SOURCE: Nugent, S. Georgia. “Mater Matters: The Female in Lucretius's De Rerum Natura.” Colby Quarterly, 30, no. 3 (September 1994): 179-205.

In the following essay, Nugent surveys various representations of women in the De rerum natura.

Epic poetry celebrates the creation of a certain kind of self.¹ That creation will often—but not always—be directed toward, tested through, and damaged or destroyed by war. Always, it will be male. This is not to say that females do not appear on the epic stage; they may even appear in the guise of heroic warrior—there is Camilla, there is Atalanta.² But each such figure is anomalous; the “real” subject of epic is how to be a man and, beyond that, how to be a community of men—an army, a polis, a republic, an empire.

Typically, such epics will address questions of autonomy and social comradeship, appetite and sublimation, intellection and...