A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

The information to be derived from ancient writers regarding the personal history of Lucretius is very scanty in amount and somewhat suspicious in character That he was a Roman, or at least an Italian by birth, may be inferred from his own words, for he twice speaks of the Latin language as his native tongue (1.831, 3.261, comp. 1.42). The Eusebian Chronicle fixes B. C. 95 as the date of his birth, adding that he was driven mad by a love potion, that during his lucid intervals he composed several works which were revised by Cicero, and that he perished by his own hand in the forty-fourth year of his age, that is, B. C. 52 or 51. Donatus,on the contrary, affirms that his death happened in B. C. 55, on the very day on which Virgil assumed the toga virilis, an event which, in the Eusebian Chronicle, is placed two years later. From what source the tale about the philtre may have been derived we know not. Pomponius Sabinus, in a note on the third Georgic (50.202), states that the drug employed was hippomanes, while later writers, twisting a passage in the works of St. Jerome (ad Rufin. 100.22) to their own views, have declared that the potion was administered by his own wife Lucilia, in order that she might inspire him with more deep and fervent affection. It has been ingenliously conjectured that the whole story was an invention of some enemy of the Epicureans, who conceived that such an end would be peculiarly appropriate for one who so boldly professed and so zealously advocated the principles of that philosophy. Not a hint is to be found anywhere which corroborates the assertion with regard to the editorial labours of Cicero.

When we consider that what has been set down above comprises everything that can be gleaned from authentic sources, we may feel somewhat surprised, on turning to the biographies of Lucretius prefixed to various editions and translations of his work, to find that they contain a detailed account

of his family and connections, from the days of the chaste wife of Collatinus, a narrative of his journey to Athens for the prosecution of his philosophical studies, an account of the society in which he there lived, of the friendships which he there formed, of the preceptors from whose lips he derived his enthusiasm for those tenets which he subsequently expounded with such fervid faith, of his return to his native country, and of his life and habits while enjoying the charms of literary ease and peaceful seclusion. But the whole of these particulars are a mere tissue of speculations,--a web of conjectures originally woven by the imagination of Lambinus and afterwards variously embroidered by the idle and perverse ingenuity of a long line of commentators.

The period about which his piece was published can be reduced within narrow limits. The allusion to the unhappy dissensions by which his native country was distracted, have been supposed to bear special reference to the conspiracy of Catiline, but the expression " patriae tempore iniquo" is so general that it is applicable to any portion of the epoch when he flourished. From the manner, however, in which Cicero, in a letter to his brother Quintus, written B. C. 55, gives his opinion on the merits of the poem, we may fairly conclude that it had been recently published; and, taking into account the slowness with which copies were multiplied, the conjecture of Forbiger becomes highly probable, that it may have been given to the world in the early part of the year B. C. 57, when the machinations of Clodius were producing a degree of disorder and anarchy almost without example even in those stormy times.

[W.R]