There are not any details about his life. Saint Jerome tells of how he became insane because of a love potion and wrote his poetry in between fits of insanity. Modern scholarship thinks this was just used to explain how he behaved. The "De rerum natura" had a large affect on the Augustan poets, including Virgil and Horace. The work were lost for a time. It was later found in a monastery in Germany. This work played an important part both in the development of atomism and in the efforts of many people of the Enlightenment era to build a new Christian humanism.