"Horror" in Lucretius. "DRN" III, 28-30, the sublime and the Epicurean "proficens"

Lucretius opens book III of the poem De rerum natura with a praise of Epicurus’ teachings - which remove the fear of death, ghosts and gods - together with a description of the feelings aroused by the Epicurean doctrines. In vv. 28-30, he writes that he feels a divine pleasure (divina voluptas) - a possible allusion to katastematic pleasure, which brings about assimilation to divine blessedness - and at the same time horror. The expression is enigmatic, perhaps even contradictory. The occurrences of horror in De rerum natura show that the term is linked above all to the fear of death, ghosts and gods, i.e. that it describes the very terror that Epicurus intends to remove through his teachings, so as to give access to divina voluptas. In this paper, I analyze the expression from DRN III, 28-30 and propose a new solution to its apparent internal contradiction. This solution is based on the hypothesis of a therapeutic use of the poetics of the sublime.