He speaks of his master throughout not only with the affection of a disciple, but with an emotion akin to religious ecstasy[29]. His admiration for him springs from a deeper source of spiritual sentiment than that of Ennius for Scipio, or of Virgil for Augustus. Though Epicurus inspired much affection in his lifetime, and though other great writers after Lucretius,—such as Seneca, Juvenal, and Lucian,—vindicate his name from the dishonour which the perversion of his doctrines brought upon it, yet even the most favourable criticism of his life and teaching must find it difficult to sympathise with the idolatry of Lucretius. Yet his error, if it be one, springs from a generous source. He attributes his own imaginative interest in Nature to a philosopher who examined the phenomena of the outward world merely to find a basis for the destruction of all religious belief. He saturates with his own deep human feeling a moral system which professes to secure human happiness by emptying life of its most sacred associations, most passionate longings, and profoundest affections.
There was a truer affinity of nature between Lucretius and another philosopher whom he names with the warmest feelings of love and veneration—Empedocles of Agrigentum—the most famous of the early physiological poets of Greece. He flourished during the fifth century b.c., and was the author of a didactic poem on Nature, of which some fragments still remain, sufficient to indicate the nature of the work and the character of the man. These fragments prove that Lucretius had carefully studied the older poem, and adopted it as his model in using a poetical form and diction to expound his philosophical system. He declares, indeed, his opposition to the doctrine of Empedocles, which traced the origin of all things to four original elements; but he adopted into his own system many both of his expressions and of his philosophical ideas. The line in which the Roman poet enunciates his first principle,—
Nullam rem e nilo gigni divinitus unquam,
was obviously taken from the lines of the old poem περὶ φύσεως—
ἐκ τοῦ γὰρ μὴ ἐόντος ἀμήχανόν ἐστι γενέσθαι
τό τ' ἐὸν ἐξόλλυσθαι ἀνήνυστον καὶ ἄπρηκτον.
Speaking of Sicily as a rich and wonderful land, Lucretius pays his tribute of love and admiration to his illustrious predecessor in these lines,—
Nil tamen hoc habuisse viro praeclarius in se
Nec sanctum magis et mirum carumque videtur.
Carmina quin etiam divini pectoris eius