Quae belle tangere possunt
Auris et lepido quae sunt fucata sonore[12].
The union of an original and independent personality with the utmost sincerity of thought and speech is a characteristic in which Lucretius resembles Thucydides. It is this which gives to the works of both, notwithstanding their studied self-suppression, the vivid interest of a direct personal revelation.
The tone of many passages in the poem clearly indicates that Lucretius, though taking no personal part in the active politics of his age, was profoundly moved by the effects which they produced on human happiness and character. Thus the lines at iii. 70-74—
Sanguine civili rem conflant, etc.—
recall the thought and spectacle of crime and bloodshed vividly presented to him in the impressible years of his youth[13]. Other passages are an immediate reflexion of the disturbance and alarm of the times in which the poem was written. Thus the opening lines of the second book, which contrast the security of the contemplative life with the strife of political and military ambition, seem to be suggested by the action of what is sometimes called the first triumvirate. The lines—
Si non forte tuas legiones per loca campi, etc.—
have been noted[14] as a probable allusion to the position actually taken up by Julius Caesar outside of Rome in the opening months of the year 58 b.c. Some earlier lines of the same passage—
Certare ingenio, contendere nobilitate,
Noctes atque dies niti praestante labore