Titus Lucretius Carus was a Roman poet and Epicurean philosopher, author of De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things) — a long philosophical poem setting out Epicurus's atomist physics and its implications for human life. Written in magnificent hexameter verse, the poem argues that the universe operates by natural laws, that the soul is mortal, that the gods do not intervene in human affairs, and that understanding these truths is the path to freedom from fear.