His frequent use of the sacrificial phrase 'Hoc age,' affords evidence of the religious earnestness with which he had devoted himself to his task.
The feeling animating him through all his great adventure,—through the wastest flats as well as the most commanding heights over which it leads him,—is something different from the delight of a poet in his art, of a scholar in his books, of a philosopher in his thought, of a naturalist in his observation. All of these modes of feeling are combined with the passion of his whole moral and intellectual being, aroused by the contemplation of the greatest of all themes—'maiestas cognita rerum'—and concentrated on the greatest of practical ends, the emancipation and elevation of human life. The life of contemplation which he alone among the Romans deliberately chose and realised he carried out with Roman energy and fortitude. It was with him no life of indolent musing, but one of thought and study, varied and braced by original observation. It was a life, also, of strenuous literary effort employed in giving clearness to obscure materials, and in eliciting poetical charm from a language to which the musical cadences of verse had been hitherto almost unknown. Above all, it was the life of one who, while feeling the spell of Nature more profoundly than any poet who had gone before him, did not in that new rapture forget
'The human heart by which we live.'
His high intellectual confidence, based on his firm trust in his master, shows itself in a spirit of intolerance towards the school which was the chief antagonist of Epicureanism at Rome. His argument is a vigorous protest against philosophical error and scepticism, as well as against popular ignorance and superstition. His polemical attitude is seen in the frequent use of such expressions as 'vinco,' 'dede manus,' etc., addressed to an imaginary opponent. Discussion of topics, not apparently necessary to his main argument, is raised with the object of carrying the war into the enemy's camp. Such frequently recurring expressions as 'ut quidam fingunt,' 'perdelirum esse videtur,' etc., are invariably aimed at the Stoics[26]. Of other early philosophers, even when dissenting from their opinions, he speaks in terms of admiration and reverence: but Heraclitus, whose physical explanation of the universe was adopted by the Stoics, is described in terms of disparagement, levelled as much against his later followers as against himself, as—
Clarus ob obscuram linguam magis inter inanis
Quamde gravis inter Graios qui vera requirunt.
The traditional opposition between Democritus and Heraclitus lived after them. Adherence to the doctrine of 'atoms and the void,' and to that of 'the pure fiery element,' became the symbol of a radical divergence in the whole view of human life.
While there is frequent allusion to the Stoics in the poem, there is no direct mention either of them or of their chief teachers, Zeno, Chrysippus, or Cleanthes. Neither do the greater names of Socrates, Plato, or Aristotle appear in it, though one or two passages clearly imply some familiarity with the writings of Plato[27]. But among the moral teachers of antiquity he acknowledges Epicurus only. The whole enthusiasm of his temperament breaks out in admiration of him. He alone is the true interpreter of Nature and conqueror of superstition (i. 75); the reformer 'who has made pure the human heart' (vi. 24); the 'guide out of the storms and darkness of life into calm and light' (iii. 1; v. 11, 12); the 'sun who at his rising extinguished all the lesser stars' (iii. 1044). He is to be ranked even as a God on account of his great services to man, in teaching him the mastery over his fears and passions:—
Deus ille fuit, deus, inclute Memmi[28].