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THE POEM
and which would at the same time produce an effective cadence to a long and
emotional poem. The poet has found a solution which satisfies both of these
requirements. The account of the Athenian plague, which depends heavily on
material set out earlier in the work, forms a fitting climax to a book which deals
with striking natural events; and the tragic story is told in such a way as to
recapitulate some of the principal themes of the poem: the bitter consequences
of ignorance, the almost universal fear of death, man's crippling anxiety and his
hopeless dependence on divine powers. In this long description of a terrible
disaster Lucretius appears once again in his characteristic role as the scientific
observer of natural causes, the ironic critic of man's folly and the sympathetic
poet of human misery.
Let us turn, in conclusion, to the prologue to Book i, perhaps the most
difficult passage in the poem. Here there can be no question of a literal interpretation;
for, although Epicurean theology conceded the possibility of some
form of communion with the gods, the sort of prayer which Lucretius addresses
to Venus, that she endow his poem with 'undying grace' and bring peace to
Rome by clasping Mars in her arms, goes far beyond the decent limits of
Epicurean piety. Clearly the poet had something else in mind and we naturally
look for some secondary meaning in his words. But what? The difficulty here
is not so much to find some suitable equation for Lucretius' goddess as to
know where to stop, how to determine the limits of the poet's symbolic
imagination. Is Venus here simply the power of love or the generative force of
nature? Or is the main emphasis on the concept of peace? Or should she be
interpreted at a more philosophical level and equated with one or other of the
two types of pleasure which Epicurus defined in his ethics? As Bignone has
shown, there is ample precedent among Greek writers for this sort of philosophical
allegory. 1 The idea of introducing the old Homeric myth of Venus and
Mars may in fact have come to Lucretius from Empedodes, who is said to have
used it for the two great forces of love and strife which control the Empedoclean
universe. 2 The world which Lucretius describes, though it differs from that of
Empedocles, is also dominated by an unending cycle of birth and decay. Some
idea of this sort may have been at the back of Lucretius' mind when he introduced
the story of Mars and Venus, but this cannot be what the myth means.
For the Mars of the Lucretian prologue is not presented as a grim symbol of
destruction and decay, but as a sensual being with the instincts of the elegiac
lover. Mars is not in fact a potent figure in the poem at all and after the prologue
his name never reappears except as a more or less conventional synonym
for war.
What then does Venus stand for in the prologue? Whatever answer is given
1
Bignone (1942—50) n 434—9.
2
Heraditus, Alleg. Horn. 69; Eustathius, ad Od. 8.367. Cf. Empedocles, DK 1 317, B 17.24.
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