The Rhetoric of Materials: Thucydides and Lucretius

In this article, analyses of Thucydides' story of the Spartan siege of Plataea (2.71-78) and of his plague narrative (2.47-54) show that Thucydides' references to natural and man-made materials characterize actors and events and are deployed for the exploration of political, cultural, and scientific themes. At the same time, Thucydides' references respond to his fifth-century reader's knowledge and concerns: Thucydides' readers were not Epicureans. I argue that Thucydidean narrative is therefore less friendly to Epicurean re-use than is sometimes assumed. Lucretius, the poet of the material, perceived this, and his reworking of Thucydides' powerful plague narrative aims to turn it to Epicurean ends.