The implied meaning of " destroying " something is to undo its existence, to make it not there anymore, and this cannot be so: if the void is that which does not exist, and if this void is the implied destination of the destroyed, then the thing in reality cannot be destroyed, for the thing ( and all things ) could not have existed in the first place ( as Lucretius said, ex nihilo nihil fit: nothing comes from nothing ).

I could not agree more with Campbell's commitment to putting Lucretius and Epicureanism into conversation with the present and with our own attempts to figure out where humans belong in a world of chance and impersonal necessity.

The 1st century BCE Roman poet, Titus Lucretius Carus, in his work De Rerum Natura, wrote: " But ' tis that same religion oftener far / Hath bred the foul impieties of men :" A philosopher of the Epicurean school, Lucretius believed the world was composed solely of matter and void, and that all phenomena could be understood as resulting from purely natural causes.

Lucretius attempts to allow for free will in his physicalistic universe by postulating an indeterministic tendency for atoms to swerve randomly ().

This indeterminacy, according to Lucretius, provides the " free will which livings things throughout the world have.

One famous proponent of this view was Lucretius, who asserted that the free will arises out of the random, chaotic movements of atoms, called " clinamen ".

Lucretius, like Epicurus, felt that religion was born of fear and ignorance, and that understanding the natural world would free people of its shackles ; however, he did believe in gods.

Again the student of evolutionary biology will find a fascinating, if to our minds grotesque, anticipation of the theory of chance variations and the natural elimination of the unfit in Lucretius, who in turn seems to have borrowed the concept from the philosopher Empedocles.

Latin was the language of the ancient Romans, but it was also the lingua franca of Europe throughout the middle ages, so Latin literature includes not only Roman authors like Cicero, Vergil, Ovid and Lucretius, but also includes European writers after the fall of the Empire from religious writers like St. Augustine ( 354 – 430 AD ), to secular writers like Francis Bacon ( 1561-1626 ) and Spinoza ( 1632 – 1677 ).

Strauss argued that Machiavelli may have seen himself as influenced by some ideas from classical materialists such as Democritus, Epicurus and Lucretius.

Four men, led by Lucius Junius Brutus, and including also Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus, Publius Valerius Poplicola, and Spurius Lucretius Tricipitinus incited a revolution, and as a result Tarquinius and his family were deposed and expelled from Rome in 509 B. C.

However, Cicero is elsewhere critical of Lucretius and the Epicureans, and disparaged them for their omission from their work of historical study.

The notion of the state of nature itself derives from the republican writings of Cicero and of Lucretius, both of whom enjoyed great vogue in the 18th century, after having been revived amid the optimistic atmosphere of Renaissance humanism.

Assisted by the assumption that combination always takes place in the simplest possible way, he thus arrived at the idea that chemical combination takes place between particles of different weights, and it was this which differentiated his theory from the historic speculations of the Greeks, such as Democritus and Lucretius.

Other poets analyzed range from Lucretius and Dante to Walt Whitman, Wallace Stevens, and John Ashbery.

Lachmann's edition of Lucretius ( 1850 ), which was the principal occupation of his life from 1845, is perhaps his greatest achievement of scholarship.

In this way he treated Horace, Lucretius, Terence and Persius, the biography of the last-named being probably taken from Probus's introduction to his edition of the poet.

Apart from his idylls and his elegies, Chénier also experimented with didactic and philosophic verse, and when he commenced his Hermes in 1783 his ambition was to condense the Encyclopédie of Denis Diderot into a long poem somewhat after the manner of Lucretius.

His translation of Lucretius, The Nature of Things ( 1805-1807 ), contains elaborate philological and explanatory notes, together with parallel passages and quotations from European and Asiatic authors.

A second edition appeared in the following year with extra commendatory verses in Latin and English, some of which bore the names of Nahum Tate, Thomas Otway, Aphra Behn, Richard Duke, and Edmund Waller ; and when Dryden published his translations from Theocritus, Lucretius, and Horace, he made flattering comments on Creech's work in the preface.

H. A. J. Munro in his edition of Lucretius spoke of Creech as borrowing annotations mainly from Lambinus, attributing the popularity of the work their clarity and brevity.

One of the most eminent savants of the period, Mazzoni was reported to have an excellent memory, which made him adept at recalling passages from Dante, Lucretius, Virgil, and others in his regular debates with prominent public figures.

Many passages from Virgil's poetry are indebted to Lucretius: the plague section of Book 3 takes as its model the plague of Athens that closes the De Rerum Natura.

G. B. Conte notes, citing the programmatic statement in Georgics 2. 490 – 502, which draws from De Rerum Natura 1. 78 – 9, " the basic impulse for the Georgics came from a dialogue with Lucretius.

Additionally, some of these reproduced lines are themselves adapted from works by Virgil's earlier literary models, including Homer ’ s Iliad and Odyssey, Apollonius of Rhodes ' Argonautica, Ennius ' Annals, and Lucretius ' On the Nature of Things.

Atomism or social atomism is a sociological theory arising from the scientific notion atomic theory, coined by the ancient Greek philosopher Democritus and the Roman philosopher Lucretius.

In this he argued that there was clear lack of logic in the materialistic view of the world and concluded: " When I bring all this together it is impossible for me to understand on what scientific grounds is founded this resurrection of the old materialistic view of the world that had its first great expression from Epicurus and Lucretius.

However, Montaigne eloquently employed many references and quotes from classical Greek and Roman, i. e. non-Christian authors, especially the atomist Lucretius.

* Translations from Lucretius ( 1920 )

Lucretius has remarked: `` The reason why all Mortals are so gripped by fear is that they see all sorts of things happening in the earth and sky with no discernable cause, and these they attribute to the will of God ''.

According to Lucretius, fear of death is a projection of terrors experienced in life, of pain that only a living ( intact ) mind can feel.

Lucretius also puts forward the ' symmetry argument ' against the fear of death.

One of the most eloquent expressions of Epicurean thought is Lucretius ' On the Nature of Things ( first century BCE ) in which he held that gods exist but argued that religious fear was one of the chief causes of human unhappiness and that the gods did not involve themselves in the world.

Lucretius identifies the supernatural with the notion that the gods created our world or interfere with its operations in some way.

Greek atomism dates back to 440 BC, as what might be indicated by the book De Rerum Natura ( The Nature of Things ) written by the Roman Lucretius in 50 BC.

Although most of the relevant tissues and endocrine glands had been identified by early anatomists, a more humoral approach to understanding biological function and disease was favoured by the ancient Greek and Roman thinkers such as Aristotle, Hippocrates, Lucretius, Celsus, and Galen, according to Freeman et al., and these theories held sway until the advent of germ theory, physiology, and organ basis of pathology in the 19th century.

** De rerum natura by Lucretius ( Latin Literature, Epicurean philosophy )

Some scholars consider the epic poem On the Nature of Things by Lucretius to present in one unified work the core arguments and theories of Epicureanism.

The Latin poem De Rerum Natura by Lucretius ( ca.

Their movement is influenced by the Parenklisis ( Lucretius names it Clinamen ) and that is determined by the chance.

9 ) laughs at this: it is referred to also by Lucretius and Horace.

It virtually disappeared during the Middle Ages, but was rediscovered in a monastery in Germany in 1417, by Poggio Bracciolini, and played an important role both in the development of atomism ( Lucretius was an important influence on Pierre Gassendi ) and the efforts of various figures of the Enlightenment era to construct a new Christian humanism.

In a letter by Cicero to his brother Quintus in February 54 BC, Cicero said that: " The poems of Lucretius are as you write: they exhibit many flashes of genius, and yet show great mastership.

If this is true, Lucretius must have been dead by 54 BC.

He attempts this by expounding the philosophical system of Epicurus, whom Lucretius glorifies as the hero of his epic poem.

Lucretius refers to Memmius by name four times in the first book, three times in the second, five in the fifth, and not at all in the third, fourth, or sixth books.

Lucretius compares his work in this poem to that of a doctor healing a child: just as the doctor may put honey on the rim of a cup containing bitter wormwood ( most likely Absinth Wormwood ) believed to have healing properties, the patient is " tricked " into accepting something beneficial but difficult to swallow, " but not deceived " by the doctor.

The earliest recorded verdict of Lucretius ' work is by Cicero, who calls Lucretius's poetry " full of inspired brilliance, but also of great artistry ".

Some scholars consider the epic poem On the Nature of Things by Lucretius to present in one unified work the core arguments and theories of Epicureanism.

9 ) laughs at Ennius for this: it is referred to also by Lucretius ( i. 124 ) and by Horace ( Epist.

Lucretius, in De Rerum Natura, mentions Iphianassa being sacrificed by her father on the altar of the " Virgin of the Crossways " ( Triviai virginis ) Diana at Aulis as an offering to ensure a successful voyage, in undoubted reference to the tradition of Iphigeneia.