On the Nature of Things
Lucretius
Epicureanism · Intermediate
The major surviving poetic vehicle of Epicurean physics, and a decisive text for Renaissance and early modern materialism.
Lucretius · first circulated 1st century BCE
Free edition: On the Nature of Things, translated by Hugh Andrew Johnstone Munro (1819 to 1885). Public domain.
Main ideas
- Epicurean atomism unfolded as Latin philosophical poetry.
- Fear of death, gods and omens answered through natural explanation.
- Pleasure defended as tranquility rather than excess.
Important themes
Reading context
Lucretius set Epicurean physics into Latin verse in the first century BCE, to argue people out of the fear of death and of the gods. The poetry is doing philosophical work: it makes atoms and void something a Roman reader could feel.
How to approach it
Book 3, on the soul and the fear of death, is the one to read if you read one. The openings of each book are the best poetry. Keep the argument's aim in view: consolation, not cosmology for its own sake.