ABSTRACT
Since the very beginning of mythology and literature, in an effort to comprehend the perplexing world around him, man has found in himself a convenient model, with which to concretize the abstract and unveil the unseen. So, he ascribed to inanimate things an anthropomorphic appearance, human capabilities or emotions.1 In the first part of this chapter (2.2), I will explore how Lucretius uses personification in order to sketch abstract natural forces and to enlarge the invisible first beginnings of things. In the second (2.3) and third part (2.4) respectively it will be seen how Lucretius envisages the world and the earth as human beings, in order to reduce their size so that his audience might visualize and conceive their unseen workings.
