Titus Lucretius Carus (c.99-55 BCE)

was a Roman philosopher and poet whose great work is the 6 part poem called De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things).

Very little is known about his life.

He asserted that although gods do exist, they have no influence on the lives of humans and the universe was not designed by a deity but was the result of random natural events.
Lucretius believed that the source of human unhappiness was in our fear of the gods and of death.

Quotes

"Such evil deeds could religion prompt." De Rerum Natura

"Fear is the mother of all gods."

"Nature does all things spontaneously, by herself, without the meddling of the gods."

On the Nature of Things....

No single thing abides; but all things flow.
Fragment to fragment clings-the things thus grow
Until we know and name them. By degrees
They melt, and are no more the things we know.

Globed from the atoms falling slow or swift
I see the suns, I see the systems lift
Their forms; and even the systems and the suns
Shall go back slowly to the eternal drift.

You too, oh earth-your empires, lands, and seas-
Least with your stars, of all the galaxies,
Globed from the drift like these, like these you too
Shalt go. You are going, hour by hour, like these.

Nothing abides. The seas in delicate haze
Go off; those mooned sands forsake their place;
And where they are, shall other seas in turn
Mow with their scythes of whiteness other bays.

The seeds that once were we take flight and fly,
Winnowed to earth, or whirled along the sky,
Not lost but disunited. Life lives on.
It is the lives, the lives, the lives, that die.

They go beyond recapture and recall,
Lost in the all-indissoluble All:-
Gone like the rainbow from the fountain's foam,
Gone like the spindrift shuddering down the squall.

Flakes of the water, on the waters cease!
Soul of the body, melt and sleep like these.
Atoms to atoms-weariness to rest -
Ashes to ashes-hopes and fears to peace!

O Science, lift aloud your voice that stills
The pulse of fear, and through the conscience thrills-
Thrills through the conscience with the news of peace-
How beautiful your feet are on the hills!

Bibliography

Purnell's Encyclopedia
Encyclopaedia Britannica
A History of Western Philosophy - Bertrand Russell
Why I am not a Christian - Bertrand Russell
The Best of Humanism - R.E Greeley
Scientists BluPete