Lucretius who, being inspired by the works of Leucippus and of Epicurus[1] wrote a book upon the nature of things, which has never been as yet well comprehended or well translated, the language not being understood.
Comedy, reformed by Menander, was again improved by Plautus and by Terence who acquired much reputation in this style; as to dramatic art in itself, it remained in its inertia. The Romans having the same gods and nearly the same mythology as the Greeks, were neither sufficiently elevated in intelligence to reinstate this art and make of it the masterpiece of the human mind; nor sufficiently advanced in exact knowledge to change wholly its forms and make of it, as we have, a new art, whence allegory and the moral part of Eumolpœia have been completely banished. But what the Romans were unable to do for dramatic art, they unfortunately were able to do for Epopœia. Certain writers, able versifiers, but absolutely deprived of intellectual inspiration, incapable of distinguishing in poetry the essence from the form, following what the degenerated theatre and the inspired declamations of Euhemerus[2] had taught them, imagined foolishly that the gods and heroes of antiquity having been only men stronger and more powerful than the others, mythology was only a crude collection of historic facts disfigured, and Epopœia only an emphatic discourse upon these same facts.[3] Thereupon they believed that it was only a question of taking any historic subject whatever, and relating it in verse with certain em-
- ↑ The real founder of the Atomic system such as has been adopted by Lucretius (De Rerum Natura, l. i.), was Moschus, Phœnician philosopher whose works threw light upon those of Leucippus (Posidonius cité par Strabon, l. xvi., Sext. Empiric., Adv. mathem., p. 367). This system well understood, does not differ from that of the monads, of which Leibnitz was the inventor.
- ↑ Fréret, Mytholog. ou Religion des Grecs.
- ↑ Voltaire, who has adopted this error, has founded it upon the signification
of the word Epos, which he has connected with that of Discourse (Dictionn. philos. au mot Epopée). But he is mistaken. The Greek word (
Greek characters) is translated accurately by versus. Thence the verb (Greek characters), to follow in the tracks, to turn, to go, in the same sense.
