How The Odes of Horace drew on On the Nature of Things
A documented line of influence: Horatius demonstrably engaged Lucretius’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
On the Nature of Things
Lucretius · c. 55 BCE
Ancient RomeThe influenced
The Odes of Horace
Horatius · 23 BCE
Ancient RomeRelevance
6/10
On The Odes of Horace’s page
- Horace knew Lucretius's verses intimately and alludes to him constantly — Odes 1.4 opens with a winter-melting spring lifted from the proem of On the Nature of Things
- Epicureanism, Lucretius's philosophy, is the dominant current in the Odes, coloring roughly twice as many poems as Stoicism
- Read On the Nature of Things first and Horace's carpe-diem mood reveals its source — the cold physics of a world that renews itself without you
On On the Nature of Things’s page
- Horace knew Lucretius's verses intimately, and On the Nature of Things is the dominant philosophical current in the Odes — Epicureanism colors roughly twice as many odes as Stoicism
- The melting-spring opening of Odes 1.4 echoes the proem of On the Nature of Things, with its Venus-and-spring tableau
- Lucretius supplied Horace the frame for his great theme: the world renews, but you will not — so seize the day