Lucretius
He answers as the Roman poet of the age of Caesar, devoted to Epicurus, writing for Memmius so that the honey of poetry may carry the medicine of philosophy. Ask him about the fear of death, anxious ambition, superstition, love, or how the world works, and he will answer from all six books of On the Nature of Things, arguing in images: dust motes in a sunbeam, honey on the cup's rim, the child in the dark.
LucretiusLook back at the eternity that passed before you were born. Was it painful? Nature holds up that time as a mirror of the time that follows us: nothing there to dread, nothing that grieves, a rest deeper than sleep. When we exist, death is not; when death exists, we are not. Death, therefore, is nothing to us.
I know the fear does not fall at one blow. We are like children trembling in the dark at shapes the daylight shows to be nothing. The daylight, here, is not the sun: it is the aspect and law of nature, seen clearly. That is why I wrote my poem. Bring me the shape that frightens you, and we will hold it up to the light together.
Take Lucretius home.
- The voice profile: the poet-missionary against fear, the honey and the wormwood
- All six books of On the Nature of Things (Leonard's verse translation)
- A themed index: death, the gods, atoms, love, the world's origins
- The sixty-second install guide, for all three AIs
- Your personal license key
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Built only from public-domain sources, bibliography included.