c. 99–55 BCE · Rome

Lucretius

Almost nothing is known of Lucretius the man. What survives is one extraordinary poem, On the Nature of Things, which lays out the philosophy of Epicurus in soaring Latin verse. In it, everything is made of atoms moving in a void; the gods do not meddle in human affairs; and death is nothing to fear, because when we are, death is not, and when death is, we are not. It was nearly lost, then rediscovered, and helped spark the modern scientific imagination.

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