Lucretius' epic "On the Nature of Things" is considered an example of
the astronomical or physical epic.

The Augustan age proved rich in epic poets, such as Publius Terentius
Varro, translator of the Argonautica and author of a poem on Julius
Caesar; Lucius Varius Rufus, whose poems are lost; and, greatest of
all, Virgil, of whose latest and greatest work, the Aeneid, a complete
synopsis follows. Next to this greatest Latin poem ranks Lucan's
Pharsalia, wherein he relates in ten books the rivalry between Caesar
and Pompey, while his contemporary Statius, in his Thebais and
unfinished Achilleis, works over the time-honored cycles of Thèbes and
Troy. During the same period Silius Italicus supplied a lengthy poem
on the second Punic war, and Valerius Flaccus a new translation or
adaptation of the Argonautica.

In the second century of our own era Quintius Curtius composed an epic
on Alexander, and in the third century Juvencus penned the first
Christian epic, using the Life of Christ as his theme. In the fifth
century Claudianus harked back to the old Greek myths of the battle of
the Giants and of the Abduction of Persephone, although by that time
Christianity was well established in Italy. From that epoch Roman
literature practically ceased to exist, for although various attempts
at Latin epics were made by mediaeval poets, none of them proved of
sufficient merit to claim attention here.




THE AENEID