Quintus Lucretius Vespillo was the son of another Quintus Lucretius Vespillo, an orator and jurist. The elder Lucretius was proscribed by Sulla and murdered.
Lucretius served in the Pompeian military in 48 BC. He was proscribed by the triumvirs in 43 BC. His good fortune was that he was concealed by his wife Curia in their home at Rome. He hid out there in the ceiling until his friends could obtain his pardon. In 20 BC he was one of the people selected as a candidate to represent the people that the Roman Senate sent to Augustus in Athens to request for him to assume the consulship in 19 BC. Lucretius was ultimately appointed as the Roman consul with C. Sentius Saturninus in that year.
He is believed to be the author of the Laudatio Turiae, a tombstone engraved with a carved epitaph that is a husband's eulogy for his wife.