The brief and balanced judgment of Quintilian (_Inst. Orat._ X. i. 90) sums up Lucan in words which suggest at once his chief merits and defects as a poet: _Lucanus ardens et concitatus et sententiis clarissimus et magis oratoribus quam poetis imitandus--Lucan has fire and point, is very famous for his maxims, and indeed is rather a model for orators than poets_. GAIUS LUCILIUS, circ. 170-103 B.C. 1. Life. [Sidenote: LUCILIUS.] Lucilius was born in the Latin town of Suessa of the Aurunci, in Campania, of a well-to-do equestrian family. Velleius tells us that the sister of Lucilius was grandmother to Pompeius, and that Lucilius served in the cavalry under Scipio in the Numantine war, 134 B.C. Lucilius lived on very intimate terms with Scipio Africanus Minor and Laelius, and died at Naples (103 B.C.), where he was honoured with a public funeral. 2. Works. +Saturae+ in thirty Books, in various metres. Fragments only are extant. ‘After Terence he is the most distinguished and the most important in his literary influence among the friends of Scipio. The form of literature which he invented and popularised, that of familiar poetry, was one which proved singularly suited to the Latin genius. He speaks of his own works under the name of _Sermones_ (talks)--a name which was retained by his great successor and imitator Horace; but the peculiar combination of metrical form with wide range of subject and the pedestrian style of ordinary prose received in popular usage the name _Satura_ (mixture).’--Mackail. _Satura quidem tota nostra est, in qua primus insignem laudem adeptus Lucilius._ --Quint. X. i. 93. ‘The chief social vices which Lucilius attacks are those which reappear in the pages of the later satirists. They are the two extremes to which the Roman temperament was most prone: rapacity and meanness in gaining money, vulgar ostentation and coarse sensuality in using it.’ --Sellar. Juvenal says of him (_Sat._ i. 165-7): ‘When old Lucilius seems to draw his sword and growls in burning ire, the hearer blushes for shame, his conscience is chilled for his offences, and his heart faints for secret sins.’ T. LUCRETIUS CARUS, circ. 99-55 B.C. 1. Life. [Sidenote: LUCRETIUS.] Very little is known of his life. The subiect of his poem prevented him from telling his own history as Catullus, Horace, and Ovid have done, and his contemporaries seldom refer to him. The name Lucretius suggests that he was descended from one of the most ancient patrician houses of Rome, famous in the early annals of the Republic. He was evidently a man of wealth and position, but he deliberately chose the life of contemplation, and lived apart from the ambitions and follies of his day. Donatus, in his life of Vergil, tells us that Lucretius died on the day on which Vergil assumed the _toga virilis_, Oct. 15, 55 B.C. 2. Works.