Epicureanism at Rome. One of the major schools of Greek philosophy was that of Epicurus. His views were made more available to Roman readers by Titus Lucretius Carus, whose On the Nature of the Universe was said to have been published posthumously by Cicero. In this hexameter didactic poem, Lucretius outlines Epicurean physics. He tries to show that everything in the world is made of matter, made of atoms. There is no afterlife and death is therefore not to be feared. Expressing these doctrines in Latin hexameter was particularly difficult, not just because it meant versifying a branch of Hellenistic Greek philosophy that today would be called natural science. In addition to this challenge, Latin simply lacked a philosophical vocabulary; Lucretius says, I know / new terms must be invented, since our tongue / is poor, and this material is new (1.137-8 translation by Humphreys). The end...