De rerum natura, V - Titus Lucretius Carus

For a work written more than two thousand years ago, in a
society in many ways quite alien to our own, Lucretius'
De Rerum Natura
contains much of striking, even startling, contemporary relevance. This is true, above all, of the fifth
book, which begins by putting a strong case against what it has
recently become fashionable to call 'intelligent design', and
ends with an account of human evolution and the development of
society in which the limitations of technological progress form a
strong and occasionally explicit subtext. Along the way, the poet
touches on many themes which may strike a chord with the
twenty-first century reader: the fragility of our ecosystem, the
corruption of political life, the futility of consumerism and the
desirability of limiting our acquisitive instincts are all highly
topical issues for us, as for the poem's original audience. Book
V also offers a fascinating introduction to the world-view of the
upper-class Roman of the first century BC. This edition (which
complements existing Aris and Phillips commentaries on books 3, 4
and 6) will help to make Lucretius' urgent and impassioned
argument, and something of his remarkable poetic style,
accessible to a wider audience, including those with little or no
knowledge of Latin. Both the translation and commentary aim to
explain the scientific argument of the book as clearly as
possible; and to convey at least some impression of the poetic
texture of Lucretius' Latin.