For Lucretius hearing, like all other sense perceptions, is material1. Early in Book 1 Lucretius gives a digest of principles concerning atomic motion and tactile sense perception that he will develop more fully in Book 4. Although he specifically speaks of smell and hearing, the physics is more or less analogous for all the senses2. What strikes against our sense organs (sensus inpellere) must be material (corporea) because nothing can touch and be touched (tangere enim et tangi; Lucr. 1.298-304) unless it is substantial3. Since all sounds, including voice and words produced by a human speaker, are likewise physically substantive, it follows that the production of hearing is a corporeal phenomenon. Atoms expelled from the body and mouth (corpore, ore; Lucr. 4. 549-50) of a person talking move through space to infiltrate and strike the ears of a hearer (4.553-62)4. These atoms are, as Koenen observes, “the acoustic equivalents of the visual simulacra, ultrafine corporal images which flow away from the sense objects and cause vision when they enter the interatomic passages of the eyes and strike them (IV 217-268)”5. As with sight, for Lucretius all verbal communications must include a source of material, material in motion, and a receptacle for material6. When put this way, the physics of orality and aurality are eroticizable and apt for depiction in sexual metaphor. Lee may have gestured toward this imagery when he used words like “pumped”, “spurt”, “stream”, and “pulse” to describe the motion of atoms moving from seen object to seeing subject7. With an eye toward sexualized discourse intrinsic to such a corporeal system, Nugent has already drawn critical attention to bodies as permeable receptors of violent ingress:
The human being considered strictly as a physical object, the “generic” Lucretian body, is remarkably porous, an open field traversed by forces. In its predisposition to pathology (i.e. from the point of view of its inevitable mortality) the body is honeycombed with orifices potentially open to assault or rape by exterior forces8.
The mechanics of speech and hearing for Lucretius is, I argue, one subdivision of this physics with a specific set of orifices and forceful movement of atomic stuff. By itself this claim would be interesting in regard to Lucretian poetics9. However, what is perhaps more remark-able is the scandalous upshot of Lucretius’ manipulation of this rather straightforward sexual image: Mars, Memmius, and the largely male, Roman audience of DRN risk being turned into effeminized repositories of semen-like verse and philosophy. I am not the first to notice such subversion in DRN. Regarding philosophers including Lucretius, Alex Dressler argues that:
While the Romans also promote [traditional] masculine ideals in their philosophy, they nevertheless, in the “literary” dimensions of that philosophy, primarily metaphor and figure, ground their theory in values ostensibly opposed to those of Socrates or modern liberals, including embodiment, vulnerability, and dependency. In doing so, the Roman philosopher entertains fantasies, strange to the reader familiar with his world, of the reversal of domination and subsequent subordination of man to the feminine entities of his speech10.
Commenting on Lucretius specifically, Dressler later claims that “Roman philosophy recognizes... the possibility... of man as a passive body like woman”11. In a similar vein but with a different collection of passages, I contend that as philosopher and poet, Lucretius figures men as effeminized receptacles and himself as the source of verbalized material even as he trades upon his own vincibility and receptiveness. I first examine an erotic image at the core of Lucretius’ treatment of speech and hearing and calibrate it with concrete language in his discussion of human sexuality. Next I show how Lucretius utilizes similar language as he depicts Venus and Mars in the poem’s opening lines. I then demonstrate how Lucretius, again with analogous sexual imagery and language, places himself in the role of Venus and his audience in the position of Mars. This was potentially embarrassing to ancient readers and I conclude the argument by offering explanation for Lucretius’ gambit. To begin to unravel this highly fraught but consistent verbal game, let us turn to Lucretius’ explanation of the physics of hearing.
Lucretius begins his account by asserting that hearing is a thoroughly tactile phenomenon. The language initially may seem colorless and technical but sexual undertones are detectible:
principio auditur sonus et uox omnis, in auris
insinuata suo pepulere ubi corpore sensum.
corpoream quoque enim uocem constare fatendumst
et sonitum, quoniam possunt inpellere sensus (Lucr. 4.524-7).
First, every sound and voice is heard when they have worked their way into ears and struck against the sense organ with their substance. Indeed we must acknowledge that voice and sound exist bodily since they are able to strike against the sense organ12.
Material (corpore, corpoream) penetrates orifices (in auris insinuata) and pounds (pepulere, inpellere) against sensitive body parts (sensus). If one views these four lines in isolation, this eroticized reading may seem forced13. But just a few lines later Lucretius uses more readily identifiable sexual terms. After reiterating that sounds and spoken words must be material (uoces uerbaque constent / corporeis e principiiis; Lucr. 4.533-4), Lucretius offers a proof:
nec te fallit item quid corporis auferat et quid
detrahat ex hominum neruis ac uiribus ipsis
perpetuus sermo nigrai noctis ad umbram
aurorae perductus ab exoriente nitore
praesertim si cum summost clamore profusus.
ergo corpoream uocem constare necessest,
multa loquens quoniam amittit de corpore partem (Lucr. 4.535-41).
Nor does it escape your notice what a continuous dialogue14 delivered from the rising brightness of dawn to the shadows of dark night removes from a body and what it takes away from men’s15 very strength and vigor. This is especially the case when a speech has been poured out with considerable audible volume. Therefore, it is necessary that voice be corporeal since he who speaks much loses a portion from his body.
The metaphor undergirding this description of sound particles passing from speaker to hearer is more patently sexual. In erotic register, uis and neruus, force and penis respectively, were terms common in literary contemporaries like Cicero and Catullus (e.g. Cic. Ver. 2.67; Sest. 16; Catul. 67.27)16. That they also bore sexual connotation in Lucretius is certain. When he describes the causes of primitive human coupling Lucretius notes that this may have happened due to “a man’s violent force” (uiolenta uiri uis; Lucr. 5.964)17. Neruus appears, as we might expect, in Lucretius’ treatment of lust and sex: “Pent up desire [i.e. semen] issued itself forth from their genitalia” (se erupit neruis conlecta cupido; Lucr. 4.1115)18. As they are used in this passage, the addition of the terms uires and nerui make the delivery of the speech vividly and perhaps even uncomfortably corporeal, a speech that is “poured out” (profusus est) as a material issue (corpoream) from the speaker’s body (de corpore). If we turn to Lucretius’ initial treatment of male ejaculation later in Book 4, we find this same language. When semen first works its way through youths’ bodies (primitus insinuatur/semen), excited by the image of beautiful people young men profundant, “pour out,” large volumes (ingentis fluctus) of semen (Lucr. 4.1030-6)19. The profundant in these verses immediately stands out but we should also note the appearance of insinuatur. Indeed, Brown observes that insinuare is “a favorite Lucretian verb for subtle or unnoticed penetration” and we have already encountered such subtlety in its sexualizing use in the pericope on sound entering ears (sonus et uox omnis in auris / insinuata)20. Of course since the youths produce the very semen that works its way through their own bodies, we are not dealing with sexual penetration from a second party, but we are in the same semantic neighborhood. Additionally, in the present passage Lucretius goes on to assert that only a human force (una hominis uis) is capable of discharging human semen (humanum semen ciet) which has coalesced near the sexual organs (in loca conueniens neruorum; Lucr. 4.1040-3). As Lucretius uses uis here it does not mean one person sexually assaulting another, but the material simulacra shearing off a person, penetrating the eyes of another, and producing a mental image that leads to the discharge of semen.
In both passages from Book 4 we find uis, profundere, and neruus used to describe material delivery. But we should also read semen into the pericope on speech and hearing. Lucretius uses semina to mean both human semen, as he does when speaking of ejaculation, and atoms, as he does early in the poem when he equates “matter” (materiem), “productive substance” (genitalia corpora), and “seeds of things” (semina rerum; Lucr. 1.58-9). Commenting on the various translational substitutes for atomi in this passage, Sedley notes that Lucretius “places the chief emphasis on their dynamic generative powers, already indicated in the procreative implications of materies (a derivative of mater), genitalia and semina”21. Thus when Lucretius states that voice is corporeal (corpoream uocem), we should also conceive it in a way resembling the seminal, issuing from a speaker to insinuate itself into the hearer (cf. Lucr. 5.1056). In other words, the one who speaks is a sexual subject compelling (uis) the hearer to become a sexually objectified receptacle22. Graver’s suggestion “that we read Lucretius’ account of sense-perception with special attention to the language of violence and vulnerability” points up the issue23. This erotic image for the physics of speech carries implications beyond poetics and Lucretius broaches these from the poem’s initial lines.
The first figure in Book 1 to be described as speaking is Venus. The tableau is famous: Mars, defeated by an eternal wound of love (aeterno deuictus uulnere amoris) lies recumbent gazing up at Venus with his mouth open (inhians; Lucr. 1.34-36)24. Although he appears to be ready to eat with mouth parted (and feeding is part of the overall image in the line; pascit... inhians; Lucr. 1.36), Mars – if his sexual appetite matches his lust for war – is not permitted to devour like some ravenous monster (Nemeaeus... magnus hiatus; Lucr. 5.24). Instead Mars must receive. Lucretius enjoins Venus to do the filling, with, for emphasis, the first word in lines 39 and 40 being forms of fundere – a term we recognize from Lucretius’ treatment of ejaculation and speech (profundere). From her draping vantage point above him (hunc... /circumfusa super), Venus is to “pour out pleasing words from her mouth” (suauis ex ore loquellas / funde; Lucr. 1.38-40)25. In light of Book 4, we must understand these spoken words to be material and semen-like. Normally we would expect ears to receive this material but Lucretius does not name them. Within the picture he creates, Mars’ open mouth26, topped by Venus’ mouth emitting the suauis loquellas from above, is the nearest open sense receptacle mentioned in the scene (though Mar’s oral feeding is also simultaneously a visual consumption (pascit... inhians... visus; Lucr. 1.36)27. Compromised in this way, Mars really is deuictus, degraded as he is to oral passivity, and, with his mouth stuffed, reduced to quietude (placidam pacem)28. Rather than a seduction this seems like something more violent, as Brown suggests29. Perhaps the tableau is closer to domination, a notion Lucretius signals a few verses previously when he makes Venus a sole governess (sola gubernas; Lucr. 1.21; cf. vi... natura gubernans; 5.77) over sexual vitality in nature30. Venus is imagined, for a brief moment, not simply as a nourishing Venus (alma Venus) from the poem’s second line, but also as Venus Victrix conquering and inseminating warlike Roman masculinity31. Pushing back against Nugent’s trenchant reading of Lucretius as an instantiation of male patriarchal writing and presumed readership, Fowler points to Venus, Mother Earth, and Natura in the poem and asserts that “However powerful the patriarchal schemata which encompass this trio, it seems to me that their energy is more than a little out of control. Venus in the prologue masters all things through her force”32. “Force” here is uis and I think that Fowler is justified in stating his case more emphatically: Venus penetrates everything and everyone, including Roman men and even Mars, an epitome of violent masculinity. Of course, by making Venus a forceful or violent penetrator – that is to say, by masculinizing her – we merely arrive back at the argument Nugent makes about Lucretius and his privileged male audience thinking narrowly about gender, sex, and power.
Though not in a seductively injurious way, this Venus Victrix is like the Venus and the woman described in Book 4 who ejaculate missiles (telis), words (verbum iaculata), and amor – their own seminal/material umor – into men (Lucr. 4.1052-57, 1137)33. And yet she remains alma Venus in her domination of Mars for she is emitting material nourishment as he feeds agape (pascit... inhians; Lucr. 1.36). She is a wholesome source like natura that nourishes all a few lines later (alatque; Lucr. 1.56). Just the opposite, in Book 4 we find a perverted iteration of this ingestion image in 1058-72 where the erotic Venus of Roman imagination, ears, ejaculated semen, atomic simulacra as food, oral ingestion, feeding, and wound language again appear together34. Still, in Book 1 we sense a hint of this more aggressive Venus as we observe her controlling her male object as he feeds from her. For a male Roman audience who would naturally identify with Mars as an embodiment of their own sexual subjectivity, this suggests a reversal of gendered power roles35. If we take the alma of Alma Venus and the alat more literally, the proem depicts Venus suckling Mars (and everyone/everything else). In a tableau with an adult male being devictus and at the same time suckled, the specter of irrumatio hovers just beneath the surface. Indeed, staging irrumation (irrumere = in + ruma), literally meaning “to put in the teat”, necessitates an actor providing the body part which suckles and an object receiving the part that issues nourishment36. For Roman men, to be conquered and fed by corporeal oral ingress is to be the victim of a sexual act that is both violent and socially destabilizing. Although her statement concerns the satirical potential of such a proposition, Richlin’s observation is germane: “The violation of the mouth (irrumation) is thus one of the most strongly charged assertions of domination possible in Roman sexual humor, and indeed in Roman society”37. It becomes still more scandalous when Lucretius later swaps out Venus and depicts himself feeding and orally penetrating his male audience.
Book 4 opens with an image of oral ingress in language that connects it to Mars’ submission to Venus. The figure is the celebrated honey-rimmed cup appearing also at 1.926-5038. Like children not wanting to drink bitter medicine, Lucretius understands that his audience naturally retracts from his message. Doctors ring their cups with honey to make the tonic potable. Lucretius’ versification of Epicurean doctrine is analogous39:
...uolui tibi suauiloquenti
carmine Pierio rationem exponere nostrum
et quasi musaeo dulci contingere melle (Lucr. 4.20-22).
I wanted to expound our argument to you with pleasing Pierian verse and, so to speak, to dab it with the Muses’ delightful honey.
To induce his audience to open their mouths and take in his ratio, Lucretius makes his words suauiloquens. Thematically and lexically, Lucretius draws our attention back to the proem in Book 1. We recall a submissive and inhians Mars into whose open mouth Venus pours her suauis loquellas. What are the suauis loquellas? Literally they are “sweet utterances”40. They are also, of necessity, substantive in Lucretius’ thoroughgoing materialism and, as noted above, they are seminal in quality. This is why Lucretius can call the atoms that variously impinge upon our senses semina in one verse and immediately equate these to the letters elementa/littera that comprise verba in 2.687-9441. We encounter this interchangeable diction (uerba, elementa) when Lucretius earlier discusses the formation of words at 1.912-13 just before the first occurrence of the honey-rimmed cup tableau and his suauiloquens carmen (1.921-50). Lucretius’ sweet-talked ratio and the loquellae of his foil Venus are atomic semina streaming toward their object. And thrice over (the Venus/Mars pericope, the two honeyed cup pericopes) he suggests that his audience part their lips and receive42.
The oral quality of the indelicate figure comes into greater focus when we view Lucretius’ discussion of the sense of taste43. The language he uses is familiar. As active subjects, smooth atoms (levia... corpora) “pleasurably seize and pleasurably handle” the objectified tongue (suauiter attingunt et suauiter... tractant; Lucr. 4.622-4)44. These corpora Lucretius renames as semina (4.644) a few lines later and tells us that they move through bodily openings (foramina 4.650, 656). For any given organism there is pleasurable (suaue) food composed of leuissima corpora (= leuissima semina) that infiltrate the gaps of its palate (caulas intrare palati; Lucr. 4.658-60). The opposite likewise penetrate (penetrant; Lucr. 4.662). Whether pleasurable or bitter, the semina “beget sense” (sensum progignere; Lucr. 4.670) in the mouth. That we are dealing in sexual procreation metaphor is certain. Indeed, later in Book 4 when Lucretius discusses human intercourse and conception we encounter terms like semina, penetrare, and suscipere, a near equivalent to progignere (Lucr. 4.1245-53).
Honey (mellis), Lucretius goes on to say in the passage on taste, is a food producing both bitter and pleasurable sensations (4.671-2)45. Lucretius’ honeyed loquellae are similarly composed to engender pleasant and bitter sensations. These seminal verses are suauis but the ratio contained in them might generate a very bitter taste (tristior; Lucr. 4.19), since they forestall participation in the excessive political agonism and wealth accumulation of the late Republic46. Nevertheless, Lucretius demonstrates that his message is palatable by first making himself orally infiltrated in the proem of Book 3 where, like a bee, he claims to gobble down all of Epicurus’ honey-like, golden words (ut apes... / omnia nos itidem depascimur aurea dicta; Lucr. 3.12)47. This language and imagery of oral consumption we have already seen with Mars feeding open mouthed on what comes from Venus (pascit... inhians; Lucr. 1.36). Moreover, a few lines before describing his honeying of the cup, he mentions that he too takes things in his mouth and does so with pleasure (iuuat... /...haurire; Lucr. 4.2-3)48. What enters his mouth though is pure (integros; Lucr. 4.2) and by extension what comes out of his mouth into the mouth/ears/eyes of his audience is likewise pure and poses no threat to the integrity of males (pueri; 4.11, 14), a perpetual anxiety at Rome49.
This atomic semen, Lucretius reiterates elsewhere, is fertile stuff50. Multiple voices are begotten (gignuntur) by one material voice making it sensible in many directions at once, Lucretius says when treating the physics of sound (Lucr. 4.603-5). This language of procreation (gignere) that we noted with the sense of taste (progignere) also appears when Lucretius discusses what this material does once inside a man’s orifices. Eyes, for instance, become womblike when struck by bright light:
praeterea splendor quicumque est acer adurit
saepe oculos ideo quod semina possidet ignis
multa, dolorem oculis quae gignunt insinuando (Lucr. 4.329-31).
Moreover whatever brightness is piercing often burns eyes due to the fact that it holds many seeds of fire which by penetrating begets discomfort for the eyes.
This semen (semina) delivered from phallically pointed (acer) light begets (gignunt) pain through entering (insinuando) eyes51. Pain from the infiltrating light is sense perception, the felt product that comes from interacting with a phenomenal world. Perception is also the offspring engendered by taking in Lucretius’ honey-worded ratio:
...uolui tibi suauiloquenti
carmine Pierio rationem exponere nostrum
et quasi musaeo dulci contingere melle,
si tibi forte animum tali ratione tenere
uersibus in nostris possem, dum percipis omnem
naturam rerum (Lucr. 4.20-25).
I wanted to expound our argument to you with pleasing Pierian verse and, so to speak, to dab it with the Muses’ delightful honey, and see whether, perhaps, I might be able to hold your mind by our verses’ import, while you perceive the entire nature of things.
Memmius and Lucretius’ audience are supposed to perceive (percipis) the phenomenal world by influx of his material and seminal argument. In these verses there is, I think, an additional bit of wordplay that is based upon the verb capere. The honey-rimmed cup of medicine, Lucretius claims, causes youth to be deceived but not captured (aetas... / ...deceptaque non capiatur; 4.14-16)52. The suauiloquens carmen is to have the same effect on Lucretius’ audience, harmlessly deceiving and holding them. But like we have seen throughout the discussion, there is a darker, erotic edge to this image of sweet deception. By using the language of seizure, Lucretius both anticipates and plays upon anxieties linked to youth at risk of being charmed, enthralled, lead astray, or corrupted, all negative valences associated with decipio and capere53. Warping the youth, both intellectually and sexually, was a topos at least since Plato’s Socrates and we can be sure that Lucretius was not ignorant of it. Lucretius acknowledges the deception he foists upon his audience to seduce them philosophically, even raising the stakes with poetic feints toward erotic permeability, while at the same time denying any commission of real stuprum. Like alma Venus of the proem who leads on nature’s beasts captured by her charm (capta lepore; Lucr. 1.15), by making his verses charmingly (lepore; 4.9) potable, Lucretius captivates his audience and provides rational explanation so that they can intellectually grasp nature’s laws (percipis omnem naturam rerum; 4.24-25). The offspring born from this sweetened, seminal libation is perception.
There is no doubt that this manifold and repeated metaphor is subversive. Roman men orally and aurally objectified54! But such subversion is already signaled from the poem’s earliest verses before we arrive at Venus’ conquest of Mars’ orifices. If we continue to cycle back to alma Venus where Lucretius describes the power that she wields over biological reproduction among animals (omne genus animantum / concipitur; Lucr. 1.4-5), he notes that birds are “struck to the heart by your [Venus’] force” (perculsae corda tua ui; Lucr. 1.13). Uis we have already seen in examining the section describing the forcefulness of a delivered speech and forced sexual congress. This uis anticipates procreation (saecla propagent; Lucr. 1.20) among the fauna and becomes the uis in the domination of Mars that generates peace for Romans and the offspring of the Memmii (Memmi... propago; Lucr. 1.42). Just as Venus forcefully penetrates animals (perculsae corda, incutiens per pectora amorem; Lucr. 1.20, 19) with her reproductive potency, so she overpowers and infiltrates Mars’ wound, mouth, and ears55. Although he, adept at uis and violent penetration (armipotens), lies suggestively near Venus’ gremium (Lucr. 1.33), Mars is rendered the pathic, penetrated as he is by her seminal speech56. Lucretius gives Venus the gremium but makes Mars the receptacle57. This is not the only passage in which a Venus becomes a phallus. When Lucretius later takes up the question of human sexuality, he will refer to a man’s penis metonymically as a Venus (viri venerem) which emits semina (Lucr. 4.1270, 1273)58. That a female Venus can be thought to release semen accords with Lucretius espousing, in this same passage, a two-seed theory in which males and females produce semen (4.1209-62)59. This subversion of gender norms along with transferals of material from subject to object Lucretius revisits in the closing lines of his critique of human sexuality. In a positive vision of intimacy between a man and woman, Lucretius states that sometimes a woman overcomes a man. In such a relationship, a man is like a thing “assaulted by frequent blow” (crebro tunditur ictu) and thus “defeated” (uincitur; cf. deuictus 1.34). With language sign-post-ing back to his earlier verses on Venus, semen (gutta, umor), ejaculation (iacere), and feeding (alendo) on atomic simulacra (4.1058-68), Lucretius illustrates his point by comparing the woman’s conquest over the man to falling drops of liquid forcefully penetrating stones (guttas... cadentis / umoris... pertundere saxa; 4.1284-7)60.
In lines following the submission of Mars, Lucretius further develops the notion of orifices materially infiltrated. If lines 1.44-49 about the gods’ utmost peace (summa pax; Lucr. 1.45) belong in the text, Lucretius picks up his argument after a half dozen lines starting at 50. If the contested verses are excluded, we find an uninterrupted, logical step61. Either way, Lucretius moves from mythical tableau to reality. No longer dealing in figures or archetypes, Lucretius comes to the heart of the matter, commanding his human audience to “apply unfilled ears to right thinking” (uacuas auris... / ...adhibe ueram ad rationem; Lucr. 1.51). And who will do the talking now that he has pivoted from Venus? Lucretius himself, with language immediately invoking seed-scattering. Concerning the heavens and gods, “I shall begin to sow”, he says and, “I shall make accessible the basic substance of things” (disserere incipiam, et rerum primordia pandam; Lucr. 1.54-5)62. But in explaining the primordia, Lucretius is also issuing – whether audibly through speech or visually through written words – material primordia, which he calls semina four lines later (1.59). The image is now expected: Lucretius as poet broadcasts (disserere) seminal atoms that enter the orifices (here the uacuae aures) of the audience. And, like Venus speaking to Mars in order to produce tranquility for Romans, Lucretius is going to fill the ears of humans with material reason in order to free them from the fears engendered by religio (1.62-79, 102-111), death (1.112-26), and natural phenomena (1.127-30)63.
Lucretius’ figure of seminal speech may not just be provocative imagery overlaying Epicurean physics. If Lucretius interacts with the early Stoa or the Stoicism of his era, a reasonable supposition, we need to assess further what he might be doing with this figure in regard to Epicureanism’s main rival64. An enduring Stoic concept from Zeno onward were the oft-mentioned σπερματικοὶ λόγοι (“generative principles”; e.g. SVF 1.102b, 2.1027)65. As quasi-metaphysical, quasi-elemental seeds of divine causation sown to link together the entire cosmos, σπερματικοὶ λόγοι do not, of course, map onto thoroughgoing materialism. The basic tenets of Epicurus’ philosophy – an infinite universe of void and atoms without reason or purpose – stands in sharp contrast to such a (patently ridiculous, to an Epicurean) theory. Perceived absurdity of the concept along with the sexual sounding technical term may have rendered it an appealing target for poetic wordplay. Indeed, the potentially sexual valence of the phrase was assumed by Stoics themselves. Thus, concerning deity Stoics could say, “and just as sperm is enclosed in seminal fluid, so also god is the generative principle of the cosmos” (καὶ ὥσπερ ἐν τῇ γονῇ τὸ σπέρμα περιέχεται, οὕτω καὶ τοῦτον σπερματικὸν λόγον ὄντα τοῦ κόσμου; Diog. Laert. 7.136). Moreover, with no apparent embarrassment, Chrysippus seems to interpret a painting of Zeus orally penetrating Hera to indicate the Stoic concept of reason-bearing σπερματικοὶ λόγοι entering inchoate, feminine matter66. The phrase was plausibly available to Lucretius fully eroticized and ready to be turned back subversively against this sort of masculinized subjectivity. So, for Lucretius, spoken words are composed of semen / atoms – quite literally σπερματικοὶ λόγοι – that he receives from Epicurus and in turn pours into the receptive orifices of Roman men to engender in them rational perception. In addition to repurposing this common Stoic locution and its gendered philosophical discourse, Lucretius reduces it to mundanity. Uttered σπερματικοὶ λόγοι are not pneumatic, chained particles of divine will. They are simply contingent material things with no greater purpose than with what the speaker and recipient endow them67. Catcalls and philosophical axioms are materially the same and communicative of no cosmic design. As though to toy with Zeno’s interpretation of the painting in which Zeus irrumates Hera, Lucretius commences the poem depicting first Venus and then himself pouring out his version of σπερματικοὶ λόγοι right into the open mouth and receptive ears of his Roman audience likely more sympathetic to Stoic principles and Zeus’ sovereignty68.
Lucretius’ use of orality can be seen also in his repeated use of the verb hiare, its related forms, and analogous terms69. As we observed above, not many lines after Lucretius fashions the image of Venus pouring her seminal loquellae into the open mouth (inhians) of Mars, he invites Memmius (or the general audience) to tender his capacious ears (auris uacuas) to rational explanation of things70. We also noted that although Mars’ oral cavity (and ears) stands open to take in, his mouth is not yawning wide for monstrous consumption like the Nemean lion we encounter in the introduction to Book 5 (Nemeaeus... magnus hiatus; Lucr. 5.24). Voraciousness, or more accurately, its opposite, subsistence level consumption, Lucretius addresses in lines preceding the appearance of the ravenous monster. After stating that people have divinized the givers of wine and grain, Lucretius comments that “it is possible for life to persist without these things” (his posset sine rebus vita manere; Lucr. 5.16). The theme that subsistence level consumption is sufficient for the Epicurean sage Lucretius will reiterate and develop later at 5.1117-19. In this passage, following up on his claim about basic maintenance, Lucretius points rather to the state of one’s mind as the primary component for flourishing existence: “It was not possible to live well without a mind made pure (at bene non poterat sine puro pectore uiui; Lucr. 5.18)71. I take pectus here metonymically as “mind” since we know from an earlier portion of the poem that the chest is the seat of the mind (idque situm media regione in pectoris haeret; Lucr. 3.140) and a literal reading like “clean chest” is nonsensical. If we return again to the proem, we also find that animals’ pectora are the objects of Venus’ violent penetration (“hurling pleasant love into their breasts/minds” omnibus incutiens blandum per pectora amorem; Lucr. 1.19).
When we read just fifteen lines later that Mars is overcome with a perpetual wound of love (aeterno devictus vulnere amoris), we are not stretching, I think, if we understand that the anatomical site of his wound, similarly, is his chest, the seat of his animus/mens (Lucr. 3.139). His mind/chest, like the animals subject to Venus’ uis, has been forced and lies open to receive the influx of Venus’ suaues loquellae (cf. the blandum amorem that Venus forces into the animals’ chests in 1.19; and perhaps here again amor = umor)72. The shift from organisms and apertures in their chests/minds which Venus fills with the drive to reproduce to Mars and his receptive chest/mind and mouth is a shift from the functions of nature (sexual procreation) to Nature’s ethical message that Lucretius seeks to instill in his audience: people are never content with attainable pleasures. Instead an “undeviating thirst for life keeps us gaping” (sitis aequa tenet uitai semper hiantis; Lucr. 3.1084) like the dreamer who thirsts while he drinks (sitit... potans; 4.1100) and those in the plague who fall into wells “with mouth agape” (ore patente; 6.1175) but find no relief (6.1176-77)73. Gape though one will, death’s door always “lies open with a vast and terrifying mouth” (patet immani et vasto... hiatu; Lucr. 5.375). The reality is, according to Lucretius, no matter one’s hunger to live and consume pleasures, nature’s semina will not cohere forever and everyone, people of Memmius’ status included, must die. And since endless consumption results in injurious surfeit on the one hand (rerum copia; Lucr. 5.1007-8) and violence-inducing envy on the other (invidia; 5.1126, 1127, 1419), both impediments to tranquility, the rational and pleasurable course of action is to cease taking and consuming more than necessary74. To gaze agape into death’s yawning maw is to be filled with reason to shut one’s own mouth and be satisfied. It is just the opposite to the comportment of the old man whom Nature harangues in Book 3 since he “always craves for what is absent” (semper aves quod abest) and over whom death (mors) looms before he can depart sated and full (satur ac plenus; Lucr. 3.957-60). Of course, we cannot actually peer into a figural mouth of death to gain this salutary perspective and concomitant ethical precept, but Lucretius’ material, seminal verse conveys the image into our waiting sense organs75.
As noted, the suggestion of something like oral ingestion or irrumation here, if taken literally by a Roman man of Memmius’ status, would be subversive76. Just the opposite, normative power structures would license a figure like Memmius to play the role of irrumator rather than the irrumated77. On a different arc, by dedicating his poem to a figure of such rank as Memmius, there is a tacit admission, perhaps, that Lucretius occupies a lower position on the social ladder78. Consequently, though he need not abase himself to the depths of a fellator, one might expect that Lucretius take an ingratiating posture toward a social superior whose attention he wants to hold79. But here, as in so much of his poem, Lucretius’ message upends Roman mores80. Memmius will be the one to lie back and receive what Lucretius is delivering, not a grandiose Priapic assertion of domination and consumption, but philosophical protreptic to unchain oneself from such pursuits81. Volk’s description captures this forceful subject-to-object, speech quality of the poem.
Reading De rerum natura is an intense experience. Far from providing an impersonal, disinterested exposition of Epicurean physics, the poem takes the form of a speech by the persona to the addressee, the tone of which is urgent, sometimes even aggressive. At no points are we allowed to forget that it is the teacher who is speaking, that he is speaking to the student, and that the subject he is teaching is one of enormous importance82.
To make this palatable, Lucretius sweetens his verses and brandishes provocative figures like oral ingress that scintillate with scandalous playfulness83.
Although Memmius is on the receiving end of the coarse jest, Lucretius soberly shows him means by which he can liberate himself from what is genuinely degrading – the vexatious and dangerous reality of social and political climbing at Rome84. Memmius gains opportunity to drink in Epicurean teachings issued pure from Lucretius’ mouth and avoid fighting along the straitened routes of political ambition (angustum per iter luctantes ambitionis), a path that comes from seeking wisdom from “another’s mouth” (alieno ex ore; Lucr. 5.1132-3)85. This mouth-to-mouth transmission grants Memmius and the rest of Lucretius’ audience access to new knowledge that can ameliorate life, like the primitive humans into whose minds “it penetrated” (penetrabat eos; 5.1262) that it was possible for metals to be formed into useful tools86. However, until, as Graver phrases it, a reader “has been able to take in all of the nature of things”, this proposition must remain scandalous87. But to take it all in, to be soft, that most detestable physical and moral state for Roman men (e.g. Cic. Tusc. 2.27; Cat. 25.1, 10), is Lucretius’ end game88. It also marks, for Lucretius, our initial step beyond bestial living (more ferarum; 5.932) when “the human race first began to soften” (tum genus humanum primum mollescere coepit; 5.1014). Mutual security and freedom from pain, the interlocking goals of Epicurean philosophy, then flourish (Lucr. 5.1019-23; cf. Epicurus RS 31, 31, 33)89.