The poem sets out the vision of the Universe according to Epicurus, who thought that everything was made up of an infinite number of tiny particles called atoms. To make sure that Memmius understood him, Lucretius wrote in Latin, rather than Greek. Lucretius’s poem, dedicated to Memmius, was an attempt to convince the boorish Roman that he was obliterating a site of importance. The Epicureans, Lucretius among them, were outraged that the site of their founder’s school was going to be turned into a retirement home for an amateur pornographer. It’s very possible that the property development by Memmius provided the occasion for the composition of one of the most famous poems of antiquity, On the Nature of Things by Lucretius. Still, within a few decades, the philosophers were beginning to return, and rich Romans such as Cicero would send their sons to Greece to acquire an education. In 88 BCE, the Roman general Sulla had crushed a revolt in Greece and closed the philosophical schools on suspicion of political sedition. At the time, Athens was far from being the philosophical centre it had been in previous centuries. According to Cicero, the land contained the ruins of the school founded by the philosopher Epicurus, which Memmius intended to level to provide space for his new villa. On arrival, he bought a plot of land on which he planned to build a house. After being accused of electoral fraud in Rome, he retired to Athens in about 54 BCE, where he wrote erotic poems. By all accounts, Gaius Memmius was not a very nice man.
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