Latin 581. Lucretius and Roman Epicureanism.

 James I. Porter

This course will be an introduction to the writing and thought of Lucretius. The versifier of Epicurus' prose treatise, On Nature, Lucretius is a fascinating interpreter of a fascinating philosophical doctrine, atomism. We will be exploring some of the many challenges his work involves: from the problem of how to make the spectacle of atoms and void relevant to life as we know it, to the problem of literary and cultural translation -- the translation of one cultural experience, a Greek philosophy (or rather tradition of philosophical speculation), and its social contexts, into another, that of Republican Rome in an age of civic crisis (whence some of the egestas linguae et rerum novitas of his poem). When we put these two facets together we arrive at a single puzzle: at one level Lucretius is a case study in the forging of (nascent) Roman identity; at another, he challenges any intuitive notions of what counts as an identity (if, for instance, everything that we know is reducible to swirling matter and simulacra). How do we solve that? The focus of our readings will be bks 3 (on death) and 4 (on sensation, representation, and love), but we will read selectively from all six books and try to cover, through discussion, issues as they arise in the whole of DRN: personal identity; the soul; the desirability of immortality; the nature of divinity; a critique of culture's norms. Background readings will be taken mainly from Long/Sedley; secondary literature will be covered as well (Clay, Fowler, Furley, Long, Mitsis, Nagel, Nussbaum, Schrijvers, Sedley, B. Williams, and others).

Students must read DRN in translation prior to the first class, begin working on bks 3-4 and other selections (see below), and be prepared to discuss the proem to bk 1 on the first day. Requirements: in-class presentations, one short paper on Lucretius (8 pp.), final research paper (20 pp.) on any related topic (Roman politics, Greek backgrounds, contemporary and more distant echoes, e.g., Cicero, Vergil, Horace, Longinus, etc.). Those working on material culture in Rome (attitudes to death, gods, cults, ways of seeing and representing, identity politics, or simply to materiality itself) are especially welcome. A more finalized list of reading selections will be available as the Fall term approaches. Required books (to be made available at Shaman Drum): OCT or Loeb Lucretius (the text by M. F. Smith is superior to Bailey's OCT) Recommended (to be available at Shaman Drum): Kenney's ed. of Bk 3 (CUP 1971); Long/Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, v. 1 (CUP 1987).

Cost: 2 Waitlist Code: 4

Prerequisites & Distribution: Latin 401. (3). (Excl).

Credits: (3; 2 in the half-term).