On the Nature of Things

Titus Lucretius Carus was probably born in the early first century B.C., and he died in the year 55. Writing in the waning days of the Roman Republic - as Rome's politics grew individualistic and treacherous, its high-life wanton, its piety introspective and morbid - Lucretius sets forth a rational and materialistic view of the world which offers a retreat into a quiet community of wisdom and friendship. Even to modern readers, the sweep of Lucretius's observations is remarkable. A careful observer of nature, he writes with an innocent curiosity into how things are put together - from the oceans, lands, and stars to a mound of poppy seeds, from the "applause" of a rooster's wings to the human mind and soul. Yet Lucretius is no romantic. Nature is what it is - fascinating, purposeless, beautiful, deadly. Once we understand this, we free ourselves of superstitious fears, becoming as human and as godlike as we can be. The poem, then, is about the universe and how human beings ought to live in it. Epicurean physics and morality converge.