The Cosmic-Text: Metapoetics and Philosophy in Latin Literature

In De raptu Proserpinae, the late antique poet Claudian remakes the myth of Proserpina's abduction and marriage to Pluto by introducing elements of natural philosophy into the traditional story. An illustrative example of Claudian's natural philosophical perspective can be found in his ekphrasis of the textile that Proserpina weaves and embroiders for her mother at the end of the first book (DRP 1.248-70).

The Argo’s voyage is commonly seen as a world-shaping voyage, opening maritime barriers and leaving traces of its passage in ritual and physical space from furthest east to furthest west (e.g., Williams, Hunter, Clare, Thalmann); but its traces are also visible in the heavens, particularly as the constellation of the catasterized Argo, a topic which has received some limited treatment in scholarship (e.g., Murray on Apollonius Rhodius; Castelletti and Krasne on Valerius Flaccus).

Ovid in Fasti 6 (269-80) compares the structure of the world to a physical replica of it in the form of the armillary sphere of Archimedes. Ovid’s description of the armillary sphere as a world within a world is arguably his most complex and intricate conception of the structure and workings of the cosmos and one which integrates a series of allusions to contrasting philosophical discourses, namely the divine teleology of the Stoics and the materialism of Lucretian physics.

In this paper I use the idealist interpretation of Epicurean theology to understand Lucretius’ ecphrasis of Venus and Mars in Book One of De rerum natura. I conclude that we as readers ourselves summon the gods into existence, in partnership with Lucretius, and that they are a shared project, constructed from images stored in our minds, taken from the poems we have read and works of art we have seen.