And finally, I think that Lucretius would have had a huge impact on humanist thinking of the time. To me, what it has to say is astonishingly modern, and it's hard for us to grasp how stunningly different it was from the teachings of the time, whether it was all the hellfire and damnation, or the sun revolving around the earth (and aforesaid hellfire etc if you said that wasn't so), and the right we all have to be happy in our lives rather than being put here to suffer in the hope of a better deal in the hereafter./QUOTE]
I was also amazed at how advanced Lucretius' thinking was, however, I wonder sometimes if there's an arrogance about the modern era - what makes us think that we're so much more advanced than other eras? Obviously the science and technological advances we have made over the last couple of hundred years have been staggering, but does that give us the right to feel superior? Should we be surprised that there weren't more writings like this?
