Though the dungeon, the scourge, and the executioner be absent, the guilty mind can apply the goad and scorch with blows.

These are a lot of ifs and it may be wisest to simply say that Lucretius was born in the 90s BC and died in the 50s BC. "
A brief biographical note is found in Aelius Donatus's Life of Virgil which seems to be derived from an earlier work by Suetonius. Lucretius' love of the countryside invites speculation that he inhabited family-owned rural estates as did many wealthy Roman families and he was certainly expensively educated with mastery of Latin Greek literature and philosophy.

It virtually disappeared during the Middle Ages but was rediscovered in a monastery in Germany in 1417 by Poggio Bracciolini and played an important role both in the development of atomism (Lucretius was an important influence on Pierre Gassendi) and the efforts of various figures of the Enlightenment era to construct a new Christian humanism. Jerome tells how he was driven mad by a love potion and wrote his poetry between fits of insanity eventually committing suicide in middle age; but modern scholarship suggests this account was likely an invention.