Titius Lŭcrētius Carus

, a celebrated Roman poet and philosopher, who was early sent to Athens, where he studied under Zeno and Phædrus. The tenets of Epicurus and Empedocles, which then prevailed at Athens, were warmly embraced by Lucretius, and when united with the infinite of Anaximander and the atoms of Demo crit us, they were explained and elucidated in a poem, in six books, which is called De rerum naturâ . In this poem the masterly genius and unaffected elegance of the poet are everywhere conspicuous; but the opinions of the philosopher are justly censured, who gives no existence of power to a supreme Being, but is the devoted advocate of atheism and impiety, and earnestly endeavours to establish the mortality of the soul. This composition, which has little claim to be called an heroic poem, was written and finished while the poet laboured under a violent delirium, occasioned by a philter, which the jealousy of his mistre or his wife Lucilia had administered. It is said that he destroyed himself in the 44th year of his age, about 54 years before Christ. Cicero, after his death, revised and corrected his poems, which had been partly written in the lucid intervals of reason and of sense. Lucretius, whose poem shows that he wrote Latin better than any other man ever did, would have proved no mean rival to Virgil, had he lived in the polished age of August us. The best editions of his works are that of Creech, 8vo, Oxford, 1695; that of Haver camp, 2  vols. , 4to, Leiden, 1725; and that of Glasgow, 12mo, 1759. Paterculus , bk. 2 , ch. 36 .— Quintilian , bk. 3 , ch. 1 ; bk. 10 , ch. 1 .――Quintus, a Roman who killed himself because the inhabitants of Sulmo, over which he was appointed with a garrison, seemed to favour the cause of Julius Cæsar. Cæsar , Civil War , bk. 1 , ch. 18 . He is also called Vespillo.――Spurius Tricipitinus, father of Lucretia wife of Coll at in us, was made consul after the death of Brutus, and soon after died himself. Horatius Pulvillus succeeded him. Livy , bk. 1 , ch. 58 .— Plutarch , Publicola .――An interrex at Rome.――A consul.――Osella, a Roman, put to death by Sylla because he had applied for the consulship without his permi ion. Plutarch.