The standard view in scholarship is that disease in Lucretius' De rerum natura is mainly a
problem to be solved and then dispensed with. However a closer reading suggests that things
are more layered and complex than they appear at first sight: just as morbus causes a radical
rearrangement of atoms in the body and makes the patient engage with alternative and up to that
point unknown dimensions of the sensible world so does disease as a theme generate a
multiplicity of meanings in the text. The present book argues for a reconsideration of morbus
in De rerum natura along those lines: it invites the reader to revisit the topic of disease and
reflect on the various and often contrasting discourses that unfold around it. More
specifically it illustrates how apart from calling for therapy disease due to its dominant
presence in the narrative transforms at the same time into a concept that is integral both to
the poem's philosophical agenda but also to its wider aesthetic concerns as a literary product.
The book thus sheds new light on De rerum natura's intense preoccupation with morbus by showing
how disease is not exclusively conceived by Lucretius as a blind obliterating force but is
crucially linked to life and meaning-both inside and outside the text.
