BMCR 2009.05.24: Gladhill on Garani, Empedocles Redivivus: Poetry and Analogy in Lucretius. Studies in Classics

Myrto Garani, Empedocles Redivivus: Poetry and Analogy in Lucretius.
Studies in Classics.  London/New York:  Routledge, 2007.  Pp. xii, 324.
ISBN 9780415988490.  $95.00.

Reviewed by Bill Gladhill, McGill University
([email protected])
Word count:  2158 words
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[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review.]

Myrto Garani, in her revised dissertation Empedocles Redivivus: Poetry
and Analogy in Lucretius, has written an important book which
challenges the influential assertion of David Sedley, that Lucretius's
debt to Empedocles goes little beyond poetics, generic affiliation, and
discrete physical descriptions of certain cosmic processes.[[1]]
Instead, Garani follows the argument of David Furley, that Lucretius's
philosophical affiliation to Empedocles is deep and foundational.[[2]]
But more significantly, Empedocles Redivivus comes within a decade of
the hundred-year anniversary of the publication of the seminal works of
Diehls and Jobst, whose impact on the study of the Greek and Roman
physiologoi strikes deep.[[3]] Although it is too early to know for
sure, it seems that we are witnessing an Empedoclean revival similar to
that witnessed in the 1960s (itself undoubtedly catalyzed by the
publication of Diehls and Kranz in 1956) as suggested by the
publication of Annette Rosenfeld-Loeffler's La poe/tique d' Empe/docle:
Cosmologie et me/taphore in France in the same year as Empedocles
Redivivus.  A century from now Sedley's groundbreaking work concomitant
with the publication of the Strasburg papyrus by Martin and Primavesi
in 1999 will be considered the terminus post quem of this resurgence.
While scholars have been grappling with the profundity and complexity
of our fragmentary Empedocles and his influence on Lucretius's poetry,
the time is ripe to build upon this recent scholarly energy and to
explore Empedoclean poetics and philosophy in Roman poetry beyond the
De Rerum Natura.  As Garani herself states in the final sentence of her
study, Empedocles Redivivus could be a catalyst for a more formal and
thorough investigation of Empedocleanism in Augustan Poetry, and
ultimately this potential is the most important consequence of Garani's
book.

Garani argues that when Lucretius praises Empedocles' praeclara reperta
at De Rerum Natura 1.731-33, he is motivated by his "predecessor's
epistemological methods of inquiry into the unseen" (16), methods which
come in the form of personifications, similes and metaphors.  These
literary devices are employed by Empedocles to create analogies between
the visible and invisible world, between the macrocosm and the
microcosm, which lift the mask from reality to reveal the true physical
and philosophical face of the universe. Garani suggests that
epistemological methods are accompanied by intertexts between Lucretius
and Empedocles through which one is able to see a twofold strategy in
Lucretius's reception of Empedocles: (1) in those instances where
Empedoclean analogies contain an Epicurean kinship, Lucretius utilizes
Empedocles' innovative arguments to prove Epicurean points; (2) with
respect to analogies that are untenable according to Epicurean
philosophy, Lucretius rejects the Empedoclean content and situates the
analogy within an Epicurean context.

Empedocles Redivivus begins by covering the necessary scholarly
background and lays the analytical foundations upon which the remainder
of the book rests.  The Introduction is followed by Chapter One:
Personification, Chapter Two: Similes, and Chapter Three: Metaphors.
The book ends with a brief Epilogue, rich and detailed Endnotes, a
Bibliography, a useful Index Locorum, and a General Index.

I will proceed by summarizing the contents of each chapter,
highlighting their merits, and will end the review with a few
criticisms.  The Introduction begins with the famous encomium to
Empedocles (De Rerum Natura 1.714-741).  Garani discusses the deep and
marked respect Lucretius grants to his materialist predecessor in order
to rehearse the scholarly debate over the implications of this praise.
She succinctly covers the ancient evidence of Epicurean hostility to
Empedocles' theory of the four elements and Lucretius's own dismantling
of various aspects of Empedoclean philosophy.  But further
investigation into Lucretius's thought shows that Epicureanism shares
much with Empedoclean notions of eternal growth and decay, the
subdivision of the cosmos into four roots (at a level once removed from
the atom), and certain features of zoogonicactivity (to name only a few
examples).  Garani sides with the suggestion of G.L. Campbell, that
Lucretius possibly saw close connections between the philosophy of
Epicurus and Empedocles and therefore infused his poem with further
Empedoclean elements on the basis of their shared or similar tenets.
The common denominator that most forcefully connects Empedocles to
Epicurus and Lucretius is the value of analogical thought; through
sensory experience of perceptible reality the natural processes
occurring within the macrocosm can be used as a point of analogy for
the unseen actions of the microcosm.  Therefore, similes, metaphors,
and personifications are not instances of poetic artifice, but the
tools of the trade of physiologoi and didactic poets.

In Chapter One: Personification, Garani explores the use of
personification in the De Rerum Natura as a way to illuminate abstract
natural forces and to visualize the invisible first principles. Her
investigation moves through a vast array of topics on the animation of
primary elements, the role of sexual imagery and friendship,
socio-political imagery, warfare, the universe as Makranthropos, and
the earth-mother personification.  While showing great sensitivity to
the multiplicity of associations in Lucretius's opening hymn to Venus,
her analysis moves through the well-trodden path of its Empedoclean
influence and the allegorical embrace of Love and Strife in the form of
Venus and Mars.  Her discussion reminds one of the fact that "openings"
of texts are major points of interpretation, and at a certain level the
scholarly aporia concerning the opening of the De Rerum Natura is in
actuality a function of the general interpretative problems inherent in
openings themselves.[[4]]  Garani shows with varying degrees of success
that at each point of contact between Lucretius and Empedocles,
Lucretius divests the original Empedoclean personification of its
philosophical content, replacing it with Epicurean doctrine.

Chapter Two: Similes is a wide-ranging study in which Garani shows that
while all ancient physiologoiuse similes in order to speculate about
astrological or invisible aspects of nature, Empedocles, in particular,
impacted the form and content of Lucretius's similes.  She investigates
the role of the Homeric simile in the works of both poets and how
Lucretius adopts particularly useful Empedoclean strategies for
philosophical exegesis.  Garani dissects with illuminating precision
the subtlety and ingenuity of Lucretius's utilization of multiple
correspondence similes (called "multi-dimensional similes" by Garani).
Through the accumulation of "vehicles" around a single "tenor"
Lucretius elucidates the obscure operations of the unseen world and
shows a marked improvement over Empedocles' deployment of vehicles.  In
fragment B100, for example, Empedocles compares respiration to the
operation of a clepsydra, but he then characterizes the clepsydra in
martial terms, ignoring how this metaphor might actually obscure the
operation of the lungs, his original tenor.  Empedocles, Garani
suggests, sacrificed clarity for poetic effect.  Lucretius, on the
other hand, maps vehicles upon vehicles in order to approach the myriad
qualities of the tenor from as many perspectives as possible, resulting
in more vivid clarity.  Her discussion goes beyond just Empedoclean
influence on Lucretius; Lucretius is merely one of many philosophers
who followed Empedocles' analogical approach, but Lucretius is the most
successful and profound successor in his employment of
multiple-correspondence similes and transfusion.

Garani concludes her study with a thorough analysis of Lucretius's
deployment of Empedoclean metaphors.  She focuses on four metaphors in
particular: "piecing together the primary elements," "filling or
emptying the atomic container," "flowing water," and "squeezing out the
sponge."  She organizes the metaphors in this way in order to focus on
the fact that Empedocles' metaphors for the admixture of primary
elements rely on the presence of effluences and pores. The evidence of
Empedoclean influence on Lucretius on this point is scant, being based
on just a few fragments, but she suggests that Epicurus shared
Empedocles' general notion that two things are best joined when the
pores of one object are symmetrical with the effluences of another.
Based on this common point, Garani suggests that Lucretius was
sensitive to the debt his master owed to Empedocles, and that
Lucretius's inclusion of Empedocles' metaphors concerning theories of
admixture and pores is a gesture to Empedoclean influence on Epicurean
physics.  While Garani argues that Lucretius found in Empedocles'
poetry the source metaphors for his own depiction of atomic action, she
concludes that the notions of atoms and void regulated Lucretius's
reception of Empedoclean metaphors.  Furthermore, Lucretius went well
beyond Empedocles, and even Epicurus, by synthesizing conventional and
unconventional metaphors into a coherent metaphorical methodology,
which allowed the poet to incorporate seemingly dissimilar concepts and
processes into an overarching theory of universal action that
emphasized the underlying homogeneity of the cosmos.  The book ends
with a restatement of her findings in a short Epilogue.

Garani's conclusions suggest that because Epicurus shared many
doctrinal beliefs with Empedocles, Lucretius was free to mine the poet
for innovative and useful analogies, provided that he injected a
healthy dose of Epicureanism into them.  Furthermore, if Lucretius is
as intellectually indebted to Empedocles as Garani claims, then
scholars must reevaluate Lucretius's relationship with other
non-Epicurean philosophers.

While the general thrust of Garani's arguments throughout the book is
illuminating, and one will have learned a great deal about Lucretius's
methodology in reading the Empedocles Redivivus, I do have a few
criticisms.  Garani attempts to buttress Empedocles' philosophical
influence on Lucretius, but her evidence does not so much present a
case for philosophical dependence as it does for methodological
affiliation.  These are not the same thing, and outside of the theory
of pores and effluences, little evidence is presented that would refute
Sedley's claim that the primary Empedoclean influence on Lucretius is
poetic, generic and concerned with discrete physical processes.
Furthermore, many of Garani's claims rely on supposed intertextual
connections between Empedocles and Lucretius.  Certain readers will not
accept some of the instances of intertextuality.  It is often the case
that a possible Empedoclean interntext is just as likely--if not more
likely--derived from Epicurus or some other philosopher.  Even more
detrimental to her analysis is her lack of interest in unearthing the
underlying rationale for cases of intertextuality.  When she does dig
into these references, her results are exciting, but there are many
intertexts left behind.  Garani would have been well served to employ
Richard Thomas' typology of intertextual reference in order to
distinguish between those instances that are merely casual and those
that have a more profound force.[[5]]  Outside of a few significant
examples, most cases of intertextuality are casual at best.

Lastly, I would like to highlight a pitfall of elucidating Lucretian
thought primarily through Greek texts to the exclusion of broader
concerns.  Garani states that the meaning of "bonds" in the phrase
foedera naturai is a particularly innovative semantic shift, and
without a doubt the phrase is highly marked.  She states that the idea
ultimately looks back to B30.3, Empedocles' horkos between Love and
Strife.  She points to horkos' etymological connection to herkos,
"constraint" or "enclosure," and argues that Lucretius "revives the
concept of binding that was already latent in Empedocles' oath and
transfers it to foedera."  She then suggests that alte terminus haerens
reflects the fact that Lucretius married foedus and terminus in order
to transfer horkos and herkos into his poem.  It is unlikely that
Lucretius is alluding to Empedocles here, and it is less likely that he
uses foedera naturai to transfer into his text horkos and herkos.  The
idea of "binding" was always an inherent quality of Roman foedera as we
see in Cicero's definition of foedus at Pro Balbo 10.7: contra foedus,
id est contra populi religionem et fides.  This religious "binding" (if
this is in fact the true etymology) is carried over into international
policy, whereby words such as obligare, adligare, inligare, and tenere
often describe the restraints imposed through foedera on allies of Rome
(see AUC 3.56, 21.18, 35.46, 38.33, 42.23, and 45.25).  Furthermore,
foedera were implicitly concerned with the creation of fines and
termini between states.  To take one example from Livy (AUC 21.2.7): a
foedus with Hasdrubal outlines, ut finis utriusque imperii esset amnis
Hiberus Saguntinisque mediis imperia duorum populorum libertas
servaretur.  Or we could look to Lucan's description of the Rubicon as
Gallica certus/ limes ab Ausoniis disterminat arva colonis (BC
1.215-16).  It is notable that Caesar states procul hinc iam foedera
sunto (BC 1.226) the very moment after he has crossed the limes and
terminus.  In addition, fides, without which foedera could not exist,
and the performance of fides by a iunctio dextrarum, are much more
influential on Lucretius's choice of foedera naturai than any text.
There is no need to look to Empedocles, ablaut patterns, and Greek
culture to see that fines, termini, iunctiones, ligationes, et cetera
were innate qualities of foedera.  I would even go so far as to suggest
that it was these cognitive associations implicit in foedera that
motivated many of Lucretius's profoundly influential descriptions of
atomic activity.

Ultimately, Empedocles Redivivus is an important contribution to the
study of Empedocles and Lucretius, and in spite of my criticisms, there
is a great deal of original and careful thought here that powerfully
reveals Lucretius's profound and creative reception of his poetic and
philosophical predecessors.

Introduction
Chapter One: Personification
Chapter Two: Similes
Chapter Three: Metaphors
Epilogue
Notes
List of Translations
Bibliography
Index
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Notes:


1.   See D. Sedley, Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom
(Cambridge)
1998 and "Lucretius and the New Empedocles," LICS 2.4 (2003) 1-12.

2.   D. Furley, "Variations on Themes from Empedocles in Lucretius'
Proem," BICS 17 (1970) 55-64.

3.   H. Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (Berlin) 1903 and F.
Jobst, Ueber da Verhaeltnis zwischen Lukretius und Empedokles (diss.,
Munich) 1907.

4.   See the recent publication B. Richardson, ed., Narrative
Beginnings: Theories and Practices (Nebraska) 2009.

5.   R. Thomas, "Virgil's Georgics and the Art of Reference," HSCP 90
(1986) 171-98.  This reference is absent from Garani's bibliography.