How On the Nature of Things drew on Theogony/Works and Days
A documented line of influence: Lucretius demonstrably engaged Hesiod’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
Theogony/Works and Days
Hesiod · c. 700 BCE
Ancient GreeceThe influenced
On the Nature of Things
Lucretius · c. 55 BCE
Ancient RomeRelevance
5/10
On On the Nature of Things’s page
- Lucretius opens by summoning the Muses — a deliberate nod to the proems of Homer, Ennius, and Hesiod, the convention Hesiod founded
- He lifts the Golden-Age coloring of Hesiod's Works and Days for his own picture of early humanity, then strips out the interfering gods — the whole point of an Epicurean rewrite
- Hesiod is the ancestor of the form On the Nature of Things perfects: verse that explains the cosmos rather than narrates a war
On Theogony/Works and Days’s page
- Hesiod invented the didactic poem — verse that teaches you how the world is built — and Lucretius is writing squarely in the tradition he founded
- On the Nature of Things reworks Hesiod's account of early human history, borrowing the Golden-Age coloring of Works and Days while quietly stripping out the meddling gods
- Read Hesiod first and you'll hear the genre's opening note: the Muse-invocation Lucretius echoes in his own proem, alongside Homer and Ennius