Lucretius exerted enormous pressure on the Roman poets of the Golden Age with the outstanding achievement of his De Rerum Natura. Virgil outmaneuvered him by reducing him to one of the voices and perspectives in his own work, by introducing other voices and perspectives, and by unifying them structurally and thematically, and in particular by employing a strategy of re-mythologization to dissolve the rationalism of De Rerum Natura. Horace took a pragmatic approach to the Epicurean philosophy and the literary elements of the epic, refusing to engage in head-on collision with Lucretius, and even frequently alluding to this predecessor in his later works. Ovid praised Lucretius unreservedly and created an alternative type of overarching epic about the universe by fusing the three traditions of mythological, etiological, and scientific epic. In the face of the daunting epic tradition from Homer onward, Lucretius' courage and wisdom in challenging it showed the three major Roman poets how to emulate their predecessors.
Key words
Lucretius /
Virgil /
Horace /
Ovid /
influence studies
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Funding
This article is sponsored by the Major Project of National Social Sciences Fund (18ZDA288).
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