"Lucretius, born in Rome in 99BC, in his great poem De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things) sought to rid us of our superstitions and make us see and love the world for what it is, not for what we imagine it to be. “There is a sense of luminous calm and serenity about the poem,” Rovelli observes, “which comes from understanding that there are no capricious gods demanding of us difficult things, and punishing us.”" John Banville Irish Times

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