# The first printed Lucretius puts De rerum natura into type at Brescia

Date: 1473

## The fact

In 1473 a Brescia press issued the first printed De rerum natura, the main Latin carrier of Garden physics after Poggio’s 1417 rediscovery. The colophon is a humanist shop’s, not a Garden autograph. Print made atomism copyable in the Latin West.

## Context

Poggio found a manuscript; print multiplied it. Church hostility did not prevent the book’s survival once type existed.

[Epicurus](/people/epicurus) is not the sole author of every later object, law, or museum label that uses the name. Shared work with courts, excavators, printers, spouses, officials, and later states does not erase a documented role, and it does not make an ancient person the signer of a twentieth-century statute.

## Evidence and sources

Official edition, museum, archive, or agency page and an independent publisher independently describe this instrument.

Official or archival record: Lucretius, On the Nature of Things (public-domain English) (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/785; Project Gutenberg).

## Significance

A 1473 Latin poem in type is a knowledge-access ignition, not a laboratory.

A 1473 Latin poem in type is a knowledge-access ignition, not a laboratory.

## What is established and what is not

Established as a dated public record of this instrument.

What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions.

The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit.

## People

- Epicurus: https://factrail.ai/people/epicurus

## Drivers

- Digital Learning Access: https://factrail.ai/drivers/edu-digital-learning-access

## Sources

- https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/785
- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Epicurus

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/ep-lucretius-print-1473