On the Nature of Things

This Latin didactic poem, written in the first century BCE, sets out Epicurean physics and ethics in six books of hexameter. Lucretius argues that the universe is atoms and void, that the gods do not govern human affairs, and that the soul dies with the body, so fear of death and of divine punishment is a mistake. He describes sensation, cosmology, the rise of human society, plague, and the nature of weather and earthquakes. The addressee is Memmius. The work is a philosophical poem meant to free the reader from superstition by explaining how the world is put together from unseen particles.

Quarter-bound in dark brown leather with cream paper boards illustrated with an engraving of the philosopher. Dark brown slipcase titled in gold. Single volume issue from 2003 Great Philospophers of the Ancient World set.