Lucretius (c. 99–55 BC)
Roman poet and Epicurean philosopher. His De Rerum natura/On the Nature of The Universe, a didactic poem in six books, envisaged the whole universe as a combination of atoms, and had some concept of evolutionary theory.
According to Lucretius, animals were complex but initially quite fortuitous clusters of atoms, only certain combinations surviving to reproduce. The chief aim of the poem is to free men from superstition, to accustom them to the idea of complete annihiliation at death, and to rid them of the idea of divine interference in human affairs.
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