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DISASTROUS EARTHQUAKES IN LUCRETIUS AND THE SIBYLLINE ORACLES

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 June 2018

Boris Kayachev
Boris Kayachev*
Affiliation:
Trinity College, Dublin
*
boriskayachev@gmail.com
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Extract

In the final book of his poem Lucretius spends some time discussing earthquakes and their causes (6.535–607). In accordance with the standard Epicurean practice, Lucretius considers four alternative physical mechanisms that may be responsible for the phenomenon. The first three explanations involve three different kinds of subterranean matter—rock (6.543–51), water (6.552–6) and air (6.557–76)—causing the commotion of the earth's deeper regions, which is then transmitted to the surface. The fourth type of earthquake is different, as it is produced by the seismic agent affecting the surface directly and potentially causing its deformation rather than just trembling. This happens when a gust of subterranean wind (6.583–4)

      exagitata foras erumpitur et simul altam
      diffindens terram magnum concinnat hiatum.

Information

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 68 , Issue 1 , May 2018 , pp. 333 - 336
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2018 

In the final book of his poem Lucretius spends some time discussing earthquakes and their causes (6.535–607). In accordance with the standard Epicurean practice, Lucretius considers four alternative physical mechanisms that may be responsible for the phenomenon.Footnote 1 The first three explanations involve three different kinds of subterranean matter—rock (6.543–51), water (6.552–6) and air (6.557–76)—causing the commotion of the earth's deeper regions, which is then transmitted to the surface. The fourth type of earthquake is different, as it is produced by the seismic agent affecting the surface directly and potentially causing its deformation rather than just trembling. This happens when a gust of subterranean wind (6.583–4)

exagitata foras erumpitur et simul altam
diffindens terram magnum concinnat hiatum.

The worst-case scenario is when the chasm opens right under a city (6.585–7):

in Syria Sidone quod accidit et fuit Aegi
in Peloponneso, quas exitus hic animai
disturbat urbes et terrae motus obortus.

Lucretius’ first example is usually identified as the earthquake during which a whole town near Sidon was ‘swallowed’ into the earth.Footnote 2 The other is the famous earthquake of the winter of 373–372 b.c., which resulted in two towns near Aegium, Helice and Bura, being completely submerged in the sea.Footnote 3 Although his language is here not sufficiently explicit, the next passage makes it clear that Lucretius used these examples to illustrate not just the destruction of buildings but the disappearance of entire cities into a chasm produced by an earthquake (6.588–90):

multaque praeterea ceciderunt moenia magnis
motibus in terris et multae per mare pessum
subsedere suis pariter cum ciuibus urbes.

Even though, Lucretius goes on, subterranean winds may not always be strong enough to create a chasm (6.591–5), this is a constant fear for people experiencing an earthquake (6.596–607).

The idea of entire cities falling into a chasm produced in an earthquake finds a striking parallel in the third book of the Sibylline Oracles. At 3.337 the Sibyl foretells ‘great signs’, among which there will be (3.341–2, 346)

χάσματα ἠδὲ βάραθρ’ ἀχανῆ· πολλαὶ δὲ πόληες
αὔτανδροι πεσέονται· ἐν Ἀσιάδι μὲν Ἰασσός …
[…]
Εὐρώπης δὲ Κύαγρα κλύτος βασιλὶς Μερόπεια …Footnote 4

The closest point of contact is that between Lucr. 6.589–90 multae … subsedere suis pariter cum ciuibus urbes and Sibylline Oracles 3.341–2 πολλαὶ δὲ πόληες | αὔτανδροι πεσέονται. But Lucretius’ preceding passage also parallels the Sibylline context in that it likewise refers to the cities affected by an earthquake by both naming them and locating them in a wider geographical area (in Syria and in Peloponneso; cf. ἐν Ἀσιάδι and Εὐρώπης). And, in general, both Lucretius and the Sibyl connect the cities’ destruction with huge chasms opening under them (magnum concinnat hiatum, χάσματα ἠδὲ βάραθρ’ ἀχανῆ).Footnote 5

How is this parallel to be accounted for? The two texts appear to be roughly contemporary: Lucretius’ poem had been published by 54 b.c., the third book of the Sibylline Oracles can be dated between 80 and 40 b.c.Footnote 6 Yet, it seems unlikely that the Jewish-Hellenistic author of the Oracles would read an exposition of Epicurean doctrine in Latin verse. By contrast, Lucretius’ interest in poetry, Hellenistic and other, is amply documented,Footnote 7 and other Latin poets seem to have been acquainted with the third book of the Sibylline Oracles.Footnote 8 The following detail is telling: Lucretius’ elaborate phrase suis pariter cum ciuibus (urbes) sounds too much like an attempt to catch the sense of the laconic Greek adjective αὔτανδροι (πόληες),Footnote 9 certainly not the other way round. It seems likely, then, that Lucretius was following a Greek source, which may, or may not, have been the text known to us as the third book of the Sibylline Oracles. If that extant collection was Lucretius’ source, its period of composition can be narrowed down to between 80 and 55 b.c.

However, an alternative possibility is suggested by a similar case of a parallel between a Sibylline context and a Latin poet. Only a few lines before her prophecy about earthquakes, the Sibyl foretells another omen (3.334–5):

ἐν δὲ δύσει ἀστὴρ λάμψει, ὃν ἐροῦσι κομήτην,
ῥομφαίας λιμοῦ θανάτοιό τε σῆμα βροτοῖσιν.

As has been pointed out by others, this oracle finds a close analogy in Tibullus, who similarly has the Sibyls predict a comet: haec fore dixerunt belli mala signa cometen (2.5.71).Footnote 10 Although the idea of a comet as a portent of evil is almost universal, points of contact on the formal level would seem to speak for a more direct kind of connection. Both contexts put the same noun, in the same case, at the end of the hexameter (κομήτην / cometen); both of these accusatives depend on a verb of speaking (ἐροῦσι / dixerunt), even if in different syntactical constructions (double accusative / accusative with infinitive); in both contexts appositives characterize the comet as a ‘sign of war’ (note too that σῆμα and signa occupy the same metrical position).Footnote 11 While it is not impossible that Tibullus had this particular Greek passage in mind, the context lets one suspect that he may rather have alluded to a pagan Sibylline oracle, which would also have provided a model for the third book of the Oracles.Footnote 12 Turning back to Lucretius, perhaps we should likewise be open to the possibility that his Greek source came not from the extant text of the Sibylline Oracles but from an earlier pagan collection.

References

1 For Epicurus’ treatment of the topic, see Ep. Pyth. 105.5–106.2. On multiple explanations as a fundamental method of Epicurean science, see recently Hankinson, R.J., ‘Lucretius, Epicurus, and the logic of multiple explanations’, in Lehoux, D., Morrison, A.D., Sharrock, A. (edd.), Lucretius: Poetry, Philosophy, Science (Oxford, 2013), 69–97Google Scholar; cf. also Hardie, P., ‘Lucretian multiple explanations and their reception in Latin didactic and epic’, in id., Lucretian Receptions: History, The Sublime, Knowledge (Cambridge, 2009), 231–63Google Scholar (originally published in Beretta, M., Citti, F. [edd.], Lucrezio, la natura e la scienza [Florence, 2008], 69–96)Google Scholar. Cf. further Stat. Theb. 7.809–16, where Statius caps Lucretius by offering as many as six alternative explanations for the chasm that swallowed Amphiaraus (with Smolenaars, J.J.L., Statius Thebaid VII: A Commentary [Leiden, 1994], 386–7Google Scholar).

2 Strabo 1.3.16 γενομένου σεισμοῦ καταποθῆναι πόλιν (citing Posidonius). See Bailey, C., Titi Lucreti Cari De rerum natura libri sex (Oxford, 1947), 3.1644Google Scholar. The date of the earthquake is uncertain: see Ambraseys, N., Earthquakes in the Mediterranean and Middle East: A Multidisciplinary Study of Seismicity up to 1900 (Cambridge, 2009), 93CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Cf. e.g. Ov. Met. 15.293–5 si quaeras Helicen et Burin, Achaidas urbes, | inuenies sub aquis, et adhuc ostendere nautae | inclinata solent cum moenibus oppida mersis. For a collection and analysis of ancient testimonia, see Ambraseys (n. 2), 86–8.

4 Text follows Nikiprowetzky, V., La troisième Sibylle (Paris, 1970), 308Google Scholar. The text of the list of cities (mostly omitted in the quotation) is unstable; see the apparatus in Geffcken, J., Die Oracula Sibyllina (Leipzig, 1902), 65–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 It may be worth adding that Lucretius uses the Greek loanword barathrum at 6.606 (it only appears in Lucretius one or two more times: at 3.966 and possibly at 3.955).

6 See Buitenwerf, R., Book III of the Sibylline Oracles and Its Social Setting (Leiden, 2003), 130Google Scholar; cf. Lightfoot, J.L., The Sibylline Oracles (Oxford, 2007), 95–6Google Scholar.

7 Kenney, E.J., ‘Doctus Lucretius’, Mnemosyne 23 (1970), 366–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar is seminal; cf. further e.g. Brown, R.D., ‘Lucretius and Callimachus’, ICS 7 (1982), 77–97Google Scholar; Knox, P.E., ‘Lucretius on the narrow road’, HSPh 99 (1999), 275–87Google Scholar; Edmunds, L., ‘Mars as Hellenistic lover: Lucretius, De rerum natura 1.29–40 and its subtexts’, IJCT 8 (2002), 343–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Taylor, B., ‘Rationalism and the theatre in Lucretius’, CQ 66 (2016), 140–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On Lucretius’ attitude to literature more generally, see Erler, M., ‘Physics and therapy: meditative elements in Lucretius’ De rerum natura’, in Algra, K.A., Koenen, M.H., Schrijvers, P.H. (edd.), Lucretius and His Intellectual Background (Amsterdam, 1997), 79–92Google Scholar.

8 On the possibility of Virgil engaging with the third book of the Sibylline Oracles in the fourth eclogue, see Nisbet, R.G.M., ‘Virgil's fourth eclogue: easterners and westerners’, BICS 25 (1978), 59–78Google Scholar; Courtney, E., ‘A basic approach to the fourth eclogue’, Vergilius 56 (2010), 27–38Google Scholar; Horsfall, N., ‘Virgil and the Jews’, Vergilius 58 (2012), 67–80Google Scholar. On its possible presence in Horace's epode 16 and ode 1.2, see Macleod, C.W., ‘Horace and the Sibyl (Epode 16.2)’, CQ 29 (1979), 220–1CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Clark, R.J., ‘Ilia's excessive complaint and the flood in Horace, Odes 1.2’, CQ 60 (2010), 262–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On a possible allusion in Tibullus, see below. Finally, it has been suggested that in Metamorphoses 1 Ovid alludes to the Biblical flood narrative: see Ryder, T.T.B., ‘Ovid, the flood, and Ararat’, G&R 14 (1967), 126–9Google Scholar; Fletcher, K.F.B., ‘Ovidian “correction” of the Biblical flood?’, CPh 105 (2010), 209–13Google Scholar; Ryder (this note), 128 considers the possibility of Ovid deriving information about the Biblical version from the Sibylline Oracles, but points out that the extant third book does not mention Mt Ararat.

9 αὔτανδρος belongs to a productive family of adjectives of the type αὐτ(ο)-X, with the sense ‘in one piece with, together with [X]’ (LSJ s.v. αὐτός V.6); one could compare αὐτογλώχιν ‘in one piece with the point’ (LSJ s.v.), αὐτόδορος ‘hide and all’ (LSJ s.v.), αὐτόπρεμνος ‘together with the root’ (LSJ s.v.), among others. This class of adjectives corresponds to the idiom (σὺν) αὐτῷ X, with the sense ‘in one, together [with X]’ (LSJ s.v. αὐτός I.5); in particular, αὔτανδρος corresponds to (σὺν) αὐτοῖς ἀνδράσιν, both of which are regularly used in the same kind of contexts (most often of capturing or destroying a ship with the crew). Lucretius’ suis pariter cum ciuibus would seem to indicate that he correctly interpreted αὔτανδροι as equivalent to (σὺν) αὐτοῖς ἀνδράσιν.

10 See D. Jacobs, ‘The images of space in the Third Sibylline Oracle’ (Diss., Humboldt University of Berlin, 2011), 150–1.

11 Of course, Virgil too mentions comets (G. 1.487–8 non alias caelo ceciderunt plura sereno | fulgura nec diri totiens arsere cometae), in a passage that is often considered Tibullus’ model (though note the scepticism of Murgatroyd, P., Tibullus: Elegies II [Oxford, 1994], 211Google Scholar: ‘the fact that so many [portents] are found in the Virgilian passage has led some to claim that T[ibullus] was here selecting from Virgil, but there are no significant verbal similarities, Virgil does not mention the rain of stones or sound of trumpets, and […] Virgil was not the only earlier author to list together prodigies’). Whether or not Tibullus was influenced by Virgil, his reference to a comet is still verbally closer to the Greek of the Sibylline Oracles.

12 Cf. Collins, J.J., Seers, Sibyls, and Sages in Hellenistic-Roman Judaism (Leiden, 1997), 182–4Google Scholar.