Titus Lucretius Carus (/ˈtaɪtəs lʊˈkriːʃəs/; c. 15 October 99 BC – c. 55 BC) was a Roman poet and philosopher. His only known work is the didactic philosophical poem De rerum natura about the tenets and philosophy of Epicureanism, and which is usually translated into English as On the Nature of Things. Lucretius has been credited with originating the concept of the three-age system which was formalised from 1834 by C. J. Thomsen.
Very little is known about Lucretius's life; the only certain fact is that he was either a friend or client of Gaius Memmius, to whom the poem was addressed and dedicated.[1]
De rerum natura was a considerable influence on the Augustan poets, particularly Virgil (in his Aeneid and Georgics, and to a lesser extent on the Eclogues) and Horace.[2] The work virtually disappeared during the Middle Ages but was rediscovered in 1417 in a monastery in Germany[3] by Poggio Bracciolini, and it played an important role both in the development of atomism (Lucretius was an important influence on Pierre Gassendi[4]) and the efforts of various figures of the Enlightenment era to construct a new Christian humanism.
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De rerum natura (Latin: [deː ˈreːrũːm naːˈtuːraː]; On the Nature of Things) is a first-century BC didactic poem by the Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius (c. 99 BC – c. 55 BC) with the goal of explaining Epicurean philosophyto a Roman audience. The poem, written in some 7,400 dactylic hexameters, is divided into six untitled books, and explores Epicurean physics through richly poetic language and metaphors.[1]
Lucretius presents the principles of atomism; the nature of the mind and soul; explanations of sensation and thought; the development of the world and its phenomena; and explains a variety of celestial and terrestrialphenomena. The universe described in the poem operates according to these physical principles, guided by fortuna, "chance," and not the divine intervention of the traditional Roman deities.[2]'
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