![]() Lucretius's tone ranges from the detachment of a scientist to the derision of a satirist, yet always the poem retains an archaic elegance. ![]() And then there is the style: alongside some of the most sublime passages in all of Latin literature (the harrowing depiction of Iphigenia's sacrifice, for instance) are found lengthy descriptions of natural phenomena in the recondite language of Epicurean atomism. ![]() There is, to begin with, the subject matter: this is no epic in the manner of Homer or Virgil, with battles and voyages and fickle gods, but instead a six-book explication in verse of the universe's material basis. Since antiquity a certain ambivalence has dogged On the Nature of Things- now available in two new translations and the subject of a recent Cambridge Companion-not without reason. Genius and artistry, certainly, but the word yet ( tamen) seems to hedge the bet. "Many sparks of genius yet much artistry"-so Cicero cryptically assessed the work of his contemporary Lucretius. ![]()
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