For a sober lesson in the vicissitudes of fortune that ancient texts faced, Lucretius’ De rerum natura (DRN) is a good place to start. In the mid-50s b.c. its author was somehow snatched away from finishing his all-encompassing Epicurean manifesto, presumably by death ex improuiso. Yet his impact on the literary world was immediate, inspiring Catullus, attracting the admiration of Cicero and fundamentally influencing Virgil, Horace and Ovid. In stark contrast with its poetic success, the poem's philosophical legacy in antiquity is much more difficult to gauge: until the Church Fathers, evidence of engagement with DRN as a digest of Epicurean doctrine is bafflingly rare. Lucretius poeta and Lucretius philosophus, despite their symbiosis in the poem itself, tend to survive as distinct personae. Perhaps by virtue of this very disaggregation, DRN managed not only to survive to the Carolingian Age by the thinnest of threads but also to re-emerge and flourish in Renaissance Italy 600 years later. It is regrettable, therefore, that only one monograph has attempted a study of Lucretius’ ancient reception, the spirited but outdated account of George Hadzsits (1935). To complement the recent flowering in studies of Lucretius in the Renaissance and Early Modern ages, this wide-ranging survey is a welcome and important contribution to Lucretian studies.

The volume charts the literary and philosophical reception of Lucretius’ DRN in prose writers ranging from the mid-first century b.c. (Cicero) to the early-fourth century a.d. (Lactantius). Whereas previous surveys of Lucretius’ Nachleben in individual authors have lacked any sound framework, G. has established her own solid method of approach, informed by the work on intertextuality of Heinrich Plett and Jörg Helbig; the first chapter outlines her sophisticated appreciation of the many and varied purposes the citation of a literary-philosophical text can serve. Throughout the book G. demonstrates admirable critical judgement informed by sound philological method and (what is essential in works of this kind) circumspection in not forcing inferences beyond what the available evidence allows.

The second chapter tackles Cicero, who makes the earliest mention of Lucretius in his frustratingly brief evaluation of his poemata (ad Q. fr. 2.10: multis luminibus ingeni, multae tamen artis). G. analyses the semantics of ingenium and ars in Graeco-Roman culture, providing the most in-depth discussion of this famous sententia. Although the poet is not mentioned elsewhere in Cicero's corpus, G. explores some structural and thematic similarities between De republica (composed between 54 and 51 b.c.) and DRN. Despite some clever and original contentions, it remains unclear that Lucretius was a significant influence on Cicero here or elsewhere: notwithstanding the eager search for echoes by scholars such as William Merrill and Gian Carlo Pucci, making the case for Lucretian (as opposed to Epicurean) influence on Cicero's extant writings is hazardous.Footnote ¹

The third chapter follows Lucretius’ fate over the next century or so, through Nepos, Vitruvius, Verrius Flaccus, Velleius Paterculus, Seneca the Younger, Pliny the Younger,Footnote ² Tacitus and Quintilian. Although many of these authors provide little to work with, Seneca, the first prose author to cite Lucretius’ poetry, offers up considerable material (pp. 59–83): the Stoic sage, though horrified by many aspects of Epicureanism, evidently admired a poet's deft handling of philosophical doctrines. G. wisely compares Seneca's direct response to Epicurus himself (pp. 80–3), concluding that Lucretius was for him a mere interpres of his master, devoid of independent philosophical importance. Quintilian's complex attitude towards DRN, which apprehends the poem's difficulty and its strategies of mollifying the reader, is here for the first time studied in detail (pp. 85–99). The chapter ends with a rich survey of Ovid and Statius (pp. 105–20), demonstrating the valuable evidence that can be extracted from verse authors, despite graver methodological difficulties. The brief survey (pp. 123–5) of Probus’ edition of Lucretius, of which all trace has vanished, reminds the reader of the late Martin West's remark that ‘the contribution of any individual [sc. to textual transmission] must usually have been as evanescent as a pee into the river’. However, G. could have augmented her study of what has chanced to survive in Lucretius’ indirect tradition by analysing a feature of his direct transmission: the so-called capitula, or subject headings, which intersperse the text of Lucretius in the three ninth-century MSS, make possible the study of how ancient readers engaged with the poem for (so it seems) their own private use.

The fourth chapter turns to three figures of the second century a.d., Fronto, Gellius and Apuleius, who viewed Lucretius’ poem as an exemplary work of ‘archaism’. For the first two, Lucretius’ language and style placed him as an intermediary poetic phase between Ennius and Virgil. Apuleius reveals more, having not only developed his unique and baroque Latin style under Lucretius’ influence but also incorporated features of Epicureanism into his particular brand of Platonism. Alongside his philosophical writings, especially De deo Socratis, G. gives a profitable account of Lucretian elements in the Venus of Cupid and Psyche (Met. 4.28–6.24) and the Isis of the work's revelatory climax in Met. 11.

The fifth and most substantial chapter treats the Christian Fathers, in particular Arnobius and Lactantius. In Patristic studies this topic has enjoyed several detailed treatments since the late-nineteenth century, albeit typically restricted to the fields of philosophy and theology. After explaining the crucial concept of chresis in the context of pagan writers citing Classical authors, G. surveys Lucretius’ fate in the earliest Christian Fathers – Tertullian, Minucius Felix and Cyprian. The focus then turns to Arnobius and Lactantius, two very close readers of DRN, the latter preserving the most detailed engagement with the poem that survives from the ancient world. G. systematically explores Arnobius’ awkward fluctuation between positive and negative uses of DRN. In Lactantius we find serious engagement with Lucretius as philosophus ac poeta (Inst. 2.3.10), although G. rightly demonstrates that the common reduction of Lucretian doctrine to Epicurus’ own tenets (which he could access in Greek) muddies the water for understanding how DRN was received.

The final chapter summarises G.'s conclusions, recapitulating how the two facets of poet and philosopher diverge or intersect throughout antiquity. A well-stocked bibliography, index locorum and index nominum et rerum round off the book. This deft and careful survey provides many answers as well as raising many (often unanswerable) questions. It is hoped that its appearance will encourage research of a similar calibre in areas that lay outside its strict remit: Servius, Macrobius, Nonius, Priscian and even Isidore – to name but a few – offer up much material that still demands competent analysis.