-
The Specter of Tantalus: Didactic Latency in De rerum natura
- Transactions of the American Philological Association
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 143, Number 2, Autumn 2013
- pp. 385-403
- 10.1353/apa.2013.0008
- Article
- Additional Information
- Purchase/rental options available:
At the end of his third book, Lucretius concludes his arguments against the fear of death and the neurotic desires brought on by this fear with a metaphor that has been difficult for interpreters to fathom: et sitis aequa tenet vitai semper hiantis (3.1084). This paper offers a new reading of this passage as a tacit reference to the myth of Tantalus, which functions as a latent mythological allegory for chronic psychological dissatisfaction. This reading solves local problems of interpretation and, more significantly, provides insight into the didacticism of Lucretius’s sub-surface polemic against myth.