  Epicurus founded his system in the late 4th and early 3rd century BCE, and it became one of the most influential of the Hellenistic age. Lucretius lived in Italy in a period when Epicureanism flourished there, especially in the area of the Bay of Naples, where a major Epicurean circle had formed around Philodemus. Philodemus’ library was rediscovered during the 18th-century excavations of Herculaneum (recent claims to have found remains of Lucretius’ poem among its badly damaged contents may be unduly optimistic). In addition, the main Epicurean school was still flourishing in Athens, despite the departure of most other schools from their metropolitan headquarters there, and it had other regional branches to which a Roman might equally well go for study. In any case, Epicureanism was by now one of the four leading philosophical systems that any aspiring philosophy student was expected to master. Romans who, against this background, became Epicureans included Cicero’s friend Atticus, and Cassius, later an assassin of Caesar. It therefore becomes both easy and attractive to think of Lucretius’ turn to Epicureanism as part of a trend among the Roman intelligentsia. Curiously, however, his poem shows few if any signs of contemporary philosophical or scientific engagement.  We know a good deal about recent trends in the Epicurean school—for example, its sophisticated debates with the Stoics on scientific method and mathematics—yet we find little or no evidence in Lucretius’ poem that he is aware of, let alone engaged in, these developments. And although he includes a number of critiques of anonymous opponents, none of these opponents can plausibly be identified with anyone who lived in the two centuries separating Epicurus’ own lifetime from Lucretius’, including adherents of the era’s most prestigious school, the Stoa. It may, then, be more accurate to think of Lucretius as philosophically isolated, drawing his inspiration from Epicurus’ own treasured writings, and for that reason adopting Epicurus’ polemical targets as his own.