Lucretius
Titus Lucretius Carus (99-55 BC) was a Roman philosopher whose only surviving work is De Rerum Natura, ‘On the Nature of Things’, an epic poem about the nature of the universe based on Epicurean philosophy. References to the poem are to be found in the writings of Cicero, Horace, and Virgil, but the poem itself was lost to medieval scholarship. However, a copy was discovered in a monastery in Germany in 1417 by Poggio Bracciolini. Thereafter it was widely read, playing an important role in the revival of atomism by Gassendi and others.
Links
Lucretius: On the Nature of Things >
Internet encyclopedia of philosophy: Lucretius >
Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy: Lucretius >
Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911): Lucretius >