Jerome in his additions to the Eusebian chronicle has these words Titus Lucretius poeta nascitur qui postea amatorio poculo in furorem versus, cum aliquot libros per intervalla insaniae conscribsisset, quos postea Cicero emendavit, propria se manu interfecit anno aetatis XLIV. Donatus in his life of Virgil writes thus according to Reifferscheid Suetonii reliq. p. 55, initia aetatis Cremonae egit [Vergilius] usque ad virilem togam, quam xv anno natali suo accepit isdem illis consulibus iterum duobus quibus erat natus, evenitque ut eo ipso die Lucretius poeta decederet. If this be true, Lucretius died about the ides of October U. C. 699 in the second consulship of Pompey and Crassus. His birth then would fall to the year 655. But the passage of Jerome is assigned to ol. 171 2 by Scaliger and most of the older authorities as well as by Mommsen Abh. d. saechs. Ges. II p. 677 and Reifferscheid 1. 1. p. 38. Mai alone in his edition of the chronicle, script, vet. coll. VIII p. 365, gives it to the year 655: on what authority? mere conjecture, I fear, in order to adapt it to the account of Donatus, though in his preface he says that this part of the chronicle has been entirely changed by the help of many Vatican mss.