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The Fading of Memmius*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
Extract
In 1884 Ivo Bruns began his Lucrez-Studien, on the relationship between Lucretius' treatment of Epicureanism and the exposition by the philosopher himself in the extant Epistles, with the question (p.4) for whom did Lucretius write? His answer was to show (p.l 1) that the general public, who were the poet's real objective, were very different readers from the disciples whom Epicurus addressed in the Letter to Herodotus and similar works. This conclusion, and the subsequent investigation of the ways in which this difference affected the treatment of doctrine in the two works, does not concern me. My interest is rather in the manner in which Bruns tackles the problem of the ostensible addressee, Memmius, and the extent to which this man remains in Lucretius' mind throughout the whole six books.
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References
1 Cic. Att. 5.11.6 (and less securely in the following year, 6.1.23).
2 Cirtna the Poet (1974), pp. 11–43.Google Scholar
3 Roller, D. W., in CPh 65 (1970), 248, suggests implausibly that his very unsuitability led to his choice as dedicatee.Google Scholar
4 De Lucretiani libri primi condicione ac retractatione (Berlin, 1912), p. 136.Google Scholar
5 Lucreti de Rerum Natura (1947), vol. i, pp. 32–7.Google Scholar For supporting arguments based on metrical developments, see Duckworth, G. E., in TAPA 97 (1966), 72–9, summarizing earlier work.Google Scholar
6 Lucretius, ed. Dudley, D. R. (London, 1965), pp. 27–33.Google Scholar
7 As opposed to unfulfilled supposition in the present, as videres in 1.214 and 357, 2.701 – all in passages where it is difficult to be certain whether the meaning is impersonal or genuine second-person.
8 Woodcock, E. C., New Latin Syntax (1959), p.90, § 119; Bailey, i. 99.Google Scholar
9 For further indications of rearrangement of this whole section, see especially Giussani, vol. ii, pp. 3–5.Google Scholar
10 Although this in itself contains only ne forte rearis … te … indugredi, the second-person continuity is established by the surrounding clusters.
11 e.g. Hor.Sat.1.4.79, 2.2.99, Juv.3.153, 7.242. In the first of these the manuscripts are divided between inquit and inquis. The latter was preferred by the older editors as the lectio facilior, although evidently induced by gaudes and facts in close proximity. Bentley showed that an almost impersonal inquit is common from Cicero onwards, even in contexts with a second person plural verb. See also Charney, B. L., in CPh 39 (1944), 110,Google Scholar for its derivation from 
of the Greek diatribe and its common use especially in Seneca's letters, although inquis also occurs when Lucilius is directly addressed. Lucretius' imaginary interlocuter recurs in Manil. 4.387, ‘multum’ inquis ‘tenuemque iubes me ferre laborem.’ With a retort in 390, just as in Lucr. 1.809.
12 In 3.898, 900, 900, supposed objections are introduced with aiunt, addunt, dicant. In 1.372, by contrast, the use of aiunt to introduce a fallacious argument is preceded-in 370–1 by a specific claim to protect the reader: ne te deducere vero possit.
13 Lenaghan, L., in TAPA 98 (1967), 221–51,Google Scholar provides a thorough justification of the relevance of these lines to their context in the first book.
14 Lenaghan, p.236, comments on these lines ‘Second person immediacy recurs’, and suggests (n.47) that ‘parva opella may be a diminutive of affection’. There is unfortunately little support for the latter idea in the four other genuine diminutive nouns in the poem (2.428, 4.1080, 1165, 1279), the last three of which have a clear suggestion of satire.
15 He appears to have claimed the title imperator for some military activity in Bithynia (Broughton, , MRR ii. 203).Google Scholar
16 So Bruns, p.6. Since there is some reason to suppose that lines 29–33 were first written as 5.1392–6, and 55–62 as 6.35–41 (with 54 added in the new context as what Bailey calls ‘a rather clumsy and awkward link of connection’), the whole of the opening of 2 looks like a relatively late addition.
17 Giussani, , ad loc, tries to explain the anomaly by supposing that Lucretius found something similar in the text of Epicurus.Google Scholar
18 Cinna the Poet, p. 31.Google Scholar
19 e.g. Horace, , Sat. 1.2.64.Google Scholar
20 Solmsen, F., in Philologus 114 (1970), 256–61,CrossRefGoogle Scholar makes heavy weather of Lucretius' failure to provide a distinct account of the discovery of iron. The poet surely felt that a second metallurgical section, after 1241–80, would be tiresome and largely repetitive. Hence, presumably, the unusual appeal to Memmius.
21 W. A. Merrill (p.25) suggests that all these vocatives throughout the poem were inserted in this casual manner, and that the poet intended to add others in 3, 4, and 6 in due course. Roller (cit. above, n.3) 247–8, pushes this view even further, without attempting to work out any real rationale for this procedure nor to indicate what must have happened when Memmius was first addressed by name in the lacuna before 1.50.
22 The clusters referred to are as follows: iii. 417–23; iv. 912–15; vi. 67–79, 187–94, 647–54. In book i the following passages are significant: 50–5, 102–6, 140–5, 265–70, 331–3, 398–417, 921–50, 972–6, 1114–18; in book ii: 80–90, 114–31, 184–97, 440–1, 485–500, 730–40, 1023–43; and in book v: 91–109, 146–65 (the last containing only a vague ut possis in 146, quae tibi posterius largo sermone probabo in 155, and an unsupported appeal to Memmius in the vocative in 164).
23 ‘The Original plan of Lucretius; de Rerum natura’, to be published in the first number of CQ N.S. 29 (1979). Ed.
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