Of the life of Lucretius little is known. Life of Lucretius. Jerome, under the year 95 B. C., says: “Titus Lucretius, the poet, was born, who afterwards was made insane by a love potion, and, when he had in the intervals of his madness written several books, which Cicero corrected, killed himself by his own hand in the forty-fourth year of his age.”[18] Donatus, in his Life of Virgil,[19] says that Lucretius died on the day when Virgil was fifteen years old, i. e., October 15, 55 B. C. This does not agree with the statement of Jerome. Cicero, in a letter written in February, 54 B. C.,[20] mentions the poems of Lucretius, but says nothing about correcting or editing them. This is the only contemporary reference to Lucretius or his work. Now the great poem of Lucretius was evidently never entirely finished by its author, who was therefore probably dead when Cicero wrote this letter. The date (55 B. C.) for his death is thus corroborated. The date of his birth must remain uncertain, but it was probably not far from 99 B. C. Jerome’s statement that Lucretius was insane and committed suicide is not in itself improbable. His work shows him to have been a man of passionate and intense feelings, and gives some ground for the belief that in the course of his life he was subjected to great emotional strain. Of his friends and his daily life we know nothing. His poem is dedicated to Memmius, who is generally supposed to be the Gaius Memmius who was proprætor in Bithynia in 57 B. C.
The only work of Lucretius is a didactic poem of six books, in hexameter verse, On the Nature of Things (De Rerum Natura), in which he expounds the doctrines of Epicurus. Philosophy known to the Romans. The Romans had been for many years acquainted with Greek philosophical teachings, especially with those of the Stoic and Epicurean schools. The Stoic doctrines had been taught by one of the most eminent philosophers of the second century B. C., Panætius, the friend of the younger Scipio Africanus, and were clearly congenial to the Roman temperament; for the Stoics taught that virtue is the highest good, that nothing else is worth striving for, and that the ordinary pleasures of life are mere interruptions of the philosopher’s peace. The Epicurean doctrine, that pleasure is the highest good, was popular only with those who wished to devote themselves to selfish and physical enjoyment, for the higher aspects of the doctrines of Epicurus were not understood. As early as 161 B. C. the senate had passed a vote banishing philosophers and rhetoricians from Rome, and six years later, when three famous philosophers—Diogenes the Stoic, Critolaus the Peripatetic, and Carneades of the Academic school—came to Rome, they aroused so much interest that the senate decided to remove them from the city as soon as possible. Greek philosophy was, then, not a new thing at Rome, but the poem of Lucretius is the first systematic presentation of the Epicurean doctrines.
The purpose of the poem is to free men from superstition and the fear of death by teaching the doctrines of Epicurus. The reason for writing in verse. This is a most serious purpose, and Lucretius is thoroughly in earnest. If he adopts the poetic form, it is in order to make his presentation of the doctrines more attractive, in the hope that it will thus have greater influence. This point of view, and at the same time the poet’s sense of the difficulty of his theme and his power to cope with it, is clearly expressed in the following passage:
Come now, and what remaineth learn and hear
More clearly. Well in my own mind I know
The doctrine is obscure; but mighty hope
Of praise has struck my heart with maddening wand,
And with the blow implanted in my breast
The sweet love of the Muses, filled with which
I wander with fresh mind through pathless tracts