LUCRE'TIUS, with his full name TITUS LUCRETIUS CARUS, was born B.C. 95, and died B.C. 52, in the forty-fourth year of his age. We possess no particulars respecting his life, but he appears to have been born at Rome, was probably of equestrian rank, and is said to have put an end to his owu life.
The poem of Lucretius, entitled De Reruns Nature' On the Nature of Things '), is is six books, and contains a development of the physical and ethical doctrines of Epicurus. Notwithstanding the nature of the subject, which gave the poet little opportunity for those descriptions of the passions and the feelings which generally form the chief charm iu poetry, Lucretius has succeeded in imparting to his didactic and philosophical wurk such of the real spirit of poetry; and if he had chosen a subject which would have afforded him greater scope for the exercise of his powers, he might have been ranked among the first of poets. Even in tho work which has come down to us we find many passages which are not equalled by the best lines of any Latin poet, nod which, for vigour of conception and splendour of diction, will bear a comparison with the best efforts of the poets of any age and country. In no writer does tho Latin language display its majesty and stately grandeur so effectively as in Lucretius. There is a power and an energy iu his descriptions which we rarely meet with in the Latin poets ; and no one who has read his invocation to Venue at the beginning of the poem, or his beautiful picture of the busy pursuits of men at the commencement of the second book, or the progress of the arts and sciences in the fifth, or his description of the plague which devastated Athens during the Peloponnesian vo ar at the close of the sixth, can refuse to allow Lucretius a high rank among the poets of antiquity. The object of Lucretius was to inculcate the great doctrine of Epicurus, so frequently misunderstood and misrepresented, that it is the great object of man's life to increase to the utmost his pleasures, and to diminish to the utmost his pains; and since the happiness of mankind was chiefly prevented in his opinion by two things, super stition or a slavish fear of the gods and a dread of death, ho endeavours to show that the gods take no interest in and exercise no control over the affairs of mankind, and that the soul is material and perishes with the body. In the first three books he developer the Epicurean tenets
respecting the formation of all things from atoms which existed from all eternity, and also maintains the materiality of the soul, which he supposes to be compounded of different kinds of air inhaled from the atmosphere; in the fourth book he inquires into the origin of sense and perception, and the nature and origin of dreams, which leads to a long digression on the folly and miseries of unlawful love ; in the fifth lie gives an account of the origin and laws of the world, and describes the gradual progress of mankind from a state of nature to eivilisatiou, as well as the origin and progress of the arts and sciences; and in the sixth he attempts to account for a number of extraordinary phenomena, such as waterspouts, hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanoes, and pestilential diseases.
The poetry of Lucretius does not appear to have been highly esti mated by the majority of his countrymen. Ovid certainly speaks of it iu the highest terms ('Amer.; xv. 23); but Qniutilian mentions him rather slightingly (' Just. Orat.,' x. 1) ; and Cicero does not praise him without considerable reservation (' Epist. ad Quint,' ii. 11). The nature of his subject, and the little taste which the Romans iu general manifested for speculations like those of Lucretius, may perhaps account for his poetry being estimated below its real merits.
The best editions of Lucretius aro—hy Lambinue, whose commentary is very useful, 1563-70; Have rcamp, 1725 ; Wakefield, 1796.97; Rich stiidt, 1801; and Forbiger, 1823. The 'De Reruns Nature' has been translated into most European languages : the translations most worthy of notice are—the English by Creech (frequently printed), by Mason Good, with the Latin text and numerous notes of little value, in 2 vols. 4to, 1305 (the metrical version forme a volume of 'Bohn's Classical Library '), and by Thomas Busby, 2 vole. 4to, 1813; the French by Lagrange, with the Latin text, 1799, and much better by De Porgen ville, 1823 ; the German by Meinecke, 1795, and by Knebel, 1821 and 1331 ; and the Italian by Marchetti, 1717, frequently reprinted.