Stephen Greenblatt’s The Swerve: Did Lucretius’s Poem Really Bring Us Modernity? - Slate Magazine: his real subject is the intellectual revolution of Epicureanism, the Greek philosophical school to which Lucretius belonged. Epicurus, its fourth-century founder, taught that the universe was completely material, made up of nothing but atoms and space. The power that drove life to multiply and evolve was irresistible but blind, the result of purely physical forces. It followed that there was no afterlife, no divine punishment, and no purpose to human existence except the cultivation of pleasure and the avoidance of pain.