Work

On the Nature of Things

De Rerum Natura

Lucretius·c. 55 BCE·Latin

About this text

A poem in six books setting out the whole of Epicurean physics. It explains the universe through atoms and void, argues that the soul is mortal, and teaches that the fear of death is the source of all human misery.

When human life lay foul before the eyes, crushed on the earth beneath the weight of religion, which showed its face from the regions of heaven, lowering upon mortals with a dreadful grin, it was a man of Greece who first dared to raise mortal eyes against her, and first stood firm against her.

Him neither the repute of the gods nor thunderbolts checked, nor heaven's threatening roar. They only spurred his spirit's keen courage the more, so that he longed to be the first to burst the narrow bars of nature's gates.

Nothing is ever created by divine power out of nothing. For if things came from nothing, any breed could be born from any source. Nothing would need a seed.

Full text not yet available.