Introduction; Part I. The Text: 1. Critical responses to the most difficult textual problem in Lucretius David Butterfield; Part II. Lucretius and his Readers: 2. Reading the 'implied author' in Lucretius' De Rerum Natura Nora Goldschmidt; 3. Common ground in Lucretius' De Rerum Natura Barnaby Taylor; 4. Coming to know Epicurus' truth: distributed cognition in Lucretius' De Rerum Natura Fabio Tutrone; Part III. The Word and the World: 5. Infinity, enclosure and false closure in Lucretius' De Rerum Natura Donncha O'Rourke; 6. Lucretian echoes: sound as metaphor for literary allusion in De Rerum Natura 4.549-94 Jason Nethercut; 7. Saussure's cahiers and Lucretius' elementa: a re-consideration of the letters-atoms analogy Wilson H. Shearin; Part IV. Literary and Philosophical Sources: 8. Arguing over text(s): master-texts vs intertexts in the criticism of Lucretius Andrew Morrison; 9. Lucretius and the philosophical use of literary persuasion Tim O'Keefe; 10. The rising and setting soul in Lucretius, De Rerum Natura 3 Emma Gee; Part V. Worldviews: 11. Was Memmius a good king? Joseph Farrell; 12. A tribute to a hero: Marx's interpretation of Epicurus in his dissertation Elizabeth Asmis; 13. Plato and Lucretius on the theoretical subject Duncan F. Kennedy.