The misery of the years following Julius' murder are recalled in Virgil's next work, the Georgics, in the magnificent rhetoric of the finale of Book I, 466-514, which represents the chaos as continuing and the young Octavian as the only hope. Seneca said pertinently that Virgil was interested in what could be said most gracefully, not most truthfully, and wrote not to teach farmers but to delight readers. In Virgil the technically didactic matter is eclectic, yet it forms too large a part of the poem for it to be taken as purely symbolic. In the case of a poem whose excellence depends on a variety of features the best, perhaps the only, way of doing justice to it is by a running commentary, in terms of structure. To several sensitive critics the Georgics has suggested a musical composition, a symphony with four movements and various themes enunciated and then harmoniously interwoven.

The De rerum natura of Lucretius represents one of the rarest of literary accomplishments, a successful didactic poem on a scientific subject. Epicureanism was the most conservative of the Hellenistic philosophies, but it was not immune to change and modification. While Lucretius was writing, Epicurean philosophers like Philodemus were busy developing the master's doctrine and attempting to answer the objections of their philosophical opponents. Lucretius was familiar with Philodemus or was in any way influenced by his work. More significant is the poet's relationship with contemporary Stoicism. If the central question in Lucretian criticism is the relationship between poetry and philosophy, then it is important to understand the extent to which Lucretius accurately reflects the spirit of Epicurus. The idea of introducing the old Homeric myth of Venus and Mars may in fact have come to Lucretius from Empedodes, who is said to have used it for the two great forces of love and strife which control the Empedoclean universe.