85n, 94n, 99, 114n, 124, 341n, 353 Garfield, Jay Lazard 64n, 66n, 67n, 68n, 70n, 81 Garin, Eugenio 154n, 163, 217 Gassendi, Pierre 153, 187, 190, 192, 195, 196, 249, 251, 254n, 256, 273n, 277, 287, 291n, 293, 294, 344 Gatti, Hilary 178n, 194, 248n, 249 Gattico, Emilio 355 Gauchat, Patrick 254n, 258n, 269 Gatzemeier, Susanne 127n, 141

Gavran Miloš, Ana 26n, 28n, 30n, 32n, 41 Gelli, Jacopo 155n, 165 Gennaro, Salvatore 131n, 132n, 141 Gerbi, Antonello 295n, 306 Gerhardt, Carl Immanuel 286, 287 Gesner, Konrad 337 Gethin, Rupert 72n, 81 Ghislieri, Michele, (pope Pius V) 179 Giallombardo, Francesca 342n, 353 Giampieretti, Francesca 268 Giannantoni, Gabriele 60, 86n, 100 Giannone, Pietro 153, 164 Gigandet, Alain 53n, 60 Gigante, M. 62, 63n, 64n, 66n, 70n, 75n, 77n, 81 Gigli, Ottavio 270 Giglioni, Guido 211n, 215 Gilbert, Allan 216 Gilbert, Felix 206n, 216, 220n, 234 Gildenhard, Ingo 136, 141 Gillespie, Stuart 3, 100, 124, 125, 197, 219n, 234, 306, 308, 353, 354, 356, 357 Giolito de’ Ferrari, Gabriele 160, 163 Giomini, Remo 228n, 234 Giordani, Pietro 270 Giorgione (Giorgio da Castelfranco) 351 Giovio, Paolo 154 Giraldi, Lilio Gregorio 160n, 161, 164, 328 Girardi, Raffaele 149n Giri, Giacomo 329n, 337 Gisondi, Antonio 149n, 154n, 164 Giuntini, Chiara 347n, 349n, 353 Giussani, Carlo 112n, 124, 328n, 337 Gliozzi, Giuliano 154n, 164 Gnilka, Christian 136n, 141 Goddard, Charlotte 147n, 64, 165 Godwin, John 35n, 41, 44n, 60, 62n, 75 Gokhale, Pradeep P. 64n, 66n, 70n, 80n, 81 Goldberg, Benjamin 249 Gonzaga, Scipione 253n, 269 Good, John Mason 353 Goodyear, Francis Richard D. 93, 95n, 100 Gordon, Cosmo Alexander 149, 165, 219n, 275n, 287, 339n, 352, 353 Gourinat, Jean-Baptiste 58n, 60

  Index Nominum Gowing, Alain M. 116n, 124 Gradenigo, Bartolomeo 262n Gradenigo, Girolamo 254 Grandi, Guido 275n Grayling, Anthony 63n, 81 Greenblatt, Stephen 3n, 5, 168, 171, 178, 194, 195, 219n, 234, 339n Greenough, James Bradstreet 239n Gregori, Elisa 351 Gregory XIII (Ugo Boncompagni), pope 253 Grendler, Marcella 221n, 234 Grendler, Paul F. 174n, 179n, 194, 339n, 353 Grillo, Angelo 263 Grimal, Pierre 125 Grohovaz, Valentina 250 Grossato, Alessandro 343n, 352 Gualdo, Paolo 222n, 234 Guanzelli, Giovanni Maria 181, 195 Guasti, Niccolò 295n, 306 Guedea, Virginia 291n, 306 Guglielminetti, Marziano 269 Guicciardini, Francesco 205, 209, 216 Guicciardini, Luigi 205 Guillemin, Anne-Marie 328n, 337 Guipponi-Gineste, Marie-France 132n, 141 Gummere, Richard M. 106, 119, 124 Gunderson, Erik 106n, 124 Güremen, Refik 37n, 40n, 41, 58n, 60, 100 Gutas, Dimitri 99 Guzmán, Eulalia 295n, 306 Hagecius, Thaddaeus 223 Hagendahl, Harald 127n, 141 Hair, Donald S. 319n, 320 Hammerstaedt, Jürgen 41, 60, 100 Hammond, Paul 344n, 353 Hannibal 105, 106, 112–122 Hankins, James 186n, 189n, 195, 356 Hankinson, Robert J. 72n, 81, 89n, 100 Hardie, Philip R. 3n, 5, 98, 99n, 100, 106n, 111n, 112, 114n, 115, 117n, 123– 125, 128n, 129n, 130n, 133n, 136n, 141, 142, 165, 169n, 172n, 185n, 189n, 190n,

194, 196, 197, 219n, 234, 305n, 306, 308, 345n, 348n, 352–357, 364 Harrison, Stephen J. 3n, 7, 165, 169n, 172n, 185n, 189n, 190n, 194, 196, 234, 345n, 351, 352, 355, 361 Haskell, Yasmin 147n, 148n, 165, 339n, 353 Hector 310 Heil, Andreas 123n Heinemann, Friedrich Heinrich 276n, 287 Helios see Apollo Hellyer, Marcus 294n, 307 Henry III, King of France 173 Heraclitus 77, 133, 346 Hercules 128, 135, 136 Hermogenes of Tarsus, 160n Herodotus (friend of Epicurus) 60, 65n, 84 Herrera Zapién, Tarcisio 308 Hersant, Yves 354 Hessen-Rheinfels, Ernst von 274n Hickman, Stephen Craig 168n Hicks, Robert Drew 24n Higgins, Antony 304n, 307 Hildebrandt, Richard 93, 100 Hill, Nicholas 190 Hill, Thomas D. 273n, 287 Hinch, Jim 168n, 195 Hine, Harry M. 97, 98n, 100, 113n, 124 Hine, William L. 186n, 188n, 195 Hippocrates 232–234, 256n, 346, 354, 356, 365 Hirai, Hiro 248n, 249 Hobbes Thomas 174, 187, 192–194, 209, 283n Hobson, Anthony 221n, 234 Hobsbawm, Eric J. 1 Hockney, David 69n, 81 Holbach, Pierre Henri Thiry de 183, 191 Holland, Louise Adams 334n, 337 Hollar, Wenceslaus 343n Holleman, A.W.J. 114n, 124 Holly, Michael A. 346n, 353 Holzberg, Niklas 101 Home, Roderick Weir 294, 307 Homer 18, 19, 239, 310, 311, 320, 321 Honorius 141

Index Nominum  

Hopkins, David 343n, 344n, 353 Horace 127, 134, 160n, 166, 292n, 305n, 349, 357 Hotson, Howard 276n, 287 Housman, Alfred Edward 320 Hues, Robert 190 Hume, David 63, 208, 209, 216 Hunter, Michael C. W. 167n, 183n, 188n, 195 Hutchinson, Lucy 186, 195, 343, 353– 355, 357 Hyland, Paul 352 Iannucci, Alessandro 196, 351 Iarbas 130 Inglese, Giorgio 216 Inwood, Brad 74n, 196, 287 Iodice, Maria Grazia 92n, 94n, 100 Iofrida, Manlio 349n, 354 Iphigenia 300, 304 Isherwood, Christopher 72n Isnardi Parente, Margherita 86n, 100 Iturriaga, José de 293 Jacob, Margaret C. 347n, 354 Jain, Drew 215n Jan III Sobieski, King of Poland 262 Janson, Gulielmus 342, 354, 358 Jebb Richard C. 318n, 319, 320 St. Jerome 7, 139n, 171n, 309, 318, 319, 325–332 St. John Chrysostom 171n St. John the Evangelist, 297 Johns, Adrian 345n, 354 Johnson David F. 287 Johnson, Monte Ransome 187n, 195 Johnson, Walter Ralph 305n, 307 Jones, Howard 187n, 195, 262n, 269, 305n, 307, 343n, 354 Jones, Roger Miller 108n, 124 Jouanna, Jacques 232n, 234 Jovius 128 Jupiter 109, 130, 137 ; Zeus 350 Juvenal 114n, 123, 131, 219, 292n, 330, 331 Juvencus 292n

Kaimowitz, Jeffrey 304n, 307 Kane, Robert 208n, 216 Kant, Immanuel 289, 291, 303, 307 Kargon, Robert H. 344n, 354 Kassel, Rudolph 267 Kaster, Robert A. 356 Kearney, Richard 355 Kemeny, Tommaso 125 Kennedy, Duncan 341n, 354 Kenney, Edward J. 138n, 142, 340n, 341n, 342n, 354 Kepler, Johannes 177, 178, 191, 194, 233 Ker, James 125 Kerferd George B. 44n, 60 Kerson, Arnold L. 295n, 296n, 304n, 307 Kidd, Ian Grey 93 Kiefer Frederick 212n, 216 King, William 277, 278n, 287 Kinsey, T.E. 345n, 354 Kircher, Athanasius 249 Klever, Wim 357 Klibansky, Raymond 345n, 354 Knight, Alan 291n, 307 Koch, Carl 307 Koch, L. Koenen, M.H. 80, 81 Kohn, Julius 357, 362 Kors, Alan Charles 169, 179, 183n, 187n, 195 Kramnick, Jonathan 344n, 354 Kraye, Jill 348n, 354 Kristeller, Paul Oskar 164, 189n, 195 Kristeva, Julia 345n, 354 Kronenberg, Leah 116n, 124 Kühnen, Franz Josef 113n, 124 Kuzminsky, Adrian 66n, 67n, 69n, 81 Kyriakidis, Stratis 111, 119, 124 La Mettrie, Julien Offray de 191 Lachmann, Karl 318, 325, 332, 336n, 337 Lactantius, 127, 128, 139n, 179, 329 Laguerre, Louis 345n Laks, André 60, 87n, 89, 353 Laird, Andrew 5, 291n, 292n, 296n, 301n, 302n, 307 Lamb, Walter Rangeley Maitland 242n

  Index Nominum Lambin Denys 180, 181, 186, 192, 219– 222, 229n, 327, 329, 331, 333, 334, 336n, 342, 358 Lana, Italo 112n, 124 Landívar, Rafael 289, 291, 302–305, 307 Lapini, Walter 53n, 57n, 60 Lassandro, Domenico 114n, 125 Lathière, Anne-Marie 44n, 60 Laurand, Valéry 99 Le Mire, Noël 359, 370, 379 Leask, Ian 348n, 354, 357 Leclerc Buffon, Georges-Louis 295 Leeber, Victor F. 296n, 307 Lefèvre, Eckard 125 Lehoux, Daryn 71n, 81 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 7, 207, 208, 273–287 Leo X (Giovanni de’ Medici), pope 186, 214 Leo, Friedrich 337 Leone, Giuliana 25n, 41, 54, 55n, 60, 91n, 100 Leopardi, Giacomo 64 Leopold I, Emperor 260 Lepage, John L. 346n, 354 Leroy, Lucien 328n, 337 Lestringant, Frank 3n, 337 Leti, Gregorio 260n, 269 Leto, Pomponio 188, 189, 193, 194, 332, 333, 338 Lettieri, Gaetano 203n, 216 Leucippus 294 Levene, David S. 116n, 125 Levi, Giorgio Enrico 152n, 155n, 165 Levy, Carlos 62n, 63n, 81 Lewin, Arnold H. 346n, 354 Lezra, Jacques 42, 142, 249 Libelli, Giacinto Maria 262, Liburnio, Niccolò 157, 165 Liebman, Seymour B. 174n, 195 Limburg, Florence Julia Gabriella 114n, 125 Lippi Emilio 7n Lipsius Justus 222 Little, Douglas A. 114n, 125 Littlewood, Cedric A.J. 111n, 125 Livy 105, 106, 116–126, 205, 216

Lock, Grahame 206, 211, 216 Locke, John 192, 193, 208, 293 Loemker, Leroy E. 287 Lofano, Francesco 353 Logre, Benjamin J. 325, 327, 328, 336, 345n, 354 Lollio, Alberto 160, 162, 163–165 LoLordo, Antonia 187n, 195 Long, Antony 24n, 29n, 42, 65n, 66n, 68n, 75n, 78, 79n, 81, 106n, 125 Ps.-Longinus 111n, 112, 303, 304n Lopez, Pasquale 152n, 165 López de Ábiles, José 292 Louis XIV, King of France 263 Lowrie, Michèle 125 Lowry, Howard Foster 312n, 317n, 321 Lucan 292n, 300 Lucilia 318, 319, 330, 331 Lucilius (satirist) 333 Lucilius Balbus, Quintus 315 Lucilius Junior 107 Lück, Werner 94n, 100 Lucretia gens 334 Lucullus, Lucius Licinius 318n, 331, 332 Lüdemann, Susanne 125 Ludwig, Walther 134, 142, 357 Luther Martin 179, 181, 204 Lüthy, Christoph H. 249, 344n, 355 Lyotard, Jean Francois 341n, 355 Maas, Paul 252n, 269 Mabellini, Adolfo 261n, 269 Macé, Arnaud 99 Machann, Clinton 311n, 320 Machiavelli, Niccolò 6, 168, 178, 181, 187, 189, 193, 194–197, 201–217, 250 Mackenzie, Donald 312n, 320 Maes, Yanick 123 Maffei, Sonia 346n, 355 Magliabechi, Antonio 275n Magnoni, Alessandra 146n, 149n, 165 Magritte, René 351 Malachi 135 Malamud, Martha A. 138n, 142 Malebranche, Nicolas de 277 Malunkyaputta 65 Mandelbrote, Giles 234

Index Nominum  

Maneiro, Juan-Luìs 293n, 295n, 304n, 307 Mansfeld, Jaap 60 Mansfield, Harvey C. 216 Manilius 111n, 124, 127, 219, 237, 251, 256, 257n, 265, 266n, 269, 292n Mantovano, Battista 292n Manuwald, Anke 24n, 42 Manuzio, Aldo 156n, 180, 192, 220, 234, 340n, 355 Manuzio, Paolo 154, 221, 222 Map, Walter 331 Maraglino, Vanna 100 Maranini, Anna 237n, 249 Maranta, Bartolomeo 222 Marchesi, Concetto 327n, 337 Marchetti, Alessandro 3, 145–147, 164, 166, 185, 195, 197, 273, 275, 286, 346n, 348, 351, 355, 356, 363, 364, 372 Marchetti, Francesco 3n Marconi, Gilberto 357 Marcucci, Marcelo 151n, 165 Marcus, Hannah 174n, 183, 184n, 196 Marder, Michael 350n, 355 Marenzio, Luca 270 Mari, Michele 149n, 165 Mariani Zini, Francesca 355 Marino, Giovan Battista 257, 269, 333n Markley, Arnold A. 310n, 318n Marlan, Stanton 345n, 355 Marolles, Michel de, 149n, 185n, 342, 343, 352, 359 Mars 132, 133, 158n, 336, 342; Ares 132, 133 Marso, Leonardo 188, 237, 250 Martindale Charles 3 Martinelli, Nello 269 Martelli, Mario 157n, 158n, 165, 216 Martial 219, 292n Martin, Robert Bernard 311n, 321 Marullus, Tarcaniota Michele 154, 214, 336 Marx, Friedrich 334n, 337 Marx, Karl 70, 81 Masi, Francesca 4, 35n, 37n, 41, 42, 43, 44n, 45n, 47n, 49n, 53n, 55n, 57n, 58n, 59, 60, 94n, 100

Maso, Stefano 41, 42, 59, 60, 62n, 75n, 81, 340n, 355n Mason, Adrienne 305n, 307 Massari, Paul 168n, 196 Masson, John 328n, 337 Matilal, Bhimal Krishna 62n, 65n, 69n, 70n, 72n, 73n, 76n, 78n, 81 Mattaire Michel 345, 347, 354, 361, 368, 369, 373–377 Mattei, Fabrizio 165 Matytsin, Anton M. 183n, 196 Maurette, Pablo 193n, 196 Mayer, Roland G. 114n, 125, Mayer, Thomas F. 174n, 176n, 178n, 179n, 196 Mayhew, Robert 95n, 97n, 100 Mazzacurati, Giancarlo 351 Mazzatinti, Giuseppe 269 Mazzoli, Giancarlo 106n, 111, 125, 270 Mazzoni, Iacopo 257n, 269, 270 Mazzucco, Katia 346n, 353 McGuinness, Philip 348n, 355 McIntosh Snyder, Jane 340n, 355 McKnight, Stephen A. 167n, 196 Medici Leopoldo de’ 259n, 263, 264n, 265n Medici Lorenzo de’ (il Magnifico) 204, 215 Meiss, Millard 217 Memmius, Gaius 4, 20, 114, 312, 314, 317, 329, 330, 335, 348 Menneas 334n Menchi, Silvana 154n, 161n, 165 Menoeceus 14, 20 Mensch, Pamela 86, 100 Mercuriale Girolamo, 232, 233, 234 Mercurius 333n Meroi, Fabrizio 195 Metrodorus of Chios 62, 66, 67n, 68, 79 Mette, Joachim 307 Meyer, Michael C. 306 Mezentius 124 Michael, Emily 248n, 249 Michel, Alain 111n, 125 Milanese, Guido 25n, 42, 128n, 142, 341n, 355 Millán, Elizabeth 306

  Index Nominum Miller, Erik 347n, 355 Miller, James 100 Miller, Jon 196 Milo, Titus Annius 312, 313 Milton, John 353 Mimnermus 223 Minervini, Francesco Saverio 270 Minois, Georges 347n, 355 Minturno see Sebastiani Minturno, Antonio Minucius Felix 132n Mitsis, Phillip 73, 81, 197 Mochi Onori, Lorenza 269 Molza, Francesco Maria 166 Monet, Annik 308 Montanari, Elio 252n, 269 Montarese, Francesco 24n, 42 Montaigne, Michel de 63, 64n, 68n, 70n, 71n, 193 Montecuccoli, Raimondo 261 More, Henry 352 Morel, Pierre–Marie 41, 60, 85n, 100 Moréri, Louis 334n, 337 Moreschini, Claudio 269 Morfino, Vittorio 214n, 216 Mormino, Gianfranco 216, 234 Mori, Massimo 215, 216, 217 Morrison, Andrew D. 81, 100 Mosconi, Gianfranco 94n, 100 Moses 128, 204 Most, Glenn W. 123 Moyle, Jeremy 306 Munro, Hugh Andrew Johnston 318, 332n, 337 Murdoch, John E. 249 Murley, Clyde 117n, 125 Muscettola, Giovan Francesco 145, 148– 152, 154–158, 160, 165, 185 Muscettola, Giovanni Antonio 149, 154, 160 Muse (Muses) 124, 129, 154, 165, 292, 301, 310, 335 Mustard, Wilfred P. 318n, 321 Myers, K. Sara 114n, 125 Nadal, Giovanni Girolamo 7n Nadler, Steven N. 196

Nagel, Thomas 207, 216 Nāgārjuna 64n, 65, 67, 81 Nail, Thomas 340n, 341n, 355 Najemy, John 189n, 196, 202, 215, 216 Nannius Petrus 188n, 197 Napoleon I Bonaparte 328n Narcissus 132n Nardi, Giovanni 6, 62, 185, 195, 220 Natali, Carlo 100 Navarro, Bernabé 290n, 293n, 294n, 307 Nauta, Ruud R. 126 Naya, Emmanuel 3n, 337 Negrini, G. 161n, 165 Nelli, Giovan Battista Clemente 3n Novoa, James W. Nelson 237n, 249 Németh, Attila 55n, 60 Nessus 318 Nesvig, Martin A. 174n, 196 Nethercut, Jason Scott 115, 117, 118, 125 Netscher, Gaspar 347n, 368 Newman, William R. 249 Newton, Isaac 176, 293, 344, 354 Niccoli, Niccolò 6 Nicolas of Cusa 177 Nicoli, Elena 6, 169n, 186n, 188n, 196, 235, 246, 249 Nicolini, Fausto 269 Nietzsche Friedrich 81, 305, 307 Nonnotte, Claude–Adrien 298, 299n Nonnus of Panopolis 257 Norbrook, David 3n, 165, 169n, 172n, 185n, 189n, 190n, 194, 196, 219n, 234, 343n, 344n, 345n, 352, 354, 355, 361 Nova, Alessandro 212n, 216 Novoa, James W. Nelson 237n, 249 Numa Pompilius 114, 124 Núñez Vela, Pedro 222, 223, 233 Nussbaum, Martha 64, 66n, 68n, 79, 81 Nuovo, Angela 221n, 234 O’Brien, Dan 352 O’Daly, Gerard 128n, 142 O’Keefe, Tim 29n, 42 Ogden, Daniel 126 Ogilvie, James 164 Olshausen, Eckart 125 Ongaro, Domenico 255n, 267

Index Nominum  

Oppius 312, 313, 314 Orestes 26, 75 Orlandi, Giovanni 355 Orsini, Fabio 270 Orsini, Fulvio 222 Orsini, Virginio II 270 Orwell, George 174, 175 Osbat, Luciano 153n, 165 Osler, Margaret J. 187n, 196 Osorio Romero, Ignacio 292n, 293, 297, 307, 308 Ovid 1, 4, 99n, 105–107, 110–115, 122– 127, 132n, 161, 179, 219, 257, 292n, 299n, 325, 333 Paccagnella, Ivano 351 Paitoni, Iacopo Maria 149, 165 Paladini, Mariantonietta 3n, 219n, 234, 340n, 355 Palagiano, Cosimo 100 Palatino, Giovan Battista 351 Paleario, Aonio 146, 147, 148, 165, 166, 186, 190, 196 Palermino, Richard J. 189n, 196 Palgrave, Francis Turner 311 Palingenius Stellatus Marcellus 147, 165 Pallavicino, Francesco Maria Sforza 260, 261, 270 Palmer, Ada 3, 6, 147n, 149n, 165, 167np, 168n, 169n, 172n, 174n, 179n, 180n, 182n, 184n, 187n, 190n, 196, 197, 214n, 215n, 216, 219n, 234, 342n, 343n, 344n, 345n, 355, 356 Palmieri, Francesco 275 Palmieri, Nicoletta 60 Panaioti, Antoine 68n, 81 Panofsky, Ewrin 217, 354, 357 Paul II (Pietro Barbo), pope 188, 194 Papali, George F. 345n, 356 Papy, Jan 123 Paratore, Emanuele 100 Parisetti Junior, Lodovico 147 Parodi, Claudia 290n, 308 Pasetti, Lucia 123 Passannante, Gerard 3n, 169n, 197, 219n, 234 Pasquali, Giorgio 269

Pastor, Ludwig von 260n, 270 Pastore, Raffaele 146n, 165 Paternostro, Rocco 251, 268 Paul V (Camillo Borghese), pope 253n Paulinus of Nola 127–131, 142 Pauw, Cornelius de 295, 302, 304 Pazzi, Antonio de’ 253 Pedullà, Gabriele 209n, 215n, 216 Peiresc Nicolas-Claude Fabri de 260 Pellacani, Daniele 351 Pelotti, Giovambattista 188 Peramás, José Manuel 301, 302 Perelli, Luciano 328n, 332n, 337 Peretti Damasceni, Alessandro 253 Perilli, Lorenzo 99 Perrone Compagni, Vittoria 202, 216, 217 Pers, Ciro di 255, 256, 258n Persa, Vincenzo della 159n Persius 219, 292n Perutelli, Alessandro 186n, 197 Petrarch 193, 194, 300 Petronius 126 Phaedrus the Epicurean 334 Phaëton 105, 107–112, 114, 117, 122, 124 Philodemus of Gadara 63, 69n, 70, 77– 82, 334n Philonides of Laodicea 91n Philip of Macedon 113, 114, 115, 120n, 126 Pianese, Marquis of 279, 280, 282 Pianezza, Carlo Emanuele Giacinto di Simiana 262 Piazzi, Lisa 341n, 356 Piccolomini, Alessandro 158, 159, 164, 165, 166 Pico della Mirandola 203, 206 Piéjus, Marie-Françoise 166 Pieper, Christoph 125 Pieri, Marzio 268 Pigeaud, Jackie 342n, 356 Pignatti, Franco 149n, 166 Pignoria, Lorenzo 352 Pilipovic, Jelena 350, 356 Pine, Martin 189n, 197 Pinelli, Gian Vincenzo 219, 221–234, 253, 260, 270 Pinotti, Andrea 351, 357

  Index Nominum Pinto, Roberto 351 Piperno, Franco 270 Piquet, Théa 157n, 166 Pius V, pope see Ghislieri Michele Pius, Giovan Battista 6, 184, 186, 188, 191, 196, 197, 220, 235–250 Pizzani, Usbaldo 220, 234 Plaisance, Michel 166, 351 Platina (Bartolomeo Sacchi) 189 Plato 23, 24n, 37n, 38n, 42, 74n, 99, 160n, 220, 235, 242, 248, 253n, 256n, 276, 277, 297, 314, 315, 339n, 349n, 352, 356 Plautus 236, 237, 249, 250 Pluhar, Werner S. 307 Plutarch 26n, 29n, 64n, 67n, 68n, 69n, 71, 73n, 75, 78n, 80, 223, 226–228, 313, 318n, 331, 332n Podolak, Pietro 94n, 100 Poisson 275n Polacco, Giorgio 187, 197 Polenton, Sicco 332 Polignac, Melchior de 166, 187, 188, 192, 193, 195, 197, 273, 275, 277, 296, 304, 305, 307, 308 Poliziano (Agnolo Ambrogini) 214, 330n Pollard, Arthur 331n, 337 Polybius 206, 211 Poma, Luigi 271 Pompey 326, 327n Pomponazzi, Pietro 189–191, 197, 204, 211, 217 Pontano, Giovanni Gioviano 154, 164, 335 Poot, Germaine 351 Poppi, Antonino 203n, 217 Porro, Pasquale 203n, 217 Porta, Malatesta 270 Porter, James 106n, 125, 303n, 305n, 308 Porter, Roy 307 Posidonius 92, 93, 99, 108n, 124, 225, Powell, Corey S. 170n, 173n, 176, 177, 197 Praetorius Johannes 223 Prete, Sesto 327n Preti, Cesare 146n, 166 Prince of Salerno see Sanseverino, Ferrante

Prins, Yopie 300n, 321 Priolkar, Anant Kakba 174n, 184n, 197 Procaccioli, Paolo 270 Proclus Diadochus 90n Propertius 219, 292n Prosperi, Valentina 1, 3n, 7, 139n, 142, 145, 147n, 149n, 166, 169n, 185, 190n, 197, 219n, 234, 253n, 270, 339n, 356 Protagoras 23, 24, 26 Prudentius 127, 128, 133–142, 292 Puglia, Enzo 74n, 82, 91n Purser, Louis Claude 326, 338 Putnam, Michael C.J. 307 Pynas, Jan 346n, 365 Pyrrho of Elis 28n, 64–68, 79n, 80, 81 Pyrrhus (King of Epirus) 117, 118, 121 Pythagoras 110, 114, 115, 123–126, 297 Pythocles 65n, 72n, 83–92, 94, 95, 97, 99, 101, 225n Quadrio, Francesco Saverio 149, 166 Quehen, Henri de 343n, 356 Quintilian 160n, 257, 270 Ragland, Evan R. 249 Rahe, Paul Anthony 189n, 197 Raimondi, Ezio 236n, 237n, 250, 257n, 258n, 267, 270 Raleigh, Walter 190 Ramberti, Rita 203n, 217 Rapisarda, Emanuele 134, 142 Raugei, Anna Maria 253n, 270 Realino Da Carpi, Bernardino 161, 165, 166 Redi, Francesco 264 Refini, Eugenio 159n, 166 Reidy, Denis V. 152n, 164 Reifferscheid, August 326n Reitzenstein, Erich 97n, 100 Remond, Nicolas 277n Renard, Marcel 337 Repetzki, Michael 354 Repici, Luciana 35n, 42 Reposianus 132n Residori, Matteo 166 Revelli, Paolo 295n, 308 Reyes Correa, Bulmaro 306

Index Nominum  

Ribbeck, Otto 337 Ricasoli Rucellai, Orazio 256n, 264 Riccardi, Niccolò 258n Ricci da Montepulciano, Giovanni 216 Riccioni, Laura 148n, 160n, 166 Ricks, Christopher 318n, 321 Rihll, Tracey E. 100 Ripa, Cesare 254n, 270, 346n, 355, 356, 366 Rist, John M. 29n, 42 Rizzo, Gino 270 Roberti, Giambattista 295 Robichaud, Denis J.J. 167n, 197 Robin, Léon 88n, 94n, 99 Roecklein, Robert J. 214n, 217 Roller, Matthew 106n, 114n, 125 Rolli, Paolo 348 Romani, Werther 268 Romano, Domenico 335n, 337 Romei, Danilo 166 Römer, Franz 357 Ronan, Charles E. 293, 308 Rosa, Salvator 346, 368 Roselli, Amneris 346n, 356 Rosellini, Michèle 147n, 164 Rossi, Girolamo 196 Rostagni, Augusto 92, 100, 327n, 330n, 337 Rotondi Secchi Tarugi, Luigi 234 Rouse, William H.D. 14n, 21, 47, 49, 51, 52, 56, 87n, 100, 118, 125, 241n, 253 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 153 Rucellai family 212 Rucellai, Giovanni 157, 166 Rücker, Nils 128n, 129n, 142 Rudd, Niall 311n, 318n, 321 Rufinus of Aquileia (Rufinus, Tyrannius) 331 Rufinus, Flavius 131 Ruse, Michael 197 Russo, Emilio 257n, 270 Rütten, Thomas 346n, 356 Saccenti, Mario 3, 146n, 166, 185n, 197, 348n, 356 Sacré, Dirk 188n, 197 Sagredo, Giovan Francesco 260n

Sagredo, Nicolò 260n, 261n, 264 Salas, Pedro de 291 Sallust 255, 312, 326n, 337, 338 Salvatierra, Gianmaria 293 Salvatore, Margherita 197 Salvatore, Gennaro 138n, 141 Salviati, Francesco 216 Sammels, Neil 332 Sammonicus, Quintus Serenus 330 Sampson, Lisa 152n, 164 Sanborn, Kate 328, 337 Sánchez-Ostiz, Álvaro 139n, 142 Sandbach, Francis-Henry 327n, 337 Sannazaro, Jacopo 154, 292n Santelia, Stefania 92n, 100 Santini, Carlo, 333n 338 Sanseverino, Ferrante 155 Sarasin, Jean-François 187, 197 Sasso, Gennaro 201, 202, 209, 213, 217 Savile, Henry 222 Savile, Thomas 222 Savonarola, Girolamo 206, 211, 216 Saxl, Fritz 354, 357 Scala, Bartolomeo 214, 215 Scaliger, Joseph Justus 333 Scalon, Cesare 255n, 256n, 266n, 270 Scandianese see Ganzarini, Tito Giovanni Scapparone, Elisabetta 195 Scarcia, Riccardo 269, 330n, 338 Scève, Maurice 190 Schenkl, Henricus 250 Schiche, Theodor 228n Schiesaro, Alessandro 88n, 101, 106n, 108n, 111, 112, 125, 335n, 338, 341n, 356 Schindel, Ulrich 119n, 125 Schindler, Claudia 147n, 166 Schlechta, Karl 307 Schmid, Wolfgang 127n, 142 Schmidt, Jürgen 24n, 42, 94n, 101 Schmitt, Charles B. 217, 294n, 308, 353, 354 Schoek, Richard J. 195 Schofield, Malcom 42, 59, 60, 64, 66, 71, 82

  Index Nominum Schrijvers, Piet H. 53n, 60, 62n, 63n, 69, 76, 80– 82, 106n, 107n, 125, 126, 341n, 356 Schubert, Werner 126 Schütze, Sebastian 269 Scilla, Agostino 353 Scipio Africanus 115n, 117, 118, 121, 197, 121 Seaford, Richard 22 Sebastiani Minturno, Antonio 149–156, 157n, 160, 165, 166 Sebond, Raymond 63n, 70n, 71n Sedley, David 4, 11, 13n, 20n, 22, 24n, 42, 62, 63, 64n, 65n, 66n, 68n, 75n, 76, 78, 79n, 81, 82, 83n, 89n, 101, 225n, 234, 245n, 250, 340n, 356 Sedulius 292n Segal, Charles P. 114n, 126, 345n, 356 Seneca the Younger 4, 5, 26n, 88n, 93, 96, 105–126, 292n, 334n Seneca the Elder 116n Sennert, Daniel 248n, 249 Serianni, Luca 252n, 270 Serres, Michel 340n, 356 Serughi, Bartolomeo 165 Setaioli, Aldo 114n, 126 Sextus Empiricus 23n, 25n, 26n, 29n, 30n, 31n, 33n, 36n, 63, 65n, 66n, 68n, 69n, 70n, 71n, 73n, 75–80, 84 Sgarbi, Marco 149n, 154n, 166 Shannon, Edgar A. 319n, 321 Sharrock Alison 81, 100 Sheppard, Kenneth 174n, 179n, 197, 344n, 356 Sices, David 215, 216 Sieveking, Albert F. 347n, 356 Signaroli, Simone 237n, 250 Silenus 239 Silius Italicus 117n, 126 Simeoni, Luca 60 Simonetta, Marcello 157n, 170 Simonetta, Stefano 126 Siri, Vittorio 263 Siskind, Sarah 168 Sisyphus 313 Sixtus V (Felice Peretti), pope 253, 254n Skinner, Quentin 217, 353, 354

Skutsch, Otto 115 Smith, Martin Ferguson 14n, 21, 58n, 60, 65n, 82, 87n, 91, 100, 118, 125, 249, 334, 338 Smith, Winston 175, 178 Smolak, Kurt 135n, 136n, 142 Smolenaars, Johannes J.L. 126 Soderini, Giovan Battista 205, 216 Solaro, Giuseppe 325, 326n, 328n, 332n, 333n, 338 Solinas, Francesco 269 Sophie Charlotte of Hanover (Queen of Prussia) 275n, 276 Sophocles 318, 319 Sorba, Lazzaro 262 Sorbelli, Albano 269 Sordi, Marta 125 Soter, Steven 171n, 172n, 173n, 175n, 176–178, 194 Spencer, Diana 114n, 126 Speroni, Sperone 190, 253n Spinelli, Emidio 42, 60, 99, 100, 208n, 215, 216, 217 Spinoza, Baruch 283, 349n, 352, 357 Stampini, Ettore 328n, 338 Star, Christopher 113n, 126 Starobinski, Jean 346n, 347n, 356 Statius 179, 292n, 328 Steadman, John M., 157n, 166 Steel, Catherine 124 Steiner-Weber, Astrid 357 Steinmetz, Peter 97n, 101 Stendhal (Henri Beyle) 332 Strabo 93 Strappini, Lucia 270 Strato of Lampsacus 283n Strawson, Galen 287 Stray, Christopher 194, 351 Striker, Gisela 24n, 27n, 28n, 29n, 32n, 42, 71, 74, 82 Stegmann, André 263n, 271 Steiner-Weber, Astrid 357 Stephens, Wade Carroll 114n, 126 Stoneman, Richard 4, 38, 61 Strickland, Lloyd 275n, 276n, 287 Sudhaus, Siegfried 92, 93, 101 Suetonius 197, 236, 326, 328, 330

Index Nominum  

Sulla, Lucius Cornelius 331, 334 Sullivan, Robert E. 348n, 357 Sullivan, Vickie 215 Swift, Jonathan 347, 357 Syme, Ronald 336n, 338 Symmachus, Quintus Aurelius 133n, 134, 142 Taddeo, Edoardo 251, 260n, 261n, 271 Tallini, Gennaro 149n, 166 Tanselle, G. Thomas 268 Tantalus 313 Taormina, Daniela Patrizia 99 Tarcov, Nathan 216 Tassis, Ottavio 261n Tasso, Bernardo 253 Tasso, Torquato 164, 166, 253n, 254, 257, 267, 268, 270, 271 Taub, Liba 92n, 94n, 101 Taylor, Charles C.W. 32n, 42, 71, 82 Tedaldi, Lattanzio 205 Temple, Dorothy 367 Temple, William 347, 355, 356 Tenenti, Alberto 262n, 271 Tennyson, Alfred 309–311, 316–321, 331, 333n, 337 Terence 215 Terrall, Mary 354 Tertullian 26n Tesauro, Emanuele 258n, 270 Tescari, Onorato 326n, 338 Testa, Simone 152n, 166 Testi, Fulvio 165, 255n, 271 Tethys 109, 110 Themistius 239, 250 Theodorakopoulos, Elena 126 Theodorus Manlius 142 Theophrastus 83, 84, 90n, 93–101 Thill, Andrée 269 Thomas Aquinas 172, 203 Thucydides 223 Thury, Eva M. 341n, 357 Thyestes 125 Tibullus 219, 292n Timon of Phlius 64, 65n Tinker, Chauncey Brewster 312n, 317n, 321

Tiraboschi, Girolamo 149, 165, 166 Tityos 313 Todd, Robert 226n, 234 Toellener, Richard 353 Toland, John 275, 276, 287, 347–355, 357, 371–373 Tomassini, Stefano 268 Tonson, Jacob 345, 347, 349, 354, 356, 361, 368, 369 Torcigliani, Michelangelo 260, 271 Torcigliani Salvestro 260, 271 Tori, Florio 263 Torre, Chiara 106n, 115n, 126 Torre Villar, Ernesto de la, 295n, 308 Torrellas, Pedro 165 Torresano, Andrea 234 Torrini, Maurizio 153n, 166 Toscanella, Orazio 351 Toscano, Tobia Raffaele 149n, 154n Traver Vera, Ángel. 290n, 308 Trismosin Salomon 345n, 357, 362 Traherne, Thomas 352 Treharne, Elaine 287 Trieste, Pietro 162, 163, 166 Trissino, Gian Giorgio 157 Truini, Maria Vittoria 100 Tsakiropoulou-Summers, Tatiana 187n, 197 Tsouna, Voula 24n, 32n, 37n, 42, 44n, 55n, 57n, 60, 71n, 82 Tulli, Mauro 91n, 100, 101 Tuplin, Christopher J. 100 Turner, Frank M. 314n, 321 Tyrrell, Robert Yelverton 326, 338 Tyson, Neil deGrasse 171, 174, 193 Udayana 73n Unger, Miles J. 205n, 217 Urania 162, 163, 164 Urban VIII (Maffeo Vincenzo Barberini), pope 258, 259 Usener, Hermann 47n, 88n, 227n, 228n Vagellius 108, 109, 111 Valerius Maximus 126 Valenzuela Rodarte, Alberto 307 Valéry, Laurand 99

  Index Nominum Valla, Giorgio 233 Valla, Lorenzo 187, 194, 197, 204, 207, 217 Valverde Téllez, Emeterio 291n, 308 Van Bunge, Wiep 357 Van Dam, Harm-Jan 126 Van Giffen, Hubert 184, 332, 334 Van Haarlem, Cornelis 141 Van Inwagen, Peter 210n, 217 Van Malssen, Tom 347n, 355 Vance, Norman 311n, 318n, 321 Varisano Grimaldi, Bartolomeo 260n Varro, Marcus Terentius 332, 333 Vegetti, Mario 100 Velleius, Gaius 15n Venantius Fortunatus 292n Ventura, Comino 181n, 195 Venus 11, 12n, 132, 133, 137, 140, 147, 156, 157n, 158, 245, 292, 293, 325, 335, 336, 340, 342, 346, 349, 350, 377 Verbaal, Wim 123 Verde, Francesco 4, 23n, 24n, 25n, 30n, 34n, 42, 44n, 45n, 46n, 47n, 49n, 54, 57n, 60, 83, 89n, 91n, 94n, 100, 101 Vermij, Rienk 349n, 357 Vernaleone, Giovanni Paolo 222 Vernon, Magdalen D. 77n, 82 Vesperini, Pierre 3n, 5 Vesserau, Jules 92n, 101 Vettori, Pietro 156, 164, 196 Viano, Cristina 100 Vico, Giovan Battista 164 Victor, Claudius Marius 142 Victorinus, Gaius Marius 292 Vida, Marco Girolamo 292n Viganò, Marino 268 Villaseñor, Enrique 296n, 306 Villerías y Roelas, José Antonio 292, 307 Virgil 4, 100, 115, 124, 127, 130, 133–135, 141, 157n, 159n, 163, 166, 219, 239, 291, 292n, 299, 305n, 307, 325–327, 332, 334n, 337, 349 Virgin Mary 147, 292, 307 Vita, Pietro 165 Viti, Paolo 270 Viroli, Maurizio 209n, 216, 217 Vitelli, Clemente 260n

Vitelleschi, Muzio 258n Vivanti, Corrado 216 Voigt, Astrid 124 Vogt, Katia 23n, 30, 32n, 38n, 42 Volk, Katharina 92n, 101, 105, 126 Volpi, Gaetano 268 Volpi, Giovanni Antonio 268 Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet) 153, 183, 191, 298, 299, 305, 307 Vota, Carlo Maurizio 262, 263n Vulcanus 132n Wagar, W. Warren 167n, 194 Waller, Edmund 344 Walther, Ludwig 134, 142, 348n, 357 Waltz, René 334n, 338 Warburg, Aby 346, 353, 357 Warmington, Eric Herbert 117, 118, 126 Wasserstein Abraham 85, 101 Weber, Dorothea 128n, 142 Wedepohl, Claudia 346n, 357 West, David. A. 117n, 126, 340, 357 Wigelsworth, Jeffrey R. 349n, 357 Wilkins, John 22 Wilkinson, Lancelot Patrick 318n, 321, 332n, 334 Wilner, Ortha L. 318n, 321 Williams, Gareth D. 105, 106, 108, 111n, 112n, 113n, 114n, 117, 120n, 126 Wilmot, John, Earl of Rochester 174n, 355 Wilson, Catherine 169n, 197, 273n, 281n, 283n, 284n, 287 Wilson Malcolm 84n, 101 Wind, Edgar 204n, 212n, 217 Winterbottom, Michael 270 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 63 Wittich, Paul 223 Wittkower, Rudolf 342n, 357 Wolff, Christian 277n, 287 Wolpert, Lewis 100 Wood, Michael 321 Woolf, Raphael 13n, 22 Wootton, David 167n, 183n, 188n, 195, 197 Wormell, Donald Ernest Wilson 328n, 338

Index Nominum  

Wray, David 125 Wright, Matthew 22 Yardley, John C. 121, 126 Yates, Frances Amelia 178n, 197 Yona, Sergio 348n, 357

Zabughin, Vladimiro 159n, 166 Zagorin, Perez 340n, 357 Zeno of Elea 297

Zeno of Sidon 334 Zeno, Apostolo 149 Zerbino, Maria Cristina 343n, 357 Ziegler, H. 233 Ziegler, Konrat 326n, 338 Zimmerl-Panagl, Victoria 142 Zubillaga, Felix 306 Zucca, Diego 1, 4, 23 Zuccari, Federico 351 Zwingli, Huldrych 181