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In De Rerum Natura, Lucretius gives two reasons for why there must be an atomic swerve: first, without the swerve, there would be no atomic collisions, and thus no macroscopic bodies, as there evidently are;' second, the swerve is supposed to break the decrees of fate and guarantee our freedom.2 The anti-determinist justification for the swerve is highly problematic after all, how could randomness at the atomic level be pertinent at all to the freedom of our own choices? but it has nonetheless garnered quite extensive treatment.3 The cosmological argument for the swerve, on the other hand, has received relatively little attention. Most treatments of Epicureanism either paraphrase Lucretius' argument in De Rerum Natura without giving any extensive analysis of whether the argument is cogent or simply dismiss it as inadequate.4
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