The note explores the parallels between Varro’s satire ‘Kos-motoryne. on the destruction of the world’, and Lucretius’ de rerum natura. although the relative dating of the two texts is controversial, they both appear to share a concern for eschatology and its connection with moral and political degeneration.
This essay discusses the apocalyptic features of Lucretius’ de rerum natura, suggesting a comparison with texts belonging to the corpus of Hellenistic Jewish pseudepigrapha; the description of the plague as a final ‘apocalypse’ with political and eschatological implications; and the connection between these aspects of the poem, the eschatological ten- sions in 1st century bce Rome, and those manifested in Hellenistic Jewish apocalypses.
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