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CULTURAL AND HISTORICAL NARRATIVES IN VIRGIL’S AND

Philip Hardie

The importance of Lucretius for the and the has been thoroughly charted. A number of studies have brought out Virgil’s intensive engagement with the at various points in the Eclogues, and it is no surprise that a for whose youthful com- mitment to there is strong biographical evidence should early have been fascinated by Lucretius’ poem. Yet differences of genre and purpose between the De Rerum Natura and the Eclogues might appear to militate against more than incidental contacts between the two works. In what follows I aim to show not only that in his first major work Virgil already practises a far-reaching and sustained dialogue with Lucretius, but that this is conducted in areas where the didactic and projects might seem most alien to each other. Specifically I shall show how, on to the local rhythms of the pastoral world, regulated by the alternation of day and night and only inter- mittently open to the more momentous temporal patterns of the world outside the green cabinet, there is imposed a larger set of temporal narratives, histories of large-scale process and change, of a kind central to Lucretius’ interests. These operate at the level both of the individ- ual, who grows up and is educated (the Lucretian didactic addressee, a ‘child’ afraid of the dark who must be educated into enlightenment), and of the race (for Lucretius the historical appearance of Epicurus is the transforming climax of the history of civilization narrated in the latter part of De Rerum Natura 5). Lucretius is also a source for the Vir- gilian analogy between the history of the individual and the history of the race: the language used of the gradual progress of civilization at the end of De Rerum Natura 5 is closely paralleled in programmatic admoni- tions in the first to the didactic addressee to make progress.1

1 With Lucr. 5.1454–1457 (history of civilization) sic unum quicquid paulatim protrahit aetas / in medium ratioque in luminis erigit oras. / namque alid ex alio clarescere corde uidebant, / artibus ad summum donec uenere cacumen, “thus time gradually dragged forth each thing plain to see and reason lifted it into the shores of light. For with their minds they saw 276 philip hardie

One result of this exposure of pastoral to the poem of Lucretius is to constitute pastoral itself as a product of a Lucretian historical narrative. A second result is to expand the ways in which the Eclogues already anticipate the themes of historical process and change in Vir- gil’s later works.2

1. Lucretian bookends

The importance of Lucretius for the Eclogues is signalled by the fact that the book opens and closes with Lucretian . The first line of the first already contains verbal parallels with the De Rerum Natura.3 The siluestris Musa which Meliboeus ascribes to Tityrus in the second line of Ecl. 1, and which functions almost as a title for the book as a whole, is a phrase from Lucretius’ discussion of the delusory effects of echo in the countryside, 4.589 fistula siluestrem ne cesset fundere musam, “so that the pipe should not cease to pour forth the woodland Muse”.4 The variant on this phrase, agrestis Musa, with which Virgil one thing made clear by another, until through the arts they reached the highest peak”, cf. 1.114–117 (progress of the didactic addressee) haec sic pernosces parua perductus opella; / namque alid ex alio clarescet nec tibi caeca / nox iter eripiet, quin ultima naturai / peruideas: ita res accendent lumina rebus, “if you take a little trouble, you will attain to a thorough understanding of these truths. For one thing will be illumined by another, and eyeless night will not rob you of your road till you have looked into the heart of nature’s darkest mysteries. So surely will facts throw light upon facts”, and 1.407–409 sic alid ex alio per te tute ipse uidere / talibus in rebus poteris caecasque latebras / insinuare omnis et uerum protrahere inde, “so in such questions one thing will lead on to another, till [like a keen-scented hunting dog] you can succeed by yourself in tracking down the truth to its lurking-places and dragging it forth”. 2 For some account of Lucretian temporality in the Georgics see Hardie (2005b) 23– 32. 3 Line 1 sub tegmine (caeli): Lucr. 2.663, 5.1016, but also in ’s poetry and possibly Ennian (see Clausen on Ecl. 1.1); Giesecke (2000) 48 notes the quasi-pastoral context of flocks and water at Lucr. 2.663. recubans:Lucr.1.38 hunc tu, diua, tuo recubantem corpore sancto, “as he reclines on your sacred body, goddess” (the only occurrence of the word in Lucretius); Clausen notes “recubo is a rather unusual verb, here perhaps with a connotation of luxurious ease”, citing Cic. De or. 3.63 (Cyrenaic philosophy personified) in hortulis quiescet suis … ubi etiam recubans molliter et delicate nos auocat a rostris, “she will rest in her little garden, where, reclining in soft luxury, she also distracts us from the rostra”; see also Martini (1986) 307–308. Virgil hints at a community of spirit between Tityrus’ pastoral world and hedonistic philosophies, of a kind that has often been noted. Modern readers like to hear an echo of the first line of ’ Id. 1 in the sound effects of the first line of the Eclogues; might we also catch an echo of an address to Tite Lucreti Care in Tityre, tu patulae recubans …? 4 siluestris/agrestis Musa also alludes to a Hellenistic model, Meleager, AP 7.1966.2 =