The Palingenesis of De rerum natura

1. If I had to sum up as concisely as I possibly can the subject matter of this paper, I would probably say that it was originally stimulated by the attempt to understand how Lucretius articulated his didactic plot. What is the plot of a poem that presents itself as analysing nothing less than ‘the nature of things’? It is safe to assume as a starting-point that a didactic poem which intends to revolutionize each and every principle of perception and evaluation of reality cannot remain unaffected by the theoretical views it tries to prove, and that the persuasive impact of those theories on the reader will inevitably be strengthened or weakened by the way the text situates itself in respect to those theories: the poem itself will be the most effective or the most damning example of its own theories.