Studies : 1) notions of the empty in Greek and Roman poets ; 2) one aspect of this emptiness, whereby subjects in poetic settings become phantasmic and finally voided of substance ; and 3) the atomistic conception of void as found in Lucretius.
Vergil, as an inheritor of the literary tradition, also inherits these three senses of void.
Specifically, Lucretius 2, 464-465 makes the point that « res gestae », in themselves, are nothing.
His philosophical vision evacuates the reality that we think we intuitively know, even as that vision seeks to anchor this reality in physics.
Vergil 's « Aeneid » follows Lucretius in enacting what might be called a « derealization » of reality.
Thus, for example, when Venus reveals to Aeneas the divine machinery of warfare in operation at Troy (2, 604-623), the picture presented of the gods works to render unreal the wars being waged.
