Roman
Lucretius was a Roman poet and philosopher whose epic poem On the Nature of Things set out Epicurean philosophy and a strikingly modern, materialist vision of the universe.
Titus Lucretius Carus (c. 99–55 BCE) was a Roman poet about whose life little is known, but whose single surviving work has exerted an extraordinary influence.
On the Nature of Things (De rerum natura) is a six-book philosophical epic that expounds the atomism and ethics of Epicurus, arguing that the universe consists of atoms moving in void, that the soul is mortal, and that freedom from fear — especially fear of death and the gods — is the path to tranquility. Its rediscovery in the Renaissance helped spark modern scientific and secular thought.
Lucretius is celebrated for fusing science, philosophy, and poetry into a visionary work whose materialist worldview feels astonishingly prescient.
by Lucretius
Lucretius's philosophical poem expounding Epicurean atomism — the argument that the universe consists of atoms and void, that the soul dissolves at death, that the gods do not intervene in human affairs, and that therefore the fear of death is irrational. Written in Latin hexameters of great beauty, c. 60 BCE.
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