Note 37 — Chapter XIII

In order to perceive the limitation of the view of the evils of human life and of their remedy presented by Lucretius, it is not necessary to contrast it with the higher aspects of moral and religious thought in modern times. It is clear that owing to some idiosyncrasy, the result perhaps of some accident of his early years, and fostered by seclusion in later years from the common ways of life, he greatly exaggerates the influence of the terrors of the ancient religion over the world. There is little trace, either in the literature37 or in the sepulchral inscriptions of the Romans, of that 'fear of Acheron'—