founder, dogmatic, limited, and without genuine interest in anything outside individual
happiness. They learnt by heart the creed of Epicurus, and added nothing to it throughout the
centuries during which the school survived.
The only eminent disciple of Epicurus is the poet Lucretius ( 99-55 B.C.), who was a
contemporary of Julius Caesar. In the last days of the Roman Republic, free thought was the
fashion, and the doctrines of Epicurus were popular among educated people. The Emperor
Augustus introduced an archaistic revival of ancient virtue and ancient religion, which caused
the poem of Lucretius On the Nature of Things to become unpopular, and it remained so until
the Renaissance. Only one manuscript of it survived the Middle Ages, and that narrowly
escaped destruction by bigots. Hardly any great poet has had to wait so long for recognition, but
in modern times his merits have been almost universally acknowledged. For example, he and
Benjamin Franklin were Shelley's favorite authors.
His poem sets forth in verse the philosophy of Epicurus. Although the two men have the same
doctrine, their temperaments are very different. Lucretius was passionate, and much more in
need of exhortations to prudence than Epicurus was. He committed suicide, and appears to have
suffered from periodic insanity--brought on, so some averred, by the pains of love or the
unintended effects of a love philtre. He feels towards Epicurus as towards a saviour, and applies
language of religious intensity to the man whom he regards as the destroyer of religion: *
When prostrate upon earth lay human life Visibly trampled down and foully crushed Beneath
Religion's cruelty, who meanwhile Out of the regions of the heavens above Showed forth her
face, lowering on mortal men With horrible aspect, first did a man of Greece Dare to lift up his
mortal eyes against her; The first was he to stand up and defy her. Him neither stories of the
gods, nor lightnings, Nor heaven with muttering menaces could quell, But all the more did they
arouse his soul's Keen valour, till he longed to be the first
* I quote the translation of Mr. R. C. Trevelyan, Bk. I, 60-79.