Teachers, pupils and cosmological revelations: Tracing the Empedoclean influence in Latin Epic

In Ennius' Annals, Vergil's Aeneid and Ovid's Metamorphoses the mythological and historical narratives, typical of the epic genre, are joined to the didactic discourses on Nature given by three "teachers" (Homer, Anchises and Pythagoras) to their respective pupils (Ennius, Aeneas and Numa). Previous scholarship has discussed in detail the influence of Empedoclean philosophy on these discourses, but the way this philosophical content is communicated will be the focus of my research. My purpose is to determine the extent to which the naturalistic digressions of Latin Epic have been affected by the argumentative style of Empedocles' poetry.