Didascalica antierotica: insaniae exempla, mellita cognomina. A proposito di Lucrezio, De rerum natura 4, 1144-1169

In the total indictment against love as a ruinous passion, Lucretius finds space in 4, 1144-1169 to ironically underline euphemisms used by the lover in order to attenuate women’s faults, by deceiving themselves. The wide range of borrowings from the palliata and the Hellenistic epigram, besides the parodic reuse of tipically neoteric nouns and adjectives, concurs to demystify lovers’ illusions, in the context of a tight didascalic lusus.