This article re-presents the section on Vico and Lucretius that first appeared in an essay by the young Andrea Battistini in which he addresses the notion of ‘phonic semantics’ in the prose writings of the Neapolitan philosopher. In these pages the author devotes his analysis in particular to the differing significance of the rhetorical figure of the paronomastic oxymoron in the De rerum natura and in Vico’s Scienza nuova. Whereas Lucretius’s paradoxes were meant to stigmatize religio, or the superstition that could lead a father to sacrifice his daughter, in Vico the desired effect of the rhetoric of paradox is to illuminate the logic of the heroic age, which coincides with the origins of humanity.