- Lived:
- c. 99–c. 55 BCE · Roman Italy
- Tradition:
- Roman Epicureanism — Greek atomist philosophy reborn as Latin poetry
- The Big Idea:
- The universe is nothing but atoms moving in empty space — and once you truly see that, the two great terrors of human life, the gods and death, lose their power over you.
- In their words:
- "The generations of living things pass in swift succession, and like runners hand on the torch of life."
- If you remember one thing:
- He turned physics into poetry to cure people of fear — and his poem survived the Middle Ages by a single thread, was rediscovered in 1417, and helped spark the modern world.