Titus LUCRETIUS Carus (died c. 50 BC) was an Epicurean poet writing in the middle years of the first century BC. His six-book Latin hexameter poem De rerum natura survives virtually intact, although it is disputed whether he lived to complete it.
A. E. STALLINGS (editor/translator) studied classics at the University of Georgia and the University of Oxford. Her poetry has appeared in The Best American Poetry series and has received numerous awards, including a Pushcart Prize, the Eunice Tietjens Prize, and the Frederick Bock Prize. Her first poetry collection, Archaic Smile, was awarded the 1999 Richard Wilbur Award by judge Dana Gioia. Stallings lives in Athens, Greece.
RICHARD JENKYNS (introducer) is a professor of classics at the University of Oxford, a fellow of Lady Margaret Hall, and the author of The Victorians and Ancient Greece and Dignity and Decadence: Some Classical Aspects of Victorian Art and Architecture.