This dissertation reevaluates the relationship between the poet and reader in Lucretius' De Rerum Natura. By exploring the way in which Lucretius projects his own voice into his poetry, this study first identifies Lucretius' poetic voice in relation to its place in the didactic tradition, its capacity to create intertextual allusions to other texts, and its pedagogical aims (Chapters 1 and 2). The study then investigates the readership of the poem and asks to whom Lucretius' poetic voice was directed not only literarily, in terms of the internal addressee, but also historically, in terms of Roman and Epicurean readerships (Chapters 3 and 4). In doing so, I offer a reading of the De Rerum Natura as a didactic poem that strives to create a non-authoritative, egalitarian relationship with its readership in order to present Epicureanism to a Roman audience. Chapter 1 constructs the definition of an author's poetic voice from previous studies of other ancient authors, synthesizing them into a paradigm for the analysis of poetic voice in the De Rerum Natura. Chapter 2 discusses the interpretive implications of this voice as it manifests itself through satiric elements within the didactic genre, intertextuality within the context of Lucretian "atomology," and internal dialectic throughout the text. These aspects of Lucretius' poetic voice anticipate a reader who is an active interpreter of the poetic aspects of the text, making possible a non-authoritative, egalitarian relationship between the poet and reader. Chapter 3 shifts focus from the active participation of the formal reader and turns to the active participation of historical and philosophical readers, whether actual readers or ideal philosophical readers constructed by the text. This chapter finds that the egalitarian relationship between poet and reader explored in the first two chapters corresponds to the historical and philosophical readership as well. Chapter 4 continues to investigate the egalitarian relationship between Lucretius and his readership by closely examining the last sustained philosophical argument in the text, Lucretius' account of magnetism. The Conclusion reiterates the main points of this project and suggests further study of this relationship as it resembles the social bond of friendship.