Matt’s Reviews > The Swerve: How the World Became Modern > Status Update

Thomas Jefferson owned five copies of Lucretius. 'the pursuit of happiness.'

One of Shakespeare's favorite books was Montaigne's Essays. Montaigne quoted Lucretius almost a hundred times.

Giordano Bruno, in the 1580s, mocked divine providence. More thought Jesus counts every hair on your head. Bruno believed in a Lucretius universe. Bruno admired Copernicus. He left London for Italy and was tried and killed for heresy.

Both Thomas More and Machiavelli embraced Lucretius, but rejected the lack of God and an afterlife. They both felt fear was needed in the pursuit of pleasure to avoid human natures tendency for force and fraud.

More read Vespucci, and saw the people of America as pleasure seekers in the school of Epicurus and Lucretius. In Utopia, private property is abolished. But, in contradiction to Lucretius, More punished the denial of the afterlife.

On the Nature of Things was being read and many started to grapple with it. Lorenzo Valla wrote a dialogue arguing Epicurean ideas. Poggio denounced him. Thomas Moore read Lucretius. Utopia described a terrible land (Henry VIII's England) and Utopia, in which people sought pleasure.

At the end of Chapter 9, Poggio dies at the age of 78 in 1459

Poggio grew old in Florence, working for many (8) popes, grew richer and bought lots of books and statues. He married and had legitimate children. At age 73, he became chancellor of Florence.

Poggio's pope is in prison, but he did not denounce him. Poggio went to England, but found no good books. In 1425 he returned to the Vatican, and read Lucretius.

Finished Chapter 8. Lucretius said everything is made of atoms, when you die so does your soul, gods care nothing of you, so live this life now.