The Historical Imagination of Lucretius

Extract

ProfessorParatore, in a book that I suspect is too little known to students of Lucretius, has called the Fifth Book of the De Rerum Natura ‘perhaps the richest in poetic inspiration’ in the poem. No part of his subject, it seems, fired the poet's imagination more; and it is the quality of Lucretius' imagination as it is seen in his account of the early history of mankind that I have chosen to discuss. The role of the imagination in the work of the historian is reviewed by Professor G. R. Elton in his book The Practice of History: ‘The discovery of truth requires not only the equipment already discussed–acquaintance with the available evidence and scholarly assessment of it—but also imaginative reconstruction and interpretation. Evidence is the surviving deposit of an historical event; in order to rediscover the event, the historian must read not only with the analytical eye of the investigator but also with the comprehensive eye of the story-teller. The truth is the product of this double process.’ For a good deal of what he says about the history of early man Lucretius had very little evidence as we account it. He had some previous scholarly literature at his disposal, but most of that was theoretical: neither he nor his sources had access to the archaeological and geological record. Yet in certain parts of his subject, as we shall see, this enforced ignorance did not hamper him as much as might be expected, even in comparison with a modern investigator.