Lucretius (95-55 B.C.).—Meanwhile Italy produced two poets of high rank, Lucretius and Catullus. Of Lucretius we have little trustworthy information. A native of Italy, he appears, in accordance with the common practice, to have studied philosophy at Athens, where he became the classmate of Memmius. From his poetry, we may infer his indifference to all things transient, alike to social pleasures and the stormy sea of politics that surged around him; his life was probably one of deep thought, tinged with sadness. In dignity he was a true Roman; in sympathy for his kind, a true man. With nature he must have held frequent converse, for Homer alone of ancient writers excels him in description. His life ended with suicide.
The only work of Lucretius was what Macaulay styles “the finest didactic poem in any language,” “On the Nature of Things.” It was dedicated to his school-friend Memmius, at whose suggestion it is said to have been written. The old story that, having been crazed by a love-philter administered through the jealousy of his wife, the poet composed this work during the temporary returns of reason, is now discredited as a fabrication of later times.
The poem is divided into six books, and embodies the dogmas of Epicurus, which Lucretius vivified with the spirit of poetry and beautified with its most attractive drapery. Pleasure, the chief end of existence, is to be sought by banishing care and distressing thoughts. God created not; but eternal atoms, variously and ceaselessly active, constitute all existing things. The soul dies with the body; it behooves us, therefore, to make the most of the little time allotted us, by dividing it between moderate enjoyment and philosophical contemplation. (See Masson’s “The Atomic Theory of Lucretius.”)
Lucretius also accounted for the origin of the universe, whose government by a Divine Being he scouted; for that of plants, men, and animals, teaching the survival of the fittest; for that of language and the arts. To elevate his readers above degrading superstitions and the cowardly fear of death is his primary aim; and “the constant presence of this practical purpose imparts to his words that peculiar tone of impassioned earnestness to which there is no parallel in ancient literature.” In one of many passages on the subject, he thus speaks of
THE DREAD OF DEATH.
“Were then the Nature of Created Things
To rise abrupt, and thus repining man
Address:—’O mortal! whence these useless fears?
This weak, superfluous sorrow? why the approach
Dread’st thou of death? For if the time elapsed