Relativizing Unfinishedness: Lucretian Textuality and Epicurean Therapy

Abstract

Over the past few centuries, scholars have often regarded Lucretius’ DRN as a fascinating example of artistic 'non-finito', mirroring the untimely death of a solitary genius. The present chapter reassesses the literary, philological, and historical evidence supporting this classical view, arguing that a careful reassessment of the ‘degree of completeness’ of Lucretius’ text should be based on a thorough understanding of the special features of Roman didactic poetry and Epicurean therapeutic pedagogy as culturally situated discourses of self-formation. The chapter makes clear that neither the practice of recursive argumentation, with the studied repetition of crucial lines in different books, nor the gradual modification of thematic priorities over the course of Lucretius’ poem can be taken as evidence of unfinishedness as neither is a culturally neutral mode of rhetorical expression. On the contrary, both verbal repetition and thematic adaptability have substantially different implications in the intellectual world of Roman and Epicurean didacticism than in our modern literary sensibility.