Disciple or original: the poem calls itself the dark discoveries of the Greeks set in Latin verse, so does it change anything in Epicurus, or is the Roman poet the master's voice with a darker temper?

Lucretius, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

The position in brief

He claims no discovery. The doctrine is Epicurus's, the man of Greece who dared first to raise his mortal eyes to meet religion, the glory of the Greek race, whose footprints the poem follows out of love, as a swallow beside a swan. What is his is the hard task of setting clearly in the light the dark discoveries of the Greeks in Latin verses, in the poverty of our tongue, with new words for new things, and the honey of the Muses touched round the cup of wormwood: a doctrine that seems bitter to the crowd is given in sweet-speaking song so that the crowd will drink it.1

He will not call that a small thing, because the Greeks wrote for the few who were already well, and the poem is written for Memmius and for Rome, which is sick. Where the master was calm he is fierce, because the Roman has seen more of the disease; the remedy is unchanged.2

Sources

  1. Come now, learn what remains, and listen to clearer words. Nor do I fail to see in mind how dark are the ways; but a great hope has smitten my heart with the sharp spur of fame, and at once has struck into my breast the sweet love of the muses, whereby, now inspired with strong mind I traverse the distant haunts of the Pierides, never trodden before by the foot of man.
    On the Nature of Things, pp. 58–59
  2. For they know not what is the nature of the soul, whether it is born or else finds its way into them at their birth, and again whether it is torn apart by death and perishes with us, or goes to see the shades of Orcus and his waste pools, or by the gods' will implants itself in other breasts, as our own Ennius" sang, who first bore down from pleasant Helicon the wreath of deathless leaves, to win bright fame among…
    On the Nature of Things, pp. 31–32

Where the argument is made

  • Book I.136-145 on the hard task 'to set clearly in the light the dark discoveries of the Greeks' in the poverty of our tongue
  • I.62-79, 'a man of Greece who dared first to raise his mortal eyes to meet her'
  • III.1-30, the follower in the master's footprints
  • V.1-54, 'he was a god, yea a god, noble Memmius'
  • I.921-950 and IV.1-25 on the honey on the cup of wormwood and the untrodden path of the Muses
  • VI.1-42 on Athens and the man who cleansed men's hearts

How the argument was received

Settled in his own words and unsettled ever since: a disciple by profession, read for two thousand years as a greater thing than his master.