Despite the general scholarly consensus about Lucretius' debt to Empedocles as the father of the genre of cosmological didactic epic, there is a major disagreement regarding Lucretius' applause for his Presocratic predecessor's praeclara reperta (DRN 1.732). In the present study, Garani suggests that by praising Empedocles' discoveries, Lucretius points to his predecessor's epistemological methods of inquiry concerning the unseen, methods upon which he himself draws extensively and creatively enhances. In this way, he successfully penetrates into the invisible natural world, deciphers its...
Despite the general scholarly consensus about Lucretius' debt to Empedocles as the father of the genre of cosmological didactic epic, there is a ma...