SOME FOURTEEN HUNDRED and fifty years before Poggio set out to see what he could find, Lucretius’ contemporaries had read his poem, and it continued to be read for several centuries after its publication. Italian humanists, on the lookout for clues to lost ancient works, would have been alert to even fleeting references in the works of those celebrated authors whose writings had survived in significant quantities. Thus, though he strongly disagreed with its philosophical principles, Cicero—Poggio’s favorite Latin writer—conceded the marvelous power of On the Nature of Things. “The poetry of
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