A Roman poem about atoms nearly vanished, then resurfaced in 1417
Lucretius left one work: a long Latin poem explaining the universe as atoms moving by chance, with no meddling gods. It shaped Virgil, nearly disappeared in the Middle Ages, and was found again in a German monastery in 1417. It even sketched a stone, bronze and iron sequence centuries before archaeologists adopted one.
Almost nothing about the poet's life is secure. He probably died in 55 BC and was born in the 90s BC, possibly 99 or 98 if Saint Jerome is right that he died at 43. The one firm fact is his link to Gaius Memmius, as friend or client, to whom De rerum natura is dedicated. He was likely a member of the aristocratic Lucretia clan and was clearly expensively schooled in Greek, Latin and philosophy.
Jerome, writing four centuries later, claimed a love potion drove Lucretius mad, that Cicero edited his books, and that he killed himself. A handful of scholars defend the tale, but most treat it as confusion or hostility to Epicureans, and the image of a lovesick, deranged poet is now considered inaccurate. Cicero did praise the poems in a letter of February 54 BC for their flashes of genius.
The poem runs to some 7,400 lines of dactylic hexameter in six untitled books. It was the first known presentation of Epicurean thought to Roman readers, covering atoms, the mind and soul, the senses, and the formation of the world, all driven by chance rather than divine will. Lucretius imagined nature testing endless forms, with those best matched to their surroundings surviving, though he did not think new species descended from older ones. He also noted that wild mammal mothers care for their young much as human mothers do.
His account of human progress moves from hands, nails and teeth to stones, branches and fire, then copper, which he seems to have treated as the same as bronze, and finally iron. That order was revived in the nineteenth century, and he is credited with anticipating the three-age system C. J. Thomsen formalised from 1834. Poggio Bracciolini's rediscovery of the manuscript in 1417 later fed into atomism, notably through Pierre Gassendi.
Source: Lucretius
