invidia and ambitions as a motivation for civil strife in lucretius

• Autor(a) principal: Freire, Antonio Julio Garcia
• Data de Publicação: 2023
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Trilhas Filosóficas (Online)
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.apps.uern.br/index.php/RTF/article/view/5018
• topic: Epicurismo; Conflitos civis; Lucrécio; Epicureanism; Civil strifes; Lucretius

The philosophical poem De rerum natura (DRN) of the epicurean Lucretius (1st century BC) was written in a period of social and political upheaval in the Roman Republic. Throughout the poem, Lucretius indicates his concern with the civil strifes. Some interpretations of the DRN accept it like a political treatise (McConnell, 2012). It is a strange thesis to the epicurean tradition, since Epicurus himself advised the sage to depart from any political activity (EPICURUS, 2002). It may be dued to the appropriation of the ancient concept of stásis, used to refer to conflicts and civil wars. Lucretius deals with two notions related to such revolts: the first of them is invidia. The other concept - which appears implicitly in the poem - is ambitionis. The two notions are related to two other instances of Lucretius's argument: the first concerns the fear of death as cause of invidia. The second focuses on demonstrating how the ambitionis leads to the fall of kings. The purpose of this paper is to analyze specific passages of De rerum natura in Books III and V, verifying how Lucretius relates civil strifes to the notions of invidia and ambitionis.