Search results for "De Rerum Natura"

Seneca on the Mother Cow: Poetic Models and Natural Philosophy in the Consolation to Marcia

2020

Seneca’s Consolation to Marcia embraces the orthodox Stoic view that, when unduly protracted, grief reflects a logical misunderstanding of the natural world, human life, and the limits of the self. Seneca is aware that persuading Marcia to leave her false beliefs is the only way to reawaken her interest in communal life, family reciprocity, and constructive memory. He conceives his consolatory writing as an intellectually engaging didactic work tailored to the needs and disposition of his addressee. The main purpose of the present paper is to show that in this and several other respects the Consolation to Marcia makes a conscious move towards the different but evidently related genre of did…

Lucretius Franco-Hibernicus: Dicuil’s Liber de Astronomia and the Carolingian Reception of De Rerum Natura

2020

Abstract Since its coinage in the nineteenth century, the concept of Carolingian renaissance has been primarily based on the revival of classical texts promoted by Charlemagne and his successors. Among the positive consequences of Carolingian classicism is the careful—if discreet—preservation of the text of Lucretius’s De Rerum Natura, which survives in three valuable ninth-century manuscripts. Whereas rigorous philological studies of these manuscripts have been offered, little attention has been paid to their role in, and connection with, the reception of Lucretius in ninth-century literature. It has been generally assumed that for the Carolingians the DRN was essentially a source for gram…

A View from the Garden: Contemplative Isolation and Constructive Sociability in Lucretius and in the Epicurean Tradition

2021

It is often assumed that Epicurean philosophy and its foremost Roman prophet, T. Lucretius Carus, adopted a deeply hostile attitude towards both politics and religion. Individualistic (or even solipsistic) interpretations of Epicureanism – as well as of the Epicurean catechism of De Rerum Natura – have long co-existed with, and provided support to, the claim that the Epicureans attached little value to religious experiences. In the present paper, I shall argue that, in this and many other respects, the modern reception of Epicureanism – with its brave aspirations after the liberation of science from social and religious restraints – has had undue influence on our understanding of De Rerum N…

Lucrezio e Carlo Magno. A proposito dell’epistola di Dungal sulle eclissi (MGH Epistolae IV Karolini aevi II, pp. 570-578)

2021

It is generally assumed that Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura disappeared with the end of antiquity and did not reappear until Poggio Bracciolini’s rediscovery (1417). Yet, the oldest and most valuable manuscripts of DRN were copied in the Carolingian age and reflect a high degree of attention to Lucretius’ text and its content. In the present paper, I argue that by studying more carefully the origin and diffusion of Lucretian manuscripts in Carolingian Europe, it is possible to detect an almost unrecognized connection between textual tradition, grammatical erudition, and literary imitatio. In the first section, I offer an overview of the reception of DRN in such representative ninth-century writ…

Recensione al testo di Salemme C., Lucrezio e la formazione del mondo, De rerum natura 5, 416-508, Loffredo, Casoria (NA) 2010, pp. 116.

2011

Barking at the Threshold

2019

Over the past few years, students of ancient Mediterranean societies have shown consistent interest in the cultural construction of dogs as reflected in texts, artefacts, and other media. However, whereas the cultural and literary implications of the Greek representation of dogs have been the subject of thorough investigations, Roman dogs have remained at the margins of the scholarly debate. By adopting an interdisciplinary methodology that combines cognitive theory, rhetorical analysis, and socio-anthropological research, the present paper discusses some affordances of dogs (in the terms of James Gibson’s 'ecological approach to visual perception') that are given special significance withi…