Lucretian Receptions in Prose

George Kazantzidis

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2024
• eBook ISBN: 9783111443812
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Ancient & Classical Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

The examination of Lucretian reception in Latin poetry has been served well by scholars. Lucretius' presence in later prose writers, on the other hand, is a topic that warrants more investigation.

Susanne Gatzemeier's 2013 monograph ( Ut ait Lucretius: Die Lukrezrezeption in der lateinischen Prosa bis Laktanz ) is an invaluable contribution to the topic but by no means exhaustive either in terms of the potential intertextualities it traces or in terms of its interpretive methods and insights. At the same time, recent studies implicate Lucretius' name in discussions of prose writers who were not that often thought in the past to have engaged with the De Rerum Natura in an active way. Caesar and Livy but also Vitruvius and Tacitus are some good examples. The present volume taps into this discussion and broadens further our understanding of Lucretian reception in prose writers, including Cicero, Celsus, Seneca the Younger, Quintilian, Pliny the Younger, Plutarch and Lactantius.

Building on the vast scholarship on the significance of Lucretius as a model for later poets, the volume sheds new light on the De Rerum Natura 's afterlife by looking at its presence in philosophical prose, medical writing, oratory, epistolary writing and Christian theology.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Cicero and Lucretius on Deifying the Great Man
• Lucretius, Celsus and “Medical Latin”
• Like a Rotten Stone: Seneca’s Allusions to Lucretian Cosmic Decay in Epistulae Morales 12, 30 and 58
• It’s the Final Countdown: Taking the Philosophical Test on the Brink of Death: Lucretius’ DRN, Seneca Naturales Quaestiones 3.27–30
• Lucretius in Quintilian
• Lucretius, Pliny the Younger, and the Volcano
• Lucretius in Plutarch’s Gryllus: An Intertext on Animal Rationality
• Lactantius’ Use of Lucretius and Virgil in the Divine Institutes
• List of Contributors
• Index Rerum et Nominum
• Index Locorum