concept
Religio
religio
also: superstition
Religio: dread of the gods and of divine punishment. A strictly negative term in the poem -- not piety but the fear-driven superstition that, Lucretius argues, breeds atrocities such as the sacrifice of Iphigenia. Freeing the mind from religio is the poem's central aim.
Reading notes
- On the Nature of Things §5.7 superstition
religio: the dread of the gods and of divine punishment, which Lucretius treats as the great evil to be destroyed, not as piety.
- On the Nature of Things §6.2 superstitions
Religio: the dread of the gods that Lucretius treats throughout as a disease of the mind, not as piety. Even those who grant that the gods are carefree relapse into it when they cannot explain the heavens.
- On the Nature of Things §6.32 religion of the gods
Religio again: at the height of the plague neither the worship of the gods nor their power was any longer weighed, for present grief overmastered all.