Note 572 — CXXXI (Q FR II, 9)

Lucretius seems to have been now dead, according to Donatus 15 October (B.C. 55), though the date is uncertain. I have translated the reading multæ tamen artis, which has been changed by some to multæ etiam artis. But the contrast in the criticism seems to be between the fine poetical passages in the de Rerum Natura and the mass of technical exposition of philosophy which must have repelled the "general reader" at all times. It suggests at once to Cicero to mention another poem on a similar subject, the Empedoclea of Sallustius, of which and its writer we know nothing. It was not the historian.