Satires (Horace) similes, and the fiction of an anonymous interlocutor whose objections the speaker easily refutes. In addition, Horace alludes to another inspiration, the poet Lucretius whose didactic epic "De rerum natura" ("On the Nature of Things"), also written in hexameters, popularized Epicurean physics in Rome. For example, Horace's comparison of his satires with cookies that a teacher uses to encourage his students to learn their letters, reminds of Lucretius' more traditional comparison of his poetry with the sugar that sweetens the bitter medicine of philosophy. Moreover, Lucretian stock phrases such as "nunc ad rem redeo" ("now I return to the matter
Carmen Priami Carmen Priami The Carmen Priami ("Priam's Song") is a lost Latin poem known from the quotation of a single line by Varro. The unknown poet, "a remarkable reactionary," rejects the Hellenizing trend in Latin poetry led by Ennius ("ca." 239–169 BC) and adopts a deliberately archaic style, invoking the Camenae: The invocation of the Muse is a convention of Greco-Roman poetry, and Ennius announced his intention to leave behind the rusticity of native poetic traditions and embrace the sophistication of the Greeks with service to the Muses. His immediate predecessors Livius and Naevius had asserted their place among traditional Roman