This great didactic poem stands with Vergil's Aeneid as one the most monumental and lasting achievements of Latin literature. Rendered into contemporary English by today's foremost translator of Latin epic, Frank O. Copley, it is again revealed as a work of lasting poetic beauty and continuing modern interest. Based on the tenets of Epicurean philosophy, The Nature of Things sets forth a world view anticipating our own. All that exists is composed of atoms that unite to form matter and dissipate with time. Even the soul is made up of atoms: however, there is no place in the Epicurean universe for the Roman gods, whose existence Lucretius refutes. Lucretius considers the fear of the death to be source of most human ills, and seeks to dispel it by demonstrating that the soul, like the body, dissolves painlessly into its constituent atoms after death. There is no afterlife, therefore no cause for fear.