another author in late Republican Rome, Virgil writes in the second book of his Georgics , clearly referring to Lucretius, [ 7 ] that "Happy is he who has discovered the causes of things and has cast beneath his feet [ a ] all fears, unavoidable fate, and the din of the devouring Underworld." [ 8 ] A brief biographical note is found in Aelius Donatus 's Life of Virgil , which seems to be derived from an earlier work by Suetonius . [ 9 ] The note reads: "The first years of his life Virgil spent in Cremona, right until the assumption of his toga virilis , which he accepted on his 17th birthday, when the same two men held the consulate , as when he was born, and it so happened that on the very same day Lucretius the poet passed away." However, although Lucretius certainly lived and died around the time that Virgil and Cicero flourished , the information in this particular testimony is internally inconsistent. Virgil was born in 70 BC, and his 17th birthday therefore took place in 53 BC. Also, the two consuls of 70 BC, Pompey and Crassus , stood together as consuls again in 55, not 53. There is insufficient basis for a confident assertion of the date of Lucretius's birth or death in other sources. Another yet briefer note is found in the Chronicon of Donatus's pupil, Jerome . Writing four centuries after Lucretius's death, he enters under the 171st Olympiad