Abstract

This dissertation analyzes personifying uses of natura to represent the Epicurean universe in the De Rerum Natura. It pays special attention to the thematic association of personified natura with other female deities in the poem. It will argue that this study demonstrates the poem presents a conception of the universe which goes beyond or contradicts orthodox Epicurean teaching, by representing the universe as a process of eternal creation and therefore as essentially meaningful, rational and purposive. One of the aims of such a representation of the All is to assuage anxiety about human mortality. There will also be a necessary, but ancillary, discussion of Lucretian poetics in which it will be argued that Lucretius' use of the literary techniques associated with poetry is not merely for the purposes of proselytizing or illustration, but has a cognitive function. In this light, the figurative level of the poem is a necessary supplement to the purely discursive level which is unable on its own to impart sufficient knowledge of the 'nature of things.'