This book was a considerable influence on the Augustan poets, particularly Virgil (in his Aeneid and Georgics, and to a lesser extent on the Satires and Eclogues) and Horace, and it played an important role both in the development of atomism

The sheer ambition and scale of Roman philosopher Lucretius' epic poem On the Nature of Things distinguishes it as belonging in a class of its own. It is on the one hand a sublime and powerful poem, and on the other an encyclopaedia of the world from an Ancient Roman perspective.

Titus Lucretius Carus ( c. 99 BC – c. 55 BC) was a Roman poet and philosopher. His only known work is the epic philosophical poem De rerum natura about the tenets and philosophy of Epicureanism, and which is usually translated into English as On the Nature of Things.