Abstract
The passage discussed in this article has two kinds of Hellenistic subtext, one pictorial and the other poetic. The pictorial is represented by the fresco in the Villa of the Mysteries at Pompeii depicting Bacchus reclining on the bosom of a woman. The peotic subtext is the kind of Hellenistic epigram that describes the male lover as lying in the lap or on the bosom of the female beloved. Meleager and Philodemus provide examples. These, with the fresco, show that a Hellenistic model for the erotic schema of Mars and Venus was available to Lucretius. On this understanding, it becomes easier to explain the phrase tereti cervice (35), borrowed from Cicero's translation of the Phaenomena of Aratus. The conclusions to be drawn from this passage go counter to the prevailing view of a “sublime” Empedoclean Lucretius who had nothing in common with Hellenistic poetry.
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