PER L’INTERPRETAZIONE DI LUCR. 4,180-182: ICONE, SIMBOLI, STILEMI

Abstract

In 4,180-182 Lucretius programmatically insists on the sweetness of the verses rather than on the exhaustiveness of the treatment, avoiding dealing in detail with the extraordinary speed of the simulacra and their mobility in swimming through the air, making a long journey in a short space of time. Therefore, the versus, with wich the doctrinal elements will be exposed, will be suavidici. In a particularly eleborate hexametric triad, the aforementioned epithet, correspon ding to gr. and built on the Ennian model of ann. 304Sk2(suaviloquens), refers to the main qualities of Nestor, an unrivaled example of orator in the Homeric epos (Il. 1,248-249). This paper focuses on the specularity of the use of sua vidicus/suaviloquens in the rhetorical and poetic spheres, reconstructing its direct Greek precedents and hightlighting the poet’s self-celebration in the guise of a “swan” on the trail of a long tradition that from Hymni homerici arrives at the meta-literary declarations of the bucolic Virgil and the lyrical Horace passing through the prooem of the Callimachean Aetia