a number of books including Dignity and Decadence: Some Classical Aspects of Victorian Art and Architecture and The Victorians and Ancient Greece . First Sentence Life-stirring Venus,1 Mother of Aeneas and of Rome, Pleasure2 of men and gods, you make all things beneath the dome Of sliding constellations teem, you throng the fruited earth And the ship-freighted sea - for every species comes to birth Conceived through you, and rises forth and gazes on the light.&nbsp Read the first page As the header says, just the best and most intelligent work ever written on how to deal with the inevitability of death, WITHOUT religion. I plan to have extracts from Lucretius's calm, compassionate good sense read at my funeral, and I can't say fairer than that. How often have you come across a poem that is at once astonishing, existential, spellbinding and scientific? Lucretius' The Nature Of Things (based on the teachings of Epicurus whose words were "of gold") is truly one of the most remarkable books I have read. It's got verve, breadth, spunk and imagination. It's also got a lot of reflection and inspired thinking. "For what's to come, open your ears" 1. Atoms: He believed everything is made up of atoms. Remember, this was written 2000 years ago. 2. Chemistry: "For when you rearrange atoms, you change what they compose" 3. Creation: "In no way was the universe made by the power of God". Thank you. 4. Scientific: We should base things on "proven facts" not beliefs