How On the Nature of Things drew on The Iliad
A documented line of influence: Lucretius demonstrably engaged Homer’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
The Iliad
Homer · c. 750 BCE
Ancient GreeceThe influenced
On the Nature of Things
Lucretius · c. 55 BCE
Ancient RomeRelevance
6/10
On On the Nature of Things’s page
- Lucretius frames his Epicurean poem with the Iliad — naming Homer as poetry's standard-bearer in the Book 3 proem and reworking the famous shield-passage into a vision of the world
- The epic is his deliberate model and foil: he writes didactic verse in Homer's high register, then turns it toward atoms and the void
- With the Iliad behind you, the proems read as what they are — an invitation to read the oldest epic through Epicurus's eyes
On The Iliad’s page
- Lucretius makes Homer the standard-bearer of poetry — and then bends him to Epicurus
- He imitates the Iliad's great shield-ecphrasis (Book 18), reading Achilles' shield as an image of the cosmos, and salutes Homer in the proem to Book 3
- The oldest epic becomes the model Lucretius writes his didactic poem against — an invitation to read Homer philosophically