[Annals N. Y. Acad. Sci., XI, No. 21, pp. 431 10441, December 17, 1898.] 



THE LATTER PART OF LUCRETIUS, AND 

 EPICURUS Tiepl [xezzcopcDv. 



E. G. SiHLER. 



(Read March 28, 1898.) 



The charm of Lucretius is perennial. The source of it, how- 

 ever, is rather complex. That his work is the foremost didactic 

 poem of antiquity is admitted. That his manipulation of the 

 possibilities of the Latin tongue stamps it, as Teuffel says, as the 

 production " Eines Sprachgewaltigen" few would gainsay. That 

 his exordia and many of his digressions really are meant by the 

 lumina of Cicero's judgment in his letter to his brother Quintus 

 (2, 11) seems most probable. And still stronger than these 

 is the tremendous earnestness of the man. We have a distin- 

 guished Epicurean in the generation after L., Horace of Venu- 

 sia. To him, too, we may trace that blending of morals, of 

 quasi-religious conviction and strictly philosophical tenets, which 

 constituted adherence to the one or the other of the two most 

 prominent sects of the day : the Epicurean and the Stoic. 

 These conditions Horace evidences most frankly in his earlier 

 writings, e. g., in the Iter Brundusinum, I, Sat. 5, 97. 



dein Gnatia lymphis 

 Iratis extructa dedit risusque iocosque, 

 Dum flamma sine tura liquiscere limine sacro 

 Persuadere cupit. Credat Judaeus Apella 

 Non ego : namque decs didici securum agere aevum, 

 Nee, siquid miri faciat natura, decs id 

 Tristes ex alto caeli demittere tecto. 



The vanity of concern for the utter extinction implied in the 

 mortality of the soul is iterated in his Odes, as is the vanity of 

 all human passions ; the good-natured banter of criticism of 

 Stoic exaggeration comes naturally from an Epicurean ; but the 



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