The Renaissance might not have existed. There would have been neither the masterpieces of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, nor the brilliant political cynicism of Machiavelli, nor the entire era of the flourishing of sciences and arts, the time of the creation of brilliant works of painting, literature and philosophy. It would not have happened if If only one day the collector of ancient manuscripts Poggio Bracciolini had not come across a certain ancient manuscript in the monastery library... Thus, Lucretius’s poem “On the Nature of Things,” which had been considered lost until then, was discovered, having lain in oblivion for hundreds of years. The manuscript preached extremely “dangerous” ideas of humanism and materialism, taught to rejoice life, denied religious bigotry and obscurantism. It influenced the formation of the worldview of Galileo and Freud, Thomas Jefferson, Darwin and Einstein. The revival of the poem from oblivion changed the course of European history. But how did this happen?..