It is my conviction that Lucretius as a thinker has been too
much neglected. The reason for this I have, I think, sufficiently
analyzed in The Genesis of Plato's Thought. In a slave-owning
society, Plato and the Pythagoreans, Aristotle and the Stoics
developed idealism as a defense of social inequality. This outlook
proved all too congenial to the thinkers of later feudal and aristo-
cratic societies. It was only with the eighteenth century A.D., and
the rise of scientific thinking that Lucretius began to come into his
own as the most articulate exponent of the philosophy of science
in classical antiquity. But even so, the recognition has been half-
hearted. The tendency to depreciate Lucretius has continued on
and on. It is time that someone put forward the thesis of Lucretius'
philosophical originality and essential profundity. This is the theme
of my book.

I am conscious of a throng of obligations, even while I dissent
most -- to my great and good friend, William Ellery Leonard, now
dead, with whom I enjoyed twenty years of intimacy and almost
daily discussion on our poet; and Cyril Bailey, the great English
Lucretian scholar; Usener, Guissani and many others who have
toiled with the interpretation of Lucretius. From Lambinus to the
present day, Lachmann, Monroe and Diels have given me much
illumination. Second hand, I have drawn from the studies of Duvau,
Hosius and Chatelaine. The Tuebner edition of Martin I have
consulted from time to time.

The citations from Lucretius are taken from the translation
published as the Roman Poet of Science, New York, 1956, London,
1959, by kind permission of the translator. For this permission I
am very grateful to myself.

I should like to pay tribute to the unfailing courtesy and help-
fulness of the staff of the University libraries of British Columbia
and Alberta (both Edmonton and Calgary).

Mrs. David J. Gravells, Miss Christine Davis and Miss Del
Bording have toiled womanfully with the preparation of the manu-
script and with reading the proof.

Some readers may prefer to leave the closely-argued scholarly
summary of Chapter I to the end. These may plunge immediately
into the life and times of Lucretius, the subjects of Chapters II
and III.

University of Alberta, Calgary.