Oxford Readings in Lucretius [Hardcover]

This book gathers together some of the most important and influential scholarly articles of the last sixty to seventy years (three of which are translated into English here for the first time) on the Roman poet Lucretius. Lucretius' philosophical epic, theDe Rerum NaturaorOn the Nature ofthe Universe(c.55 BC), seeks to convince its reader of the validity of the rationalist theories of the Hellenistic thinker Epicurus. The articles collected in this volume explore Lucretius' poetic and argumentative technique from a variety of perspectives, and also consider the poem in relation to its philosophical and literary milieux, and to the values and ideology of contemporary Roman society. All quotations in Latin or Greek are translated.

1. Introduction,Monica R. Gale
2. The Sources of Lucretius' Inspiration,Disikin Clay
3. The Empedoclean Opening,David Sedley
4. Lucretius' Venus and Stoic Zeus,Elizabeth Asmis
5. Epicurus' Triumph of the Mind,Vinzenz Buchheit
6. The Presocratics in Book 1 of Lucretius' De Rerum Natura,W. J. Tatum
7. Distant Views: The Imagery of Lucretius 2,Phillip De Lacy
8. Lucretius the Epicurean: On the History of Man,David J. Furley
9. Lucretius' Interpretation of the Plague,H. S. Commager
10. Lucretian Conclusions,Peta Fowler
11. The Conclusions of the Six Books of Lucretius,Gerhard Muller
12. Seeing the Invisible: A Study of Lucretius' Use of Analogy in De Rerum Natura,P. H. Schrijvers
13. Lucretius and Epic,David West
14. Doctus Lucretius,E. J. Kenney
15. Lucretius and Callimachus,Robert D. Brown
16. Pattern of Sound and Atomic Theory in Lucretius,P. Friedlander
17. The Significant Name in Lucretius,Jane M. Snyder
18. Making a Text of the Universe: Perspectives on Discursive Order in Lucretius,Duncan KennedylÔ