This course will focus on a close reading of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura. Lucretius sets his readers on a terrain that roams through issues of fate and chance, nature and politics, and poetic inspiration and rational account. Fans of Lucretius’ denial of divine effects might be perplexed by his opening invocation of Venus and relentless wordplay. Does an atomistic understanding of the world reproduce the unifying force of divinity on a micro level? Is there a subtle rebellion, a mortal time lapse, built into the very act of perception? How are we to read "material" in Lucretius' poem, particularly in the cases of soul, mind, and image? We will also take a look at Marx’s doctoral dissertation on Epicurus.