ABSTRACT
Lucretius was more fortunate, for in Epicureanism he found a gospel which his essentially religious mind accepted and proclaimed with the enthusiasm of a Bunyan or an Augustine. Before taking leave of Lucretius, it should be mentioned that there was another didactic poet of about that date, whose work was likewise called de return natura. His name was Egnativs; he is twice mentioned after Accius and once before Lucretius by Macrobius, who at that point is giving examples of how Vergil borrowed words from older writers, and regularly arranges his quotations from the latter in chronological order. Except Lucretius himself, every poet of any importance in that age was more or less decidedly a modernist. It may be mentioned in conclusion that, whereas Lucretius keeps much of his dignity and eloquence in a good translation, no one has yet succeeded in making anything like an adequate version of Catullus into any other language.
