Lucretius was born in the 90s and died in the 50s of the first century B.C.; greater precision the evidence hardly warrants.These were the years which saw the proscriptions of Marius (87) and Sulla (82), the rebellion of Spartacus (73-71), the consulship of Cicero and the death of Catiline (63-62), the first Triumvirate (60), and the acquisition of Rome’s empire in the Near East. When Lucretius died the stage was set for a civil war memory of which was to haunt the Roman conscience for the succeeding century. Of all this the only overt hint in the De Rerum Natura occurs at the beginning of the poem, in the poet’s prayer to Venus for peace in his time:

nam neque nos agere hoc patriai tempore iniquo
possumus aequo animo nee Memmi clara propago
talibus in rebus communi desse saluti.
(1. 41-3)

This implies the detachment proper to the Epicurean philosopher; the tone of certain other passages, especially in Book III, suggests that the poet, a Roman writing for Romans, was not indifferent to the agonies of the dying Republic. That Lucretius was indeed a Roman citizen, and probably a man of good family, may be plausibly inferred (though it cannot be proved) from the tone in which he addresses Memmius, from the familiarity displayed in his writing with upper-class ways of life, and above all from the literary culture evident in the D.R.N.

Cicero was credited by Jerome with having corrected the D.R.N. ‘later’ (posted), presumably after the poet’s death rather than while he was writing it. The statement is surprising. Cicero was outspokenly hostile to Epicureanism, to him of all men avoidance of public life was heresy, and scientific inquiry as Lucretius understood it had no appeal to him. The elaborate Pythagorean cosmology of the Somnium Scipionis is no more than a technicolor backdrop to his Sunset Home for Retired Statesmen. The tone of his one reference to Lucretius can hardly be called warm; it does not suggest that he would have put himself or Atticus (who is sometimes said to have ‘published’ the D.R.N.) to much trouble to secure the survival of his work.

The subject-matter of the D.R.N. is physics, not ethics; yet the genesis of the poem, as of the Epicurean system itself, must be sought in a moral revulsion. This is one of several apparent paradoxes confronting the interpreter of Lucretius. Like Juvenal (though the comparison with Juvenal’s nostalgic myopia should not be pressed) Lucretius looked at the state of mankind and was appalled by what he saw. He himself would have desired no better epitaph than the words that he applied to Epicurus (6. 24-34). But in taking on himself the mantle of Epicurus he did not inevitably become, what page after page of the D.R.N. proclaims him to be, one of the great satirists of all time. This character no doubt suited his bent; if words alone can ever demonstrate what the romantic critic calls sincerity, Lucretius was sincere.

If Lucretius is still worth reading, it is not only because of the brilliance of his descriptions or the power of his satire, but because he has something to say. A Greek or Latin book that has no message for the modern reader may yet deserve study as a document for the history of ancient culture or because of some other technical interest; but it cannot be called literature. What distinguishes the D.R.N. not merely from Nicander’s Alexipharmaca or Nemesianus’ Cynegetica but even from the Georgics is the intellectual and moral quality of the Epicurean philosophy – that part of it, that is to say, which is relevant to Lucretius’ purpose – as it emerges from the poem. Ex nihilo nihil fit: without Epicurus there could have been no Lucretius. Had his system really been as mean and silly as Cicero and Macaulay thought it, Lucretius would have rendered himself absurd by the lofty tone and impassioned sweep of his advocacy.