How did Lucretius influence Virgil’s Georgics?

The influence of Lucretius on Virgil was pervasive, particularly in the composition of the Georgics.1

Virgil’s admiration for the poet is explicitly reflected in the Georgics through a clear allusion to Lucretius’s work. In Book II, line 490, Virgil writes, "Happy is the man who can read the causes of things," a sentiment that echoes the philosophical inquiry into the nature of the universe found in Lucretius’s On the Nature of Things. Furthermore, Lucretius’s development of the Latin hexameter served as a vital bridge in the evolution of Roman poetry; his work stands halfway between the early experiments of Quintus Ennius and the perfected form later achieved by Virgil.1