Titus Lucretius Carus was a Latin poet of the first century BCE whose sole surviving work De rerum natura, or “On the Nature of Things,” revised the teachings of the Greek philosopher Epicurus for a Roman audience. The poem describes a world built out of atoms that swerve and come together to create all matter, including ourselves. Nominally addressed to Lucretius’ friend Memmius, the poem tries to free its reader from all superstition and fear of death by embracing the pleasures of a materialist universe.