In A. E. Stallings translation of Lucretius' The Nature of Things, she translations the following passage as such:

Back then the fate of an untimely death was no more rife

Than now, why men with moaning leave the sweet light of this life.

To be sure, each was more likely to be caught by some wild beast,

Gulped down in toothy jaws, supplying it a living feast,

Filling the groves, the hills and woods with groans, because he was

Buried alive, he saw, inside a live sarcophagus.

And those who managed to escape, but with their bodies mauled,

Later placed shaking hands on suppurating sores and called

On Orcus with hair-raising cries, until the pains that racked

Their flesh released them from their lives, and all because they lacked

Aid and the know-how to dress a wound. But no one day would yield

At that time myriads of men reaped on the battlefield;

Neither in those days did tossing surges of the main

Shiver ships and sailors on the rocks. Blindly, in vain,

To no purpose, often the sea would rage with rising tide,

Then fickle as you please, would toss her empty threats aside.

Nor then could the bewitching laughter of the sparkling waves

And peaceful-seeming sea beguile men to watery graves;

The perverse science of navigation still lay hid in gloom.*

Back then a dearth of food sent swooning bodies to the tomb;

Now men are sunk beneath excess and eat more than their fill.

Then, men unwittingly ingested poison that would kill;

But now men poison others, being expert in that skill.

—Lucretius, The Nature of Things 5.988-1010

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*perverse science of navigation . . . gloom: Romans were suspicious of sailing and navigation, as comes across again and again in this book.

The commentary above is her own.

Is this true? If so, why were Romans suspicious of sailing and navigation?