Roman Epicureanism · didactic poetry · c. 99 – c. 55 BCE
Lucretius
Understanding nature to free the mind from fear.
Rome · Roman Italy
Reading guides
A thread to guide your reading.
Original introductions to enter the works, discover their central questions and take the reflection further.
Physics against fear
Follow how atoms, void and the mortality of the mind support the claim that death is nothing to us in On the Nature of Things.
On the Nature of ThingsThe first attested reader
Read Cicero’s single sentence on the poems of Lucretius, its date and its disputed wording, as evidence of the poem’s first circulation in Rome.
Cicero, Letter to His Brother QuintusUntangling a legend
Separate the dates, the love potion, the madness and Cicero’s editing in Jerome’s brief notice, and weigh each claim against earlier evidence.
Jerome, Chronicle