Hostname: page-component-74656f9884-c52kr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-08T22:18:57.398Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

HEAD-FAKE: TWO JOKES IN LUCRETIUS 3.136–50

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2019

Michael McOsker
Michael McOsker*
Affiliation:
Ohio Wesleyan University
*
mfmcoske@owu.edu
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Towards the beginning of Book 3, Lucretius starts his description of the soul. According to Epicurus, the soul is divided into two, an irrational part, which is coextensive with the body, and a rational part, the ‘mind’, which is located in the chest. This position is a relic from an earlier, non–philosophical tradition, and was adopted by several different philosophers. But Alexandrian doctors would soon correctly locate the mind in the head, and later Epicureans would have to defend an increasingly uncomfortable and out-of-date position.

Information

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 69 , Issue 2 , December 2019 , pp. 903 - 904
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2019

Towards the beginning of Book 3, Lucretius starts his description of the soul. According to Epicurus, the soul is divided into two, an irrational part, which is coextensive with the body, and a rational part, the ‘mind’, which is located in the chest. This position is a relic from an earlier, non–philosophical tradition, and was adopted by several different philosophers. But Alexandrian doctors would soon correctly locate the mind in the head, and later Epicureans would have to defend an increasingly uncomfortable and out-of-date position.Footnote 1

Lucretius begins his report of Epicurus’ position as follows (3.136–42). I adapt Smith's translation to follow more closely Lucretius’ order of words and ideas.

nunc animum atque animam dico coniuncta teneri   136
inter se atque unam naturam conficere ex se,
sed caput esse quasi et dominari in corpore toto
consilium, quod nos animum mentemque uocamus,
idque situm media regione in pectoris haeret.     140
hic exultat enim pauor ac metus, haec loca circum
laetitiae mulcent; hic ergo mens animusquest.     142

Now I claim that the mind and spirit are held joined together and form one nature together, but it is the head, so to speak, and lord over the body that are the understanding which we call the mind and intelligence, and which, positioned in the middle region of the chest, stays there. For in this place throb terror and fear, hereabouts is melting joy: here therefore is the intelligence and the mind.

The argument, as Sanders showed,Footnote 2 is better than the commentators take it to be, and so is the humour.Footnote 3 Lucretius announces his topic, the two parts of the soul and their unity, and then immediately says sed caput ‘but the head …’. Someone unfamiliar with Epicurean philosophy notices nothing amiss, but someone who does know the basics of the doctrine in question is surprised: is Lucretius going to claim that the mind is in the head?!

No, but it takes him two and a half lines to get there. Absolute clarity about the mind's position only comes with pectoris in 3.140, and then he emphasizes the fixity of the position with situm … haeret. The mind, whatever the Alexandrian doctors might say, is definitely not going anywhere. The ‘real’ translation of 3.138–9 is ‘but the understanding, which we call the mind and intelligence, is like the head and controls the whole body’, but Lucretius has reversed the order of the sentence to put caput at its head. Epicurean readers will have been initially disconcerted, but then they smiled at the end of 3.140 when the joke became clear, and orthodoxy was maintained.

There is a follow–up joke at 3.150–1: cum cetera pars animai | per membra atque artus nulla nouitate cietur, literally ‘when the rest of the spirit throughout the limbs and frame is not stirred by any new sensation’, but also potentially ‘since the rest of the soul is not displaced throughout the various parts of the body by any innovation’ [sc. in doctrine]. Herophilus’ discovery of the nervous system was evidently not felt as a threat to the credibility of this part of Epicurean doctrine. nouitas may have a threatening tone.Footnote 4

There is another bit of doctrinal wit in the passage: the patterns of elision at 3.136 animum atque animam and 3.137 inter se atque unam naturam, both of which emphasize that the rational and irrational parts of the soul form a unity together.Footnote 5

References

1 Demetrius Laco does so at PHerc. 1012, cols. 42–7, with a citation of Zeno, probably the scholarch Zeno of Sidon who was his contemporary. For an edition of this papyrus with translation and commentary, see Puglia, E., Aporie testuali ed esegetiche in Epicuro (Naples, 1987)Google Scholar. For the medical discovery, see Cambiano, G., ‘Philosophy, science and medicine’, in Algra, K., Barnes, J., Mansfeld, J. and Schofield, M. (edd.), The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy (Cambridge, 2005), 585–613Google Scholar, at 601.

2 See Sanders, K., ‘Mens and emotion: De Rerum Natura 3.136–46’, CQ 58 (2008), 362–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Heinze, R., T. Lucretius Carus: De Rerum Natura Buch III (Leipzig, 1897)Google Scholar, 68—followed by Bailey, C., Titi Lucreti Cari De Rerum Natura Libri Sex (Oxford, 1947)Google Scholar, 2.1012—calls the phrase quasi caput ‘nicht eben glücklich’, and thinks that the use of caput is an intentional protest against the rival theory. Kenney, E.J., Lucretius: De Rerum Natura Book III (Cambridge, 2014 2), 96Google Scholar finds a near personification, and Brown, P.M., Lucretius: De Rerum Natura III (Warminster, 1997)Google Scholar, 109 notes: ‘vivid, figurative language’. Ernout, A. and Robin, L., Lucrèce, De la nature, Livres III–IV (Paris, 1962 2)Google Scholar, 27 just provide philological data. No one thinks that this passage is funny. But people do find humour, or at least satire, in Lucretius: Bailey (this note), 1.8 recognizes a ‘vein of satire’, and Holtsmark, E.N., ‘Lucretius and the fools’, CJ 63 (1968), 260–1Google Scholar suggests that Lucretius intentionally placed inanis and solidum–stolidi, his own technical terms for the void and solid matter, in equivalent metrical position throughout 1.1–642 to refer mockingly to those who had different metaphysics, which is definitely extremely amusing.

4 So Ernout and Robin (n. 3), 29 suggest ad loc.

5 So Brown (n. 3), 109 ad loc.