Lucretius (c.94–c.55 BC)

Titus Lucretius Carus was a Roman Epicurean philosopher and poet. About his life and personality little can be said with certainty, yet his only known work, ‘On the Nature of Things’ (De rerum natura), is of considerable size and one of the most brilliant achievements of Latin poetry. A didactic poem in six books, it expounds Epicurean physics. Its manifesto is to abolish the fear of gods and of death by demonstrating that the soul is mortal and the world not governed by gods but by mechanical laws.