Few materials exist for the compilation of his biography. From two passages[471] in his work, in which he states that his native language was Latin, it is clear that he was born within the limits of Italy. The date of his birth is generally fixed B. C. 95.[472] The prevalence of the Epicurean philosophy, and the additional popularity with which his talents invested the fashionable creed, combined to raise him to the equestrian dignity; and, consistently with his cold and hopeless atheism—his proud disbelief in a superintending Providence—he died by his own hand in the prime of life and in the forty-fourth year of his age.[473] The story that his work was written in the lucid intervals of a madness produced by a love-potion, as well as his residence at Athens for the purpose of study, rest upon no foundation. His poem _On the Nature of Things_ is divided into six books, and is written in imitation of that of Empedocles, who is the subject of his warmest praise and admiration. Whilst its subject is philosophical and its purpose didactic, its unity of design, the one point of view from which he regards the various doctrines of the master whose principles he adopts, claims for it the rank of an epic poem. This epic structure prevents it from being a complete and systematic survey of the whole Epicurean philosophy; but, notwithstanding this deficiency in point of comprehensiveness, the exactness and fidelity with which he represents those doctrines which he enunciates, renders him deserving of the credit of having given to his countrymen, as far as epic writing permitted, an accurate view of the philosophical system which then enjoyed the highest degree of popularity. Although Greek philosophy furnished Lucretius with his subject, and a Greek poem served as a model, he also saw and valued the capabilities of the Latin language—he wielded at will its power of embodying the noblest thoughts, and showed how its copious and flexible properties could overcome the hard technicalities of science. Grand as were his conceptions, the language of Lucretius is not inferior to them in majesty. Without violating philosophical accuracy, he never appears to feel it a restraint to his muse: his fancy is always lively, his imagination has free scope even when his thoughts are fixed in the abstrusest theories, and engaged in the most subtle argumentation.[474]