The lengthy poem, On the Nature of Things, by Lucretius, published as De Rerum Natura in Latin, presents the Greek philosopher Epicurus's scientific theory. The title of Lucretius's work, Peri physes, is a translation of the title of Epicurus' principal treatise (On Nature). Lucretius structured his discussion into six books, each of which had a very well-crafted introduction. Books I and II lay forth the fundamental ideas of the atomic universe, disprove the competing views of Heracleitus, Empedocles, and Anaxagoras, pre-Socratic cosmic thinkers, and subtly criticize the Stoics, a rival school of moralists to Epicurus. The final sermon in Book III, "Death is nothing to us," illustrates the atomic structure of the soul and its mortality. Book IV criticizes sexual passion while describing the mechanisms of the mind, some physical functions, and sense perception. Book V explains how the world and heavenly bodies were created, how they function, how life evolved, and how human society developed. Book VI covers amazing astronomical and terrestrial events, especially lightning and thunder. The poem concludes with a description of the Athens epidemic, a sombre representation of mortality in contrast to the image of spring and life presented in the poem's opening appeal to Venus.
Titus Lucretius Carus was a Roman poet and philosopher who lived from around 99 to 55 BC. His only known work is the philosophical poem De Rerum Natura, which is typically translated into English as On the Nature of Things and somewhat less frequently as On the Nature of the Universe. It is a didactic work explaining the principles and philosophy of Epicureanism. The idea of the three-age system, which was codified in 1836 by C. J. Thomsen, has been attributed to Lucretius. The only thing that is clear about Lucretius's life is that he was either Gaius Memmius's friend or customer, to whom the poem was composed and dedicated. The Augustan poets, especially Virgil (in his Aeneid and Georgics, and to a lesser extent in the Eclogues), and Horace were greatly influenced by De Rerum Natura. The book was nearly lost during the Middle Ages, but Poggio Bracciolini rediscovered it in a German monastery in 1417, and it became crucial to the development of atomism (Lucretius had a significant influence on Pierre Gassendi) as well as the endeavors of numerous Enlightenment figures to create a new Christian humanism.
