Laughing Atoms, Laughing Matter: Lucretius' De Rerum Natura and Satire by T.H.M. Gellar-Goad (review)

As Gellar-Goad acknowledges in his introduction (6-9) and with comprehensive citation throughout this book, scholars have long detected satiric themes, voices and passages in De Rerum Natura. With this thorough study, Gellar-Goad revisits, supplements, explicates and theorizes these in a way that will benefit how scholars read Lucretius and his relationship with satire henceforth.

A concise introduction reviews previous scholarship on didactic and satiric poetry and articulates the author's views on De Rerum Natura's audience and the persona of the first-person speaker (he refers to the "Lucretian-ego" vel sim., throughout). The final pages of the introduction provide a précis of the book that mirrors the titles of chapters and subsections outlined in the table of contents.

Chapter 1 lays essential groundwork for the study by introducing the two ways in which Gellar-Goad approaches satire: 1) with an eye on Roman verse satire, primarily poetry by Ennius, Lucilius, Horace, Persius and Juvenal; and 2) through the satiric mode, or works that "do satire" (26) but are not part of the circumscribed Roman genre. Chapters 2 and 3 focus on earlier and later verse satire, respectively, with most sections documenting textual allusions between De Rerum Natura and poems by specific satirists. The latter half of Chapter 3 varies the approach by identifying topoi that appear in Lucretius and recur in Horace, Persius and Juvenal in ways that reflect the distinct satiric voices and tendencies of these later poets. Chapter 4 pivots to documenting the satiric mode in De Rerum Natura, with particular attention to the Lucretian speaker's satiric voice, and Chapter 5 identifies and tugs at the knot that forms between satiric and didactic modes when the "indefinite, ambiguous, and elusive" (173) nature of the satiric voice conflicts with the "straightforward, fair, and consistent" (174) ambitions of didaxis. Chapter 6 acknowledges the centrality of Rome to both verse satire and Lucretius' poem before identifying "set pieces" (185) of civic satire at the ends of Books 2-6 of De Rerum Natura. In a brief conclusion, Gellar-Goad suggests that satire in De Rerum Natura creates and caters to a "divided audience" (215-219) and thus encourages diverse reading—and rereading—experiences.

Detailed signposting appears throughout, ensuring that readers receive regular reminders of what is under discussion in a given section and of how it relates to the broader argument. A further consequence: after the first chapter, much of book can be read out of sequence, as Gellar-Goad's conclusion tacitly acknowledges when he summarizes the chapters in a different order than that in which they unfold. A comprehensive general index and index locorum also permit readers to browse to specific topics, terms and passages.

Gellar-Goad's book succeeds absolutely in its aim of documenting "how important satire is to Lucretius' De Rerum Natura, and how important De Rerum Natura is to satire" (211), and explorations of the satiric mode make Chapters 4 and 5 especially rewarding. Gellar-Goad also evinces a talent for concisely reviewing historical or ongoing debates in scholarship and situating his own conclusions—constructively—within those debates. Quarrels feel more like quibbles when set against the extent of Gellar-Goad's evidence and accompanying argumentation, but there remain a few larger questions that I wish someone with such command of the material had explored at greater length.

A section in Chapter 1 on the risks of satire contains the succinct declaration: "[O]ne of the greatest risks of the satiric act […] is its challenge to epistemic certainty" (37). I agree, yet the statement raises the question of what the Lucretianego, whose avowed objective involves instilling epistemic certainty in his addressee(s) about the nature of the universe, achieves with a satiric voice that he could not have achieved without it. Gellar-Goad profitably identifies...