But Lucretius is genuinely trying to write philosophy in verse, to expound, argue and persuade, and no one, it seems, had seriously attempted that for nearly four hundred years. The oddity of Lucretius is confirmed by the extent to which other Roman philosophers ignored him. Cicero, despite admiring him as a poet, never once refers to him in his many philosophical works, and does not even pay him the compliment of being worth refutation.
