Making the Ideal Real: Lucretius’ Use of Pastoral in De Rerum Natura

Matthew Semanoff (University of Montana)

Lucretius’ use of pastoral topoi in a didactic context is an innovative crossing of genres typical of poetry influenced by Hellenistic literature. In particular, Lucretius inserts images and topoi reminiscent of Theocritean passages throughout De Rerum Natura. Although pastoral elements are consistent with Epicureanism (Rosenmeyer 1969, 11-12), the readers’ expectations of a pastoral poem do not align with their expectations of a didactic poem. This paper seeks to resolve this conflict in three parts: I suggest that by introducing the generic conventions of pastoral into a didactic framework, Lucretius transforms the idealized pastoral fantasy of Hellenistic poetry into an Epicurean reality; that he inverts readers’ expectations of pastoral poetry by asserting the attainability of a simple life removed from the anxieties associated with urban life; and, finally, that this treatment of generic expectations exemplifies the influence of Hellenistic poetry on the Roman poet.

While scholars recognize a descriptive element in Lucretius’ DRN that is rightly considered pastoral, rarely are the generic implications of the link between pastoral and didactic adequately explored. Gillis, who describes Lucretius as a “great pastoral poet,” asserts a political motivation for the use of pastoral motifs that is inconsistent with the poem’s Epicurean tenets (1967, 361-362). Similarly, Betensky acknowledges Lucretius as “a poet of timeless pastoral” (1976, 55). But, while he asserts that pastoral is based in the unfulfillable longing for a simpler and happier life (45), Betensky fails to reconcile the implications of supporting an explanation of reality with examples of an ideal that is at best remote, and at worst, unattainable. This paper, unlike previous scholarship, engages these contradictions.

In DRN 2.20-60, the poet expands on an Epicurean maxim when he compares a life of elaborate feasts in halls gleaming with gold and resounding with the sounds of a cithara to a life in which friends lie together in the soft grass beneath the shade of trees beside the banks of a cool river. The pastoral description is reminiscent of herdsmen resting at mid-day, singing in friendly competition (cf. Theocritus Idyll 1.12-14, 6.3-4, etc.), but the life of luxury Lucretius describes reflects the aspirations, the political and economic ambition, to which Roman men were striving. The reality of this world, however, is undermined as Lucretius alludes to the description of Alcinous’ palace at Odyssey 7.100-103. By juxtaposing the two descriptions, Lucretius suggests that the reality towards which Romans strive is a fantasy, and in its place, the fantasy into which readers of Hellenistic poetry retreat is, in fact, the reality.

Lucretius manages a similar inversion of expectations in his first proof of the existence of genitalia corpora (1.160-173). He supports the theory that everything arises from specific atoms with a contrafactual argument: if his premise were not true, then trees would be able to produce a variety of different fruits. While Lucretius’ lines recall the imagery of Theocritus Idyll 1.132-136, notably, Lucretius relies on this rhetorical strategy for a strikingly different purpose. Theocritus uses adynaton to suggest phenomena contrary to natural order that could occur in response to the death of Daphnis. In the pastoral poem, the adynaton suggests a new natural order resulting from the disturbance of a former order. Lucretius, however, reworks the adynaton to establish that what is impossible in a pastoral setting is a reality in the didactic poem.

While Lucretius’ use of pastoral topoi is consistent with the Epicurean content of De Rerum Natura, these same topoi are in conflict with the didactic poem’s message; in a poem that sets out to describe the way things really are, there is little room for idealization or fantasy. Lucretius’ use of the pastoral ideal to represent Epicurean reality demonstrates how he was influenced by Hellenistic poetics. Scholars acknowledge Hellenistic influence upon DRN through individual allusions (e.g. Kenney 1970, Brown 1982, King 1985, Knox 1999, Volk 2002), but allusions such as these often suggest aemulatio rather than Lucretius’ acceptance of a specific literary program. This paper, however, argues that Lucretius’ transformation of generic expectations is indicative of his reliance on Hellenistic literary aesthetics.