It is a strange juxtaposition, at least on the surface. Lucretius had become popular in the fifteenth century after Poggio Bracciolini discovered a full version of On the Nature of Things during the Council of Constance. The first-century BCE thinker had written a meditative poem in six books. Its overriding theme was Epicureanism, and the excellence of its Latin entranced Renaissance thinkers always on the alert for stylistic models. As an Epicurean, Lucretius adopted “atomism” as a basis of his natural philosophy. He believed, that is, that all things were made of particles. When the formal unity of any given thing ended — when a tree died, say, or when a human being passed away – the constituent particles then dispersed into the void, to combine and recombine endlessly into other things. This process was totally natural: “…nature is free and uncontrolled by proud masters and runs the universe herself without the aid of gods”. And though gods exist, they live in their own realm, utterly unconcerned with human affairs: “…All their wants are supplied by nature, and nothing at any time cankers their peace of mind”. Human beings are on their own, and if there is a purpose behind human life it is not obvious: randomness is all.