Nothing Can Be Created From Nothing

From Book I of De Rerum Natura ("On the Nature of Things"), the great Epicurean philosophical poem of the Roman poet Lucretius, composed around 55 BC. Lucretius is translating into Latin the Epicurean principle ex nihilo nihil fit — derived ultimately from the pre-Socratic philosopher Parmenides — which formed the cornerstone of ancient atomist physics. If something could arise from nothing, natural processes would be unpredictable and miraculous; since they are regular and law-governed, matter must be indestructible and eternal. The principle anticipates the modern law of conservation of matter.