Lucretius' poem, for which Epicurean philosophy provided the inspiration, attempts to explain the nature of the universe and its processes with the object of freeing mankind from religious fears.

'In Lucretius on Atomic Motion Don Fowler produces a commentary of Lucretius like no other. His commentary achieves the status of a meta-commentary... what makes this commentary claim our attention is the range of texts, both poetic and philosophical, ancient and modern, that Fowler brings to bear in revealing the deep background --and the later fortune - of Lucretius' poem.' -Diskin Clay, Times Literary SupplementThis is the first commentary on Lucretius' theory of atomic motion, one of the most difficult and technical parts of De rerum natura. The late Don Fowler sets new standards for Lucretian studies in his awesome command both of the ancient literary, philological, and philosophical background to this Latin Epicurean poem, and of the relevant modern scholarship.

Lucretius' account of the origin of life, the origin of species, and human prehistory is the longest and most detailed account extant from the ancient world. It gives an anti-teleological mechanistic theory of zoogony and the origin of species that does away with the need for any divine aidor design in the process, and accordingly it has been seen as a forerunner of Darwin's theory of evolution. This commentary locates Lucretius in both the ancient and modern contexts, and treats Lucretius' ideas as very much alive rather than as historical concepts. The recent revival of creationismmakes this study particularly relevant to contemporary debate, and indeed, many of the central questions posed by creationists are those Lucretius attempts to answer.

Takes stock of existing approaches in the interpretation of Lucretius, innovates within these, and advances in new directions.

The Roman philosopher's didactic poem in 6 parts, De Rerum Natura — On the Nature of Things — theorizes that natural causes are the forces behind earthly phenomena and dismisses divine intervention. Derived from the philosophical materialism of the Greeks, Lucretius' work remains the primary source for contemporary knowledge of Epicurean thought.

This is the first detailed analysis of the fate of Lucretius' De rerum natura from its composition in the 50s BC to the creation of our earliest extant manuscripts during the Carolingian Age. Close investigation of the knowledge of Lucretius' poem among writers throughout the Roman and medieval world allows fresh insight into the work's readership and reception, and a clear assessment of the indirect tradition's value for editing the poem. The first extended analysis of the 170+ subject headings (capitula) that intersperse the text reveals the close engagement of its Roman readers. A fresh inspection and assignation of marginal hands in the poem's most important manuscript (the Oblongus) provides new evidence about the work of Carolingian correctors and offers the basis for a new Lucretian stemma codicum. Further clarification of the interrelationship of Lucretius' Renaissance manuscripts gives additional evidence of the poem's reception and circulation in fifteenth-century Italy.