Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393090949 ISBN 13: 9780393090949

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 1977

The epic poem that changed the course of human thought forever.

This great poem stands with Virgil's Aeneid as one of the vital and enduring achievements of Latin literature. Lost for more than a thousand years, its return to circulation in 1417 reintroduced dangerous ideas about the nature and meaning of existence and helped shape the modern world.

From the Back Cover:

Based on the tenets of Epicurean philosophy, The Nature of Things sets forth a world view anticipating our own. All that exists is composed of atoms that united to form matter and dissipate with time. Even the soul is made up of atoms; however, there is no place in the Epicurean universe for the Roman gods, whose existence Lucretius refutes. Lucretius considers the fear of death to be the source of most human ills, and seeks to dispel it by demonstrating that the soul, like the body, dissolves painlessly into its constituent atoms after death. There is no afterlife, therefore no cause for fear.

About the Author:

Titus Lucretius Carus―Lucretius―was a Roman poet and philosopher (ca. 99 BC – ca. 55 BC). His only known work is an epic philosophical poem laying out the beliefs of Epicureanism, De rerum natura, translated into English as On the Nature of Things.