Lol, it did bring home the Bacon. Without it there might have never been a Darwin (as demonstrably errant as his theory may be).
You might say never a Newton! Not that Lucretius was the cause of the whole thing, but he, or the discovery of him, was part of it.
BTW, there's no real suggestion of evolution in Lucretius. He is quite remarkable for positing a material, i.e. atomic basis for life, and in particular embryonic development. A very advanced way of thinking! OTOH he seems to accept a fixed order of things emerging from an original "creation", and his view of origins is creationist in that sense.