Defence of Lucretius: Please can you comment on this paragraph?

Question

A pathless country of the Pierides I traverse, where no other foot has ever trod. I love to approach virgin springs an there to drink; I love to pluck new flowers, and to seek an illustrious chaplet for my head from fields whence before this the Muses have crowned the brows of none: first because my teachings is of high matters, and I proceed to set free the mind from the close knots of superstition; next because the subject is so dark and the verses I write so clear, touching every part with the Muses’ grace. For even this seems not to be out of place; but as with children, when physicians try to administer rank wormwood, they first touch the rim of the cups all about with the sweet yellow fluid of honey, that unthinking childhood may be deluded as far as the lips, and meanwhile that they may drink up the bitter juice of wormwood, and though beguiled not betrayed, but rather by such a means be restored and regain health.

Answer 1

he speaks of loneliness or at least feeling alone and experiencing things that no one else has in the first line. it is a feeling he has grown accustomed to and even enjoys.

his enjoyments are bittersweet and innocent; drinking from virgin springs, plucking new flowers. He pursues a carefree world view, which suggests to me that his life is more complicated, more grey than black and white as he would wish for himself. lonely pursuits were his priority at the moment he wrote this, not family, not politics, not future.

mention of the Pierides betrays that he is Cypriot or loves Cyprus and that it was sparsely populated at the time, so this poem is old. There are still not that many people living in cyprus but there are enough to make this man's wishes impossible.

he is interested in recording an original idea through art and he admits this much and describes why: first because he thinks he is highly educated and not superstitious (no religious leanings?) next because what he is writing about; which is not this poem, is a dark subject which he feels that he tackles successfully.

he hopes to do for the world what the physician he describes does for the children, convinced that although it might be uncomfortable it would be for their eventual good "restored and regain health", so he hopes that the muses will help him deliver his idea sweetly despite its dark subject and content and he hopes that what he delivers will have a similar effect, "beguiled not betrayed" on his intended subjects that wormwood had on the children.

at first glance i think that this is either the whole of the piece he intended to write. it strikes me as if he intended this to be the actual or part of a larger body of work much like Milton's Paradise Lost, where he too called upon a higher authority bless his efforts and help him deliver where he himself might not suffice.

Answer 2

Hi George,
it talks first of purity
of places and things never
touched or seen before,
the innonence of life.

And then he uses children,
the innocent who need to
be 'tricked' by honey to so they
may drink the bitter juice of wormwood,
to heal - the key word here are not betrayed
by beguiled.

Hope it helps

Answer 3

The religious inference is almost Jehovah like in an understated fashion, coupled with the freedom of self enlightenment and the imparting of knowledge and understanding to those yet to be freed from their own shortcomings.
The pill may be bitter to swallow - trust me for I know that eventually you will see the truth.

Answer 4

I can't believe they fed wormwood to children. I have "drank a cupful" of wormwood and had a very long, colorful, psychadelic trip. Amazing. I wonder what it was prescribed to children for?

Answer 5

From a man that wrote .Quote It is pleasant to stand on the shore and watch the struggles of men in a storm tossed boat.
I think they should have named him ludicrous

Answer 6

do you know what time of the day it is in the uk to late to be thinking of deep things like that