Honey and the Indecency of Epicurus’aurea dicta(DRN3.12)

Abstract

In this article the aurea dicta of Epicurus (DRN 3.12) are placed in conversation with larger discourses related to apian, floral, and honey imagery. Within these literary contexts, bees and honey are often associated with morally suspect appetites, effeminacy, and potentially dangerous erotic entanglements. Lucretius, I argue, seems to allude to these risky literary valences and manipulates them for his own poetic and rhetorical ends. Honey, we discover, is much more than a sugary substance.