Lucrezio e i presocratici

In the first book of De Rerum natura I, Lucretius devotes about three hundred lines to the controversy with the pre- Socratic philosophers Heraclitus, Empedocles and Anassagora.
The confutation covers questions of a philosophical nature (the problem of arché, the void and the infinite divisibility of the primary elements) and of a poetic and literary character (style, correct methods of spreading philosophical teaching). By closely comparing these writers, Lucretius also defines the characteristic of his own work and reflects on problems like the deficiency of Latin philosophical vocabulary and the analogy between words and things. The discussion of rival teachings, in agreement with the bitterly polemic style of all Epicureanism, is carried out with aggressiveness sometimes subversive, often aiming at impoverishing, if not exactly misrepresenting, an adversary's thesis to make them more easily refutable. However appreciation and compliments are not lacking, especially towards Empedocles, considered to be a model for the scientific didactic poem and a master of excellent style.
By commeting in detail on Lucretius's text, the work tackles the main questions it poses, both on the conceptual and philosophic level and, above all, on philological and stylistic literary one.