Read this if you…
- are interested in what cutting edge science was in Rome (way better idea of whats going on than i expected)
- like Lucretius main idea - "What if the scientific worldview wasn't boring as hell and i made it a great invigorating poem"
- love or want to explore rationalism (definitely more atheistic/rationalist than most other ancient authors)
Skip this if you…
- are turned off by someone arguing for atheistic/rationalistic worldview
- need science that's up to date (of course, he was wrong about some stuff, it was 55 BC)
Why It Matters
Lucretius laid out Epicurean physics, atoms, void, the mortal soul, in a poem of real beauty and real nerve. It was lost for a thousand years, and when it turned up again in 1417 it helped kick off the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution. Its argument that the universe runs on natural laws and not divine meddling was centuries early.
The 
Take
Awesome logic describing the science of the time even if it wasn’t perfect and there’s lots of incorrect info. They knew a lot and had great theories for 50 BC
Where to go next
- The Iliad by Homer. On the Nature of Things built on it. - Lucretius frames his Epicurean poem with the *Iliad* — naming Homer as poetry's standard-bearer in the Book 3 proem and reworking the famous shield-passage into a vision of the world - The epic is his deliberate model and foil: he writes didactic verse in Homer's high register, then turns it toward atoms and the void - With the *Iliad* behind you, the proems read as what they are — an invitation to read the oldest epic through Epicurus's eyes
- Theogony/Works and Days by Hesiod. On the Nature of Things built on it. - Lucretius opens by summoning the Muses — a deliberate nod to the proems of Homer, Ennius, and Hesiod, the convention Hesiod founded - He lifts the Golden-Age coloring of Hesiod's *Works and Days* for his own picture of early humanity, then strips out the interfering gods — the whole point of an Epicurean rewrite - Hesiod is the ancestor of the form *On the Nature of Things* perfects: verse that explains the cosmos rather than narrates a war
- The Georgics by Virgil. On the Nature of Things shaped it. - The Latin didactic poem Virgil set out to answer — its influence on *The Georgics* is, in scholarly terms, perhaps stronger than any one poet ever exerted on another - Virgil took the *De Rerum Natura* as his model and saturated his farming poem in Lucretian thought, composition, and diction - The famous cattle-plague that closes *Georgics* Book 3 reaches straight back to Lucretius's plague of Athens in Books 5–6
- The Complete Essays by Michel de Montaigne. On the Nature of Things shaped it. - One of Montaigne's deepest sources — the *Essays* quote Lucretius nearly a hundred times - His own heavily annotated copy of the *De rerum natura* survives, finished, by his own hand, on 16 October 1564 - The Lucretian thread runs thickest where Montaigne is most himself — "To philosophise is to learn to die" and the "Apology for Raymond Sebond"
- The Aeneid by Virgil. On the Nature of Things shaped it. - Virgil wrote his epic in pointedly Lucretian hexameter — borrowing not just single words but whole lines and passages of *On the Nature of Things* - The *Aeneid*'s great storm re-mythologizes Lucretius' atomistic meteorology; even Virgilian emotion-language is built on Lucretian precedent - The deepest debt is also an argument: Virgil takes Lucretius' verse texture and underworld matter, then inverts the Epicurean denial of gods and afterlife it was written to prove
- Metamorphoses by Ovid. On the Nature of Things shaped it. - Ovid takes Lucretius's cosmic sweep and runs it backward — into myth - The Pythagoras discourse that closes the *Metamorphoses* adopts Lucretius's didactic mode and his vision of a universe in constant flux, even as it inverts the godless Epicurean physics underneath - Where Lucretius explained natural phenomena to banish the gods, Ovid re-mythologizes the same wonders to put them back
- Letters from a Stoic by Seneca. On the Nature of Things shaped it. - Seneca read Lucretius closely — and quotes him in the *Letters* - The Epicurean's images of cosmic decay, the "rotten stones" of a universe wearing down, resurface in Letters 12, 30, and 58 - Seneca sparring with the great Epicurean poet's verses, then bending them toward Stoic ends, is one of the running pleasures of the *Letters*
- The Eclogues by Virgil. On the Nature of Things shaped it. - Lucretius's atomic, gods-absent account of how the world began left its mark on Virgil's pastoral - In Eclogue 6, Silenus sings a cosmogony in miniature — the origin of all things in Lucretian phrasing, the universe assembling itself without the gods - Virgil bends *On the Nature of Things* into song, folding Epicurean physics into the green world of the shepherds
- The Odes of Horace by Horatius. On the Nature of Things shaped it. - Horace knew Lucretius's verses intimately, and *On the Nature of Things* is the dominant philosophical current in the Odes — Epicureanism colors roughly twice as many odes as Stoicism - The melting-spring opening of Odes 1.4 echoes the proem of *On the Nature of Things*, with its Venus-and-spring tableau - Lucretius supplied Horace the frame for his great theme: the world renews, but you will not — so seize the day
- Candide by Voltaire. On the Nature of Things shaped it. - Voltaire read Lucretius and prized him — he found *De rerum natura* a useful weapon against the Church and ranked him among the great philosopher-poets - The Epicurean garden Lucretius preserved is the one Voltaire reaches for at the close of *Candide*: "we must cultivate our garden"
Depicted in Art
Illuminated frontispiece of the poem's opening: architectural border framing the first verses of Book I, with Pope Sixtus IV's coat of arms below.
Girolamo di Matteo de Tauris, 1483
Engraved title page with Lucretius enthroned among emblems of nature, philosophy, and the elements, framed by a classical arch.
Wenceslaus Hollar, 1656
Primitive humans, satyrs, and centaurs attack wild animals fleeing a forest fire; bodies sprawl in violent struggle across a panoramic landscape.
Piero di Cosimo, 1500
Nine mythological figures in an orange grove: Zephyr seizes Chloris who transforms into Flora; Venus presides at center while the Three Graces dance.
Sandro Botticelli, 1482
Animals (some with human faces) flee in panic across a wooded landscape as flames explode from white-hot tree trunks; herders drive cattle to safety.
Piero di Cosimo, 1505
Recommended Editions
A.E. Stallings
Penguin Classics · 2007
Stallings translates Lucretius in rhyming fourteeners, a formal gamble that pays off. The English moves with the same evangelical momentum as the Latin, and you can feel why atoms got him this excited.
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Deep Dive
What It's About
This summary gives away plot details.
Notable Quotes
“Nothing can be created out of nothing.”
“Death is nothing to us, since when we are, death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.”