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Two thinkers, side by side

Life

Portrait of Epicurus
Epicurus

341 BCE – 270 BCE

HellenisticEpicurean

Born Samos

Pleasure is the absence of pain. The good life is quiet, shared, and free from fear.

Portrait of Lucretius
Lucretius

c. 99 BCE – c. 55 BCE

RomanEpicurean

He wrote the universe in verse. Atoms falling through the void, swerving into freedom. Epicurus made poetry.

Connection

Epicurus master Lucretius — Lucretius regarded Epicurus as a liberator of humanity. De Rerum Natura is a poetic monument to Epicurean physics.

Shared Ideas

Atoms & the VoidNaturePleasure

Ideas

PleasureHappinessNatureModerationAtoms & the Void
Atoms & the VoidNaturePleasure

Words

“Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.”

— Epicurus

“Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And once it does come, we no longer exist.”

— Epicurus

“Nothing is ever created by divine power out of nothing.”

— Lucretius

“The drops of rain make a hole in the stone not by violence but by oft falling.”

— Lucretius

Key Moments

341 BCE

Born on Samos

306 BCE

The Garden

c. 305 BCE

Atoms and Tranquility

c. 290 BCE

Letters to Friends

c. 99 BCE

Born

c. 55 BCE

De Rerum Natura

c. 55 BCE

The Atomic Swerve

c. 55 BCE

Freeing the Reader from Fear

Works

The Dialogues and Discourses

Letter to Menoeceus

Principal Doctrines

On the Nature of Things

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Volume I · Ancient Greece · 624-262 BCE