A collection of important scholarly articles on the Roman poet Lucretius, whose philosophical epic, the De Rerum Natura or On the Nature of the Universe (c.55 BC), seeks to convince its readers of the validity of the rationalist theories of Epicurus. An Introduction contextualizes the essays, and all Greek and Latin is translated.

1. Introduction ; 2. The Sources of Lucretius' Inspiration ; 3. The Empedoclean Opening ; 4. Lucretius' Venus and Stoic Zeus ; 5. Epicurus' Triumph of the Mind ; 6. The Presocratics in Book 1 of Lucretius' De Rerum Natura ; 7. Distant Views: The Imagery of Lucretius 2 ; 8. Lucretius the Epicurean: On the History of Man ; 9. Lucretius' Interpretation of the Plague ; 10. Lucretian Conclusions ; 11. The Conclusions of the Six Books of Lucretius ; 12. Seeing the Invisible: A Study of Lucretius' Use of Analogy in De Rerum Natura ; 13. Lucretius and Epic ; 14. Doctus Lucretius ; 15. Lucretius and Callimachus ; 16. Pattern of Sound and Atomic Theory in Lucretius ; 17. The Significant Name in Lucretius ; 18. Making a Text of the Universe: Perspectives on Discursive Order in Lucretius ; 19. Lucretius and Politics

An up-to-date collection of influential scholarly articles, including three translated into English for the first time A specially written Introduction places the articles in context and surveys the history of twentieth-century Lucretian scholarship All Latin and Greek is translated

An up-to-date collection of influential scholarly articles, including three translated into English for the first time A specially written Introduction places the articles in context and surveys the history of twentieth-century Lucretian scholarship All Latin and Greek is translated