Lucretius

first century BCE · Poet of On the Nature of Things

The Roman poet who set Epicurus’s physics and his view of death in Latin verse.

2 min read · Updated 11 November 2026 · Last checked 11 November 2026

Life and work #

Titus Lucretius Carus wrote De Rerum Natura, ‘On the Nature of Things’, a long poem in six books of Latin hexameter. It sets out the atomic picture of the world and argues that death is nothing to us.¹^,²

A letter of Cicero’s from February 54 BCE shows that the poem was already being read in Rome by then. The traditional date for the poet’s death, about 55 BCE, is uncertain.³

The poem nearly vanished. Poggio Bracciolini found a copy in 1417, and it spread through Renaissance Europe.⁴

What to be careful about #

Almost nothing secure is known about his life. The few biographical notices are late, and I have not repeated the stories they tell.

Stephen Greenblatt’s The Swerve is a lively account of the poem’s rediscovery, but specialists dispute some of its larger claims.

On this site #

Notes

Lucretius, De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things). ↩
Donatus, Life of Virgil, and Jerome, Chronicle (the late sources for Lucretius's dates). ↩
Cicero, Letters to his brother Quintus (Ad Quintum fratrem), 2.9. ↩
Stephen Greenblatt, The Swerve: How the World Became Modern (W. W. Norton, 2011). The find is dated to 1417. The exact monastery is uncertain. ↩

Ancient sources cited

Cicero, Letters to his brother Quintus (Ad Quintum fratrem)
Letter 2.9 (February 54 BCE) is the earliest mention of Lucretius's poem.
Lucretius, De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)
Donatus, Life of Virgil, and Jerome, Chronicle (the late sources for Lucretius's dates)
Both were written centuries after Lucretius, which is why his dates stay uncertain.

Modern works cited

Stephen Greenblatt, The Swerve: How the World Became Modern (W. W. Norton, 2011)
A lively popular account of Poggio's find. Some scholars think it overstates the poem's Renaissance impact.

Cite this page. The Garden, ‘Lucretius’, https://camelmaps.org/garden/person.php, last updated 11 November 2026, last checked 11 November 2026. What has changed.