Titus Lucretius Carus 
Of the Nature of Things [EPUB ebook] 
A Metrical Translation by William Ellery Leonard

’De Rerum Natura’ (’On the Nature of Things’) is a 1st century BC didactic poem by the Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius, with the goal of explaining Epicurean philosophy to a Roman audience. Lucretius presents the principles of atomism; the nature of the mind and soul; explanations of sensation and thought; the development of the world and its phenomena; and explains a variety of celestial and terrestrial phenomena. The universe described in the poem operates according to these physical principles, guided by fortuna, ’chance, ’ and not the divine intervention of the traditional Roman deities.