He seems to admire the sterling qualities of character and intellect rather than the brilliant manifestations of impulse and genius. He celebrates the heroism of brave endurance rather than of chivalrous daring[65]: the fortitude that, in the long run, wins success, and saves the State[66], rather than the impetuous valour which achieves a barren glory; the sincerity and simplicity which are stronger than art, yet that know when to speak and when to be silent[67]; the sagacity which enables men to understand their circumstances, and to turn them to the best account[68].
Many of his fragments, again, show traces of that just and vigorous understanding of human life, and that shrewdness of observation, which constitute a great satirist. The didactic tone of satire appears, for instance, in the following lines—
Otioso in otio animus nescit quid velit;
Hic itidem est: enim neque domi nunc nos neque militiae sumus,
Imus huc, illuc hinc, cum illuc ventum est, ire illinc lubet;
Incerte errat animus: praeter propter vitam vivitur[69],—
a fragment which might be compared with certain passages in the Epistles of Horace, which give expression to the ennui experienced as a result of the inaction and luxurious living of the Augustan age. But a closer parallel will be found in a passage where Lucretius has assumed something of the caustic tone of Roman satire—
Exit saepe foras magnis ex aedibus ille
Esse domi quem pertaesum 'st subitoque revertit,
Quippe domi nihilo melius qui sentiat esse, etc.[70]