In the Library
On the Nature of Things
Lucretius, 99 BCE
- Form
- Form Poem
- Reading time
- Reading time 5.5 hours
- Translated by
- Translated by William Ellery Leonard
- Chapters
- Chapters 6
- Length
- Length 74k words
£1.99
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About the book
Atoms fall through an infinite void, swerve infinitesimally, and from that swerve come the seas, the cities, the gods, and the reader holding the poem. Lucretius composed this Latin epic in the first century before the common era, casting the materialist physics of Epicurus into hexameters of such sustained beauty that the doctrine survived its own near-extinction through them. Six books move from the atom to the cosmos, from the soul to the plague at Athens, refusing the consolations of religion and offering in their place the consolation of understanding. There is no afterlife; there is no providence; there is no reason to fear what cannot, by definition, be felt. The poem teaches the reader, line by lapidary line, how not to be afraid.