Vergil said of Lucretius: "Happy is he who could understand the causes of things." Lucretius was an ardent Epicurean who believed that the world was composed of indivisible particles called atoms and that the soul, also composed of atoms, perished with the body. In this course students will study De Rerum Natura, a didactic poem that Lucretius wrote to explain his philosophy and to free his readers from their fear of death.