Mode and Value in the De Rerum Natura: A Study in Lucretius' Metrical Language

200 Pages·1978·2.335 MB·

by  John Douglas Minyard

JOHN DOUGLAS MINYARD
MODE AND VALUE
IN THE
DE RERUM NATURA
HERMES
ZEITSCHRIFT FUR KLASSISCHE PHILOLOGIE
EINZELSCHRIFTEN
HERAUSGEGEBEN VON
HORST BRAUNERT (t) · KARL BOCHNER
WOLFGANG KULLMANN
HEFT 39
MODE AND VALUE
IN THE
DE RERUM NATURA
A STUDY IN LUCRETIUS' METRICAL LANGUAGE
BY
JOHN DOUGLAS MINYARD
FRANZ STEINER VERLAG GMBH · WIESBADEN
1978
MODE AND VALUE
IN THE
DE RERUM NATURA
A STUDY IN LUCRETIUS'
METRICAL LANGUAGE
BY
JOHN DOUGLAS MINYARD
FRANZ STEINER VERLAG GMBH · WIESBADEN
1978
CIP-Kurztitelaufnahme der Deutschen Bibliothek
Minyard, John Douglas
Mode and value in the De rerum natura: a study in Lucretius's
metrical language. - 1. Aufl. - Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1978
(Hermes: Einzelschriften; H. 39)
ISBN 3-515-02569-3
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CONTENTS
Preface VII
1. Introduction 1
2. Lucretius's metrical language 8
A. The word . 8
B. The phrase 14
C. The whole verse . 43
D. The verse passage 46
E. Summary: The formulaic style 59
3. The shape of the Lucretian discourse 67
4. Mode 87
5. Value 96
Appendix A: Index of phrase formulas 103
Appendix B: Index of whole verse and passage formulas 151
Bibliography . 173
Index of Cited Lucretian Passages 180
Index of Proper Names 183

PREFACE
The original stage of research for this study was completed in Rome
during the year 1969 with the support of a Fulbright Fellowship and a
Harrison Fellowship from the University of Pennsylvania, and the results
were presented in a doctoral dissertation of 1970. Thanks are due to the
staffs of the Istituto Archeologico Germanico and the American Academy
in Rome for allowing me to use their libraries and to Dott. L. E. Rossi of
the University of Rome for his professional and personal help during that
period. Research since 1970 has added new material and resulted in revision
and even rejection of a number of the views and statistical descriptions
offered in the dissertation. Therefore, while parts of it have been included
in modified form in this work and the reader is referred there for more
detailed treatment of some matters, much of the earlier discussion is now
out of date.
The present essay is a portion of a much fuller, not yet completed dis
cussion of the De Rerum Natura and has been subtracted therefrom to
allow a fuller description of certain technical aspects of Lucretian style. It
has benefited from the broader framework in which it was formerly en
closed, and some of the general issues of classification, interpretation, and
evaluation there discussed have been raised here to suggest what is thought
to be the significance of this material and to link this investigation to the
central problems of Lucretian criticism. This phase of the research was com
pleted in January 1975, and it has been possible to acknowledge some more
recently published work in related areas only by citation in the notes and
bibliography.
Following the essay are two indexes of the formulas which are its subject.
These are arranged metrically, according to the verse position and quantita
tive shape of each formula, a principle of organization stemming from the
concern of the discussion with Lucretian poetics, specifically with Lucretius'
metrical craftsmanship and its significance. Other arrangements, where
relevant, are provided within the essay. The form of the indexes will enable
the reader to test the propositions of the argument by presenting the for
mulas in the manner in which they are discussed and will give additional
interpretive direction to the evidence by helping to expose the impact of
the abstract metrical design upon the language and structure of the poem,
VIII Preface
offering specific material for gauging the extent to which a purely poetic,
or aesthetic, purpose has controlled its form and expression.
It may be thought that a number of the formulas adduced are of the sort
noticed by studying concordances rather than by reading texts. The appro
priate response to such an observation is not simply that the core of the
formula system and most of the examples were discovered before consulting
the then-new concordance to Lucretius. More importantly, the formulas
dispose themselves in systems of various kinds, showing a variety of degrees
of complexity in the individual units, and the relationship between levels
(single word, phrase, whole verse, and verse passage) is very tightly knit.
Through phonetic, verbal, syntactic, and metrical parallelism, the indivi
dual formulas are shaped into complex and intricately related systems which,
through various overlappings, cohere in an overriding general system whose
structure can only be described as organic. This system springs from the
material roots of the poem (the words and the sound elements of which they
are composed) and grows step by step through phrases and whole verses to
verse passages. As a consequence, the discovery of examples which usually
can be noticed consciously only with the aid of a concordance for the most
part adds final touches to a clearly articulated verbal structure and not
merely disconnected examples of an arbitrarily defined phenomenon. Even
if we subtract these lately added members, we shall not alter the description
and line of argument offered here. And a clear perception of the whole
orderly system, including the more obscure and relatively incidental units,
will allow us to see the repetition of the famous long passages as the out
growth of a coherent style and not as monstrous intrusions stemming from
a failure of taste or structural indecisiveness, certain of elimination upon
rev1s10n.
Many readers will still want to eliminate some of the phrases included in
the indexes. On the other hand, while extensive lists of formulas are provid
ed, it is beyond question that more can yet be found. It is also true that not
everything possible to say about this aspect of Lucretian style will be said
in these pages and that more relationships among the formulas and formula
levels can be discerned than have been described. And surely, in spite of
extensive checking of the indexes by several people and several different
methods, inaccuracies remain. While it is hoped that the number of these
errors will be small, it will certainly not be large enough to affect the statisti
cal arguments and relations described on the basis of the indexes. More
examples of more formulas and formula relationships will simply confirm
the description offered. The number of instances cited is so large that mar
ginal alterations by elimination or discovery of more formulas cannot tell.
Preface IX
It is also true that portions of the indexes could have been categorized
differently, with some phrases, now listed separately, presented as examples
of the same general formula type, and some of those combined under a more
general heading listed as separate units. The organic relationship linking
formulas and formula levels together leads to still other problems of classi
fication. Since the shading off from group to group or development from
level to level is gradual, there are many borderline cases, difficult of assign
ment to one or another class, and some readers will disagree with a number
of the choices made. In all matters of this sort, what is important for the
indexes is not specific assignments but as great a degree of completeness as
practicable, with an apparatus of cross-references sufficient for indicating
the connections between formulas and possible different arrangements. While
it is true that classification is interpretation, and even evaluation, and so is
intellectually not a minor matter, and that another arrangement could have
a considerable effect on our understanding of the formulas and their impor
tance, still, the central matter of concern is presentation of the data and not
the finer points of listing.
Classification is also abstraction and will therefore always falsify the
material classified to a greater or less degree. The numbers given to the for
mulas and formula groups in the indexes are meant to minimize this falsify
ing effect by revealing more of the relations among the formulas than the
indexes as presently arranged can do. These numbers are assigned to make
cross-reference, as well as reference from the discussion to the indexes,
possible, and are not to be understood as expressing some "natural" and
immutable characteristic of the formulas and therefore as designations
useful beyond the ad hoe requirements of this monograph.
It will seem perhaps that the stress here on the metrical arrangement of
the indexes and the great emphasis on metrical matters in the essay is much
ado about the obvious. This reaction will be accurate. The metrical form of
the De Rerum Natura is too obvious and so has usually been ignored in dis
cussion of the goals and principles of coherence of the work. The meter is an
all-pervasive, philosophically irrelevant principle of design to which all the
language of the work is made to submit. The question posed by my investiga
tion is whether the abstract metrical design becomes lively in the creation
of significant verbal relationships, structural patterns, and units of aesthetic
expression, enabling the poet to handle his linguistic medium in ways not
possible in prose, whether he creates thereby analytically invalid patterns
of association and coherence by warping his discourse to a poetic shape.
Such examination of compositional technique at the verbal and verse level
is the sine qua non of poetic criticism and the necessary foundation of any
theory of interpretation. We cannot deal critically with the De Rerum Na-
X Preface
tura unless we ask whether its metrical form has any significance, i.e. whether
it is effectually a poem. This question is directly related to that which asks
what principles of coherence hold the parts together and give unitary form
to the whole, whether these principles are, e.g., analytic or aesthetic. We
know what the usual answers to these questions are, but we also know how
little satisfactory they have been and how much of our response to the whole
they leave without rationale. The focus of this discussion is thus upon the
ground of interpretation of the De Rerum Natura. As a first essay in Luc
retian poetics strictly conceived it concentrates upon the craftsmanship and
craft values of the work and is rigorously and narrowly aesthetic in its goals.
Comprehensive models of interpretation will then follow, but they can only
follow. If they come first, as is usual in Lucretian criticism, they can only
obscure.
Discussion of an apparently analytical passage ( 4.176-268) in Chapter
Three is a provisional step in the direction of creating a theory of inter
pretation for the De Rerum Natura consequent upon the description of the
formulaic system. The intention is to give an idea of the appearance of the
formulas in context and to show how they impart distinctly poetic shape
and value even to a passage with so little obvious aesthetic promise. The
value of the passage chosen is enhanced by the fact that it contains a struc
tural textual difficulty in that some scholars have discerned a lacuna of
greater or smaller proportions after verse 215. When we have perceived the
narrative form of the poem and apprehended Lucretius' poetic values, when
we have ceased the search for analytical values in his language, we can see
the easy flow and aesthetic structure of this passage and understand how it
functions as an intelligible unit within the whole didactic narration, even
though on analytical grounds it seems disorderly and discontinuous.
A number of assumptions provide the foundation for this study, and it
will be useful to mention them. The De Rerum Natura is a work of very
great complexity of form and content, a poem in which Cicero saw multa
ars, whose author Statius called doctus and Quintilian dif ficilis. No one
among its Roman readers could have responded to it accurately who was not
well educated in philosophy, rhetoric, science, and poetry. Memmius, the
audience epitomized, was a Roman aristocrat, a member of the class of
Rome's cosmopolitan, imperial politicians, a poet, and a patron of poets. The
De Rerum Natura itself always takes the aristocratic point of view, warning
the reader away from those pursuits of politics, military glory, and the
pleasures of courtesans possible only to those who had the nobilitas, or at
least the money. The poem was not composed on an introductory level for
the multitude of ordinary minds (Horace's profanum vulgus) but is rather
a learned, formidably intellectual, and often allusive treatment of a philoso-