Reconstructing Rome: Vespasian in the Capitolium | The Peripatetic View of the Passions | Blood, Guts, and Laughter: Dark Humour in Statius' Thebaid V | Lucretius and the Conquest of Emotion | Transforming Relationships through Emotional Expression in Sophocles' Electra | Brutalized Bodies and Broken Categories in Catullus 8 and 40

Lucretius and the Conquest of Emotion

    Lucretius, while developing his account of Epicurean physics and its theoretical derivatives (ethics, natural history, etc.) in De Rerum Natura, frequently includes vignettes of a less rigidly didactic character. Frequently, these episodes are interpreted by commentators as evidence of Lucretius' poetic genius running away from his stated philosophical purpose. That is, the vivid, at times almost frenzied accumulation of images in such episodes seems to run counter to the spirit of contemplative ataraxia advocated by the poem. In particular, violent, poignant, or desperate content apparently depicts scenes in reality of just such chaotic emotion as the Epicurean is advised to avoid. For instance, the description of violent death in battle (III.642-656), the complaints made against mortality at the conclusion of Book III, and, perhaps most importantly, the description of the plague in Athens with which Lucretius ends his work might well be expected to elicit an inordinate emotional response. Indeed, Lucretius' language in such passages actually seems designed to maximize the emotional impact of such scenes.
    Rather than view such descriptive interludes as aberrant or beside the point, I would like to advance the thesis that these vignettes actually serve directly to advance Lucretius' own philosophical project. As the reader well knows, Lucretius has justified his poetic form by the appeal such a form holds for the uninitiated. He has "honeyed the cup" precisely to make the austerity of Epicurean philosophy seem more palatable to those in need of its tenets. However, the author is not merely after converts; rather, his missionary zeal also extends to the sincerity of conversion. Lucretius is acutely aware of the potential for backsliding when individuals, even those who profess belief in Epicurean principles, are confronted with their own mortality (e.g. III. 870-875). Therefore, in order to place one's theoretical commitments under stress, to thereby bolster their reliability in the real world, Lucretius frequently presents the reader with exactly the kind of highly emotional situation which would most likely precipitate an abandonment of rationality and a relapse into conventional attitudes toward death. It is to inoculate the reader against such terrors as Lucretius wishes to banish that he confronts us with constant reminders of the same.
    In this, Lucretius moves beyond the arid proscriptions of his master, and furnishes a more practical ideal of ataraxia, in which the condition of well-reasoned calm is cultivated as an antidote to superstitious terror, rather than a purely contemplative isolation from the errors of conventional thinking. While Epicurus is content to reduce his principle doctrines to a litany of theoretical formulae, his great advocate recognizes that the intellectual products of sober reflection must be tempered by the heat of emotional distress. For Lucretius, the goal of practical philosophy is not only deliverance from disturbance, but also the positive ability to overcome it at need.