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In his long poem De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things), Lucretius (c. 98–55 BCE) has two main goals:
- To explain the creation and operation of the universe in rational terms.
- In doing so, to supplant religion — and its superstitions and “crimes” — with a more thoughtful and less harmful philosophy.
His apparent addressee is one Memmius, but Lucretius likely had in mind a larger, more religiously inclined, Roman audience, as well.
To make his case, the poet leans heavily on the atomistic theories forwarded by the Greek philosophers Epicurus and Democritus. They held that everything was composed of atoms, tiny seeds that humans can’t perceive.
These atoms moved in a void, propelled by their own nature, not by divine intervention, and collided with each other all the time. Through such interactions, which were often violent, things were created. The properties of those things depended on the shapes and characteristics of the atoms themselves. Solids were made up of hook-like atoms, while the atoms of liquids were smooth.
Taking this as his foundation, Lucretius attempts to explain how the world was created, how life began, how language developed, how humans formed civilizations, how the mind works, why we have sex…
