The most important book you’ve never heard of

The most important book you’ve (probably) never heard of is…

On the Nature of Things by the Roman poet Titus Lucretius Carus

Published around 55 BCE, Lucretius’s poem described the most advanced science the Romans had developed at that time. Two thousand years ago, this book spoke of atoms, the laws of physics, and a universe without gods—but then the poem was lost to history. When a copy of the ancient manuscript resurfaced in 1417 CE, it fueled the Renaissance, ushering in our modern world.

I learned that from The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt (2011). Once the good people of Italy rediscovered this invaluable manuscript in the 15th century, they put its scientific theories to the test. And then they built upon their results, and experimented some more, discussing their findings in their visionary scientific communities.

And that’s how the Renaissance took off! It wasn’t a given. It needed a seed, and On the Nature of Things was that forgotten seed.

When I read about Lucretius back in 2011, I was blown away. I couldn’t believe I had never heard of his book. I hadn’t learned about it in school. I hadn’t seen it mentioned in any documentaries.

I needed to read this important text with my own eyes. Over the years, I collected a few editions because I wanted to compare the translations. Some of these editions include the Latin text, which I consult when I want to get the original meaning of a word.

Imagine if the Roman Empire hadn’t lost that knowledge. Imagine if science had continued building upon those brilliant ideas. Imagine Europe without the Dark Ages (which weren’t as dark as we think, but that’s a discussion for another newsletter). Imagine Europe without the deadly plagues.

Imagine a different timeline called the Lucretian Era…

Which is exactly what I did once I began writing my historical fantasy, The Exiled Queen. I imagined a timeline where On the Nature of Things and its scientific knowledge had never been lost.

With a poetic flourish, Lucretius dedicated his book to the divine Venus, “delight of humans and gods,” and that’s what I chose for my series title. Delight of Humans and Gods unfolds across millennia, from the dawn of the Lucretian Era in The Exiled Queen (a “rich and rousing memorable historical fantasy”—Publishers Weekly) to Earth’s far future in The Regolith Temple (“a must-read for sci-fi fans”—PW). Each novel is a standalone, capturing a critical turning point in this surprising timeline, and the series can be read in any order.

To get a glimpse of what this timeline looks like in the far future (and I leave it to the reader to figure out what year on our real timeline that future corresponds to), check out The Regolith Temple page, where you can also read and/or listen to the first chapter.

To give you an idea of why Lucretius’s manuscript stunned 15th-century Italy, here are lines 486–503 from “Book I: Matter and Void” in the 2007 Penguin Classics translation of A. E. Stallings. Please forgive the forced rhymes, but this translation has fewer archaic words than others, so it’s easier to follow.

***

Further, substances consist either of a single kind

Of atom, or are made of compounds, elements combined.

But the atoms of things are such, there is no power that can snuff

Them out, for they prevail at last with stoutness of their stuff.

And yet it’s hard to believe that anything of solid mass

Exists in all the universe. For bolts of lightning pass

Through walls of houses, just as noises and as voices do.

Iron glows white in fire, stones with fierce heat are split in two.

Warmth loosens up and melts down the frigidity of gold,

And the ‘ice’ of bronze is thawed in fire. Heat and biting cold

Trickle through silver—something anybody understands

Who’s ever held a silver cup of vintage in his hands

When sparkling water’s poured in. So it seems a certain bet

That there is nothing solid in the universe. And yet

True reason and the Nature of Things say otherwise. Lend an ear

For just a few more verses until I can make it clear

That there are things made up of solid stuff that lasts forever,

Which I teach are the atoms, seeds of things that make the sum,

The basic elements the universe is fashioned from.

***

Can you imagine reading this in the 1400s and trying to comprehend how these tiny atoms make up everything you see? Imagine growing up with a debilitating fear of Hell’s horrors (as depicted in religious paintings) and then reading in this book that ancestral gods probably didn’t exist, and that when people died, their souls dispersed into atoms. No afterlife, no fear of Hell, no Catholic Church gatekeeping Heaven. That’s how the Renaissance happened.

Reading Swerve is a treat you shouldn’t miss. In case you didn’t click on the link above, here’s the book description from its publisher:

In the winter of 1417, a short, genial, cannily alert man in his late thirties plucked a very old manuscript off a dusty shelf in a remote monastery, saw with excitement what he had discovered, and ordered that it be copied. He was Poggio Bracciolini, the greatest book hunter of the Renaissance. His discovery, Lucretius’ ancient poem On the Nature of Things, had been almost entirely lost to history for more than a thousand years.

It was a beautiful poem of the most dangerous ideas: that the universe functions without the aid of gods, that religious fear is damaging to human life, that pleasure and virtue are not opposites but intertwined, and that matter is made up of very small material particles in eternal motion, randomly colliding and swerving in new directions. Its return to circulation changed the course of history. The poem’s vision would shape the thought of Galileo and Freud, Darwin and Einstein, and—in the hands of Thomas Jefferson—leave its trace on the Declaration of Independence.

From the gardens of the ancient philosophers to the dark chambers of monastic scriptoria during the Middle Ages to the cynical, competitive court of a corrupt and dangerous pope, Greenblatt brings Poggio’s search and discovery to life in a way that deepens our understanding of the world we live in now.

I hope you’ll check out Swerve when you get a chance. And try reading Lucretius, but only if you have time and patience for his ancient literary form. I also hope you’ll read my series too, though it won’t take you in the direction you might suspect after reading Stephen Greenblatt’s book.