Wonder did not depend on gods and demons and the dream of an afterlife; in Lucretius it welled up out of a recognition that we are made of the same matter as the stars and the oceans and all things else. And this recognition was the basis for the way he thought we should live our lives.
This reads almost like Lucretius is agnostic or an atheist, but he instead believed in gods of nature that don’t have interest or need to interfere with humans. It’s also said he believed the gods therefore didn’t need religion and didn’t create it, that it was instead the creation of humans.
