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Notes on Lucretius

R. J. Shackle

The Classical Review / Volume 35 / Issue 7-8 / November 1921, pp 156 - 156 DOI: 10.1017/S0009840X00015328, Published online: 27 October 2009

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0009840X00015328

How to cite this article: R. J. Shackle (1921). Notes on Lucretius. The Classical Review, 35, pp 156-156 doi:10.1017/ S0009840X00015328

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Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/CAR, IP address: 150.216.68.200 on 19 Apr 2015 156 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW is the single divinity, alive, strong and _ ' Ualerent' might then be due to accommoda- benevolent, the god of the conquerors; tion to the neighbouring ' corpora,' while 1 uideres' would be the second stage of a cor- and there are the group-divinities, ruption due to ' uidemus' at the end of the fol- spirits of the dead, malignant and de- lowing line. feated, whom it is yet policy to appease. The group-divinities of Rome are II. 381. the Lemures, the , the , the Perfacile est animi ratione exsoluere nobis. . . Penates; the first two Etruscan, the If' animi' be thought unsound,' simili' would second two Latin words. As to seem preferable to ' tali' or 'parili,' since it the character of the Lemures there is might be lost through the copyist's eye straying no doubt. They were' Larvae nocturnae to ' dissimili' in the preceding line. As in- et terrificationes imaginum et besti- stances of this type of corruption may be cited—e.g. II. 251-2, III. 852-3 (if Merrill's arum': and they were appeased by 'nil' be adopted in 853), III. 886-7, V. 393-4 offerings of beans. The Manes are ('interse' and 'interea'), V. 585-6, V. 775-6. exactly described by the adjective im- ' Animi' might then be supplied as a stopgap manis. They were creatures vaguely from a reminiscence of I. 425, I. 448, etc. huge and therefore terrifying: you could III. 1. O tenebris tantis, O. not see where they began and where — tenebris tantis, Q, they ceased—a fairly accurate descrip- E tenebris tantis, ltalitali.) tion of what we call a ghost. It was Q seems to give the truest testimony, namely hoped, of course, that the name Manes a blank syllable. I think that the rhetorical would reverse their character. The force of the opening of this invocation would be methods pursued with the Lemures and considerably strengthened were we to fillth e gap with < Te,>,— striking the leading note in the Manes are methods of fear. A bolder very first word, giving a powerful epanalepsis course is to welcome such unpleasant with • te sequor' (3), and a four-word alliteration visitors as honoured guests and to to launch the passage under way. The initial T make them part of the family. This might well have been left to be illuminated, and was, I believe, what was done with the thus accidentally omitted. Lares and Penates. The latter were III. 617. certis regionibus omnibus haeret. given a new name and put in charge of ' pedibus . . . manibus . . . sedibus ... re- the larder; the former were taken out gionibus omnibus' in two consecutive lines of the class of group-divinites and a would surely have sounded uncouth even to benevolent Lar Familiaris created in Lucretius' ear; moreover, it seems only possible their place. But that the Lares were to extract a workable sense by the violent ex- not originally kindly spirits may be in- pedient of supposing • omnibus' to be a mascu- line dative. ferred from their name. It is agreed Surely we should hesitate to credit any com- that it is an Etruscan word, and we petent author with such a harshness. IV. 420 know the sinister character of the suggests ' omnis obhaeret' as, at any rate, a con- . Moreover, we cannot ceivable remedy. R. J. SHACKLE. separate lar from the adjectival noun larua (sc. imago) formed from it. If the Larvae were malignant spirits of the same kind as the Lemures, then the , AENEID VI. 545. Lares also must originally have belonged discedam, explebo numerum, reddarque tenebris. to this class. Is it possible that in the phrase explebo numerum there is a tinge of the meaning of F. A. WRIGHT. numerus in the sense of'the common throng' as we have it in , Epistles I. 2.27, nos numerus sumus et fruges consumere natif NOTES ON LUCRETIUS. Deiphobus obviously means that he will return I. 357. Haud ulla fieri ratione uideres. to his place among the shades; by speaking with Aeneas and the Sibyl he has been singled denique cur alias aliis praestare uidemus . . . out from them, but now he will' fill up the com- FOR 'fieri,' the variant' ualerent' has the re- mon throng (by rejoining it) and will lapse again spectable authority of Q and the Gottorpian into insignificance. It is a tinge of meaning fragment. continued, in typically Virgilian style, by the It may perhaps be suggested that this repre- words reddarque tenebris. R. B. A. sents an original ' ualeret' in place of ' uideres,' in a sense similar to 'posset' iff. I. 603, for example).