LUCRETIUS AND EPICURUS. 441 



which uprooting of popular fear of the gods with its interde- 

 pendence with the fear of death is really the chief motive and the 

 very essence of this unique poem . . . the practical moral in- 

 terest of emancipating the soul vastly predominates over the 

 didactic or speculative interest. 



But the limits of the libci\ the mechanical necessity even of 

 limitation, so instructively elaborated by Th. Birt in his " Das 

 Antike Buchwesen," 1882, put their constraint upon the poet; 

 so that alongside of these disproportionate elaborations of par- 

 ticular themes as just noted we find, e.g., VI, 527 sqq. snow, 

 winds, hail, hoarfrost, ice merely summarily mentioned, and 

 turned over to the reader's application of first principles. We 

 must not incline, however, to the assumption that this apparent 

 miscellany of physical and meteorological themes and problems 

 in Lucretius \" and VI was a mere appendix, or second-thought 

 supplement of the work proper ; for in the very first detailed 

 announcement of his chief themes, in I, 127, this entire matter 

 is even placed first in order : 



Qua propter bene cum superis de rebus habenda 

 nobis est ratio, solis lunaeque meatus 

 qua fiant rati one. . . 



In conclusion we ask were the aizkcooa an essential part of the 

 37 bb. Tzim c'jazco::'^ It seems impossible to prove that the let- 

 ter to Herodotus, § 35, 83, in Diog. L., X, is a true, i. c, an even 

 and truly proportioned summary of the entire range of the great 

 work of 37 bb., the brief reference to (izricopa in § yG is too 

 slender for elaborate or positive inferences. In the list of E's 

 works Diog. L., 10, 27, of some forty-nine titles with Sgvolumina 

 are recorded as za ^ilzcoTa out of the total of 300 x'jAcvdpoc with 

 the exception of Tzeol vorwv oo^at there is no title specifically 

 bearing on the subject of tJLZzicopa. 



New York University, 1898. 



