Lucretius and the Language of Nature

Lucretius'' Epicurean poem De Rerum Natura (''On the Nature of Things''), written in the middle of the first century BC, made a fundamental and lasting contribution to the language of Latin philosophy. The style of De Rerum Natura is like nothing else in extant Latin: at once archaic and modern, Romanizing and Hellenizing, intimate and sublime, it draws on multiple literary genres and linguistic r...