Abstract

From Book IV of Lucretius’s De Rerum Natura, we most often retain the severe criticism of the amorous feeling and the “traps of Venus.” However, two original aspects of the Lucretian denunciation of love, which I propose to study, are overlooked: on the one hand, the eulogy of the vagrant Venus, the volgivaga vagus Venere of verse 1071, an image of sexual infidelity that has become a philosophical virtue; on the other hand, the study of feminine pleasure—Lucretius acknowledges and values feminine jouissance in his description of the physiology of heterosexual coitus. Bearing in mind that Epicurean ethics identifies voluptas with telos or Sovereign Good, it is particularly interesting to note that these two elements actually propose the outline of a specific sexual ethos, characterized by two structuring elements: diversity and reciprocity. I will thus propose a global perspective on this question of sexuality within Epicurean thought, highlighting the particularities resulting from the Epicureans’ consideration of the feminine dimension and its ambivalence.