Search results for "Latin didactic poetry"

Granting Epicurean Wisdom at Rome: Exchange and Reciprocity in Lucretius' Didactic (DRN 1.921-950)

2018

In the first book of De Rerum Natura, Lucretius describes his didactic undertaking as a metaphorical process of gift exchange (1.50-53): the obscure and salvific precepts of Epicurean philosophy, skilfully arranged in hexameters, are said to be 'gifts' (dona) that the poet has prepared with loyal zeal (studio fideli). Such a suggestive depiction of Lucretius' relationship to the work's dedicatee, Gaius Memmius, seems to reflect a relevant functional pattern of De Rerum Natura as a coherent system of communication strategies, variously readapting social models and cultural traditions. The present paper employs the interpretative approach of gift theories – the thought-provoking theories elab…