Lucretius: On the Nature of Things
The Plainspoken Classics - Scriptorium Press (First Edition, 2026)
An original AI translation made directly from the source language.
https://openscriptorium.com


======== Book I — Matter and the Void ========

Mother of the line of Aeneas, delight of gods and men,
nurturing Venus, who beneath the gliding constellations of the sky
fill the ship-bearing sea and the crop-bearing lands,
since through you every kind of living thing
is conceived and, once risen, looks upon the light of the sun:
before you, goddess, the winds flee, before you and your coming
the clouds of the sky depart; for you the skillful earth
sends up sweet flowers, for you the plains of the sea laugh,
and the sky, grown calm, shines with light poured everywhere.
For as soon as the springtime face of day is uncovered
and the life-giving breath of the west wind, unbarred, grows strong,
first the birds of the air signal you, goddess, and your entry,
their hearts struck through by your force.
Then the wild herds bound over the glad pastures
and swim across the racing rivers: so, seized by delight,
each eagerly follows you, wherever you go on to lead it.
Then through the seas and mountains and rushing rivers,
the leaf-bearing homes of birds and the green plains,
striking sweet love into the hearts of all,
you bring it about that each kind eagerly propagates its generations.
Since you alone govern the nature of things
and without you nothing rises up into the divine shores of light,
nor does anything joyful or lovely come to be,
I long for you to be my partner in the writing of these verses,
which I am attempting to compose on the nature of things
for our friend Memmius, whom you, goddess, have willed
at every time to excel, adorned with every distinction.
Grant, then, all the more, goddess, an everlasting charm to my words.
Bring it about meanwhile that the savage works of war,
over every sea and land, fall lulled to rest;
for you alone are able to aid mortals
with tranquil peace, since the savage works of war are ruled
by Mars, mighty in arms, who often casts himself
into your lap, conquered by the everlasting wound of love,
and so, gazing upward, his smooth neck thrown back,
feeds his hungry eyes with love, gaping upon you, goddess,
and as he lies back his breath hangs upon your mouth.
Him, as he reclines upon your sacred body,
goddess, wrapped around and over him,
pour out sweet words from your mouth, seeking, glorious one, a peaceful calm for the Romans;
for neither can we work at this task with an untroubled mind
in this hard time for our country, nor can the noble line of Memmius
fail the common welfare in such matters.
For the whole nature of the gods of necessity
must enjoy its own immortal age in utter peace,
set apart and far removed from our affairs;
for free from all grief, free from dangers,
strong in its own resources, needing nothing from us,
it is neither won over by merits nor touched by anger.
When human life lay before all eyes, foul upon the ground,
crushed on earth beneath the heavy weight of religion,
which showed its head from the regions of the sky,
looming over mortals with a horrible aspect,
a man of Greece was first, a mortal, who dared
to raise his eyes against it, and first to stand against it;
him neither the fame of the gods nor lightning nor the sky's
threatening rumble could hold down, but all the more they sharpened
the keen courage of his mind, so that he desired to be first
to break through the narrow bars of nature's gates.
Therefore the living force of his mind prevailed, and he went forward
far beyond the flaming walls of the world,
and traversed the whole immeasurable universe in mind and spirit,
from where he brings back to us, victorious, what can come to be,
what cannot, and by what principle each thing at last has its power
bounded, and its deep-set limit fixed.
And so religion in turn is cast down beneath our feet
and trampled, and the victory raises us level with the sky.
In these matters this I fear: that you might perhaps think
you are entering upon impious first principles of reasoning
and setting foot on a path of wickedness. But on the contrary, it is that
religion which has more often given birth to wicked and impious deeds.
As at Aulis the chosen leaders of the Greeks, the first among men,
foully defiled the altar of the virgin goddess of the crossroads
with the blood of Iphigenia.
For as soon as the sacred band, placed around her maiden hair,
hung down equally from either side of her cheeks,
and she perceived her father standing sorrowful before the altar,
and, near him, the attendants hiding the knife,
and the citizens pouring out tears at the sight of her,
mute with fear, sinking on her knees, she reached toward the ground.
Nor could it help the poor girl, in such a moment,
that she had first bestowed the name of father on the king;
for lifted up by the hands of men, trembling, she was led
to the altars, not so that, after the solemn rite of sacrifice
had been completed, she might be escorted by the bright wedding-song,
but so that, chaste, at the very moment of her unholy marriage,
she might fall, sorrowful, a victim slaughtered by her own father's hand,
so that a happy and favorable departure might be granted to the fleet.
So great is the evil that religion has been able to persuade.
You yourself, at some point, defeated by the terror-speaking words
of the prophets, will seek to desert us.
For indeed, how many dreams they can now invent for you,
dreams that could overturn the reasoned plan of your life
and throw all your fortunes into confusion with fear!
And rightly so; for if men saw that there was a fixed end
to their sufferings, they would somehow have the strength
to stand against the religions and threats of the prophets.
As it is, there is no way, no means, to resist,
since eternal punishments must be feared in death.
For it is not known what the nature of the soul is,
whether it is born, or whether instead it steals into those being born,
and whether it perishes together with us, torn apart by death,
or visits the darkness of Orcus and its vast pools,
or by some divine power inserts itself into other beasts,
as our own Ennius sang, who first brought down
from pleasant Helicon a crown of everlasting leaves,
which would be renowned throughout the Italian peoples of men;
even though, besides this, Ennius also
sets forth in undying verses that Acherusian realms exist,
where neither our souls nor our bodies remain,
but certain images, pale in wondrous ways;
from which he recalls that the likeness of ever-flourishing Homer
rose up before him and began to pour out salt tears
and to unfold the nature of things in words.
For this reason we must properly hold a rational account
of matters above us, of how the courses of sun and moon
come to be, and by what force each thing on earth
is governed, and then, first of all, with keen reasoning
we must look into what the soul and the mind's nature consist of,
and what thing, meeting us while we are awake, terrifies
our minds when afflicted by disease, or buried in sleep,
so that we seem to see and hear before us, in person,
those whose bones the earth embraces, their death already met.
As for what remains, apply an unoccupied ear and a keen mind,
set apart from cares, to the true account,
lest my gifts, laid out for you with faithful care,
you abandon in scorn before they are understood.
For I shall begin to discourse to you on the highest system
of sky and gods, and I shall lay open the first beginnings of things,
from which nature creates all things, and makes them grow and feeds them,
and into which that same nature, once things are destroyed, resolves them again —
those things which we, in giving our account, are accustomed
to call matter and generative bodies of things, and the seeds
of things, and we are accustomed to use these same terms
as first bodies, because from these first things all things come.
Nor does it escape my mind that it is difficult to illuminate
in Latin verses the obscure discoveries of the Greeks,
especially since much must be done with new words
because of the poverty of our tongue and the newness of the matter;
but still your worth, and the hoped-for pleasure
of sweet friendship, persuade me to undertake any labor whatever
and lead me to keep watch through calm nights,
seeking with what words and in what song at last
I might be able to spread bright light before your mind,
by which you might see thoroughly into things hidden deep.
This terror of the mind, then, and these darknesses must
be dispelled not by the rays of the sun nor the shining shafts of day,
but by the outward appearance and inner reason of nature.
The starting point of this shall take its beginnings from here:
that nothing is ever born from nothing by divine power.
For indeed such fear holds all mortals bound,
because they see many things happen on earth and in the sky
whose causes they can perceive by no reasoning,
and so they think they come about by divine will.
For which reason, once we have seen that nothing can be created
out of nothing, then what we are pursuing we shall perceive
more correctly from that point on, both from where each thing can be created
and in what way each thing comes about without the gods.
For if things came to be from nothing, from all things
every kind could be born, nothing would need seed.
Men could first arise from the sea, and from the earth
the scaly race, and birds could burst forth from the sky;
cattle and other herds, every kind of wild beast,
with uncertain birth, would occupy the tilled land and the wild.
Nor would the same fruits be constant on the trees,
but they would change, and all could bear anything.
For indeed, where there were no generative bodies for each thing,
how could any fixed mother stand behind each thing?
But as it is, since each thing is created from fixed seeds,
it is born from that source and comes forth into the shores of light,
where the matter and the first bodies of each thing are present;
and for this reason not all things can be born from all things,
because a separate power resides in fixed things.
Besides, why in spring do we see the rose, in summer heat the grain,
and the vines pour forth as autumn urges,
if not because, when the fixed seeds of things
have flowed together at their proper season, whatever is created is revealed,
while the seasons are present and the vigorous earth
safely brings forth its tender things into the shores of light?
But if they came from nothing, they would spring up suddenly
at uncertain intervals and in seasons foreign to them,
since indeed there would be no first-beginnings that could be kept apart
from generative union at an unfavorable time.
Nor further would there be any need of time for things to grow
by the coming together of seed, if they could grow from nothing;
for suddenly small infants would become grown men,
and trees would spring up in a moment, risen from the earth.
But it is plain that none of this happens, since all things
grow little by little, as is fitting from fixed seed,
and in growing preserve their kind; so that you can recognize
that each thing grows and is nourished from its own proper matter.
To this is added that without the fixed rains of the year
the earth could not send up its joyful produce,
nor further could the nature of living things, kept apart from food,
propagate its kind and preserve life;
so that you might rather think that bodies are shared in common
among many things, as we see letters shared among words,
than that any thing could exist without first-beginnings.
Finally, why could nature not prepare men so large
that on foot they could wade across the sea's shallows,
to cross over and tear apart great mountains with their hands
and by living to outlast many generations of life,
if the matter given to things for their begetting were not fixed,
that from which each thing that can arise consists?
we must therefore admit that nothing can come from nothing,
since things need a seed, from which each thing once created
can be brought forth into the soft air's breezes.
Finally, since we see that cultivated ground
outdoes untended land and yields better produce under our hands,
it is clear that there are in the earth first-beginnings of things
which we rouse up when we turn the fertile clods with the ploughshare
and work the soil of the earth, driving it to bring forth;
but if there were none, you would see everything grow much better
of its own accord, without any labor of ours.
To this is added that nature dissolves each thing back again
into its own bodies, and does not destroy things into nothing.
for if anything were mortal in all its parts,
each thing would perish, snatched suddenly from before our eyes;
for there would be no need of any force to bring about
the separation of its parts and loosen their bonds.
whereas now, because each thing is made of everlasting seed,
until some force meets it that shatters the thing with a blow
or penetrates within through the void spaces and dissolves it,
nature allows the destruction of nothing to be seen.
Besides, whatever things age removes with the passage of time,
if it destroys them utterly, consuming all their matter,
from where does Venus bring back the race of living things,
generation by generation, into the light of life, or where, once brought back,
does the cunning earth nourish and increase them, generation by generation, providing food?
from where do the native springs and far-off foreign
rivers supply the sea? from where does the sky feed the stars?
for infinite age and days gone by must have consumed
everything that has a mortal body.
but if in that span, in that age gone before,
there existed things from which this sum of the world is renewed and made whole,
they are surely endowed with an immortal nature.
things cannot, then, return to nothing.
Again, one and the same force and cause would destroy
all things alike, unless eternal matter held them together,
bound to each other more or less tightly;
for mere touch would then be cause enough for death,
since none of the things whose fabric that force
must dissolve would have an everlasting body.
but as it is, because the bonds between the first-beginnings
are of different kinds and the matter is eternal,
things remain with their body unharmed, until a force
sharp enough is found, matched to each thing's structure.
nothing, then, returns to nothing, but all things
return, once separated, into the bodies of matter.
finally, rains perish, once father sky has hurled them down
into the lap of mother earth;
but bright crops spring up and branches turn green
on the trees, they themselves grow and are weighed down with fruit.
from this in turn our race and that of wild beasts is fed,
from this we see happy cities flourish with children
and the leafy woods everywhere ring with new birds,
from this the weary herds lay down their fattened bodies
through the glad pastures, and the shining milky moisture
flows from their swollen udders, from this new offspring
on unsteady limbs frolic through the tender grass,
their young minds struck giddy by the pure milk.
nothing, then, that seems to perish, perishes utterly,
since nature restores one thing from another and allows no
thing to be born unless helped by another's death.
Now come, since I have taught that things cannot be created
from nothing, nor likewise, once born, be called back to nothing,
lest by chance you begin to distrust my words on this account,
because the first-beginnings of things cannot be seen by the eyes,
hear besides of other bodies which you must
admit exist among things, yet which cannot be seen.
First of all, the force of the wind, driven hard, lashes at bodies
and sinks huge ships and scatters clouds,
and sometimes, racing over the plains in a swift whirlwind,
it strews them with great trees and batters the highest mountains
with forest-splitting blasts: so fiercely does the sea rage too
with a sharp roaring and threatening murmur.
winds, then, are surely bodies unseen,
which sweep the sea, the lands, and the clouds of the sky as well,
and harass and sweep them along, suddenly caught up in a whirlwind,
and flow on and spread ruin in no other way
than when the soft substance of water is swept along suddenly
in an overflowing stream, which a great rush of water
down from the high mountains swells with its heavy rains,
hurling together fragments of forests and whole thickets;
nor can even sturdy bridges withstand the sudden
force of the oncoming water: so, turbulent with a great downpour,
the river crashes against the piers with mighty force,
it makes a great crash of ruin and rolls beneath its waves
huge boulders, sweeping away whatever stands against its currents.
so too, then, must the gusts of wind be carried along,
which, like a strong river when they have swept down
in whatever direction, drive things before them and hurl them headlong
with repeated blows, and sometimes in a twisting eddy
they snatch things up and carry them along in a swirling whirlwind.
therefore, again and again, winds are bodies unseen,
since in their deeds and behavior they are found to rival
great rivers, which are of a visible body.
Then again, we sense the various smells of things,
yet we never see them coming to our nostrils,
nor do we behold hot heat, nor are we able
to perceive cold with our eyes, nor are we used to seeing sounds;
yet all these things must consist of a bodily
nature, since they are able to strike upon the senses;
for nothing but body can touch or be touched.
Again, clothes hung up on a wave-beaten shore
grow damp, and the same clothes, spread out in the sun, dry off.
yet neither has it been seen in what way the moisture of water settled into them,
nor again in what way it fled from the heat.
the moisture, then, is scattered into tiny parts
which the eyes can in no way see.
indeed, as many yearly returns of the sun come round,
a ring on a finger grows thin underneath from wearing,
the fall of dripping water hollows out a stone, the curved iron
ploughshare wastes away unseen in the fields,
and we see the stone-paved streets of the city
worn down by the feet of the crowd; likewise, next to the gates, the bronze
statues show their right hands growing thin
from the frequent touch of those greeting them and passing by.
we see these things, then, grow smaller once they are worn away.
but what bodies depart at each given moment,
grudging nature has shut off the sight of them from our seeing.
Finally, whatever time and nature add to things
little by little, forcing them to grow by degrees,
no straining sharpness of the eyes can make out,
nor again whatever things grow old with age and wasting,
nor can you see what the rocks overhanging the sea,
eaten by the corrosive salt, lose at any given time.
it is by unseen bodies, then, that nature does her work.
And yet not all things are packed everywhere
with bodily matter; for there is void in things.
knowing this will be useful to you in many matters,
and will not let you wander in doubt, forever questioning
the sum of things and distrusting my words.
therefore there is a place untouched, void and empty.
for if this were not so, things could in no way
be able to move; for the function that body performs,
to obstruct and block, would be present at every moment
to all things; nothing, then, could go forward,
since no thing would give the first beginning of yielding.
but as it is, through seas and lands and the heights of the sky
we see many things before our eyes moving in many ways
by various means, which, if there were no void,
would not so much lack the restless motion they are deprived of
as never have been born at all in any way,
since matter, packed everywhere, would have remained at rest.
Besides, however solid things are thought to be,
you can yet see from this that they have a porous body.
in rocks and caves the liquid moisture of water
seeps through, and everything weeps with abundant drops.
food distributes itself through the whole body of living creatures;
trees grow and pour forth their fruit in due season,
because food is spread all through them, from the deepest roots
all the way through the trunks and through every branch.
sounds travel between walls and through the closed rooms
of houses they fly through, stiffening cold seeps to the bones.
unless there were empty spaces through which each body could
pass, you would see this happen in no way at all.
Again, why do we see some things surpass
others in weight, though their size is no greater?
for if there is as much body in a ball of wool as
there is in lead, it is right that they weigh the same,
since it is the function of body to press everything downward,
while on the other hand the nature of void remains weightless.
therefore, whatever is equal in size but seems lighter
surely shows that it has more void in itself;
while, on the contrary, what is heavier declares that it has
more body within it, and far less empty space inside.
there exists, then, without doubt, that which our keen reasoning
seeks, mixed in with things, which we call void.
I am forced to anticipate this point here, lest something
which certain people invent should lead you away from the truth.
they say that the waters yield to the scaly creatures pressing forward
and open liquid paths, because the fish leave places
behind them, into which the yielding waves can flow together;
so too other things, they say, can move among themselves
and change place, even though everything is full.
but clearly this whole notion is based on false reasoning.
for where, in the end, will the scaly creatures be able to advance,
unless the waters give them space? and where, further, will the waves
be able to withdraw, when the fish cannot go forward?
therefore either every body must be deprived of motion,
or it must be said that void is mixed in with things,
from which each thing can take the first beginning of its motion.
Finally, if two bodies, carried together in collision,
should spring apart swiftly, surely the air must take possession
of all the void that comes to be between the bodies.
and however swiftly it flows together on all sides with rushing
currents, still it will not be able all at once
to fill the whole space; for it must occupy each place
in turn first, and only then can the whole be possessed.
but if by chance someone, when the bodies have sprung apart,
thinks this happens because the air condenses,
he is wrong; for then a void comes to be that did not exist before,
and likewise a void that existed before is filled again,
nor can air be condensed in that way,
nor, even if it could, could it, I think, without void
draw itself in upon itself and gather its parts into one.
Therefore, however long you delay by raising many objections,
you must still admit that there is void in things.
and I can furthermore, by calling many things to mind,
to heap up proof to secure faith for my words.
yet these are traces small enough for a keen mind;
through them you may recognize the rest yourself.
for as hounds very often find by scent
the leaf-covered lair of the mountain-roaming beast,
once they have fixed on the sure tracks of the trail,
so you yourself, on your own, will be able in matters
such as these to see one thing after another
and work your way into every hidden lair and draw the truth out from there.
but if you grow slack or fall back even a little from the subject,
this much I can promise you plainly, Memmius:
so abundant will be the draughts my tongue will pour
sweet from the rich store of my heart, from great fountains,
that I fear slow old age will creep through our limbs
and loosen the bars of life within us
before the whole abundance of arguments on any single point
has been sent through your ears in verse.
But now, to resume weaving together what I began to say,
the whole of nature, then, as it is in itself, consists
of two things: for there are bodies and there is void,
in which those bodies are placed and through which they move in different directions.
that body exists in itself, the sense common to all
declares; and unless faith in this is first laid down firm,
we will have nothing on which to rely, when speaking of hidden things,
by which to confirm anything to the mind by reasoning.
then further, place and space, which we call void,
if it were nothing, bodies could nowhere
be situated, nor move at all in any direction;
this I showed you a little above already.
besides, there is nothing you could name that is set apart
and separate from every body and from void alike,
as though it were some third nature found in the count.
for whatever will exist must be something in itself,
of some bulk, whether great or small, so long as it exists;
and if it can be touched, however light and slight the touch,
it will add to the count of bodies and follow their sum;
but if it is untouchable, with no part able
to stop any thing passing through it on its own course,
clearly this will be what we call empty void.
Besides, whatever exists on its own will either act in some way
or must itself be acted upon by other agents,
or be such that things can exist and be done within it.
but nothing can act or be acted upon without body,
nor further offer room except what is void and empty.
therefore besides void and bodies no third nature
can be left remaining in the count of things,
neither one that could ever fall under our senses
nor one that anyone could grasp by reasoning of the mind.
For whatever things are named, you will find them either joined
to these two things, or you will see them as their events.
that is joined which can nowhere be separated and parted from a thing
without ruinous severance,
as weight is to stones, heat to fire, wetness to water,
touch to all bodies, untouchability to void.
slavery, on the other hand, poverty and riches,
freedom, war, harmony, and other things like these, at whose
coming and going the nature of a thing remains unharmed,
these we are accustomed, as is fitting, to call events.
time likewise does not exist by itself, but from things themselves
comes the perception of what has passed in time,
then what state is now present, and further what will follow next;
and it must be admitted that no one senses time by itself
apart from the motion of things and their quiet stillness.
finally, when men say that the daughter of Tyndareus was ravished, and the Trojan-born
peoples subdued in war, one must take care
that they not force us to admit that these things exist by themselves,
since those generations of men, whose events these were,
an irrevocable age has already carried off as past;
for one thing can be called an event of the earth, another of the regions
themselves, whatever has been done.
finally, if there had been no matter of things
nor place and space, in which each thing is done,
never would the fire kindled by love for the beauty of Tyndareus' daughter,
smoldering beneath the Phrygian breast of Alexander,
have set ablaze the famous contests of savage war,
nor would the wooden horse have secretly set Pergama aflame
for the Trojans, by its nighttime birth of Greek-born men;
so that you can see clearly through and through that all deeds done
do not stand or exist by themselves as body does,
nor exist by the same reasoning as that by which void exists,
but rather that you may rightly call them events
of body and of place, in which each thing is done.
Bodies, moreover, are partly the first-beginnings of things,
partly what is formed by a combination of those first elements.
but those which are the first-beginnings of things, no force
can extinguish; for they prevail by their solid body in the end.
although it seems difficult to believe that anything
can be found among things with a solid body.
for lightning from the sky passes through the walls of houses
just as shouting and voices do; iron grows white-hot in fire,
and stones burst apart from the fierce heat of the fire;
when the hardness of gold is broken down and melts in the heat,
then the ice of bronze, overcome by flame, liquefies;
heat permeates silver and likewise cold penetrates to the core,
since we have felt both, holding cups properly in hand,
when the dew of water is poured in from above.
so thoroughly does it seem that there is nothing solid in things.
but since true reasoning and the nature of things nevertheless
compel it, attend, while in a few verses I explain
that there are things which consist of a solid and eternal body,
which we teach are the seeds and first-beginnings of things,
from which the whole sum of things is now made up and stands.
To begin with, since a twofold nature, of two things
far different, is found to stand apart,
that of body and of place, in which each thing is done,
each must necessarily be by itself, pure in itself.
for wherever space is empty, which we call void,
body is not there; and wherever, further, body
holds its place, there empty void does not exist at all.
therefore the first bodies are solid and without void.
Besides, since there is void in things that are born,
solid matter must stand around it;
nor can any thing be proved by true reasoning
to hide void within its own body and hold it inside,
unless you grant that what encloses it is solid.
and that, further, can be nothing but a combination
of matter, able to enclose the void within things.
matter, therefore, which consists of solid body,
can be eternal, even while other things are dissolved.
Then further, if there were nothing that could be called void,
everything would be solid; unless, on the other hand, definite bodies
existed to fill whatever places they occupied,
the whole of what exists as space would be empty void.
alternating, then, no doubt, body and void
are distinct, since it is neither full throughout without a break
nor further empty; there are, then, definite bodies
which can mark off empty space from the full.
these cannot be broken apart by blows struck from outside,
nor further be undone once penetrated to the core,
nor can they be made to give way when tried by any other means;
this I showed you a little above already.
for it seems that nothing can be struck together without void,
nor broken, nor split into two by cutting,
nor take in moisture, nor likewise penetrating cold,
nor piercing fire, by which all things are undone.
and the more each thing holds void within itself,
the more, when tried, it gives way deep within.
therefore if the first bodies are solid and without void
as I have taught, they must necessarily be eternal.
Besides, if matter had not been eternal,
before now everything would have utterly returned to nothing,
and whatever we now see would have been reborn from nothing.
but since I have taught above that nothing can be created
from nothing, nor can what has been born be called back to nothing,
the first-beginnings must be of undying body,
into which each thing can be dissolved at its final moment,
so that matter may be available for renewing things.
therefore the first-beginnings are solid in their simplicity,
nor can they, kept through the ages by any other means,
from infinite time now still renew things.
finally, if nature had set no limit
to the breaking of things, already the bodies of matter
would have been reduced by the breaking of past ages,
so that nothing formed from them from a fixed time
could reach the utmost limit of its age.
for we see that anything can be dissolved more quickly
than it can be remade; and so whatever the long
infinite age of past time before now
had broken, still disturbing and dissolving,
could never be restored in the time remaining.
but as it is, no doubt, a fixed limit
to breaking clearly remains, since we see each thing restored
and likewise fixed periods of time set for things by kind,
within which they can reach the flower of their age.
To this it may be added that, though the bodies of matter
are most solid, all things can still be accounted for
that turn soft, air, water, earth, vapors,
how they come to be and by what force each is carried on,
since void is once mixed in among things.
but on the other hand, if the first-beginnings of things were soft,
from which strong flints and iron could be created,
no account could be given; for from the very start
every nature would lack the foundation to build on.
therefore the first-beginnings are strong in their simplicity,
and by a denser combination of them all things
can be packed tight and show forth strong powers.
further, if no limit to the breaking of bodies
had been granted, yet from eternal time each of the bodies
must still now survive among things,
which have not yet been tried by any peril.
but since they are endowed with a breakable nature,
it is inconsistent that they could have remained through eternal time
battered by countless blows through the ages.
Finally, since now a limit assigned by kind
stands fixed for things' growing and holding life,
and since what each thing can do under the laws of nature,
and what it cannot, is ordained, seeing that it stands so,
and nothing changes, but all things remain
so constant that all the varied birds in order
show the marks proper to their kind upon their bodies,
they must, no doubt, also have a body of unchangeable
matter; for if the first-beginnings of things
could be changed, overcome by some means,
it would then also be uncertain what could arise
and what could not, and by what fixed power, finally, for each thing,
and by what law a boundary clings deep within,
nor could the generations so often, kind by kind, reproduce
the nature, habits, way of life, and movements of their parents.
Then further, since there is an outermost point
of that body, which our senses
now they cannot, since this in fact stands without parts,
and consists of a minimal nature, and never
has been separate by itself, nor will it be able to be so hereafter,
since it is itself the first and single part of another,
and then other and further similar parts in sequence
fill out the nature of the body in a packed array;
and since these cannot stand by themselves, it must be
that they cling where they can never by any means be torn away.
The first-beginnings, therefore, are solid in their simplicity,
packed tightly together and cohering by their smallest parts.
They are not compounded by a gathering-together of those parts,
but rather strong through an everlasting simplicity,
from which nature, keeping the seeds of things in reserve,
allows nothing now to be torn away or diminished.
Moreover, unless there is a smallest limit, the tiniest
bodies of all will consist of infinite parts,
since indeed the half of a half will always have
a further half, and no thing will set a limit to it.
Then what difference will there be between the sum of things and the smallest thing?
There will be none; for although the whole sum
be utterly infinite, still, the very smallest things
will equally consist of infinite parts.
Since true reasoning cries out against this and denies
that the mind can believe it, you must, defeated, confess
that there are things which now exist endowed with no parts at all
and consist of a minimal nature; and since these exist,
you must confess that they too are solid and everlasting.
Finally, if creating nature were accustomed to force
the resolution of all things into their smallest parts,
then she would no longer be able to remake anything out of them,
because things which are increased by no parts at all
cannot have what generative matter ought to have —
the varied linkings, weights, blows,
collisions, motions, through which each thing is brought about.
For this reason those who have thought the matter of things
is fire, and that the sum of things stands from fire alone,
seem to have slipped far from true reasoning.
Heraclitus leads them, first chief of that battle,
famed more for his obscure speech among the shallow
than among the weighty Greeks who seek the truth;
for fools admire and love above all
those things they see lurking hidden under inverted words,
and they hold as true whatever can pleasingly touch
the ears, and whatever is dressed up with a charming sound.
For I ask, why could things be so varied,
if they are all created from fire alone, pure fire?
It would do no good for that fire to be made denser when hot,
nor rarer, if the parts of fire had the same
nature that the whole fire has besides.
For the heat would be sharper when the parts are drawn together,
and fainter again when scattered and dispersed.
Beyond this, there is nothing more you could suppose possible
from such causes — let alone that so great a variety
of things could come from fires dense and rare.
This too: if they make void mixed in with things,
then fires will be able to be condensed, and to be left rare;
but since they see many things contrary to themselves in this,
and shrink from leaving pure void among things,
fearing the steep path, they lose the true way,
nor do they see, on the other hand, that if void is removed from things,
everything is condensed and becomes, out of all things, one
body, which can send nothing swiftly from itself,
as the heat-bearing fire casts out light and warmth,
so that you may see it does not consist of tightly packed parts.
But if perhaps they believe that on some other reasoning
fire can be quenched in its coming-together and change its body,
clearly, if they hold back from doing this in no part at all,
the whole heat will surely perish utterly to nothing,
and whatever things are created will come to be from nothing;
for whatever changes and departs from its own boundaries —
this is at once the death of that which it was before.
Accordingly something must remain unharmed in those things,
lest for you all things return utterly to nothing
and the abundance of things, reborn from nothing, grow strong again.
Now therefore, since there are certain bodies wholly fixed,
which always keep the same nature,
by whose departure or arrival, and by a changed order,
things change their nature and bodies turn themselves about,
one may know that these are not fiery bodies of things.
For it would make no difference for certain ones to depart, to leave,
and other ones to be added and things changed in order,
if nonetheless all of them kept the nature of heat;
for whatever they created would be fire in every way.
But, as I think, it is this way: there are certain bodies, whose
collision, motion, order, position, and shapes
produce fire, and by a changed order they change
their nature, and are not made in the likeness of fire, nor of any
other thing besides which could send bodies
to our senses and touch our sense of touch by contact.
Moreover, to say that fire is all things, and that no
thing is real in the number of things except fire,
as this same man does, seems utterly mad.
For he himself fights against the senses on behalf of the senses,
and undermines them, from which all beliefs hang,
from which this very fire he names is itself known;
for he believes the senses truly recognize fire,
but does not believe them about other things, which are no less clear.
This seems to me both empty and mad;
for to what shall we refer? what can be more certain for us
than the senses themselves, by which we mark the true and the false?
Besides, why should anyone rather do away with everything
and wish to leave only the nature of heat,
than deny that fire exists, yet allow that something else does?
For it seems equal madness to say either.
For this reason those who have thought the matter of things
is fire, and that the sum of things could stand from fire,
and those who have set up air as the origin
for the begetting of things, or whoever have thought
that moisture by itself shapes things, or that earth creates
all things, and that they turn into every nature of things,
seem to have strayed very far from the truth.
Add also those who double up the first-beginnings of things,
joining air to fire and earth to liquid,
and those who think all things can grow
from four things — from fire, earth, air, and rain.
Among these Empedocles of Acragas stands foremost,
whom that three-cornered island of lands bore,
around which the Ionian sea, flowing with great windings,
sprinkles its brine from grey-green waves,
and with a narrow channel the rushing sea divides with its waves
the shores of the Aeolian lands from Sicily's own borders.
Here is the vast Charybdis, and here Etna's rumblings
threaten that its fiery wrath gathers itself again,
so that the force of fire may again vomit forth what erupts from its throat,
and again carry the flashes of flame to the sky.
And though this great region seems in many ways
a wonder to human nations, and is said to be worth seeing,
rich in good things, fortified by great strength of men,
yet it seems to have held nothing in itself more glorious than this man,
nor does anything seem more sacred, more wondrous, and more dear.
Indeed the songs of his divine breast
proclaim aloud and set forth his splendid discoveries,
so that he scarcely seems to have been born of human stock.
Yet he, and the others we have mentioned above, who are
inferior to him, and much and greatly lesser in many respects,
although discovering many things well and as if by divine inspiration,
and giving them forth, as it were, as oracles from the shrine of the heart,
more sacredly and with far surer reasoning than
the Pythia who speaks forth from Phoebus's tripod and laurel,
yet at the first-beginnings of things they brought about their own ruin,
and there, great men, fell heavily in a great fall.
First, because they establish motion while removing void from things,
and yet leave things soft and rarefied —
air, sun, fire, earth, living creatures, crops —
and still do not mix void into their body;
then, because they will make there be no limit at all to the cutting
of bodies, nor any pause standing to the breaking,
nor that any smallest thing at all stands firm among things,
though we see that the outermost point of each thing
is what seems to be the smallest as far as our senses go,
so that you can infer from this that, for things whose outermost point
you cannot perceive, a smallest part of things stands firm.
To this is added also, since they establish the first-beginnings
of things as soft, which we see to be born
and to have a mortal body, it follows utterly that the whole
sum of things must return to nothing again,
and the abundance of things, reborn from nothing, grow strong again;
and you will see how far each of these is from the truth.
Then, they are in many ways hostile and poisonous
to one another among themselves; wherefore either, meeting together, they will perish,
or they will scatter apart, just as we see lightning-bolts
scatter apart when a storm has gathered them, and rains and winds too.
Finally, if all things are created from four things,
and all things are in turn dissolved back into those,
how can those be called the first-beginnings of things
any more than things be thought their reverse and opposite?
For they are begotten in turn and change their color
and their whole nature between themselves for all time.
[we see lightning-bolts scatter apart, and rains and winds too.]
But if perhaps you think that the body of fire and earth
come together with airy breezes and the dew of water,
so that in their combination nothing changes the nature of them,
then no thing at all will be able to be created from them,
neither living, nor lifeless in body, such as a tree;
for each thing, in the mixture of the varied heap, will show
its own nature, and air will be seen mixed
together with earth, and remaining with a certain dew.
But the first-beginnings must, in the begetting of things,
bring to bear a hidden and unseen nature,
lest something stand out that fights against and obstructs
whatever is created from being properly what it is.
Indeed they trace things back to the sky and its fires,
and make fire the first to turn itself into the breezes
of air, and from this rain is born, and earth is created
from the rain, and all things turn back again from earth,
first moisture, then air, then heat,
and these never cease to change among themselves, to pass
from sky to earth, from earth to the stars of the universe.
This is something the first-beginnings ought not to do in any way.
For something unchangeable must remain,
lest all things be reduced utterly to nothing;
for whatever changes and departs from its own boundaries —
this is at once the death of that which it was before.
Wherefore, since the things we mentioned a little before
come into mutual change, they must consist
of other things, which can nowhere be turned into something else,
lest for you all things return utterly to nothing.
Rather you should establish that certain bodies are endowed
with such a nature that, if by chance they created fire,
the same bodies, with a few taken away and a few added,
with order and motion changed, could make the breezes of air,
so that all things could equally be changed one into another?
"But a plain fact shows clearly," you say, "that into the breezes
of air from earth all things grow and increase;
and unless the weather grants, at the right season,
rains enough that the trees stagger under the downpour of clouds,
and the sun for its part warms and gives its heat,
crops and trees and living things could not grow."
Of course — and unless dry food and moist drink
sustain us, once the body is lost, all life too
would be released from every sinew and bone;
for beyond doubt we are helped and nourished
by definite things, and other things by other definite things,
no doubt because many first-beginnings, common to many things
in many ways, lie mixed within things,
and so different things are nourished by different things.
And it often matters greatly with what other
first-beginnings, the same ones, and in what arrangement they are held,
and what motions they give and receive among themselves;
for the same ones make up sky, sea, lands, rivers, sun,
the same make crops, trees, living things,
but mixed with other things and in another way, they move.
Indeed everywhere, in these very verses of mine,
you see many elements common to many words,
though you must admit that verses and words among themselves
differ both in sense and in the sound they make.
So much can the letters do by a mere change of order;
but the first-beginnings of things can bring more resources to bear,
from which the various things can each be created.
Now let us also examine the homoeomeria of Anaxagoras,
as the Greeks call it, which our own tongue
does not allow us to say, for our native speech is too poor,
yet the thing itself is easy to set out in words.
To begin with, when he speaks of the homoeomeria of things,
he means that bones are born from tiny, minute
bones, and that from tiny, minute
innards, flesh is generated and blood is created
from many drops of blood coming together among themselves,
and he thinks gold can be composed of grains of gold,
and that earth grows together out of small bits of earth,
fires out of fires, moisture out of moisture,
and he imagines and supposes the rest by a similar reasoning.
And yet he does not admit that there is any void anywhere
in things, nor any limit to the cutting of bodies.
So on both counts alike it seems to me
he errs, just as those did whom we mentioned before.
Add to this that he makes his first-beginnings too feeble;
if they are first-beginnings endowed with a nature
like that of the things themselves, and suffer equally
and perish, and nothing holds any of them back from destruction —
for what among them will endure under crushing force,
so as to escape death, right under the very teeth of destruction?
Fire, or moisture, or air? Which of these? Blood, or bone?
None, I think, since equally, in the end, everything
will be as mortal as what we plainly see
perish, overcome by some force, before our own eyes.
But I call to witness things already proven, that matter cannot
fall back into nothing, nor grow from nothing.
Furthermore, since food increases and nourishes the body,
we may know that our veins and blood and bones
* * *
if they say that all foods are of a mixed body
and have within them small bodies of sinew
and of bone, and altogether of veins and portions of blood,
it will follow that all food, both dry and liquid itself,
will be thought to be composed of things foreign to it —
bone and sinew and gore and blood all mingled together.
Furthermore, whatever bodies grow out of the earth,
if they are already in the earth, then earth must be composed
of things foreign to it, which arise out of the earth.
Carry the same reasoning over — you may use the very same words:
if flame and smoke and ash lie hidden in logs,
the logs must be composed of things foreign to them —
[furthermore whatever bodies the earth nourishes and increases]
of things foreign to it, which arise out of the wood.
Here there remains some slight room for hiding,
which Anaxagoras takes for himself, supposing that all things
lie mixed and hidden within all things, but that only that one
appears of which there is the greatest mixture present
and which is more to the fore, set in the very front.
Yet this is driven far from true reasoning;
for it would then be fitting that grain too, often, when it is crushed
by the threatening force of stone, should give off some sign
of blood, or of something of what is nourished within our body.
When we grind stone against stone, blood ought
by the same reasoning often to flow from grasses too,
and waters ought to give off sweet drops of a flavor
like that of the milk in a woolly ewe's udder;
and likewise, when clods of earth are crumbled,
the kinds of grasses and grains and leaves ought often to be seen
lying hidden, minutely scattered throughout the earth,
and finally ash and smoke ought to be seen in logs
when they are broken, and tiny fires ought to lie hidden.
But since plain fact teaches that none of this happens,
we may know that things are not so mixed within things,
but rather that seeds common to many things,
mixed in many ways, must lie hidden within things.
"But often," you say, "it happens on great mountains that the neighboring
topmost crowns of tall trees are rubbed together,
forced by strong south winds against one another,
until the bright bloom of flame breaks out."
Of course — and yet fire is not implanted in the wood;
rather there are many seeds of heat, and by the rubbing,
when these have flowed together, they create fires in the forest.
But if a flame lay ready-made, hidden away in the woods,
the fires could not be concealed for any length of time;
they would consume the forests everywhere, would burn up the trees.
Do you see now, then, what we said a little before,
that it matters enormously with what other
first-beginnings, the same ones, and in what arrangement they are held,
and what motions they give and receive among themselves,
and that the same ones, slightly rearranged among themselves, create
fires and wood? In the same way that words themselves
are, among themselves, made by a slight rearrangement of their elements,
when we mark "wood" and "fires" by distinct sounds.
Finally, whatever things you observe happening openly,
if you think it cannot happen unless you endow
the bodies of matter with a like nature,
by this reasoning the first-beginnings of things perish on you:
it will follow that they shake with quivering laughter and cackle,
and moisten their faces and cheeks with salty tears.
Now come, learn what remains, and hear it more clearly.
Nor does it escape my mind how obscure these things are; but a great
hope of praise has struck my heart with its sharp thyrsus,
and at the same time has struck into my breast a sweet love
of the Muses, by which I now, inspired with a lively mind,
range through the trackless places of the Pierides, trodden
by no one's foot before. It delights me to approach untouched springs
and to drink from them, and it delights me to pluck new flowers
and to seek from them a distinguished crown for my head,
from a place where the Muses have veiled no one's temples before;
first, because I teach of great matters, and press on
to loose the mind from the tight knots of superstition,
next, because on so dark a subject I compose verses so clear,
touching everything with the charm of the Muses.
For this too seems to be done not without some reason;
but just as, when physicians try to give children
foul wormwood, they first touch the rim of the cup all around
with the sweet golden liquid of honey,
so that the unwary age of children may be beguiled
as far as the lips, and meanwhile drink down the bitter
draught of wormwood, and, though deceived, not be harmed,
but rather, by such means restored, may grow strong,
so I now, since this doctrine generally seems
too harsh to those who have not handled it, and the common crowd
shrinks back from it, have wished to set out our reasoning
to you in sweetly speaking song of the Muses
and, as it were, to touch it with the sweet honey of the Muses,
in case I might in this way hold your mind
by my verses, while you look closely at the whole
nature of things, in what form it is compounded.
But since I have taught that the most solid bodies
of matter fly about, unconquered, through all time,
come now, let us unfold whether there is some limit
to their sum or not; likewise, that void which we have found,
or place and space, in which each thing is carried on,
let us look closely at whether it is altogether bounded and finite,
or whether it lies open immense and vastly deep.
All that exists, then, in no direction of its extent
is bounded; for it would have to have an outer edge.
Now an outer edge of anything seems impossible
to have, unless there is something beyond to bound it, so that
a point appears beyond which this nature of sense cannot follow.
Now, since it must be admitted that there is nothing outside the sum of things,
it has no outer edge, and therefore lacks bound and limit.
Nor does it matter in which region of it you take your stand;
so much is this so, that whatever place anyone occupies,
the infinite whole leaves an equal amount stretching in every direction.
Furthermore, if the whole of space that exists
were now supposed to be bounded, and someone ran to its
outermost edges and hurled a flying spear,
do you prefer that, hurled with strong force, it should go
wherever it was sent and fly far,
or do you think something can block it and stand in its way?
For you must admit one or the other and adopt it.
But whichever of the two you choose closes off your escape
and forces you to grant that the whole extends without limit.
For whether there is something that checks it and brings it about
that it does not arrive where it was sent and settle at a bound,
or whether it is carried on beyond, it did not set out from a boundary.
In this way I will pursue you, and wherever you set
the outermost edges, I will ask: what will finally happen to the spear?
It will follow that nowhere can a limit stand,
and the possibility of escape will always extend the flight further.
Furthermore, if the whole space of the entire sum
were enclosed on every side within fixed bounds
and were finite, then by now the store of matter,
by its solid weights, would have flowed together everywhere to the bottom,
and nothing could be carried on beneath the roof of the sky,
nor would there be any sky at all, nor the light of the sun,
since all matter, settling down, would lie piled up
from time everlasting now already.
But as it is, no doubt, no rest is given
to the bodies of the first-beginnings, because there is no bottom at all,
where, as it were, they might flow together and where they might settle.
Everything is always carried on in ceaseless motion
in all its parts, and from below there are supplied
swift bodies of matter out of the infinite.
Finally, one thing seems, before our eyes, to bound another;
air separates hills, and mountains separate the air,
land and sea, and sea in turn, bound every land;
but truly there is nothing that bounds the all outside.
there exists, then, a nature of place and a space of depth,
through which not even the bright lightning bolts, in their course,
could run, gliding on through the unbroken stretch of time,
nor bring it about that less remains for them still to travel;
so vast, everywhere, lies open this huge abundance for things,
with all bounds removed, in every direction on all sides.
further, nature holds fast that the sum of things
cannot set a limit for itself, since it compels body
to be bounded by void, and void in turn to be bounded by body,
so that by this alternation it renders all things infinite,
or else, unless one of the two should set a limit on the other,
each by its own single nature nonetheless lies open unmeasured,
and neither sea nor earth nor the shining halls of heaven
nor the race of mortals nor the holy bodies of gods
could stand firm for the briefest span of an hour;
for, torn apart from its gathering, the supply of matter
would be carried off, dissolved through the great void,
or rather, still more, it would never have compacted and created
any single thing, since scattered it could not have been forced together.
for certainly the first-beginnings of things did not by design,
each with a shrewd mind, arrange themselves in their proper order,
nor indeed did they agree beforehand what motions each would produce,
but because many of them, changed in many ways throughout the all,
driven on by blows, are tossed about from infinity,
trying out every kind of motion and combination,
at last they arrive at just such arrangements
as those by which this sum of things, once created, stands assembled,
and preserved too, through many years, and great ones,
once it has been cast into motions that suit one another,
it brings it about that the greedy sea is replenished
by the generous waters of rivers, and that the earth, warmed
by the sun's heat, renews its offspring, and that the race of living creatures,
brought forth, flourishes, and that the gliding fires of the upper air live on.
which they could accomplish by no means, unless a supply of matter
could rise up again out of the infinite,
from which each thing is accustomed to repair, in due time, what it has lost.
for just as the nature of living creatures, deprived of food,
wastes away, losing its substance, so all things must
be dissolved as soon as matter fails to be supplied,
turned aside by some circumstance from its course.
nor can blows from outside, on every side, preserve
the whole sum of any thing that has been assembled;
they can indeed strike it often and hold a part of it back,
until others arrive and the sum can be made whole again;
but sometimes they are forced to rebound, and at the same time
to grant to the first-beginnings of things space and time for flight,
so that they can be carried off free from the gathering.
wherefore it is necessary that many things rise up again, again and again,
and yet, so that the blows themselves too can be kept in supply,
an infinite force of matter is needed, on every side.
In this matter, flee far from believing this, Memmius,
what they say, that all things strive toward the middle of the sum,
and that for this reason the nature of the world stands firm without any
blows from outside, and can nowhere be dissolved,
top and bottom, because all things are pressed toward the middle,
if you believe that anything can rest upon itself,
and that all the weights that are beneath the earth press
upward, and rest reversed, set upon the earth,
just as we now see reflections of things through water;
and by similar reasoning they maintain that living creatures wander
upside down, and that they cannot fall back from the earth
into the regions of the sky below any more than our bodies
can fly of their own accord into the halls of heaven;
that when they see the sun, we behold the stars of night,
and that they share with us, in alternation, the seasons of heaven,
and pass nights equal in length to our days.
but empty error offers this to fools * * *
who have embraced it, holding as they do a perverse * * *
for there can be no middle at all * * *
the all is infinite; nor at all, even if there were now a middle,
could anything come to rest there * * *
any more than, by any other reasoning whatsoever, far removed * * *
for every place and space, which we call void,
through the middle, through what is not the middle, must yield
equally to weights, wherever their motions carry them.
nor is there any place at all where bodies, once they have arrived,
can, their weight's force lost, come to stand still in the void;
nor ought that which is void to hold anything back,
from continuing to yield to what its own nature seeks.
therefore, by such reasoning, things cannot be held fast,
gathered into a union at the middle, overcome by its craving.
besides, since they do not claim that all bodies
strive toward the middle, but only the moisture of earth
and of the sea's water, and the great waves from the mountains,
and whatever is contained, as it were, in an earthy body,
while on the other hand they set forth that the thin breezes of air
and the hot fires at the same time are carried away from the middle,
and that for this reason the whole surrounding ether trembles with its stars,
and the sun's flame is fed throughout the blue depths of heaven,
because heat, fleeing from the middle, gathers itself entirely there,
and that the topmost branches of trees could not put forth leaves at all,
unless nourishment were supplied to each of them, little by little, from the earth
* * *
lest the ramparts of the world, in the swift manner of flames,
should suddenly scatter, dissolved through the great void,
and lest all the rest should follow by a like reasoning,
and lest the thundering halls of heaven should crash down from above,
and the earth swiftly withdraw itself from beneath our feet, and, amid
the ruins of things and of heaven mingled together,
should slip away, its body dissolving, through the deep void,
so that in a moment of time nothing at all would remain behind,
save an empty space and the invisible first-beginnings.
for from whatever quarter you determine first that bodies are lacking,
this quarter will be, for things, the gateway of death,
through it the whole crowd of matter will pour itself outward.
These things, thus, once led on a little by this small labor, you will come to know thoroughly;
for one thing will grow clear from another, and blind night
will not steal the road from you, before you have seen through
to the furthest things of nature: so will things kindle lights for other things.

======== Book II — The Dance of the Atoms ========

Sweet it is, when winds are churning the waters of the great sea,
to watch from land another's great struggle;
not because anyone's distress is a pleasant delight,
but because it is sweet to see what troubles you yourself are free of.
Sweet too to watch the great contests of war
drawn up across the plains, with no share of the danger yourself;
but nothing is sweeter than to hold the well-fortified,
serene, high sanctuaries built by the teaching of the wise,
from which you can look down on others and see them everywhere
wandering, and seeking, astray, the path of life,
vying in wit, competing in rank,
striving night and day with outstanding effort
to rise to the heights of wealth and gain mastery of things.
O wretched minds of men, O blind hearts!
In what darkness of life, amid what dangers,
this span of time, however long it is, is spent! Do you not see
that nature barks for nothing else for itself, except that pain
be absent, kept apart from the body, and the mind enjoy
a pleasant feeling, with worry and fear removed?
So we see that for the body's own nature few things
are needed at all: whatever things remove pain
can also lay out many delights beneath it,
more pleasantly at times, though nature herself does not require it,
if there are no golden statues of youths throughout the halls,
holding fire-bearing torches in their right hands,
so that light may be supplied for nighttime feasts,
nor does the house gleam with silver and glitter with gold,
nor do lyres resound through gilded, paneled ceilings,
when nevertheless, lying together on the soft grass,
beside a stream of water, under the branches of a tall tree,
people tend their bodies pleasantly at no great cost,
especially when the weather smiles and the season
of the year sprinkles the greening grass with flowers.
Nor do hot fevers leave the body any sooner
if you toss about on woven pictured cloth and reddening purple,
than if you must lie down in a common garment.
Therefore, since treasures do nothing for our body,
nor does noble birth, nor the glory of kingship,
it must be thought that, for the rest, they do the mind no good either;
unless perhaps, when you see your legions across the open plain
seething, rousing the mock-battles of war,
reinforced by great reserves and the strength of wealth,
decked out with arms, and equally spirited,
then, at this sight, your fear-struck scruples of religion
flee trembling from your mind, and your fears of death
then leave your breast empty and free of care.
But if we see that these things are laughable mockeries,
and that, in truth, men's fears and the cares that pursue them
fear neither the clash of arms nor fierce weapons,
but boldly mingle among kings and the powerful,
and pay no reverence to the gleam of gold
nor the bright splendor of purple clothing,
why do you doubt that all this lies within the power of reason,
especially since all of life labors in darkness?
For just as children tremble and fear everything
in blind darkness, so we in the light fear,
at times, things that are no more to be feared than
what children shudder at in the dark and imagine will happen.
This terror of the mind, then, and this darkness, must
be dispelled not by the sun's rays nor the bright shafts of day,
but by the outward form and the reasoned account of nature.
Now come, by what motion the generative bodies of matter
beget the various things there are, and dissolve them once begotten,
and by what force they are compelled to do this, and what mobility
is granted them for traveling through the great void,
I shall set forth: remember to give yourself to my words.
For matter does not, in truth, cohere among itself
packed tight, since we see each thing grow less
and we perceive all things flow away, as it were, over the long span of time,
and old age steal them from our sight,
while nevertheless the sum of things seems to remain unharmed,
because whatever bodies depart from each thing,
they lessen the place they leave, and endow with increase the place they reach.
They force those things to grow old, but these others, on the contrary, to flourish,
nor do they linger there. Thus the sum of things is ever
renewed, and mortal things live by mutual exchange among themselves.
Some races grow, others dwindle,
and in a brief span the generations of living things are changed,
and, like runners, hand on the torch of life.
If you think the first-beginnings of things can come to rest,
and by resting beget new motions in things,
you wander far astray from true reasoning.
For since they wander through the void, all the first-beginnings of things
must be carried either by their own weight
or by a chance blow from another. For when swift-moving bodies often
collide as they meet, it happens that they suddenly
bounce apart in different directions; and no wonder, since they are utterly hard
with solid weight, and nothing stands in their way from behind.
And so that you may see more clearly that all the bodies of matter
are tossed about, recall that there is no bottom at all
to the sum of things, nor any place where the first bodies
can come to rest, since space is without end or limit,
and extends immeasurably in every direction on all sides,
as has been shown in many ways and proved by sure reasoning.
Since this is established, no rest at all, to be sure,
is granted to the first bodies through the deep void,
but rather, driven by constant and varied motion,
some rebound after colliding across great intervals,
and some are buffeted by blows within short spaces.
And whichever ones, gathered in a denser combination,
rebound, driven together, across tiny intervals,
entangled by their own interlocking shapes,
these make up the strong roots of stone, and the fierce
bodies of iron, and the rest of that kind.
A few, besides, wander on through the great void;
the rest spring far apart and run far back again
across great intervals; these supply for us
the thin air, and the sun's bright light.
And besides, many wander through the great void,
cast out from the unions of things, and nowhere
have they been able, once taken back, to join their motions with others.
Of this thing I describe, an image and likeness
is always before our eyes, present and pressing upon us.
For observe: whenever the sun's beams,
let in, pour their rays through the dark places of houses:
you will see many tiny bodies mingling in many ways through the void,
in the very light of the beams,
and as if in an eternal contest waging battles and fights,
contending in troops, and never giving a pause,
driven by frequent unions and separations;
so that from this you can guess what it is like
for the first-beginnings of things to be tossed forever in the great void.
At least, a small thing can give an example
of great things, and traces of knowledge.
It is fitting, too, that you turn your mind all the more to these
bodies that seem to be stirred about in the sun's rays,
because such stirrings show that motions of matter also
lie hidden beneath, secret and unseen.
For you will see many things there, struck by unseen blows,
change course, and, driven back, turn back again
now this way, now that, in every direction on all sides.
This wandering, clearly, comes to all of them from the first-beginnings.
For the first-beginnings of things move first, of themselves,
then those bodies that are made of a small combination
and are, as it were, nearest to the power of the first-beginnings,
are set in motion, struck by their unseen blows,
and they in turn go on to stir up bodies a little larger.
Thus motion mounts up from the first-beginnings and passes
gradually to our senses, so that those things too are set moving
which we are able to discern in the light of the sun,
though by what blows they do this is not clearly evident.
Now, what mobility is granted to the bodies
of matter, you may learn from this in a few words, Memmius.
First, when dawn scatters the lands with new light
and the varied birds, flitting through the trackless groves,
fill the places through the soft air with their clear voices,
how suddenly, at such a time, the risen sun is wont
to clothe everything, flooding it with its light —
this we see is plain and evident to everyone.
But that warmth which the sun sends out, and its clear light,
does not travel through the empty void; hence it is forced
to go more slowly, as it beats its way through the waves of air;
nor do the tiny bodies of that warmth travel one by one,
but they move locked together and clustered with one another;
and so they are held back together among themselves, and from outside
they are hindered, so that they are forced to go more slowly.
But those first-beginnings that are solid in their simplicity,
when they travel through the empty void and nothing outside
delays them, and they themselves, being one thing made of their own parts,
are carried, straining as one, to the single place they set out for,
they must, without doubt, excel in speed
and be carried much more swiftly than the light of the sun,
and race across many times the space
in the same time that the sun's rays spread across the sky.
* * *
nor to track down each single first-beginning one by one,
so as to see by what process each thing comes about.
But some, on the other hand, ignorant of matter,
hold that nature could not, without a god's power,
change the seasons of the year and bring forth crops
so precisely, matched to human calculations,
and all the rest besides — which divine Pleasure, life's guide,
herself urges mortals to approach, and leads them to,
and coaxes, through the arts of Venus, to propagate their kind,
lest the human race perish. But when they imagine
that the gods established all things for the sake of these,
in every respect they seem to have fallen far from true reasoning.
For although I may not know what the first-beginnings of things are,
yet this, from the very workings of the heavens, I would dare
to affirm, and to prove from many other things besides,
that the nature of the world was by no means created for us
by divine power: it stands endowed with so much fault.
which I shall make plain to you later, Memmius;
now I shall set forth what remains concerning motions.
Now, I think, is the place, amid these matters, also
to affirm to you this: that no bodily thing can be carried
upward by its own force, or travel upward.
And do not let the bodies of flames deceive you on this point;
for they are born and take on increase in an upward direction,
and upward, too, bright crops and trees grow,
though weights, so far as lies in them, all tend downward.
Nor, when flames leap up to the roofs of houses,
and with swift fire taste the beams and rafters,
should it be thought that they do this of their own accord, without force applied beneath.
Of this kind, too, is blood released from our body,
which spurts up leaping high and scatters gore.
Do you not see, too, with what force beams and rafters
the water's wetness spits back? For the more, straight down,
and with great force, many of us press hard and with much labor,
the more eagerly it thrusts them up again, and gives them back,
and spring out beyond it and leap forth still more.
Yet I do not doubt that these things too, so far as lies in them,
are all borne downward through the empty void.
So too flames must be able, through the breezes
of the air, once forced out, to rise upward, although
their weights, so far as lies in them, strive to draw them down.
And the night-fires of the sky, flying on high—
do you not see them draw long trails of flame
in whatever direction nature has given them passage?
Do you not see stars and constellations fall to earth?
The sun too, from the height of the sky, scatters all
its heat into every quarter and sows the fields with light;
so the sun's heat too inclines down toward the earth.
And you see lightning bolts fly slantwise through the rains,
now from here, now from there, fires torn loose from the clouds
clash together; the fiery force falls to earth on every side.
This too, in these matters, we are eager for you to grasp:
when bodies are carried straight down through the void
by their own weights, at a time wholly uncertain
and at uncertain places, they swerve a little from their course—
only so much that you could call it a shift of motion.
For if they were not in the habit of swerving, all things would fall
straight down through the deep void like drops of rain,
no collision would arise, no blow would be produced
among the first beginnings; so nature would never have created anything.
But if by chance someone believes that heavier
bodies, since they are carried more swiftly straight through the void,
can fall from above onto lighter ones, and so
produce blows able to give back generative motions,
he strays far from true reasoning.
For whatever falls through water or through thin air,
must quicken its fall in proportion to its weight,
because the substance of water and the thin nature
of air cannot equally hinder every object,
but yield more quickly, overcome by heavier things;
but empty void, on the other hand, can never, at any point
or at any time, stand firm beneath a thing,
but must go on yielding, as its own nature demands;
therefore all things must be borne through the calm void
at equal speed, though their weights are not equal.
Heavier things, then, will never be able to fall upon lighter ones
from above, nor produce blows by themselves
that could vary the motions by which nature carries on her work.
Wherefore, again and again, the first bodies must swerve
a little; and no more than the least amount, lest we seem to imagine
slanting motions, and the plain truth refute it.
For this we see to be evident and manifest,
that weights, so far as lies in them, cannot move at a slant,
when they plunge down from above—this you can observe;
but that nothing at all swerves from the straight line of its path—
who is there that could ever perceive it?
Again, if every motion is always linked to another
and new motion arises from the old in a fixed order,
and if the first bodies do not by swerving create some
new beginning of motion that might break the bonds of fate,
so that cause should not follow cause from infinity back—
from where comes this free will, spread through the lands, that living things have—
from where, I ask, is this will torn away from the fates,
through which we go forward wherever pleasure leads each of us,
and by which we likewise swerve our motions, not at a fixed time
nor at a fixed place, but wherever the mind itself has carried us?
For without doubt it is each one's own will
that gives the start to these things, and from it the motions flow through the limbs.
Do you not see, too, that when the starting gates are thrown open
at a given instant, the eager force of the horses
still cannot burst forward as suddenly as the mind itself desires?
For the whole store of matter through the whole body
must be roused, and once roused through every limb,
must follow and strain after the striving of the mind;
so that you may see that the start of motion is created in the heart,
and proceeds first from the will of the mind,
and only then is passed on through the whole body and limbs.
Nor is it the same as when we move forward driven by a blow,
by the great force and compulsion of another;
for then it is plain to us that all the matter of the whole body
moves and is swept along against our will,
until the will has reined it in throughout the limbs.
Do you see, then, that although an outside force
often drives many people and compels them, unwilling, to go forward
and be swept headlong, yet there is something in our breast
that can fight back and resist it?
And at its bidding the store of matter too
is forced at times to turn throughout the limbs and joints,
and, thrust forward, is reined in and settles back again.
Wherefore in the seeds too you must admit the same must be true:
that there is, besides blows and weight, another cause
of motions, from which this power innate in us derives,
since we see that nothing can come from nothing.
For weight prevents all things from happening by blows,
as it were by an outside force; but that the mind itself does not have
some inner necessity in all that it does,
and is not, as it were, overpowered, forced to endure and suffer—
this is brought about by the tiny swerve of the first beginnings,
at no fixed place and at no fixed time.
Nor has the store of matter ever been more crowded together
than now, nor again more widely spaced apart;
for nothing is added to it and nothing is lost from it.
Wherefore the motion in which the first bodies
now move, in that same motion they moved in ages past,
and hereafter they will always be carried on in the same way,
and the things that have been accustomed to be born will be born
under the same condition, and will exist and grow and thrive in strength,
as much as is granted to each by the laws of nature.
And no force can change the sum of things;
for there is no place outside to which any kind of matter
could escape from the whole, nor any place from which
new force could arise and burst in and change
the whole nature of things and overturn its motions.
In this there is nothing to wonder at, that although
all the first bodies of things are in motion,
the whole should nonetheless seem to stand wholly at rest,
except where something gives motion with its own particular body.
For the nature of the first bodies lies far beneath
all our senses; wherefore, since you cannot even
perceive the bodies themselves, their motions too must be hidden from you—
especially since even things we can perceive
often conceal their motions when set at a distance.
For often, on a hillside, cropping the rich pasture,
the wool-bearing flocks creep along, wherever each is called
and drawn by the grass, gemmed with fresh dew,
and the lambs, well fed, play and butt each other gently;
yet all this, to us, seems blurred at that distance,
a mere gleam of white settled on the green hill.
Besides, when great legions fill the plains
with their running, rousing images of war,
a brightness lifts to the sky and all around
the earth glitters with bronze, and beneath it the tramp
of men's feet stirs up sound, and the mountains, struck
by the shouting, throw back voices to the stars of heaven,
and horsemen wheel about and suddenly
gallop across the midst of the plains, shaking them with mighty charge;
and yet there is a certain spot high in the mountains from which
they seem to stand still, and the brightness to rest fixed upon the plains.
Now come, next in order learn the beginnings
of all things—of what sort they are, and how far apart in shape,
and grasp how greatly they are varied in their many forms;
not that few are endowed with a like shape,
but because, as a rule, not all things are alike in every respect.
Nor is this strange; for since their store is so vast
that, as I have taught, there is no end and no total to it,
surely they must not all possess, throughout,
the same outline and be marked by a like shape.
Besides, the race of mankind, and the mute swimming
scaly herds, and the glad flocks and wild beasts,
and the varied birds that throng the gladdening waters
around the banks, the springs, and the pools,
and those that range the trackless groves in flight—
take any one of these, of any kind you please,
and you will still find them differing from one another in shape.
Nor could offspring know its mother by any other means,
nor mother her offspring; and we see that this can happen
no less among them than it is well known to happen among men.
For often, before the fair shrines of the gods, a calf
falls, slaughtered beside the incense-burning altars,
breathing out from its breast a warm stream of blood;
but the mother, bereaved, roaming the green glades,
knows the tracks pressed into the ground by cloven hooves,
scanning every place with her eyes, if anywhere she might
catch sight of her lost young, and fills with her complaints
the leafy grove, stopping there, and returns again and again
to the stall, pierced through with longing for her calf;
nor can the soft willows and the grass thriving with dew,
nor any rivers gliding along their banks' edge,
delight her mind and turn aside her sudden care,
nor can the sight of other calves among the rich pastures
divert her mind and lighten her care;
so much does she seek something of her own and known.
Besides, tender kids with quavering voices
know their horned mothers, and butting lambs know
the bleating flocks; so, as nature demands,
each runs back, as a rule, to its own milk-bearing udder.
Lastly, you will see that no single kind of grain
is so wholly alike within its own kind to itself,
but that some measure of difference in shape runs between them.
And in like manner we see the race of shells
paint the bosom of the earth, where with soft waves the sea
feeds the thirsty sand of the curving shore.
Wherefore, again and again, it must in like manner be true,
since they are made by nature and not fashioned by hand
to one fixed pattern, that the first beginnings of things
fly about among themselves differing in shape.
It is very easy for us to unravel, by reasoning,
why fire from lightning is far more penetrating
than ours that rises from earthly torches;
for one may say that the heavenly fire of the lightning
is finer, made up of smaller shapes,
and so passes through openings which this fire of ours
born from wood and produced from torches cannot pass.
Besides, light passes through horn, but rain
is repelled by it. Why, unless the bodies of light
are smaller than those of which the nourishing liquid of water is made?
And though we see wine flow through a strainer
quickly, yet, on the other hand, oil lingers and is slow,
either because, no doubt, it is made of larger elements,
or of ones more hooked and more entwined with one another,
and so it happens that its first bodies cannot so suddenly
be drawn apart from one another so as each
to seep singly through each opening.
Add to this that the liquids of honey and of milk
are handled with a pleasant sensation by the tongue in the mouth,
but on the other hand the foul nature of wormwood and the fierce
centaury twist the mouth with their disgusting taste;
so that you may easily recognize that whatever
can touch the senses pleasantly is made of smooth, round bodies,
while whatever, on the other hand, seems bitter and harsh,
is held together by parts more hooked among themselves,
and so is apt to tear open paths into our
senses, and burst through the body as it enters.
In short, all things good to the senses, and all things bad to the touch,
are made up in conflict with one another, of dissimilar shape;
do not suppose, then, that the harsh grating of the shrieking saw
is made of elements as smooth
as the melodies of music, which the fingers of players
call forth, moving nimbly over the strings and giving them shape;
nor suppose that first bodies of a like form penetrate
the nostrils of men when foul corpses are burning,
and when the stage has just been sprinkled with Cilician saffron,
and when the altar nearby breathes out Panchaean perfumes;
nor should you conclude that the pleasant colors of things are made
of a like seed, the ones that can feed the eyes,
and those that prick the sight and force it to weep,
or that seem foul and repulsive in their disgusting appearance.
For everything that soothes the senses, whatever it may be,
is never created without some smoothness in its first bodies;
but whatever, on the other hand, is found troublesome and harsh,
is never found without some roughness of matter.
There are also some that are rightly thought neither
altogether smooth nor hooked with bent points,
but rather having small angles slightly projecting, so that
they can tickle the senses more than injure them—
of which kind are already tartar and the flavors of elecampane.
Again, that hot fires and icy frost
prick the senses of the body with teeth of a different kind,
the sense of touch, in either case, is proof enough for us.
For touch, touch, by the sacred powers of the gods,
is the sense of the body, whether when some outside thing
works its way in, or when something born within the body hurts it
or gives pleasure as it passes out through the organs of Venus's work,
or when, from some collision, the seeds are thrown into confusion
within the body itself and disturb the sense among themselves;
as if you should, by chance, strike some part of your own body
with your own hand and put it to the test.
Wherefore the shapes of the first beginnings must differ
greatly, since they can produce such varied sensations.
Again, whatever seems to us hard and dense,
this must be made of parts more hooked among themselves
and held tightly packed together as if by branching links.
In this class, first of all, stand the diamond-hard stones,
accustomed to scorn blows at the first onset,
and sturdy flints, and the strength of hard iron,
and bronze bolts that cry out as they resist in their sockets.
But those things that are liquid and flow with a fluid body
must be made rather of smooth, round parts.
For a draught of poppy seed pours as easily as water does;
its little clusters are not held fast to one another,
and once struck it likewise rolls readily downhill.
Lastly, everything you see scatter in an instant,
as smoke, mist, and flames do, must necessarily,
even if not entirely made of smooth, round parts,
still not be entangled and bound by interlocking shapes,
so that they can prick the body and pass through stone,
yet not cling to one another; so that whatever we perceive
by the senses as sharp-toothed, you may easily recognize
is made not of interlocking but of pointed elements.
But that things which are bitter should at the same time be fluid,
as is the brine of the sea, ought not to seem strange in the least—
* * *
for what is fluid is made of smooth, round parts,
but mixed in with the smooth ones are hooked bodies of pain;
yet these need not be held fast by their hooks:
clearly they are still round in shape, though rough,
so that they can roll along together and yet hurt the senses.
And so that you may see more clearly that rough elements are mixed
with smooth ones, from which comes Neptune's bitter body,
there is a way to separate them and see them apart:
when the same sweet water, seeping repeatedly through the earth,
filters through into a pit and there grows mild;
for it leaves behind, up above, the first bodies of its foul taste,
since the rough ones are the more able to cling fast in the earth.
Since I have taught this, I will go on to link to it a matter
that draws its warrant from this: that the first beginnings of things
vary within a limited range of shapes.
For if it were not so, then once again certain seeds
would have to be of infinite size of body.
For within the small compass of any single body,
the shapes cannot vary greatly among themselves.
Suppose, then, that the first bodies are made of three
of the smallest parts, or increase them by a few more;
when you have tried out all the parts of a single body—
placing top and bottom, and swapping right for left—
in every possible arrangement, testing what shape
each ordering gives to the whole outline of that body,
then, beyond that, if by chance you wish to vary the shapes further,
further parts will have to be added. It will follow from this,
by the same reasoning, that the arrangement will call for still more parts,
if you should wish, in turn, to vary the shapes yet again.
So an increase of body follows upon novelty
of shape. Wherefore you cannot believe
that seeds differ in an infinite number of shapes,
lest you be forced to make some of them of monstrous
size, which I have already shown above cannot be proved.
Otherwise, before you, barbarian robes and the shining
purple of Meliboea, dyed with Thessalian shellfish color,
and the golden generations of peacocks, steeped in their laughing
charm, would lie outmatched by some new color of things,
and the scent of myrrh would be despised, and the flavors of honey,
and the songs of the swan, and Apollo's intricate melodies
played on the strings, would in the same way be silenced, outdone;
for something more excellent than another would forever be arising.
And likewise all things could recede backward
into worse forms, just as we said they could into better ones;
for one thing would in turn seem more foul than another
to the nostrils, the ears, the eyes, and the taste of the mouth.
Since these things are not so, but a fixed limit on either side
holds the sum of each thing, you must admit
that matter too differs by shapes that are finite.
Lastly, from the fires to the icy frosts of winter
the distance is finite, and measured back again in equal degree.
For all heat and cold and the temperate warmths between
lie between the two extremes, filling up the sum in due order.
Therefore things created differ within a finite range,
since they are marked off at both ends by an opposing point,
hemmed in on the one side by flames, on the other by stiff frosts.
Since I have taught this, I will go on to link to it a matter
that draws its warrant from this: that the first beginnings of things,
which are made alike in shape to one another,
are infinite in number. For since the range
of shapes is finite, it must be that those which are alike
are infinite, or else that the sum total of matter
is finite—which I have proved is not so.
* * *
I will show in verses that the tiny bodies of matter
keep up the sum of things from infinity onward,
by an unbroken relay of blows on every side.
For as to certain animals that you see are rarer,
and whose nature you perceive to be the more fertile,
yet in another region and place, in lands far off,
many of that kind may exist and fill out the number;
just as we see, among four-footed creatures, first of all
the snake-handed elephants, of whose kind India
is fortified by many thousands with an ivory rampart,
so that it cannot be penetrated within: so great is the force
of these creatures, of which we see only very few examples.
But even granting that too, let it be, if you like,
that some one thing exists alone, of a body born unique,
with nothing like it anywhere in the whole world;
yet unless the supply of matter is infinite,
from which it might be conceived and brought to birth, it will not be able
to be created, nor, further, to grow at all.
For indeed, suppose that finite bodies, throughout
all space, are tossed about, the generative matter of one single thing—
from where, by what force, and in what way will they come together and unite
in so vast a sea and crowd of alien matter?
They have, I think, no means of combining;
but just as, when great and many shipwrecks have occurred,
the great sea tends to scatter benches, ribs,
yardarms, prow, masts, and floating oars,
so that stern-ornaments are seen drifting along
every shore of every land, giving mortals a warning
to avoid the treacherous sea's snares, its force and guile,
and never to trust it at any time,
when the calm sea's deceitful smile beguiles them—
so, if you should once suppose certain first beginnings
to be finite, they would have to be scattered through all
time, driven apart by the currents of matter in every direction,
and never able to be driven together into a union,
nor to remain in that union, nor to grow by increase;
yet plain fact shows that both of these plainly happen,
that things are brought to birth, and once born, can grow.
It is clear, then, that in every kind there are first beginnings of things
infinite in number, from which all things are supplied.
And so the death-dealing motions cannot prevail
forever, nor bury life's welfare for all time,
nor, on the other hand, can the generative and growth-giving
motions of things preserve what is created forever.
So the war of the first beginnings, drawn out
from infinity in time, is waged with even contest.
Now here, now there, the vital forces of things prevail,
and are in turn overcome. The funeral wail mingles
with the cry the infant lifts on first seeing the shores of light;
and no night has ever followed day, nor dawn followed night,
that has not heard, mixed with the feeble wailing of infants,
laments, the companions of death and of black funeral.
It is fitting, too, to hold this fact sealed
among these matters, and keep it entrusted to a mindful memory:
that nothing exists, of those things whose nature seems evident,
that is made of a single kind of first bodies,
nor anything that is not made of a mingled seed.
And whatever possesses in itself the more force
and powers, thereby shows that it holds within itself
the most kinds and the most varied shapes of first beginnings.
First of all, the earth holds within it first bodies
from which the springs, rolling their cold waters, constantly
replenish the boundless sea, and holds those from which fires arise;
for in many places the ground of the earth is kindled and burns,
and from its lowest depths Etna rages with fire.
Then, too, it holds within it what can raise up
shining crops and glad orchards for the human race,
and can furnish rivers, leaves, and rich pastures as well
to the mountain-roving race of wild beasts.
Therefore she is called the great mother of the gods and mother of beasts,
and the sole begetter of our body, this same one.
Her the learned poets of the Greeks of old have sung
as driving a yoked pair of lions from her seat in a chariot,
teaching that the great earth hangs in the expanse of air
and that earth cannot rest upon earth.
They yoked wild beasts to her, because however savage the offspring,
it must be softened, mastered, by the dutiful care of parents.
And they crowned the top of her head with a mural crown,
because, fortified in her chosen strongholds, she upholds cities.
Adorned with which emblem now throughout great lands
the image of the divine mother is carried in dread solemnity.
Her, by the ancient custom of sacred rites, various nations
call the Idaean Mother, and give her Phrygian troops
as companions, because they say it was first from those borders
that crops began to be brought forth throughout the round world.
They assign her the Galli, because those who violate her divine power
of the Mother, and have been found ungrateful to their own parents,
they mean thereby to show should be thought unworthy
to bring living offspring forth into the shores of light.
Taut drums thunder beneath their palms, and cymbals round them
hollow, and horns menace with harsh-sounding blare,
and the hollow pipe spurs minds on with its Phrygian strain,
and they carry weapons before them, tokens of violent frenzy,
the ungrateful minds and impious hearts of the crowd
to strike with terror through fear of the goddess's power.
So then, when first, carried through the great cities,
she does mortals a silent kindness with her mute greeting,
they strew the whole course of the roads with bronze and silver,
enriching her with lavish offerings, and shower down snow of roses,
shading the Mother and her band of companions with blossoms.
Here an armed band, whom the Greeks call by the name Curetes
they tell of, if by chance among the Phrygian troops
they sport and leap in time, joyful in bloodshed,
shaking with a toss the fearsome crests upon their heads,
they re-enact the Dictaean Curetes, who once are said
to have hidden the infant wailing of Jove in Crete,
when boys around the boy, in swift-footed dance,
[arms him, and in swift-footed dance, in rhythm]
armed, would strike bronze on bronze in rhythm,
lest Saturn, once he seized him, consign him to his jaws
and deal an eternal wound beneath the mother's heart.
For this reason, armed, they escort the great Mother,
or because they signify that the goddess counsels that with arms
and courage men should be willing to defend their homeland,
and stand as a guard and an honor to their parents.
All this, however well and finely it may be arranged,
is nonetheless far removed from true reasoning.
For the whole nature of the gods must, of itself,
enjoy immortal life in utmost peace,
set apart from our affairs and far disjoined;
for, free from all pain, free from every peril,
strong in its own resources, wanting nothing from us,
it is never won by our good deeds nor stirred by anger.
Earth, indeed, is wholly without feeling at every time,
and because it possesses the first-beginnings of many things,
it brings many things forth in many ways into the sun's light.
Here, if someone should choose to call the sea Neptune
and the crops Ceres, and prefers to misuse the name of Bacchus
rather than speak out the proper name of that liquor,
let us allow him to keep calling the round earth
the mother of the gods, provided that he himself, in truth,
refrains from staining his own mind with shameful superstition.
Often, then, cropping the grass from one same field,
the wool-bearing flocks and the warlike breed of horses
and horned herds, beneath the same canopy of sky,
and slaking their thirst from one same river's water,
live on with differing appearance, and each keeps its parents'
nature, and each mimics their ways after its kind.
So great, in every kind of grass, is the matter's
differing composition, so great is it in the river too.
Hence too, whatever single living creature is formed from all of these—
bones, blood, veins, warmth, moisture, flesh, sinews—
these make it up, and they in turn differ far,
each made up of first-beginnings of a different shape.
Then further, whatever things are burned, kindled by flame,
if nothing else, still hold this within their substance,
which lets them throw off fire and send up light
and drive forth sparks, and scatter embers far and wide.
Ranging over the rest by a like process of thought,
you will find, then, that the seeds of many things
lie hidden in a body, holding various shapes.
Finally, you see many things in which color and flavor, together
with fragrance, are all bestowed — most fruits especially.
These, therefore, must be composed of varied shapes;
for scent penetrates into the limbs where dye does not go,
dye likewise separately, <separately> flavor insinuates itself
into the senses — so you may know they differ in first shapes.
Dissimilar shapes, therefore, gather together into one mass,
and things are composed of intermingled seed.
Indeed, everywhere in these very verses of ours
you see many letters shared among many words,
though still you must admit that verses and words
are composed, one from another, of different elements —
not that few letters run in common through them,
or that no two of them are made of all the same,
but because not all are, as a rule, composed alike in every part.
So too in other things, in the same way, though many elements
are common to many objects, the first-beginnings of things
can still combine, one with another, in a differing sum,
so that rightly the human race is said to be composed of elements
different from those of crops and flourishing orchards.
Yet it must not be thought that all things can be joined together
in every fashion; for you would see monsters arising everywhere,
half-beast forms of men coming to exist, and tall
branches sometimes springing from a living body,
and many limbs of land creatures joined to those of the sea,
and Chimaeras breathing flame from a foul mouth,
fed by nature, the all-begetter, across the lands.
None of this plainly happens, since we see that all things,
created from fixed seeds by a fixed parent stock,
as they grow, are able to keep their kind.
Clearly this must happen by a fixed process.
For out of every kind of food, each thing's own matter, inside, into the limbs,
the particles pass off, and, joined together, produce
fitting motions; but on the other hand, we see foreign matter
cast back by nature onto the ground, and many things, driven
by unseen blows of matter, flee from the body,
things which could not be joined anywhere, nor within
harmonize with and follow the motions of life.
But lest you think perhaps that only living creatures are bound
by these laws — a like principle bounds all things:
for, just as things born, each from the other,
are wholly dissimilar in nature, so must each
be composed of first-beginnings of unlike shape;
not that few are endowed with a similar form,
but because not all consist alike in everything.
And since the seeds, in turn, differ, there must differ too
the intervals, paths, connections, weights, blows,
encounters, motions — things which set apart not living creatures
alone, but part the lands and the whole sea
and hold the whole sky apart, away from the lands.
Now come, take in the words won by my sweet labor,
lest perhaps you think the white things you see
bright before your eyes, are made of white first-beginnings,
or that the things that blacken are born of black seed;
or that whatever is steeped in any other color you like
you should think bears that hue for the reason that matter's
particles are dyed with a matching color of their own;
for no color at all belongs to matter's
particles, neither like things nor, indeed, unlike them.
and if it seems to you that into these particles no
reach of the mind can be cast, you wander far astray.
For since the blind from birth, who have never
beheld the light of the sun, still know objects by touch,
objects joined with no color, from their earliest years,
we may know that objects can present themselves to our mind too
and come to notice, smeared about with no dye at all.
Finally, we ourselves, whatever we touch
in blind darkness, feel to be dyed with no color at all.
And since I show that this happens, I will now teach that it is so.
For every color is wholly changed into every other;
which the first-beginnings must by no means do;
for something unchangeable must remain over,
lest all things be reduced utterly to nothing;
for whatever, once changed, passes beyond its own bounds,
this is at once the death of what it was before.
So take care not to taint the seeds of things with color,
lest for you all things return utterly to nothing.
Besides, if no nature of color at all is
granted to the first-beginnings, and they are endowed with varied shapes,
from which they beget and vary colors of every kind,
because it matters greatly with what other seeds each
seed is bound together, and in what arrangement,
and what motions they give and receive between them,
you could very easily give account at once
why things that a little before were black in color
can suddenly turn to a gleaming marble whiteness,
as the sea, when great winds stir its level waters,
is turned into hoary waves of gleaming marble.
For you could say that what we often see as black,
once its matter has been remixed and the order
of its first-beginnings changed, some added, some removed,
at once it happens that it appears gleaming and white.
But if the waters of the sea were composed of dark-blue
seeds, they could by no means turn white;
for however you jumble things that are dark-blue,
they can never pass over into a marble-white color.
But if the seeds are dyed with one color and another,
which together make the sea's single, pure sheen,
just as, often, out of different forms and varied shapes,
something square, of one single shape, is made,
it would follow — just as in the square we discern
dissimilar shapes present — so too to discern in the sea's expanse,
or in any other single, pure sheen,
colors far different from one another and varied.
Besides, the dissimilar shapes do nothing to hinder or oppose,
so that the square should be any less entirely square from outside;
but the varied colors of things do hinder and prevent
the whole thing from being of a single sheen.
Then, further, what leads and tempts us to grant
colors, now and then, to the first-beginnings of things as their cause,
collapses, since white things are not created from white,
nor those called black from black, but from varied seeds.
For indeed, far more readily will white things arise,
born of no color at all, than born of black,
or of any other that would fight against it and resist.
Besides, since colors cannot exist without light,
and the first-beginnings of things do not step out into the light,
we may know how they are veiled in no color at all.
For what kind of color could there be in blind darkness?
Indeed, it changes according to the light itself, because
struck by direct or slanting light, it shines back differently;
just as the plumage of doves is seen in sunlight,
which, set about the neck, crowns the throat;
for at times it happens to be red with bright bronze-gold,
and sometimes, in a certain light, it happens to appear
to mingle green emeralds in with dark blue.
And the peacock's tail, when it is filled with ample light,
turned toward it, changes its colors by the like process;
and since these colors are begotten by a certain stroke of light,
we may know it — without light they cannot be thought to arise.
And since the pupil takes into itself a certain kind of impact,
when it is said to perceive the color white,
and a different one again, when it perceives black and the rest,
and it makes no difference with what color, as it happens,
the things you touch are endowed, but rather with what shape they are better fitted,
we may know that the first-beginnings have no need at all of color,
but, varying in their shapes, produce varying touches.
Besides, since a fixed nature of color is not bound
to fixed shapes, and all the formations of the first-beginnings
can exist in any brightness whatever,
why are not the things composed of them likewise
suffused with every kind of color in every class?
For it would follow that crows too, often as they fly,
would cast a white color from white feathers,
and swans would turn black, born of black seed,
or of any other single, varied color.
Indeed, the more each thing, torn apart into minute
portions, is pulled apart, the more you can see
its color gradually vanish and go out;
as happens when purple cloth is torn into small pieces:
purple, and crimson, by far the brightest color,
when it is pulled apart thread by thread, is wholly lost;
so you may learn from this that the particles breathe out all their color first,
before they break apart into the seeds of things.
Finally, since you grant that not all bodies
send forth a sound, nor a smell, for this reason it follows
that you do not assign sounds and smells to all things:
so, since we cannot perceive all things with our eyes,
we may know that certain things likewise exist bereft of color
just as certain things are without any smell, and set apart from sound,
and no less can a keen mind come to know these things
than it can mark those deprived of other properties.
But lest you think perhaps that the first bodies, stripped only of color,
remain as they are, they are also cut off from warmth
and cold entirely, and from hot vapor,
and are said to be barren of sound and empty of savor,
nor do they cast off any smell of their own from their body.
Just as, when you set out to make the soothing perfume of marjoram and myrrh,
and the essence of nard, which breathes nectar to the nostrils,
it is fitting, first of all, to seek out
so far as you can find it — the nature of scentless olive oil,
which sends no breath at all to the nostrils,
so that it may, as little as possible, spoil in its own substance
the blended, digested scents by handling them with its own strength;
for that same <reason> the first-beginnings of things must
not lend their own smell to the things they beget,
nor sound, since they can send forth nothing from themselves,
nor, by the same reasoning, finally any flavor at all,
nor cold, nor likewise hot or lukewarm vapor,
and the rest — things which, though such that mortal bodies are composed of them,
soft and yielding, brittle and crumbling, hollow with a loose texture,
all these must be kept apart from the first-beginnings,
if we wish to set immortal foundations beneath things
as their basis, on which the whole of their continuance may rest;
lest for you all things return utterly to nothing.
Now, whatever things we see to have feeling, it is necessary
that you admit all are nonetheless composed
of insensible first-beginnings; nor do plain facts refute this,
nor do the things plainly known fight against it,
but rather lead us, so to speak, by the hand, and compel us to believe
that, as I say, living creatures are born from insensible things.
For indeed we may see living worms come into being
from foul dung, when the moist earth has taken on a stench
from untimely rains.
Besides, all things likewise transform themselves.
Rivers turn themselves into leaves and lush pasture,
into flocks; flocks turn their substance into our bodies,
and from our body often the strength of wild beasts
grows, and the bodies of birds strong of wing.
So nature turns all food into living bodies,
and from it brings forth all the senses of living creatures,
in no very different way than it unfolds dry wood
into flames, and turns everything into fire.
Do you see now, then, how much it matters for the first-beginnings of things
in what order each is set,
and, mixed with what, they give and receive motions?
Then further — this thing itself that strikes the mind,
which moves it and forces it to bring forth its varied feelings —
do you doubt that the sensible can be born of the insensible?
No doubt it is that stones and wood and earth, mixed all together,
still cannot render up living sensation.
This, then, in these matters, it will be well to remember,
that I do not say sensations are born at once
from every single thing whatever that creates sensible beings,
but that it matters greatly, first, how small the things are that compose
the sensible creature, and with what shape they are endowed,
and finally what they are in motions, arrangement, and position.
None of which we see present in logs or clods of earth;
and yet these, when they are, so to speak, rotted through by rains,
bring forth small worms, because the particles of matter,
stirred from their old arrangements by this new turn of events,
combine in just the way that living creatures must be born.
Then those who hold that the sensible can be created out of the sensible,
and further, that these are accustomed to feel by way of other things
* * *
when they make things soft — for all sensation is bound up
with flesh, sinews, veins — whatever we see
to be soft, made up of mortal substance.
But grant, even so, that these could remain eternal;
surely they must still either have the feeling of a part
or be thought like whole living creatures themselves.
But it must be that the parts cannot feel by themselves:
for the mind rejects every sensation belonging to the limbs,
nor can a hand, once cut off from us, nor any
part of the body at all, hold sensation on its own.
It remains, then, that they be likened to whole living creatures,
so that they can share vital feeling on every side.
How, then, can they be called the first-beginnings of things,
and escape the paths of death, if they are living creatures,
and living creatures <are> one and the same thing as mortal beings?
But even granting they could be so, still by gathering and combining
they will produce nothing beyond a crowd and throng of living creatures,
just as men, herds, and wild beasts cannot,
by coming together among themselves, beget any single thing.
so likewise, in the same way, whatever makes us feel must itself feel.
But if perhaps they give up their own feeling from their body
and take on another, what need was there to grant them that
which is then taken away? Besides, as we showed before,
since we see eggs turn into living chicks
of birds, and worms swarm forth from the earth
once an untimely rain has brought a stench upon it,
we may know that feelings can be born from things devoid of feeling.
But if perhaps someone should say that, so long as feelings arise
from non-feeling by way of change,
or by some sort of birth, as it were, that is brought forth outward,
for him it will be enough to make this plain and prove it:
that no birth occurs unless a combination has first been formed,
nor can anything be changed without a combining of parts.
To begin with, there cannot be feelings belonging to any body
before the very nature of the living creature has been begotten,
because, no doubt, its matter is held scattered apart
in air, in rivers, in earth, and in things sprung from earth,
and it has not yet, coming together, joined the fitting
vital motions among themselves, by which the all-perceiving
senses, once kindled, keep watch over each living creature.
Besides, a blow too great for nature to endure
suddenly strikes down any living creature, and goes on
to confound all the sensations of body and mind alike.
For the arrangements of the first-beginnings are broken apart,
and the vital motions are hindered deep within,
until all the matter, shaken through the limbs,
loosens the knots of the living soul from the body
and, once it is scattered, casts it all out through every passage.
For what else should we think a blow, once dealt,
could do, except shake apart and dissolve each thing?
It also happens, when the blow dealt is less severe,
that the remaining vital motions often prevail,
prevail, and settle the huge turmoil of the blow,
and call back again, each into its own course, whatever was disturbed,
and shake apart the motion of death, as it were already master in the body,
and kindle again senses almost lost;
for by what means else, rather, from the very threshold of death,
could they, their minds gathered back together, return to life,
rather than go on and pass away to where their course was already nearly run?
Besides, since pain occurs when the bodies of matter,
stirred by some force through the living flesh, through the limbs,
tremble within, in their own inner seats,
and when they migrate back into place, a soothing pleasure arises,
we may know that the first-beginnings can be assailed
by no pain at all, nor take any pleasure from themselves;
since they are not made up of any bodies
of further first-beginnings, whose motions might suffer from novelty
or might reap some enjoyment of nourishing sweetness.
Therefore they must not be endowed with any feeling at all.
Finally, so that living creatures generally may be able to feel,
if feeling must now be granted to their first-beginnings,
what of those from which the human race in particular is made?
Surely they too, shaken with quivering laughter, must burst out laughing,
and bedew their faces and cheeks with dropping tears,
and be skilled at discoursing on the mixture of things,
and further inquire for themselves what their own first-beginnings are;
since, being likened to whole mortal creatures,
they too must themselves be composed of further elements,
and those in turn from still others, so that you would never dare to stop;
for indeed I will press you: whatever you say speaks and laughs
and is wise, must be so because still other things do these very things.
But if we see that this is raving and mad,
and that something can laugh, though built up out of things that do not laugh,
and be wise, and render reasoned account in learned speech,
though not made of seeds that are wise and eloquent,
why can the things we see to feel be any less
composed of seeds mingled together that lack all feeling whatever?
Finally, we are all sprung from a seed that comes from the sky;
of all of us that same one is father, from whom, when the fostering earth
our mother, has taken in drops of flowing moisture,
made fruitful, she bears bright crops and flourishing trees
and the human race; she bears all the generations of wild beasts,
since she supplies the food with which all creatures feed their bodies
and they lead a sweet life, and propagate their offspring;
for which reason she has rightly earned the name of mother.
So too it passes back again — what was earlier from earth —
into the earth, and what was sent from the shores of the sky,
that, carried back again, the vaults of heaven receive.
Nor does death destroy things in such a way that it
annihilates the bodies of matter, but scatters their union;
then it joins one thing to another, and brings it about that all
things change their shapes and alter their colors
and take on sensation, and in an instant give it up again;
so that you may know it matters, for these things, what
other elements, and in what arrangement, hold them together,
and what motions they give and receive among themselves,
and do not think that it can dwell forever within
the eternal first bodies, that which we see floating on the surface
of things, and now and then born and suddenly perishing.
Indeed it matters, even in these very verses of ours,
with which letters, and in what order, each is placed;
for the same letters signify sky, sea, lands, rivers, sun —
the same denote crops, trees, living creatures;
if not all, still by far the greatest part
is alike; but things differ in their arrangement.
So too, in things themselves, likewise, of matter
[the intervals, paths, connections, weights, blows]
the meetings, motions, order, arrangement, shapes —
when these are changed, things too must change.
Now turn your mind to the true reasoning we offer.
For a strange thing labors powerfully to reach your ears,
and a new appearance of things to show itself.
But no thing is so easy that it does not first
stand as more difficult to believe; and likewise
nothing is so great, nor anything so marvelous,
that all do not gradually cease to marvel at it,
beginning with the bright and pure color of the sky,
and all it holds within itself, the stars wandering everywhere,
and the moon, and the sun's brilliant, shining light;
all of which, if they were now for the first time
suddenly thrown before mortal eyes, unforeseen,
what could be called more marvelous than these things,
or what would peoples have dared less to believe could be, beforehand?
Nothing, I think; so wondrous would this sight have been.
Yet now no one, wearied and sated with seeing it,
deigns to look up at the bright vaults of the sky.
Cease, therefore, terrified by its mere novelty,
to spit reason out of your mind, but rather with keener
judgment weigh it, and if it seems true to you,
surrender, or, if it is false, gird yourself against it.
For the mind seeks a reason, since the sum of space is
infinite, out beyond these ramparts of the world,
what there may be further on, to which the mind wishes to look
still onward, and to which the free cast of thought would fly.
First of all, in every direction, on all sides,
and on either side, <above> and below, throughout the whole,
there is no limit; as I have taught, and the thing itself, of itself,
cries it aloud, and the nature of the deep shines clear.
It must now be thought in no way likely,
since on every side space lies open, infinite,
and seeds in number uncountable, through the deep sum of things,
fly about in many ways, driven by eternal motion,
that this one globe of earth and sky was created,
and that so many bodies of matter beyond it do nothing;
especially since this world was made by nature, and itself,
of its own accord, by chance, the seeds of things colliding,
driven together randomly in many ways, vainly and in vain,
at last settled into those which, suddenly thrown together,
would always become the beginnings of great things —
of earth, sea, sky, and the race of living creatures.
Wherefore, again and again, you must admit it is necessary
that there are other gatherings of matter elsewhere,
such as this one, which the eager embrace of the ether holds.
Moreover, since much matter is prepared,
since space is at hand, and neither thing nor cause delays
at all, things must, no doubt, be carried on and brought about.
Now if there is so great a supply of seeds as
the whole lifetime of living creatures could not count,
and the same nature remains, which is able to throw
the seeds of things into any place, by the same means
as they were thrown together here, you must admit
that there are other worlds in other regions of space,
and various races of men, and generations of wild beasts.
To this is added that in the sum of things no thing is single,
unique, born alone, and growing alone and unique,
but rather belongs to some kind, and very many others of the same
kind exist. First, among living creatures, with your mind as guide,
you will find that so it is with the mountain-roaming race of beasts,
so with the twofold offspring of men, so finally with the mute
scaly-bearing herds, and all the bodies of flying things.
For this reason it must be admitted, by like reasoning,
that sky and earth and sun, moon, sea, and all else that exist,
are not single, but rather countless in number;
since indeed a boundary of life, deeply set,
holds as firmly for these, and their bodies are just as truly born,
as is every kind that teems, abundant, generation by generation, among these things.
If you hold these things well understood, nature is seen
at once to be free, stripped of haughty masters,
doing everything herself, by her own will, through herself, having no part of the gods.
For by the holy, tranquil hearts of the gods, in their peace,
who pass a calm age and a serene life,
who is able to govern the sum of the immeasurable, who to hold
in hand the strong reins of the deep, steering them,
who to turn all the heavens alike, and all
the fertile earths to warm with fires of the ether,
and to be present in all places at every time,
so as to make darkness with clouds, and to shake the clear sky
with a crash, then hurl thunderbolts, and often
overturn his own temples, and, withdrawing into deserts,
rage there, wielding a weapon that often passes
by the guilty and strikes down the undeserving and unoffending?
And many bodies, after the birthing-time and day of the world,
the first arising of sea and earth and sun,
were added from outside, seeds added all around,
which the great All contributed by casting them in,
from which the sea and lands could grow, and from which
the space of heaven's house might appear, and raise its lofty roof
far from the earth, and the air rise up.
For to each its own, from every place, all bodies
are distributed by blows, and withdraw to their own kind,
moisture to moisture; earth grows with earthy body,
and fires forge fire, and <ether> forges ether,
until at last, perfecting their growth to its final
limit, creative nature brought all things to a close;
as happens when no more is now given within
the vital veins than what flows out and departs.
Here the growth of all things must come to a halt,
here nature reins in their increase with her own powers.
For whatever you see growing large with joyful increase
and climbing by degrees the steps of mature age,
takes on more bodies for itself than it sends off from itself,
so long as food is easily placed into the veins, and so long
as things are not spread so wide that they release much,
and cause more loss than the age feeds upon.
For surely it must be granted that bodies flow and depart
in great number from things; but more must come in,
until they have touched the highest peak of growing.
Then, little by little, age breaks their strength
and mature vigor, and dissolves into the worse part.
For indeed, the larger a thing is, once its increase is spent,
and the broader it is, in every direction, on all sides,
the more bodies it now scatters and sends off from itself,
nor is all its food easily distributed into its veins,
nor is there enough, against the great tides it seethes with,
from which so much could arise anew and be supplied.
Rightly, then, they perish, when, made porous by outflow,
they are, and when all things give way beneath blows from outside,
since indeed food fails at last for their great age,
nor do the bodies that batter, from outside, ever cease
to wear away anything, and subdue it with hostile blows.
So too, then, the ramparts of the great world, stormed
on every side, will give way to decay and crumbling ruin;
for food must renew and restore all things,
and food must prop them up, <food> must sustain everything,
all in vain, since the veins do not endure
what is enough, nor does nature supply as much as is needed.
And now indeed the age is broken, and the earth, worn out with bearing,
scarcely creates small creatures, she who created all
the generations, and gave birth to the huge bodies of wild beasts.
For, I think, no golden cord let down mortal generations
from the sky above onto the fields,
nor did the sea, nor the waves beating on the rocks, create them,
but the same earth that now feeds them from herself, bore them.
Moreover, she herself first, of her own accord,
created for mortals bright crops and joyful vineyards,
she herself gave sweet fruits and joyful pastures;
which now scarcely grow large, though increased by our labor,
and we wear down oxen and the strength of farmers,
we wear out iron, scarcely supplied by the fields:
so much do they stint their yield and increase our toil.
And now the aged plowman, shaking his head, sighs
again and again, that his great labors have fallen out in vain,
and when he compares present times with times
past, he often praises the good fortune of his fathers.
So too the sad planter of the old, <shriveled> vine
blames the movement of time and rails at the age,
and grumbles that the ancient race, filled with piety,
bore its life quite easily within narrow bounds,
when the measure of land allotted per man was once far smaller;
not grasping that all things waste away little by little, and go
to the grave, worn out by the long span of age.

======== Book III — The Nature of the Mind and the Fear of Death ========

Out of such great darkness to raise up so bright a light,
you who were first able, illuminating the good things of life,
I follow you, O glory of the Greek race, and now in your
footprints, already made, I set my own steps, pressed into your tracks,
not so eager to compete as for the love
I bear you, longing to imitate you; for what could a swallow contend
with swans, or what likeness could kids, on trembling legs,
make in a race with the strength of a powerful horse?
You, father, are the discoverer of things; you supply us
with fatherly precepts, and from your pages, glorious one,
as bees in flowering glades sip everything,
we likewise feed on all your golden words,
golden, always most worthy of everlasting life.
For as soon as your reasoning begins to proclaim aloud
the nature of things, arisen from a mind divine,
the terrors of the mind scatter, the ramparts of the world
part; I see things happening throughout the whole void.
The divine power of the gods appears, and their quiet abodes,
which winds do not shake, nor clouds spatter
with rainstorms, nor snow, hardened by harsh frost,
white, falling, ever violates; a cloudless sky
covers them always, and smiles with light poured out abundantly:
nature, moreover, supplies everything, and nothing
ever nibbles away the peace of that mind at any time.
But on the other hand, nowhere do the halls of Acheron appear,
nor does the earth stand in the way of all things being seen through,
whatever is carried on below, beneath our feet, throughout the void.
At these things a kind of divine pleasure
seizes me, and a shudder, because by your power nature thus
lies open so plainly, uncovered on every side.
And since I have taught what the seeds of all things
are like, and how, differing in varied shapes,
they fly of their own accord, driven by eternal motion,
and in what way each thing can be created from them,
following on these matters, the nature of the mind
and of the soul now seems to need clarifying in my verses,
and that fear of Acheron must be driven headlong out,
which throws human life into turmoil from its very depths,
suffusing everything with the blackness of death, and leaves
no pleasure clear and pure to remain.
For as to men often saying that diseases are more to be feared,
and a life of ill repute more than the Tartarus of death,
and claiming they know the nature of the mind is blood,
or even wind, if their fancy happens to lead that way,
and that they have no need at all of our reasoning,
from this you may notice that all this is bandied about
more for the sake of praise than because the matter itself is proven.
These same men, exiles from their homeland and driven far
from the sight of men, defiled by some shameful crime,
afflicted with every hardship, still go on living,
and wherever the wretches come, they still make offerings to the dead
and sacrifice black cattle and to the divine shades below
send funeral gifts, and in bitter circumstances all the more
turn their minds sharply toward religion.
All the more it is fitting to watch a man in doubtful dangers,
and to know who he is in circumstances of adversity;
for true words are then at last drawn out
from the depths of the heart, and the mask is torn away, the reality remains.
Then again, greed and the blind desire for honors,
which compel wretched men to overstep the bounds
of law, and sometimes, as accomplices and agents of crimes,
to strive night and day with outstanding toil
to rise up to the heights of wealth — these wounds of life
are nourished in no small part by the dread of death.
For shameful contempt, more or less, and bitter poverty
seem set apart from a life sweet and secure,
and, as it were, already lingering before the gates of death;
and so, while men, driven by this false terror,
wish to have escaped it and pushed it far, far away,
they amass wealth through the blood of citizens, and their riches
they double, greedy, piling slaughter upon slaughter,
cruel, they rejoice at a brother's grim funeral,
and hate and fear the tables of their own kin.
In similar fashion, often from that same fear,
envy wears them down, that so-and-so before their eyes is powerful,
that so-and-so is looked upon, who walks about in shining honor,
while they themselves, they complain, wallow in darkness and mud.
Some perish for the sake of statues and a name.
And often, to such a degree, from dread of death,
hatred of life and of seeing the light seizes men,
that with grieving heart they bring death upon themselves,
forgetting that this fear is the source of their cares:
that this is what tramples honor, this that breaks
the bonds of friendship, and urges men to overturn duty utterly:
for already, often, men have betrayed their homeland and their dear parents,
seeking to avoid the halls of Acheron.
For just as children tremble and fear everything in blind
darkness, so we in the light are afraid, sometimes,
of things no more to be feared than
what children shudder at in the dark and imagine will happen.
This terror of the mind, then, and these shadows
must be dispelled — not by the rays of the sun nor the bright shafts of day,
but by the outward view and reasoning of nature.
First I say that the mind, which we often call the intellect,
in which the judgment and guidance of life is placed,
is a part of man no less than hand and foot
and eyes are parts existing of the whole living creature.
* * *
that the sense of the mind is not located in any fixed part,
but that it is a certain vital condition of the body,
which the Greeks call harmony, because it makes us
live with sensation, though the mind is in no single part;
as good health is often said to belong
to the body, and yet this is no part of the healthy person,
so they do not place the sense of the mind in any fixed part;
in which they seem to me to go very far astray.
So often the body, which lies plainly visible, is sick,
while yet we rejoice from another, hidden part;
and the reverse often happens too, in turn,
when a person is wretched in mind while rejoicing in the whole body;
in no other way than if, when a sick man's foot hurts,
his head meanwhile happens to be in no pain at all.
Moreover, when limbs are given over to soft sleep
and the body, weighed down, lies sprawled without sensation,
there is nonetheless something else in us which, at that time,
is stirred in many ways and takes into itself
the motions of joy and the empty cares of the heart.
Now, so that you may also recognize that the soul, within the limbs,
is something apart, and that the body does not customarily feel by harmony,
first, it happens that when much of the body is taken away,
life still often lingers for us in the limbs.
And that same soul, again, when a few particles of heat
have fled away, and air is sent forth through the mouth,
abandons the veins at once and leaves the bones behind;
so that from this you may recognize that not all particles
hold life equally, nor equally sustain our health,
but rather these, which are the seeds of wind and of warm heat,
are the ones that see to it that life lingers in the limbs.
There is, then, a vital heat and wind within
the body itself, which abandons our limbs as we die.
Wherefore, since the nature of the mind has been found,
and of the soul, as it were a part of man, give back the name
"harmony," brought down from lofty Helicon to the musicians,
or which they themselves drew from elsewhere and transferred
onto that thing which then lacked a name of its own.
Whatever it is, let them have it: you take in the rest of what I say.
Now I say that mind and soul are held joined
to one another and make up a single nature from themselves,
but that the judgment, which we call mind and intellect,
is, as it were, the head, and rules over the whole body.
And it is fixed, situated in the middle region of the chest.
For here fear and dread leap up; around this place
joys soothe: here, then, is the mind and the intellect.
The rest of the soul, scattered through the whole body,
obeys, and is moved at the nod and impulse of the mind.
And that mind, alone, by itself, has understanding for itself and rejoices for itself,
when nothing stirs the soul or body along with it.
And just as, when the head or eye, under an assailing pain,
is hurt in us, we are not tormented over our whole
body, so the mind itself is sometimes hurt
or else flourishes with joy, when the rest of the soul's substance,
through the limbs and joints, is stirred by nothing new;
but when the mind is more violently shaken by fear,
we see the whole soul feel it together through the limbs,
and sweats and pallor thus arise over the whole
body, and the tongue falter and the voice die away,
the eyes grow dim, the ears ring, the limbs give way,
and finally we see men collapse
from terror of mind — often; so that anyone can easily recognize from this
that the soul is joined with the mind, which, once struck
by the force of the mind, then drives forward and strikes the body.
This same reasoning teaches that the nature of the mind and of the soul
is bodily; for since it seems to drive the limbs forward,
to snatch the body up from sleep, and to change the expression,
and to guide and turn the whole man,
none of which we see can happen without touch,
nor touch, further, without body, must it not be admitted
that mind and soul consist of a bodily nature?
Moreover you see that the mind, together with the body and as one,
performs its function and feels along with it, within our body.
If the grim force of a weapon, driven within,
with bones and sinews split apart, harms life less,
still there follows a faintness, and a sweet sinking
toward the ground, and a turmoil of mind that is born on the ground,
and sometimes an uncertain will, as it were, to rise up.
Therefore the nature of the mind must be bodily,
since it suffers from bodily weapons and their blow.
Now I will go on to give an account in words of what kind of body
this mind of yours is made, and from what.
First, I say it is exceedingly fine, and made up
of extremely tiny particles. That this is so
you may notice from this, so that you can fully understand it.
Nothing seems to happen in so swift a manner
as when the mind proposes for it to happen and itself begins it;
the mind, then, sets itself in motion more swiftly than any thing
whose nature is plainly seen before our eyes.
But what is mobile to such a degree must consist of round
seeds, extremely round and extremely small,
so that, once struck, they can be moved by a small impulse.
For water is moved and flows at the slightest impulse,
seeing that it is made of small, rolling shapes.
But on the other hand, honey's nature is more stable,
and its fluid is more sluggish, and its movement more hesitant:
for the whole mass of its matter clings together more
among itself, no doubt because it does not consist of particles
so light, nor so fine and round.
For a light, hovering breeze can make a tall heap
of poppy-seed flow down from the top,
but on the other hand it cannot do the same to a pile of stones
or of grain-ears. Therefore, in proportion as bodies are
and the lightest, so much mobility they enjoy;
but on the other hand, whatever things are found
with greater weight and roughness, are the more stable for it.
Now therefore, since the nature of the mind has been found
to be exceptionally mobile, it must consist
of particles small and light and round.
This fact, once known to you, good friend, in many matters
will be found useful and will prove timely.
This fact also reveals its nature,
how fine a texture it consists of, and in how small a space
it could be contained, if it could be gathered into one mass —
namely, that as soon as the untroubled repose of death
has taken hold of a man, and the nature of mind and soul has withdrawn,
you can see nothing at all taken away from the whole body,
in appearance, nothing in weight: death leaves everything intact,
except the vital sense and the warm heat.
Therefore the whole soul must consist of extremely small
seeds, bound throughout the veins, organs, and sinews,
seeing that, when it has wholly departed from the whole body,
the outer contour of the limbs nonetheless
presents itself unharmed, and not a jot of weight is missing.
It is like this: when the bouquet of wine has vanished, or when
the sweet breath of perfume disperses into the air,
or when the savor has already gone from some substance;
yet the thing itself seems no smaller to the eyes
on that account, nor is anything taken from its weight,
no doubt because many tiny seeds make up
the savor and the scent throughout the whole body of things.
Wherefore again and again you may know that the nature of mind and soul
is created from extremely tiny
seeds, since in departing it carries off no weight at all.
Yet this nature must not be thought simple for us.
For a certain fine breath leaves the dying,
mixed with heat, and the heat in turn draws air along with it;
nor is there any heat with which air is not also mixed;
for since its nature is loose-textured, it is necessary
that many first-particles of air move about within it.
So the nature of the mind is now found to be threefold;
and yet all these together are not enough to produce sensation,
since the mind admits that none of these is able to create
the sense-bearing motions which it turns over at last in thought.
A fourth nature, then, must be added to these;
it is entirely without a name;
than which nothing exists more mobile or finer,
nor made more of small and light elements;
and it is this that first distributes sense-bearing motions through the limbs.
For it is stirred first, being made complete of tiny shapes,
and from it heat receives motion, and the blind power of wind,
and from it air; from it all things are set in motion:
the blood is shaken, then the inner organs feel it through and through,
all of them; last of all it is given to the bones and marrow,
whether it is pleasure or its opposite, a burning pain.
Nor can pain penetrate all the way here idly, nor can a sharp
harm pass through, without everything being thrown into disorder
to such a degree that there is no room left for life, and the parts of the soul
scatter away through all the channels of the body.
But usually a limit is set, as it were, on the surface of the body,
for these motions; for this reason we are able to keep hold of life.
Now, in what way these are mixed among themselves and by what
means composed they thrive, though eager to render the reasoning,
the poverty of my native speech drags me unwilling away;
but still, as best I can, I will touch on it briefly.
For the first-beginnings run about among themselves
in mutual motions, in such a way that no single power
can be separated out, nor made a power divided in space,
but they exist as, so to speak, the many powers of a single body.
It is like the way that in the flesh of any living creature there is,
generally, a smell and a certain color and a taste, and yet from these
all together there is one complete mass of body,
so heat and air and the blind power of wind,
mixed together, create a single nature, along with that mobile
force, which imparts to them the start of motion from itself,
from which the sense-bearing motion first arises through the organs.
For this nature lies utterly hidden deep within, and underlies,
and nothing in our body is further beneath than this,
and it is itself, further still, the very soul of the whole soul.
It is like the way that, in our limbs and in the whole body,
the mixed and hidden power of mind and soul lies concealed,
because it is created out of particles small and few,
so likewise this nameless power, made of tiny
particles, lies hidden, and is itself, as it were, further still,
the very soul of the whole soul, and rules over the whole body.
In similar fashion it must be that wind and air
and heat thrive mixed together through the limbs,
and one lie more beneath, another stand out more,
so that a single thing seems to arise from them all,
lest heat and wind, and the power of air, each taken apart
on its own, should destroy sensation and dissolve it once pulled apart.
There is also that heat which the mind takes on, in anger,
when it seethes, and a fiercer fire flashes from the eyes;
there is also much cold breath, the companion of dread,
which stirs a shudder in the limbs and sets the frame trembling;
there is also that settled state of calm air,
which comes about with a tranquil breast and a serene face.
But there is more of the hot element in those whose fierce hearts
and irascible mind readily boil over into anger,
a kind among which, first of all, is the violent force of lions,
who often, roaring, all but burst their chests with groaning,
and cannot contain the waves of anger in their breast.
But the cold mind of deer is more windy,
and it stirs icy currents more swiftly through its organs,
which make a trembling motion arise in the limbs.
But the nature of cattle lives more on calm air,
nor does the torch of anger, set beneath, ever too much stir it,
smoking, suffusing it with the shadow of blind gloom,
nor does it grow numb, pierced by the icy shafts of fear;
it stands between the two, between deer and savage lions.
So it is with the human race: although learning may polish
some men equally, it nonetheless leaves
the first traces of each one's natural temperament.
Nor must it be thought that faults can be torn out by the root,
so that this man will not more readily rush down into sharp angers,
that man be assailed a little more quickly by fear, and a third
take certain things more mildly than is fair.
And in many other respects the varied natures of men
and their consequent characters must differ;
the hidden causes of which I cannot now set forth,
nor find names for as many shapes as there are
first-particles, from which this variety of things arises.
But this much I can see how to establish in this matter:
so slight are the traces of these natural tendencies left
so slight, those which reason cannot drive out of us,
so that nothing prevents us from leading a life worthy of the gods.
This nature, then, is held by the whole body,
and is itself the guardian of the body and the cause of its well-being;
for they cling to one another by shared roots,
and cannot, it seems, be torn apart without ruin.
It is like tearing the scent out of lumps of frankincense —
it is not easy to do without its own nature also perishing,
so it is not easy to draw the nature of mind and soul out
of the whole body, without everything dissolving.
Their first-particles, thus intertwined from the very origin,
become endowed, between them, with a shared life,
and neither the power of body nor of mind seems able
to feel by itself, apart from the force of the other,
but sensation is kindled in us through our organs by motions
shared between the two on both sides.
Besides, the body by itself is never born,
nor does it grow, nor does it seem to endure after death.
For it is not as water often lets go of the heat
that was given it, and is not for that reason itself torn apart,
but remains unharmed — not, I say, thus can limbs left
behind endure the separation of the soul,
but they perish utterly, torn apart, and rot away.
So, from the very start of life, the mutual contacts of body and soul
learn the motions of life,
even while still lodged in the mother's limbs and womb,
so that their separation cannot happen without ruin and harm;
so that you may see that, since the cause of their well-being is joined,
their nature too consists as something joined.
Furthermore, if anyone denies that body feels,
and believes instead that it is the soul, mixed through the whole body,
that takes up this motion which we call sensation,
he fights against things plain and true.
For who will ever explain what it is for the body to feel,
if not the plain fact itself, which experience has given and taught us?
"But once the soul is dismissed, the body lacks sensation altogether."
Yes, for it loses what was never its own possession in life,
and it loses much else besides, when it is driven out of life.
Furthermore, to say that the eyes themselves can discern nothing,
but that the mind looks out through them as through open doors,
is hard to maintain, when the very sensation of the eyes pulls against it;
for sensation draws and drives the gaze right to the eyes themselves,
especially since we often cannot make out bright things,
because our eyes are hindered by the very light.
This does not happen with doors; for the opening through which we ourselves see
undergoes no such trouble when it is thrown open.
Besides, if our eyes stand in place of doors,
then it seems the mind ought rather, with the eyes removed,
to see things better, once the doorposts themselves are taken away.
In this matter you can by no means accept
what the revered opinion of that man Democritus lays down,
that the single first-particles of body and mind
are set alternately next to one another, varying and knitting together the limbs.
For since the elements of the soul are much smaller
than those from which our body and organs are made,
they are also fewer in number, and are scattered sparsely
through the limbs, to just such an extent that you can promise this much:
however small the first particles are that, thrown into us,
can stir sense-bearing motions in the body, the first-beginnings
of the soul hold gaps of just that size between them.
For we do not at times feel dust clinging
to our body, nor chalk-dust settling on our limbs,
nor mist by night, nor the fine threads of a spider's web
as we meet them, when we walk into them and are netted,
nor that its withered garment has fallen over our
head, nor the feathers of birds, nor the flying down
which, from their very lightness, usually fall only with difficulty,
nor do we feel the crawling passage of whatever creature
is crawling, nor each separate footprint
that gnats and other creatures set down on our body.
To such a degree must much be stirred up in us first,
before the first-particles of the soul, once shaken, feel it —
those seeds mixed in with our bodies throughout the limbs —
and before, in these gaps between them, they can go
rushing together, colliding, and springing apart in turn.
And the mind is more the bolt holding shut the gates of life,
and has more mastery over life than the power of the soul.
For without mind and intellect, no part of the soul can remain
through the limbs for even a brief span of time,
but it readily follows along as a companion, and departs into the air,
and leaves the limbs cold in the chill of death.
But he remains in life for whom mind and intellect have remained,
even though he is mangled all around, with his limbs cut away on every side;
a trunk, with the soul taken and the limbs removed from around it,
lives, and still draws in the life-giving breezes of the upper air;
if not utterly, still deprived of a great part
of his soul, he nonetheless lingers on in life and clings to it;
just as, if an eye is torn all around but the pupil remains
unharmed, the living power of seeing still stands,
provided only you do not destroy the whole orb of the eye
and cut all around the pupil, leaving it alone;
for even that will not happen without harm to them.
But if that tiny central part of the eye is eaten away,
the light of sight dies at once, and darkness follows,
however unharmed and bright the orb otherwise remains.
By this same compact, soul and mind are always bound.
Now come, so that you may know that minds and light souls
are born together with living creatures and are mortal,
verses long sought after and found by sweet labor,
worthy of your life, I will go on to set out.
See to it that you join both of these under one name of theirs,
and when, for the sake of argument, I go on to speak of the soul,
teaching that it is mortal, believe I am saying the same of the mind too,
in as much as they are one thing between them and a united thing.
First, since I have taught that it consists of a fine substance
made of tiny particles, and is composed of first-beginnings
much smaller than those of which the flowing water
or mist or smoke is made — for it far surpasses these in mobility
and is set in motion more easily by a slight cause,
since indeed it is moved by mere images of smoke and mist;
as, for instance, in sleep, when drowsy, we see on high
the altars breathe out vapor and give off smoke;
for these images, without doubt, are carried to us from far off —
now therefore, since when vessels are shattered on every side
you see the liquid flow away and the fluid depart,
and since mist and smoke depart into the air,
believe that the soul too is dispersed, and perishes much
more swiftly and quickly dissolves into its first-bodies,
once it has been taken away and has withdrawn from a man's limbs;
seeing that indeed the body, which stood as it were its vessel,
when it cannot hold it together, once shattered by some cause
and rarefied, with the blood drawn out from the veins,
how could you believe that this soul could be held together by any air,
which is more loose-textured and less able to hold together than our body?
Besides, we perceive that the mind is born together with the body, and equally
grows with it, and equally grows old with it.
For just as children totter about with a weak and tender
body, so a slight power of judgment in the mind follows suit.
Then, when age has grown up with sturdy strength,
the judgment too is greater, and the mind's power is more developed.
Afterward, when the body is already shaken by the strong forces
of age, and the limbs have sunk with blunted strength,
the intellect limps, the tongue rambles, the mind falters,
everything fails and is wanting at one and the same time.
Therefore it follows that the whole nature of the soul
must dissolve too, like smoke, into the high breezes of the air;
since indeed we see it equally born, and equally
grow, and, as I have taught, together with age grow weary and fall apart.
To this add that we may observe: just as the body itself
takes on monstrous diseases and harsh pain,
so the mind takes on bitter cares, grief, and fear;
wherefore it follows that it too shares in death.
Indeed, in the diseases of the body, the mind often
strays off course; for it goes out of its senses and speaks deliriously,
and sometimes it is carried down into a heavy lethargy,
into deep and unending sleep, with drooping eyes and nodding head;
from which it neither hears voices nor can recognize the faces
of those who, calling it back to life,
stand around it, drenching their faces and cheeks with tears.
Wherefore you must admit that the mind too dissolves,
since the infections of disease penetrate into it;
for both pain and disease are craftsmen of death,
a thing we have already learned well from the death of many.
[and since the mind is healed, as a sick body is,
and equally the mind is healed... the body by an emptiness]
Finally, when the force of wine has penetrated a man,
and its sharp fire has spread and passed into the veins,
a heaviness of limbs follows, the legs are hampered
as he staggers, the tongue grows slow, the mind is sodden,
the eyes swim, shouting, hiccups, and quarrels swell up,
and now whatever other things of this kind follow,
why do these happen, except because the vehement violence of wine
is accustomed to throw the soul into confusion within the body itself?
But whatever things can be thrown into confusion and hindered
show, if a slightly harsher cause should work its way in,
that they will perish, deprived of any future life.
Indeed, someone, often overcome suddenly by the force of disease,
before our very eyes, as if by the stroke of lightning,
collapses, and foams at the mouth, and groans, and his limbs tremble,
he loses his senses, strains his sinews, is convulsed, gasps
unevenly, and wears out his limbs in thrashing about,
no doubt because the force of the disease, torn apart through the limbs,
drives on and throws the soul into turmoil, just as, foaming, on the salt sea,
the waves seethe under the strong force of the winds.
A groan, moreover, is forced out, because the limbs are afflicted
with pain, and above all because the seeds of the voice
are drawn out and, gathered together, are carried out through the mouth
along the path where they are, as it were, accustomed and provided.
Loss of the senses occurs because the power of mind and soul
is thrown into confusion and, as I have taught, torn apart and
scattered by that same poison, is disjointed.
Then, when the cause of the disease has at last turned back, and
the bitter fluid of the corrupted body retreats into hiding,
then, as if staggering, the man first rises up, and gradually
returns bit by bit to his senses and recovers his soul.
These things, then, since they are tossed about by such great diseases
within the body itself, and, torn apart, suffer in wretched ways,
why do you believe that these same things, without a body, in the open air,
can pass their existence amid strong winds?
And since we see the mind be healed, as a sick body is,
and we see it can be turned by medicine,
this too foretells that the mind's life is mortal.
For it is fitting to add parts, or shift their order,
or take away some small bit from the total,
for anyone who undertakes and sets out to change the mind,
or seeks to alter any other nature whatsoever.
But whatever is immortal wants neither to have parts transferred to it
nor granted to it, nor to lose the smallest part;
for whatever, once changed, passes beyond its own bounds,
this at once is the death of what it was before.
Therefore, whether the mind sickens, it gives mortal
signs, as I have taught, or whether it is turned by medicine.
To such a degree does a true fact appear to run counter
to a false theory, and to shut off the escape of one fleeing,
and to convict the falsehood by a two-pronged refutation.
Finally, we often see a man depart gradually,
and lose his living sensation limb by limb;
first, in the feet, the toes and nails turn livid,
then the feet and shins die, and after that through the limbs
the footsteps of cold death go creeping on to the rest.
And since this nature of the soul is split apart, and does not exist
whole at one single moment, it must be reckoned mortal.
But if perhaps you think that the soul itself can, through the limbs,
draw itself inward and gather its parts into one,
and so withdraw sensation from all the limbs,
then that place, all the same, to which so great a quantity of soul
is driven together, ought to appear as having greater sensation;
since this place is nowhere to be found, no doubt, as we have said before,
the soul is torn apart and scattered abroad, and so it perishes.
Indeed, even if we should now be willing to grant something false,
and allow that the soul can be gathered together in the body of those
who, dying, leave the light bit by bit,
you must still admit that the soul is mortal,
nor does it matter whether it perishes scattered through the air,
or, drawn together from its own parts, grows senseless,
since sensation, everywhere, fails the whole man
more and more, and less and less of life remains everywhere.
And since the mind is one single part of a man, and remains fixed
in a definite place, just as the ears and eyes are,
and the other senses, whichever govern life,
and just as a hand, or an eye, or nostrils, apart
and separated from us, cannot feel nor even exist,
but nonetheless are left in such a state for only a short time,
so the mind cannot exist by itself without the body and without
the man himself, which seems to be, as it were, its vessel,
or whatever else, more closely joined to it, you prefer
to imagine, since the body clings to it by connection.
Finally, the living power of body and mind
is strong only when joined together, and only so do they enjoy life;
for neither can the nature of the mind, by itself, alone,
produce the motions of life without the body, nor, on the other hand,
can the body, deprived of soul, endure and make use of its senses.
Just as an eye, torn away from its roots, cannot
by itself perceive anything at all, apart from the whole body,
so soul and mind, by themselves, seem able to do nothing.
No doubt because, mixed through the veins and organs,
through sinews and bones, they are held by the whole body,
and their first-particles cannot spring apart freely
across large gaps; therefore, enclosed, they perform
sense-bearing motions, which, once cast out beyond the body into the
breezes of the air, cannot after death be moved,
because they are no longer held together in the same way;
for the air itself would become a body and a living creature, if the soul
could hold itself together and enclose itself within those same motions,
which before it carried out in the sinews and within the body itself.
Wherefore, again and again, once the whole covering of the body
is dissolved, and the vital breezes are cast out beyond it,
you must admit that the sensation of mind and soul dissolves,
and that the soul itself does too, since the cause is joined for both.
Finally, since the body cannot bear the separation
of the soul without wasting away in foul stench,
why do you doubt that the power of the soul, risen up from deep within
and spread abroad, has flowed out like smoke,
and that on this account the body, changed, has collapsed
into a rotten ruin so great, because its foundations have been
deeply shaken from their place, and the parts of the soul flow out through the limbs
and through all the twists of the pathways that are in the body,
and through its openings? So that you may recognize in many ways
that the nature of the soul, distributed, went out through the limbs,
and was already torn apart within the body itself,
before it slipped out and swam forth into the breezes of the air.
Indeed, even while the boundary of life still turns within,
often, nonetheless, from some cause, the soul seems to be shaken loose
and to depart, and be wholly released from the whole body,
and the face seems to grow faint as at the last hour,
and all the limbs fall limp from the bloodless body.
This is what happens when a person is said to have suffered a fainting fit of mind,
or to have lost consciousness; then there is panic, and everyone
is eager to catch hold of the last thread of life;
For then the mind and the power of the spirit are utterly shaken,
all of it. And these collapse together with the body itself,
so that a slightly heavier cause can dissolve them.
Why do you doubt, then, that once driven out beyond the body,
weak, out in the open, its covering stripped away,
it could not endure not merely for all time,
but could not hold together for even the smallest moment?
For no one, dying, seems to feel
that the soul goes out whole from the whole body,
nor that it first rises to the throat and the upper jaws,
but rather that it fails, placed in a definite region;
just as it knows each of the other senses fails
in its own part. But if our mind were immortal,
it would not, in dying, complain so much of being dissolved,
but rather of going forth and leaving its garment behind, like a snake.
Again, why does the mind's intelligence and counsel never
arise in the head or the feet or the hands, but clings to one
seat and to definite regions in all of us,
if fixed places have not been assigned to each thing to be born in,
and where each created thing can endure,
and so exist with its limbs divided in many ways,
so that the order of the limbs is never reversed?
So constantly does one thing follow another, and flame is never
accustomed to be created from rivers, nor cold born in fire.
Besides, if the nature of the soul is immortal
and can feel when separated from our body,
we must, I think, endow it with five senses.
Nor by any other reasoning can we picture to ourselves
souls below wandering in Acheron.
And so painters and the generations of writers before us
have thus portrayed souls endowed with senses.
But eyes, nor nostrils, nor the hand itself, apart
from the body can belong to the soul, nor tongue apart, nor ears;
so by themselves they cannot feel, nor exist.
And since we feel that vital sensation is present
in the whole body, and we see the whole is alive,
if some force should suddenly cut through the middle with a swift blow,
so as to sever each part apart,
without doubt the force of the soul too, divided,
will be scattered, torn apart along with the body.
But whatever is split and falls apart into separate parts
surely denies that its nature is eternal.
They tell how scythe-bearing chariots cut off limbs
so suddenly, often, amid the confused slaughter, still warm,
that what has fallen, cut away from the limbs, can be seen
trembling on the ground, while the mind, and the man's vital power,
because of the swiftness of the harm, cannot feel the pain;
and because his mind is given over at once to the ardor of battle,
with the rest of his body he presses on for the fight and the slaughter,
nor does he notice, often, that his left arm with its shield has been lost,
dragged off among the horses by the wheels and the grasping scythes,
nor does another notice his right hand has fallen, as he climbs on and presses forward.
Then another tries to rise with his leg torn away,
while the dying foot beside it still moves its toes on the ground.
And a head, cut off, while the trunk is still warm and alive,
keeps on the ground a living expression and open eyes,
until it has given up all the remnants of its soul.
What is more, if it should please you — the threatening serpent, its tongue flickering —
its tail, its long body, both,
to cut apart into many pieces with a blade,
you will see all the severed pieces writhing apart
from the fresh wound, and spattering the ground with gore,
the forepart itself turning back to seek with its mouth the part behind,
so that, struck, it may press the burning pain of the wound with its bite.
Shall we say, then, that whole souls exist in all
those separate pieces? But by that reasoning it will follow
that one living creature had many souls in its body.
Therefore that which was one has been divided, together with
the body; and so both must be thought mortal,
since it is likewise split into many parts.
Besides, if the nature of the soul is established as immortal
and steals into the body of those being born,
why can we not remember our past life before,
[that it perished, and what now exists was now created,]
nor do we retain any traces of what was done?
For if the power of the mind is so greatly changed
that all memory of past deeds has slipped away,
that, I think, does not wander far from death;
wherefore you must admit that what existed before
has perished, and what now exists was now created.
Besides, if the living power of the mind is accustomed to be brought in
to us once the body is already complete,
at the time we are born and enter upon the threshold of life,
it would not fit that it should seem to grow together with the body and along with
the limbs, in the very blood itself,
but rather it would suit for it to live alone by itself, as in a cage,
so that the whole body should nonetheless be flooded with sensation from it.
Wherefore, again and again, souls must not be thought
to be without a birth, nor released from the law of death;
for it must not be thought that they could have been joined so closely
to our bodies, if they had stolen in from outside,
whereas the plain fact teaches that quite the opposite happens —
for it is so bound together through veins, organs, sinews,
and bones, that even the teeth share in sensation;
as a toothache shows, and the sharp bite of icy water,
and a rough pebble bitten unexpectedly among the grain,
nor, since they are so intricately woven together, do they seem able to go out
unharmed, and to free themselves whole
from all the sinews and bones and joints,
but if perhaps you think that the soul, having stolen in from outside,
is accustomed to seep through our limbs,
all the more, then, mingled with the body, will it perish;
for what seeps through is dissolved, and therefore perishes;
for it is scattered through all the passages of the body.
Just as food, when it is distributed through all the limbs and joints,
perishes, and supplies from itself another nature,
so soul and mind, however whole and fresh they enter
the body, are nonetheless dissolved as they seep through it,
while, distributed as if through channels into all the limbs,
the particles from which this nature of the mind is formed
— which now holds sway in our body, born
from that soul which then perished, divided among the limbs.
Wherefore the nature of the soul seems to be deprived neither of a birth-day
nor to be without a death.
Besides, are seeds of the soul left behind, or not,
in the lifeless body? But if they are left and remain within,
it will not follow that it can rightly be held immortal,
since it has withdrawn diminished, having lost some parts.
But if it has been taken away and fled with the limbs left whole,
so as to have left no part of itself behind in the body,
where do the worms that emerge from corpses, once the flesh has rotted, come from,
and where does such a huge number of living things come from
surge through the boneless and bloodless swollen limbs?
But if perhaps you believe that souls steal in from outside
into the worms' bodies, each its own,
and do not consider why so many thousands of souls
should gather where a single one has departed — this, however, is a matter
that seems to need investigating and bringing to a decision:
whether, after all, the souls each go hunting for the seeds
of the little worms, and build for themselves a place to be in,
or steal in as though into bodies already complete.
But there is no way to say why they should do this themselves, or why
they should take the trouble. For indeed, when they are without a body,
they do not flit about troubled by diseases and cold and hunger;
for it is the body that suffers, being more subject to these ills,
and the mind endures many evils by contagion from it.
But even granting that it may be useful for them to make a body for themselves,
when they enter it — still, by what way they could, no way appears.
Souls, then, do not make bodies and limbs for themselves.
Nor again is there any way that they steal into bodies already
complete; for they could not be so finely
joined, nor would sympathetic contact between them come about.
Again, why does the fierce violence of savage lions follow
their breed, cunning the foxes', and flight the deer's?
It is given from their fathers, and inherited fear stirs their limbs,
and why, in general, do all other traits of this kind arise in their limbs
from the very outset of life, and in their character too,
if not because a fixed power of mind grows, together with the body,
from its own particular seed and stock?
But if it were immortal and were accustomed to change
bodies, living creatures would have mixed-up characters:
often a dog of Hyrcanian stock would flee
the charge of the horned deer, and the hawk would tremble through the breezes
of the air, fleeing before the oncoming dove,
men would lack sense, and the wild races of beasts would have it.
For that claim rests on false reasoning, which says
that an immortal soul is altered by a change of body;
for what is changed, is dissolved, and therefore perishes;
for its parts are transposed and shift their order;
wherefore they must also be able to be dissolved throughout the limbs,
so that in the end all perish together with the body.
But if they say that human souls always go
into human bodies, I will still ask why, from a wise one,
a foolish one can come to be, and why no child is prudent,
[if not because a fixed power of mind grows from its own seed and stock,]
nor a mare's foal so skilled as the mighty horse's strength.
Surely they will take refuge in saying that the mind grows tender
in a tender body. But if this is indeed so, you must admit
that the soul is mortal, since, so changed throughout the limbs,
it loses so completely its former life and sense.
Or in what way will the power of the mind, made strong,
be able to reach, together with the body, the longed-for flower of youth,
unless it is its partner from its very first origin?
Or why does it want to go forth out of its aging limbs?
Does it fear to remain shut up in a decaying body,
lest its house, worn out by the long span of age,
crush it? But there are no dangers at all for something immortal.
Again, that souls should stand ready for the couplings of Venus
and the births of beasts seems to be simply ridiculous —
immortal souls waiting for mortal limbs
in countless number, and competing in headlong haste
among themselves as to which shall be first and foremost to steal in;
unless perhaps such are the compacts agreed among souls,
that whichever comes flying first steals in first,
and they do not contend at all among themselves by force.
Again, no tree can exist in the upper air, nor clouds
in the deep sea, nor fish live in the fields,
nor blood be in wood, nor sap in stones.
It is fixed and settled where each thing may grow and be found.
So the nature of the mind cannot arise alone, without the body,
nor exist apart, far from the sinews and blood.
For if it could, the power of the mind itself would sooner
be in the head, or the shoulders, or the very heels,
and it would be accustomed to be born in any part whatever,
provided only that it remained in the same man and in the same vessel.
But since it is fixed, even in our own body, and settled
where soul and mind can be and grow,
apart, all the more must it be denied
that they could endure and be born entirely outside the body.
Wherefore, when the body has perished, you must admit
that the soul, scattered throughout the whole body, has perished.
For indeed to yoke the mortal with the eternal, and to suppose
that they can agree together and perform mutual functions,
is folly; for what can be thought more different,
or more disjoined and at odds with itself,
than a mortal thing joined in partnership with something immortal
and everlasting, enduring savage storms together?
Besides, whatever things endure must necessarily
either, because they are of solid body, repel blows
and not allow anything to penetrate that could loosen
their close-packed parts within — as are the bodies of matter,
whose nature we have shown before,
or else be able to last through all time
because they are free of blows, as is the void,
which remains untouched and is not affected at all by a blow,
or else because there is no supply of space around them
into which, as it were, things could depart and be dissolved,
as the sum of sums is eternal, and there is no place
outside it into which things might scatter, nor are there bodies
that could strike it and dissolve it with a strong blow.
But if perhaps it is to be thought immortal for this reason,
because it is kept guarded by the things that support life,
either because things hostile to its safety do not come at all,
or because those that do come withdraw by some means,
driven off before we can feel whatever harm they might do —
* * *
For besides falling sick along with the diseases of the body,
there comes upon it that which often, from things yet to come,
wears it down, and afflicts it in fear, and wearies it with cares,
and, over past wrongs committed, sins gnaw at it again.
Add the mind's own madness, and forgetfulness of things,
add that it is plunged into the black waves of lethargy.
Death, therefore, is nothing to us, and does not concern us at all,
since the nature of the mind is held to be mortal.
And just as in time gone by we felt nothing troubling,
when the Carthaginians came from every side to give battle,
when all things, shaken by the fearful turmoil of war,
trembled in dread beneath the high breezes of the sky,
and it was in doubt into whose dominion
all mankind, on land and sea, would fall —
so, when we shall no longer exist, once the parting of body and soul
— from which we are formed, joined together as one —
has taken place, then to us, who will no longer exist,
nothing at all will be able to happen or stir any feeling,
not even if earth were mixed with sea, and sea with sky.
And even if, after the nature and power of the mind
and soul has been torn apart from our body, it does still feel,
still that is nothing to us, who exist only through the union and marriage
of body and soul, joined together as one.
Nor, if time should gather our matter back together
after our death, and restore it again as it is now arranged,
and the light of life were once more given to us,
would even that event, once done, concern us at all,
once our recollection of ourselves has once been broken.
And now nothing that concerns those selves we were before
touches us now, nor does any anguish over them afflict us.
For when you look back over the whole span
of immeasurable time gone by, and consider how manifold
the motions of matter are, you could easily believe this too:
that these same seeds, often placed in the same order as they now are,
the very ones of which we now consist, have existed before.
Yet we cannot recall this with a remembering mind;
for a pause of life has been interposed, and all the motions
have strayed everywhere astray from our senses.
For if things are to go badly and painfully for someone,
he himself must also exist at that very time, to whom harm
can happen. Since death removes this, and forbids the existence
of him to whom troubles could be brought together,
we may know that there is nothing to be feared in death for us,
and that one who does not exist cannot become wretched, and it makes no difference at all
whether he had never been born at any time at all,
once immortal death has taken away mortal life.
So, when you see a man complaining bitterly about himself,
that after death his body, once laid down, will rot,
or perish in flames, or in the jaws of beasts,
you may know that his words do not ring true, and that some hidden
blind sting lurks in his heart, however much he himself denies
believing that any sensation will remain for him in death;
for he does not, I think, actually grant what he promises, nor the ground
from which it follows, nor does he root himself out and cast himself entirely from life,
but unknowingly makes something of himself survive.
For when a man, while alive, pictures to himself what is to come —
that in death birds and beasts will tear his body —
he pities himself; for he does not truly separate himself from it,
nor withdraw himself far enough from the body cast out,
but imagines himself as that body, and, standing by, taints it with his own feeling.
Hence he resents that he was created mortal,
and does not see that in true death there will be no other self of his,
able, while alive, to mourn for himself as slain,
and, standing there, to grieve that he lies torn apart or burned.
For if it is an evil in death to be mangled by the jaws
and teeth of beasts, I do not see why it should not also be bitter
to be laid on fires and scorched by hot flames,
or set in honey and suffocate, or stiffen
with cold, lying on the flat top of a chilly stone,
or be pressed down, crushed from above by the weight of the earth.
'No longer will your happy home welcome you, nor your excellent
wife, nor will your sweet children run to meet you for a kiss
and touch your heart with a silent sweetness.
You will not be able to be a protection to your flourishing affairs
and to your own. 'Wretched man, wretchedly,' they say, 'one hostile day
has taken from you all these rewards of life.'
But this they do not add to their words: 'nor does any longing
for these things settle upon you any longer.'
If they saw this clearly, and followed it through in what they say,
they would free their minds of great anguish and fear.
'You indeed, as you are now put to sleep by death, so will you be for all
the time remaining, freed from every grievous pain;
but we, beside the dreadful pyre where you were turned to ash,
have wept for you insatiably, and no day
will ever take that eternal grief from our hearts.'
This, then, must be asked of such a man: what bitterness is there in it,
so very great, if the matter comes down to sleep and rest,
that anyone should waste away in eternal mourning.
Men do this too, when they have reclined at table and hold
their cups, often, and shade their faces with garlands —
they say, from the heart: 'brief is this enjoyment for us poor mortals;
soon it will be gone, and afterward it will never be possible to call it back.'
as if this were, among the evils of death, foremost of all for them —
that thirst should burn the poor wretches and parching heat scorch them,
or a longing for some other thing settle upon them.
For no one then misses himself or his life,
when mind and body alike lie still, put to sleep;
for as far as we are concerned this sleep could go on forever,
and no longing for ourselves affects us at all,
and yet at that time those first-beginnings, through our limbs,
do not stray at all far from the motions that carry sense,
when a man, roused, gathers himself up out of sleep.
Death, then, must be thought far less to us,
if less than nothing can be, than what we see to be nothing;
for a greater scattering of the mass of matter
follows upon death, and no one wakes and rises,
once the cold pause of life has overtaken him.
Again, if the nature of things should suddenly find a voice
and herself rebuke one of us in these terms:
'What is so gravely wrong with you, mortal, that you give yourself over
to such sick mourning? Why do you groan and weep over death?
For if the life you have lived up to now has been pleasing to you,
and all its blessings have not drained away and been lost as though poured
into some leaking vessel, and perished ungathered,
why do you not withdraw like a satisfied guest from the feast of life,
and take, fool, an untroubled rest with equal mind?
But if all that you have enjoyed has been squandered and has perished,
and life is a burden to you, why do you seek to add still more,
which will again be wasted badly, and pass away entirely without enjoyment,
rather than putting an end to life and its labor?
For as for anything else I might contrive and find for you
to please you, there is nothing; everything is always the same.
Even if your body has not yet withered with years, and your limbs
grown weary do not yet fail, still everything remains the same,
even if you should go on outliving generation after generation,
or rather still more so, if you were never to die at all' —
what can we answer, except that nature is bringing a just complaint
and setting forth in her words a true case?
But if here some older man, further along in years, should complain
and lament his death, poor wretch, more than is fitting,
would she not rightly cry out at him still more, and rebuke him with a sharp voice:
'Away with your tears from here, glutton, and check your complaints.
You wither having enjoyed all the rewards of life to the full;
but because you always crave what is absent, you scorn what is present,
and so life has slipped from you unfinished and unenjoyed,
and death has stood at your head before you expected it,
before you could depart sated and full of things.
Now, all the same, let go of everything unsuited to your age,
and with equal mind, come now, yield to necessity's demands?'
Justly, I think, would she act so, justly rebuke and reproach;
for the old, ever, gives way, driven out by the new order of things,
always, and one thing must always be made good from another.
And no one is thrown down into the pit or black Tartarus;
matter is needed, so that future generations may grow;
yet all of them, their own lives spent, will follow you;
and no less than you, they too have fallen before this, and will fall.
So one thing will never cease to arise from another,
and life is given to no one as a possession, to all only for use.
Consider likewise how the ages of eternal time gone by,
before we are born, are nothing at all to us.
This, then, is the mirror nature holds up to us
of the time to come, after our death at last.
Does anything dreadful appear there? Does anything seem sad,
anything that does not stand more untroubled than any sleep?
And indeed, whatever things are said to happen
in the deep of Acheron, all of them exist for us in this life.
No wretched Tantalus, as the story goes, fears the huge rock hanging
over him in the air, frozen with empty terror;
but rather in this life an empty fear of the gods weighs on
mortals, and they fear whatever chance may bring each one.
Nor do birds attack Tityos as he lies in Acheron,
nor indeed can they find anything, deep in his vast breast,
to search out and prey on for all eternity.
However huge the sprawl of his body may be,
even if his limbs, spread out, do not cover nine acres alone
but the whole circle of the earth,
still he will not be able to endure eternal pain
nor forever supply food from his own body.
But Tityos is here for us — the man lying in love,
whom birds tear, and whom anxious anguish devours,
or whom cares rend with any other craving.
Sisyphus, too, is before our eyes in this life,
the man who longs to seek from the people the rods of office and cruel axes,
and always withdraws defeated and downcast.
For to seek power, which is empty and never granted,
and in that pursuit always to endure harsh toil,
this is like pushing a stone by straining up a steep mountainside,
which nevertheless, once from the very top,
rolls back down and rushes swiftly for the level plain below.
Then to feed forever the mind's ungrateful nature
and fill it with good things and never satisfy it,
as the seasons of the year do for us, circling
round as they return, bringing crops and varied delights,
and yet we are never sated with life's fruits —
this, I think, is like what they tell of maidens in the flower of youth
pouring liquid into a leaking vessel,
which nevertheless can by no means be filled.
Cerberus, too, and the Furies, and the want of light,
and Tartarus belching forth dreadful heat from its jaws!
These do not exist anywhere, nor indeed can they exist;
but in this life there is a fear of punishment for evil deeds,
outstanding for outstanding crimes, and atonement for wrongdoing,
prison, and the dreadful hurling down from the rock,
floggings, executioners, the block, pitch, the branding-plate, the torch;
and even though these are absent, still the mind, conscious of its deeds,
fearing beforehand, applies its own goads and scourges itself with whips,
nor meanwhile does it see what limit there can be to its ills
or what, in the end, the boundary of its punishments may be,
and fears rather that these same torments may grow heavier in death.
Here, in the end, the life of fools becomes a very Acheron.
This too you might sometimes say to yourself:
'Even good Ancus closed his eyes and left the light,
a man better than you, wicked one, in many ways.
After him many other kings and men mighty over affairs
have died, men who ruled over great nations.
That man too, who once laid a road across the great sea
and gave his legions a path to march over the deep,
and taught them to walk on foot over the salt lagoons
and, prancing on horses, scorned the roaring of the sea,
had the light taken from him, and poured out his soul from a dying body.
Scipio, thunderbolt of war, terror of Carthage,
gave his bones to the earth just as if he had been the lowest slave.
Add the discoverers of learning and of the graceful arts,
add the companions of the Muses of Helicon; of whom Homer, one,
who held the scepter alone above the rest, now sleeps the same sleep as others.
Then Democritus too, once ripe old age
warned him that the remembering motions of his mind were growing feeble,
of his own accord offered his head to meet death.
Epicurus himself died, the light of his life having run its course,
he who surpassed the human race in genius, and put out
all the stars, as the risen sun of heaven does.
And will you hesitate and resent dying,
you, whose life is already almost dead while you still live and see,
you who waste the greater part of your time in sleep,
and snore while awake, and never cease seeing dreams,
and carry about a mind troubled by empty terror,
and often cannot find out what is wrong with you, when,
drunk, you are beset, poor wretch, by many cares on every side,
and drift and wander with an unsteady mind astray.'
If men, just as they seem to feel
that a weight lies on their mind, wearying it with its heaviness,
could likewise know from what causes this comes about, and where it comes from —
so great a mass of trouble settles in their breast,
they would not lead their lives as we now generally see them do,
each not knowing what he wants, and always seeking,
changing his place, as if he could set down his burden.
Often a man goes out from his great house,
weary of being at home, and suddenly returns,
since he feels no better at all outside.
He drives his ponies headlong to his country house,
rushing as if to bring help to a burning building;
he yawns at once, the moment he reaches the threshold of the villa,
or falls into heavy sleep and seeks forgetfulness,
or, hurrying again, heads back to the city and revisits it.
In this way each man flees from himself, but that self, of course, as happens,
he cannot escape: it clings to him against his will, and he hates it,
because, being sick, he does not grasp the cause of his sickness;
if he saw this clearly, each man, abandoning everything else,
would first strive to learn the nature of things,
since what is at stake is the condition of eternal time,
not of a single hour, in which all the age that remains for mortals
awaits them after death, however long it lasts.
Again, what evil desire for life drives us
to tremble so greatly amid uncertain dangers?
Surely a fixed end of life stands before mortals,
and death cannot be avoided; we must meet it.
Besides, we keep turning in the same round, and remain always within it,
and no new pleasure is forged by living on;
but while what we crave is absent, it seems to outweigh
everything else; then, once we have gotten it, we crave something else,
and the same thirst grips us, forever gaping open for life.
And it is uncertain what fortune the age to come will bring us,
or what chance may carry, or what end may be at hand.
And by prolonging our life we take away nothing at all
from the time of death, nor can we shave off any of it,
so as to be dead any less long, once we are gone.
So you may live through as many generations as you like,
yet that eternal death will still await you all the same,
and the man who made an end of his life this very day
will be no less long non-existent than he
who died many months and years before.

======== Book IV — The Senses, Dreams, and Desire ========

I roam the pathless places of the Pierides, untrodden before by anyone's
foot. It delights me to approach untouched springs
and draw from them, and it delights me to pluck fresh flowers
and seek from there a distinguished crown for my head,
from which no Muse has ever before wreathed anyone's brow;
first because I teach of great matters, and I go on
to free the mind from the tight knots of superstition,
then because on so dark a subject I compose verses so clear,
touching everything with the Muses' charm.
For this too seems not without reason;
just as when physicians, wanting to give children foul wormwood,
try first to smear the rims of the cup all around
with the sweet golden liquid of honey,
so that the unwary age of children may be beguiled
as far as the lips, and meanwhile may drink down the bitter
draught of wormwood, and not be caught out by the deception,
but rather, restored by such a trick, may grow strong,
so I now, since this doctrine mostly seems
too harsh to those by whom it has not been handled, and the crowd
shrinks back from it, have wished to set out our reasoning for you
in sweet-speaking Pierian song
and to touch it, as it were, with the sweet honey of the Muses;
if perhaps by this method I might hold your mind
fast in my verses, while you grasp the whole
nature of things and feel through to its usefulness.
But since I have taught the first-beginnings of all things,
what they are like, and how, differing in varied shapes,
they fly of their own accord, driven by eternal motion,
and in what way each thing can be created from them,
[now I shall begin to set forth for you what bears strongly upon these matters,
namely that there exist what we call the images of things,
which should be named, as it were, films or a rind,]
and since I have taught what the nature of the mind is,
and out of what things, joined with the body, it thrives,
and in what way, torn apart, it returns to its first elements,
now I shall begin to set forth for you what bears strongly upon these matters,
namely that there exist what we call the images of things,
because its image bears an appearance and shape like it,
whatever thing it is said to wander, poured out from the body;
which, like films stripped from the outer surface of things,
fly here and there through the breezes,
and these same, meeting us while we are awake, terrify
our minds, and in sleep too, when we often behold
strange shapes and images of those who lack the light,
which have often, dreadfully, roused us as we lay slack in sleep,
lest we think that souls escape from Acheron,
or that shades fly about among the living,
and lest we think that anything of us can be left behind after death,
when the body, together with the nature of the mind, destroyed,
have each given way, departing into their own first-beginnings.
I say, then, that likenesses of things and thin shapes
are sent off from things, from their outermost rind;
this one may recognize, even with a dull mind, from the following.
First, since among things plainly before us many things
send off bodies, partly loosely diffused,
as timbers send off smoke and fires send off vapor,
and partly more closely woven and dense, as once,
when in summer the cicadas lay aside their smooth coats,
and when calves, being born, send off membranes
from the surface of their body, and likewise when the slippery snake
strips off its garment on the thorns; for we often see
the brambles increased by their fluttering spoils.
Since these things happen, a thin image too must
be sent from things, from the outer surface of things.
For why those should fall away and withdraw from things more readily
than what is thin, there is no power to say;
especially since on the surfaces of things there are
many minute bodies, which can be cast off in the same order
in which they were, and preserve the shape of their form,
and much more quickly, inasmuch as fewer bodies, being few
in number, are less easily hindered, and those which are placed at the front.
For we certainly see that many things are cast off and given forth abundantly,
not only from deep within, as we said before,
but also often the very color itself from the surfaces.
And yellow and red awnings commonly do this,
and rust-colored ones too, when stretched over great theaters
spread out over the masts and beams, they flap and quiver;
for there, beneath, they dye the assembly of the cavea, and all
the show of the stage, and the fathers and mothers below,
and force it to swim in their own color.
And the more the walls of the theater are enclosed round about,
the more all this within, drenched in charm,
laughs together, caught up in the light of day.
Therefore, since the awnings send off dye from the surface of their body,
they must also send off thin likenesses,
each and every thing, since both are cast off from the surface.
There exist, then, definite traces of shapes,
which commonly fly about, endowed with a fine thread,
and cannot be seen singled out one by one.
Besides, every smell, smoke, vapor, and other
similar things stream out abundantly from things for this reason,
because, while they come out from within, having arisen deep inside,
they are torn apart along a winding path, and there are no straight
doorways by which, once risen, they might strive to get out.
But on the other hand the thin film of surface color,
when it is cast off, there is nothing that can tear it apart,
since it lies ready at hand, placed at the very front.
Finally, in mirrors, in water, and in every bright surface,
whatever images appear to us, it must be
since they are endowed with an appearance like that of things,
that they consist of images sent off from those things.
[For why those should fall away and withdraw from things more readily
than what is thin, there is no power to say.]
There exist, then, thin likenesses of shapes, similar to them,
images, which no one can discern one by one,
yet still, by constant and frequent rebound,
thrown back, they give back a sight from the surface of mirrors,
and they seem unable to be preserved by any other means,
in such a way that they are rendered similar to each figure.
Now come, grasp of how fine a nature the image
consists. And first, since the first-beginnings are so far
below our senses and are so much smaller
than what our eyes first begin to be unable to see,
still, so that I may confirm this too, grasp in a few words
how fine are the first-beginnings of all things.
First, there are already living creatures so tiny in part, that a third part
of them could not possibly be seen at all.
Of what sort must any inward organ of theirs be thought to be!
What of the ball of the heart, or the eye? What of the limbs? What of the joints?
How tiny they are! What besides of the first-beginnings each,
from which the soul and the nature of the mind must necessarily consist,
do you not see how fine and how minute they are?
Besides, whatever things breathe out a sharp smell
from their own body, all-heal, foul wormwood,
and heavy southernwood, and bitter centaury,
if by chance any one of these, lightly, between two
* * *
Rather you should recognize that images of things wander about
in many ways, many of them, empty of force and devoid of sense.
But lest you perhaps think that only those wander about
which withdraw from things as the images of things,
there are also some which are born of their own accord and are themselves
formed in this sky, which is called air,
which, shaped in many ways, are borne aloft,
just as we sometimes easily see clouds thickening on high
and marring the clear appearance of the sky,
stroking the air with their motion; for often the faces
of Giants seem to fly, and to trail a shadow far and wide,
and sometimes great mountains and rocks torn away
from mountains seem to go ahead and pass across before the sun,
and then a monstrous shape seems to drag and draw on other clouds.
Nor do these flowing shapes cease to change their appearance
and to turn into the outlines of every kind of shape.
Now grasp by how easy and swift a process these are generated
and continually flow from things and, having slipped off, pass away
* * *
For always whatever streams off in abundance from the surface of things,
so as to be cast off. And this, when it arrives elsewhere among things,
passes through, as first of all through cloth; but when it reaches
rough stones or the substance of wood, there at once
it is torn apart, so that it can give back no image.
But when bright and dense things have been set in its way,
as a mirror is above all, none of this happens;
for they can neither pass through it, as through cloth, nor yet
be torn apart; the smoothness, mind you, ensures its safety.
Because of which it happens that images stream back to us from it.
And however suddenly, at whatever moment, you set
any thing before a mirror, an image appears;
so that you may know that fine textures and thin shapes
of things continually flow from the outer surface.
Therefore many images are generated in a brief space of time,
so that their origin may rightly be called swift in this matter.
And just as the sun must send up many beams of light
in a brief space, so that everything is perpetually filled with them,
so likewise, by a similar process, it must be that from things
images of things are borne in an instant of time
in many ways to every part on every side;
since to whatever quarter we turn a mirror facing,
things there answer back with a like shape and color.
Besides, when the weather of the sky has just been perfectly clear,
it very suddenly turns foully turbulent,
so that you would think that all the darkness had left Acheron everywhere
and filled the great caverns of the sky.
So utterly, once the foul night of storm-clouds has risen,
do the faces of black Dread hang above.
Of these, how small a part is image, there is no one
who could say, nor give an account of it in words.
Now come, and the swiftness of motion with which images are borne,
and what speed is granted to them as they swim across the breezes,
is granted to them, so that a short hour is spent over a long distance,
into whatever place each, by its differing impulse, tends,
I shall set forth rather in sweet-spoken verses than in many.
As the swan's small song is finer than the cry of cranes
scattered among the clouds of the south wind in the upper air.
First, we may see very often that light things, and those made
of minute bodies, are swift.
Of this kind now is the sun's light and its heat,
because they are made of minute first-bodies,
which are, as it were, struck out and do not hesitate to cross
the interval of air, driven on by the following stroke;
for light is supplied at once upon light,
and flash is spurred on by flash as if in relay.
Because of which images, by an equal process, must
be able to run across an unspeakable distance
in an instant of time; first, because a very small cause
lies far behind them to carry and drive them forward,
seeing that besides, they are borne along with such swift lightness,
then because they are sent off endowed with such a loose
texture that they can easily penetrate whatever things
and, as it were, seep through the interval of air.
Besides, if certain tiny bodies of things, from deep within
and sent forth outward, as the sun's light
and heat, these are seen in an instant of daylight, once released,
to spread themselves through the whole expanse of the sky
and to fly across sea and lands and drench the heaven.
What then of those which are already prepared right at the front,
when they are cast off, and nothing hinders what has been sent forth?
Do you not see that they must go more quickly and farther,
and cross a many-times-greater span of space in the same
time in which the sun's rays spread through the sky?
This too seems to be, first of all, a true proof
of how swift a motion carries the images of things:
that as soon as, in the open air, the bright surface of water
is set out, at once, when the sky is clear and starry,
the shining stars of heaven answer back in the water.
Do you see now, then, in how short an instant of time the image
falls from the shores of the upper sky to the shores of the earth?
Wherefore again and again you must admit that bodies are sent off
which strike the eyes and provoke sight.
And smells continually flow from definite things,
as cold from rivers, heat from the sun, spray from the waves
of the sea, the eater-away of walls around the shores,
nor do varied voices cease to fly through the air.
Finally, moisture of a salty taste often comes into the mouth,
when we move about near the sea, and, on the other hand, when diluted
wormwood is being mixed before our eyes, its bitterness touches us.
To such a degree does each thing flow from all things
and is sent out on every side into every part,
and no delay, no rest, is ever granted in this flowing,
since we perpetually perceive, and are always able
to see, to smell, and to sense things sounding.
Besides, since a shape handled in the dark by the hands
is recognized to be the same one that
is seen in the light and in clear brightness, it must be
that touch and sight are moved by a similar cause.
Now then, if we feel out something square, and it, in the dark,
affects us, what thing in the light will be able
to strike our sight as square, except its image?
Because of which the cause of perceiving seems to lie
in images, and no thing can be seen without them.
Now these images of things, which I speak of, are carried
in every direction and are cast, scattered, into every part;
but because we can perceive only with the eyes,
it therefore happens that, wherever we turn our sight, all
things there strike it in return with shape and color.
And how far off each thing is from us, the image
brings it about that we see, and takes care that we distinguish it;
for when it is sent off, at once it thrusts forward and drives
whatever air is placed between it and our eyes,
and so it glides through all our eyes,
and, as it were, brushes across the pupils, and so passes through.
Because of this it happens that we see how far off
each thing is. And the more air is stirred up before it,
and the longer the current that brushes across our eyes,
the farther off and more distant each thing seems to be.
Of course, all this happens by an extremely swift process,
so that we see both what a thing is like and how far off it is, together.
This must be considered the least surprising thing in this matter,
why, though the images that strike the eyes cannot be seen
one by one, the things themselves are clearly perceived.
For when the wind too gradually lashes us, and when
sharp cold flows over us, we do not usually feel
each single particle of the wind and of that cold,
but rather all at once, and we see it happen just as if
some blow were then being dealt in our body, as if some thing
were striking us, and gave the sensation of its own body from outside.
Besides, when we strike a stone with a finger, we touch
the very outer edge of the stone and its outermost color,
and we do not feel that by touch, but rather
we feel the hardness of the stone deep within.
Now come, grasp why the image seems to lie beyond the mirror—
for it certainly seems removed deep within.
Of the same kind as those things outside which are truly seen through,
when a door of itself offers an open view through,
and makes many things outside be seen from within the house;
for this sight too comes about through a double, twinned air.
For first the air is seen on this side of the doorposts,
then the door-panels themselves follow, on right and left,
then the outside light brushes across the eyes, and another air,
and those things outside which are truly seen through.
So, when the image of the mirror has first thrown itself forth,
as it comes to our sight, it thrusts forward and drives
whatever air is placed between it and our eyes,
and brings it about that we can feel all this air first,
before the mirror; but when we have also sensed the mirror itself,
at once the image which is carried from us to it
arrives, and, thrown back, returns to visit our eyes,
and, driving another body of air before it, rolls it along,
and brings it about that we see this air before we see the image itself, and for that reason
it seems removed and set apart from the mirror by just that much.
Wherefore again and again it is fitting to marvel least at
* * *
those which give back a sight from the surface of mirrors,
since each of the two effects is accomplished through a pair of airs.
Now, that part of our limbs which is our right side,
comes to be seen in mirrors on the left, because,
when the image, coming to the flat surface of the mirror, strikes against it,
it is not turned around unchanged, but is beaten straight
back again, just as if, before it is dry,
someone should dash a mask of clay against a pillar or a beam,
and if it should at once, keeping its shape straight in front,
preserve it, and, being struck, press itself back out again in reverse.
It will happen that the eye which before was the right one, that same one
now becomes the left, and, in exchange, the left becomes the right.
It also happens that an image is passed on from mirror to mirror,
so that as many as five or six images have been known to occur.
For whatever things lie hidden in an inner part behind,
from there nevertheless, however twistingly and deeply removed,
being all led out through winding passages, it will be possible
for these to be seen, by means of several mirrors, to be within the house.
To such a degree does the image shine through from mirror to mirror,
and when a left has been given, it happens in turn that it becomes a right,
then it goes back again and turns to the same side once more.
Moreover, whatever mirrors have slightly curved sides,
furnished with a curve similar to that of our own side,
for this reason send back to us right-handed images,
either because the image is transferred from mirror to mirror,
then, struck twice, flies to us, or also because,
as it comes, the image is turned around, for this reason:
the curved shape of the mirror teaches it to turn round towards us.
Further, you might believe that the images step forward in step with us
and set their foot with ours, and imitate our gesture,
because, from whatever part of the mirror you withdraw,
the images at once cannot return from there;
since nature compels all of them to be sent back
and to rebound from things, given back at equal angles.
Further, our eyes shun and avoid gazing at bright things.
The sun even blinds, if you go on trying to face it,
because its own force is great, and its images
are carried on high through the clear air,
and, striking the eyes, they disturb their fine arrangement.
Besides, whatever brightness is sharp often burns
the eyes, for this reason, because it possesses seeds of fire,
many, which produce pain in the eyes by working their way in.
Besides, whatever things people afflicted with jaundice
look at become sallow, because seeds of that sallow color
flow in abundance from their body to meet the images of things,
and many too are mingled finally in their own eyes,
which by their contact paint everything with their pallor.
But from darkness we see things that are in the light
for this reason, because, when the nearer air of darkness
enters our open eyes first and takes possession of them,
there follows immediately the bright, shining air,
which, as it were, cleanses them and scatters the black shadows
of that other air; for this air is in many respects
more mobile, and in many respects finer, and more powerful.
And as soon as it has filled the passages of the eyes with light
and opened them wide, which the dark air had before besieged,
at once the images of things follow after,
those which are placed in the light, and they provoke us to see.
But the opposite, to do this in darkness out of light, we cannot,
for this reason, because the following, darker air
comes after, thicker, and fills all the openings,
and besieges the passages of the eyes, so that the images
of any things at all, once cast, cannot be set in motion.
And when we see the square towers of a city from afar,
for this reason it happens that they often seem round,
because every angle is seen blunted from a distance,
or rather is not seen at all, and its blow
does not glide through to our sight, and its stroke is lost,
because, while the images are being carried through so much air,
the air forces them to grow blunt through frequent collisions.
When in this way every angle escapes our perception at once,
it comes about that the structures of stone seem as if turned on a lathe;
yet not in the way that things present before us and truly round are seen,
but they are seen as merely faintly and slightly imitated in outline.
Likewise a shadow seems to us to move in the sunlight
and to follow our footsteps and imitate our gesture,
if you believe that air deprived of light can
walk, following the movements and gesture of men;
for it can be nothing other than air empty of light,
that which we are accustomed to call shadow.
No wonder, because the earth, in certain places one after another,
is deprived of the sun's light wherever, as we pass along,
we block it, while that part which we have left behind is refilled;
because of this it happens that what was the shadow of our body
seems to have followed us continually from the very same spot.
For always new light of rays pours itself forth,
and the first perishes, as if wool were being drawn into a fire.
Because of this the earth is easily both stripped of light
and refilled again, and washes away its black shadows.
Yet we do not admit that here the eyes are deceived in the least.
For it is their business to see in what place, whatever it may be, light
and shadow are; but whether it is the same light or not,
and whether the shadow that was here is the same one that now passes there,
or rather whether what we said a little before happens instead,
this in the end the reasoning of the mind must decide,
and the eyes cannot know the nature of things.
Therefore do not attach this fault of the mind to the eyes.
The ship in which we are being carried moves, though it seems to stand still;
the one that remains at anchor is believed to be moving past.
And hills and fields seem to flee toward the stern,
past which we drive our ship and fly under sail.
The stars all seem to stand still, fixed in the vaults of heaven,
and yet all are in constant motion,
since, having risen, they revisit their long settings,
once they have measured across the sky with their bright body.
And the sun and moon likewise seem to remain
standing still, though the very fact indicates that they are being carried along.
And mountains standing out far off from the middle of the sea,
between which a great free passage lies open for fleets,
yet out of these seems to be one single joined island.
Halls seem to spin around, and columns to run in circles,
to such a degree that it happens for children, when they themselves
have stopped spinning, that they can scarcely believe
that all the roofs are not threatening to collapse upon them.
And now, when nature begins to raise up high its red radiance
with trembling fires, and to lift it above the mountains,
those mountains above which the sun then seems to you to be,
touching them close at hand itself with its blazing fire,
are scarcely two thousand arrow-shots distant from us,
scarcely, indeed, often five hundred casts of a javelin;
yet between them and the sun lie the immense
level waters of the sea, spread out beneath the vast shores of the sky,
and many thousands of miles of lands lie between,
which various nations and races of wild beasts hold.
But a pool of water, not deeper than a single finger's breadth,
which stands among the stones along the paving of the streets,
offers a view downward beneath the earth, with such great force,
as great as the high gap of the sky that stretches from the earth,
so that you seem to look down on clouds and to see the sky,
bodies of the sky wondrously hidden beneath the earth.
Finally, when our spirited horse has stopped in the middle
of a river, and we look down at the swift waves of the stream,
the body of the standing horse seems to be carried sideways
by some force, and to be thrust swiftly against the current,
and wherever we cast our eyes, everything seems
to be carried along and to flow, by the same illusion for us.
Finally, although a portico runs in a straight, level line
and stands forever, propped up on equal columns,
yet when the whole of it is seen from its far end,
it gradually draws in to the narrow point of a cone,
joining roof to floor, and all its right side to its left,
until it has drawn everything together into the dim point of the cone.
To sailors on the open sea, the sun seems to rise from the waves
and to set and hide its light in the waves;
since indeed they see nothing else but water and sky;
do not lightly believe that the senses are thereby shaken on all sides.
But to those unfamiliar with the sea, ships in harbor seem lame,
straining against the waves with their sterns broken.
For whatever part of the oars stands up above the spray of the salt water
is straight, and straight too above is the rudder;
but the parts that are submerged and pass beneath the water seem broken,
all seem turned about and bent back upward again,
and, bent back, to float almost on the top of the water.
And when the winds carry scattered clouds across the sky
in the time of night, then the shining constellations seem
to glide against the clouds and to move above them
in quite a different direction from the one in which they are truly carried.
But if by chance a hand, placed underneath one eye,
presses it, by a certain sensation it happens that all the things we look at
then seem, as we look, to become double,
double the blooming lights of lamps with their flames,
and double furniture doubling throughout the whole house,
and double the faces of men, and double their bodies.
Finally, when sleep has bound our limbs in sweet slumber
and the whole body lies in utter rest,
then nevertheless we seem to ourselves to be awake and to move
our limbs, and in the blind darkness of night
we think we see the sun and the light of day,
and, though shut up in a small space, we seem to change
sky, sea, rivers, mountains, and to cross plains on foot,
and to hear sounds, though the stern silences of night
prevail all around, and, though silent, to utter words in reply.
We see many other wondrous things of this kind,
which all seem to seek, as it were, to violate the trustworthiness of the senses,
in vain, since the greatest part of these deceives us
on account of the mind's own opinions, which we ourselves add,
so that things not actually seen by the senses count as seen.
For nothing is harder than to separate things that are plain
from doubtful ones which the mind straightway adds of itself.
Finally, if anyone thinks that nothing can be known, he does not know
whether even this can be known, since he admits he knows nothing.
Against this man, then, I shall refrain from arguing the case,
who himself plants his own footprints upon his own head.
And yet, even if I should grant that he knows this, still I shall ask this very thing:
since he has seen nothing true in things before,
how does he know what it is to know, and in turn not to know,
what thing has created the notion of the true and the false,
and what thing has proved that the doubtful differs from the certain?
You will find that the notion of the true has been created
first from the senses, and that the senses cannot be refuted.
For that must be found to have greater reliability
which is able of its own accord to overcome falsehoods with truths.
What, then, ought to be held with greater reliability than the senses?
Will reason, sprung from a false sense, have the power
to speak against them, when it is entirely sprung from the senses?
And unless they are true, reason too becomes entirely false.
Or will the ears be able to correct the eyes, or will touch
correct the ears? Or again will taste of the mouth impugn this touch,
or will the nostrils refute it, or the eyes overturn it?
It is not so, I think. For each sense has its power
allotted separately, each has its own function, and so it must be
that what is soft, and what is cold or hot, is perceived
by one sense, and separately the varied colors of things are perceived
by another, and whatever is joined to colors must be perceived by it too.
Likewise taste of the mouth has its power separately, smells arise
separately, sounds separately. And so it must be
that one sense cannot convict another.
Nor further will they be able to correct themselves,
since equal trust must always be granted to them.
Accordingly, whatever has been perceived by them at any given moment is true.
And if reason will not be able to resolve the cause
why things that were square close up seem round
from far off, still it is better, for one lacking the explanation,
to give a mistaken account of the causes of both shapes
than to let slip from one's grasp, in any way, things manifest in themselves,
and to violate the primary trust, and to tear up entirely
the foundations on which life and its safety rest.
For not only would all reason collapse, but life itself too
would fall in an instant, unless you dared to trust the senses
and to avoid precipitous places and the other things that must be
shunned in this class, and to pursue their opposites.
That whole abundance of words is therefore empty for you,
which is marshaled and made ready against the senses.
Finally, just as in building, if the first ruler is crooked,
and if the square is deceptive and departs from true lines,
and if the level falters at all in some part,
everything must necessarily be built faultily and askew,
crooked, leaning forward or backward, and roofs out of true,
so that some parts already seem about to collapse, and do collapse,
all of them betrayed by the first deceptive judgments,
so likewise your reasoning about things must necessarily be
crooked and false, whatever springs from false senses.
Now let us see in what way the remaining senses each
perceives its own object; the account left to explain is not at all difficult.
First, sound and every voice is heard, when, having worked its way
into the ears, they have struck sense with their own body.
For it must be admitted that voice too, and sound,
consist of body, since they can strike the senses.
Besides, voice often scrapes the throat, and a shout,
going forth, makes the windpipe rougher,
since indeed, having arisen in greater crowd, through a narrow passage,
the first-beginnings of the voice have begun to go forth.
Of course the doorway of the mouth too is scraped when it is filled to overflowing.
There is no doubt, then, that voices and words consist
of bodily first-beginnings, so that they can cause hurt.
Nor does it escape you likewise how much of the body
a continuous speech, drawn out from the rising brightness of dawn
to the shadow of black night, takes away and draws off
from men's sinews and their very strength,
especially if it has been poured forth with the loudest shouting.
Therefore voice must consist of body,
since a man speaking much loses a part of his body.
And roughness of voice arises from the roughness
of its first-beginnings, and smoothness likewise is created by smoothness;
nor do the first-beginnings enter the ears in a similar shape,
when the trumpet bellows with a deep, low murmuring rumble,
and the swift lyre echoes back a hoarse booming,
and when the daughters of Daulis, born from the gardens of Helicon,
raise up a clear lament with mournful voice.
These voices, then, we squeeze out from deep within with our body
and send them forth out through our straightened mouth,
and the tongue, mobile and intricately built of sinews, shapes them into words,
and the shaping of the lips gives them form in its part.
When the space is not long from which that voice has set out
to reach us, each word too must necessarily
be clearly heard out and distinguished, articulated part by part;
for it preserves its formation and preserves its shape.
But if the space placed between is longer than is fitting,
the words must necessarily be jumbled through so much air
and the voice thrown into confusion, as it flies across the breezes.
Therefore it happens that you can perceive the sound, but not
distinguish what the sense of the words is;
so utterly confused and entangled does the voice arrive.
Besides, one single word, sent out from the mouth of a herald,
often stirs the ears of everyone in a crowd.
Into many voices, then, one voice suddenly
scatters, since it divides itself into separate ears,
stamping a shape upon the words, and a clear sound.
But that part of the voices which does not fall upon the ears themselves
passes by and perishes in vain, dispersed through the breezes.
Part, dashed against solid places, thrown back,
gives back a sound, and sometimes mocks us with the image of a word.
When you see this clearly, you can give an account,
both to yourself and to others, of how, through lonely places,
rocks give back matching shapes of words in order.
We seek our straying companions among shady mountains
and call to them, scattered, with a loud voice.
I have seen six or even seven places give back the voice,
when you had thrown out just one word: so did the hills themselves,
throwing the words back to the hills, repeat the sayings as they were carried back.
The neighboring people imagine that goat-footed Satyrs and Nymphs
hold these places, and say that Fauns are here,
and declare that, by their night-wandering noise and playful sport,
the silent stillnesses are commonly broken,
and that the sounds of strings arise, and sweet laments,
which the pipe, struck by the fingers of singers, pours forth,
and that the race of farmers far and wide perceive it, when Pan,
shaking the pine-wreathed coverings of his half-wild head,
often runs over the gaping reeds with his curved lip,
so that the pipe does not cease to pour forth its woodland music.
Other monstrous and marvelous things of this kind they tell,
lest the places be thought deserted by the gods too, and to be held
by them alone. For this reason they boast of these wonders in their tales,
or are led by some other motive, since the whole
human race is far too greedy for tales for the ear.
As for what remains, it is not to be wondered at by what means,
through places where the eyes cannot see things plainly,
these places, sounds can come through and reach and provoke the ears.
We often see also that conversation passes through closed doors;
no wonder, since voice can pass unharmed through the winding
openings of things, while images refuse to do so;
for they are torn apart, unless they pass through straight openings,
such as those of glass, through which every appearance flies across.
Besides, voice is divided into every part,
since from some voices others are born, once a single one
has once burst apart, having risen up, into many, just as a spark of fire
often scatters itself into fires of its own kind.
Therefore places hidden behind are filled up with voices,
all of which seethe round about and are set astir with sound.
But all images travel by straight paths only,
once they are sent; wherefore no one can
often see beyond an obstacle, but can receive voices from outside it.
And yet this voice too, while it passes through the closed spaces of houses,
is blunted, and enters the ears in a jumbled state,
and we seem to hear sound rather than words.
As for this — how we perceive flavor — the tongue and palate
have somewhat more explaining in them, more work to be done.
First, we perceive flavor in the mouth, when, in chewing food,
we squeeze it out, just as if someone should set about
squeezing and drying a sponge full of water with the hand.
Then what we squeeze out is spread through all the channels
of the palate, and through the winding, loose-textured openings of the tongue,
when the bodies of the flowing juice are smooth,
they touch and handle everything pleasantly,
around the moist, sweating regions of the tongue;
but on the contrary, once risen, they prick and tear at sense,
the more each is filled with roughness.
Then pleasure from the flavor lasts only to the limit of the palate;
but when it has rushed headlong down through the throat,
there is no pleasure at all, while it is spread entirely through the limbs;
nor does it matter at all by what food the body is nourished,
provided only that you can digest and distribute what you take in
to the limbs, and keep the swollen tension of the stomach steady.
Now let us see how it is that different food suits different creatures,
I shall explain, and why what is harsh and bitter to some
can nevertheless seem exceedingly sweet to others,
and there is such great difference and disparity in these matters,
that what is food to some becomes sharp poison to others;
so it is with the snake, which, touched by human saliva,
perishes, and destroys itself by biting itself.
Besides, hellebore is a sharp poison for us,
but it fattens goats and quails.
So that you may understand by what means this comes about,
first it is fitting to remember what we said before,
that seeds are held mixed in things in many ways.
Further, all living creatures, whichever take in food,
just as they are unlike from outside and, by their kind,
are bounded by their outer bodily contour,
so accordingly they too are made of seeds that vary in shape.
Further, since the seeds differ, it must be that the gaps
and passages, which we call openings, differ
in all their bodily parts, and in the mouth and in the palate itself.
Some, then, must be smaller and some larger,
some must be three-cornered, others four-cornered,
many round, some many-angled in many ways.
For as the arrangement and motions of the shapes demand,
so accordingly the shapes must differ, matching the openings,
and the passages must vary, according to how the texture constrains them.
So, when what is sweet to some becomes bitter to others,
for the one to whom it is sweet, the smoothest bodies must
enter the channels of the palate gently and agreeably,
but on the contrary, for those to whom the same thing is bitter within,
no wonder rough, hooked particles penetrate their throat.
Now from these things it is easy to understand each case.
For indeed, when in someone a fever has arisen from an excess of bile,
or some other force of disease has been stirred up by another cause,
there the whole body is at once thrown into disorder, and all
the arrangements of its first-beginnings are there changed;
it comes about that the bodies which formerly fit the sense
now no longer fit, and others become more suited,
which, once they have entered, can produce a bitter sensation;
for both kinds of seed are mixed together in the flavor of honey;
which we have already shown you often before, above.
Now come, let me set forth in what way the impact of a smell
touches the nostrils. First, there must be many things
from which a varied flowing wave of smells rolls itself forth,
and it must be thought that it flows and is sent out and scattered widely;
but one smell suits one kind of creature more, another suits another,
on account of their differing shapes. And for this reason, through the air,
bees are drawn from however far away by the smell of honey,
and vultures by carcasses; then the force of hounds, sent ahead,
is led wherever the cloven hoof of wild beasts has carried its step,
and the guardian of the citadel of Romulus's sons, the white goose,
senses in advance a human smell from far away.
So, different smells given to different creatures lead each
to its own pasture, and force it to recoil from foul poison,
and by this means the races of wild beasts are preserved.
This very smell, then, whichever one provokes the nostrils,
is such that one can be sent farther than another;
but still, none of them is carried so far
as sound, as voice — I say nothing now of things
which strike the sight of the eyes and provoke vision.
For wandering aimlessly it comes slowly, and perishes before its time,
gradually and easily torn apart into the breezes of the air;
first because it is scarcely sent forth from deep within a thing;
for that smells flow and withdraw from deep within things
is shown by the fact that things seem to smell more strongly
when broken, when crushed, when broken down by fire.
Further, one can see that it is created from larger
first-beginnings than voice, since it does not pass through stone
walls, through which voice and sound commonly pass.
For this reason too you will see that it is not so easy
to track down in what region a smell is located;
for the blow grows cold by lingering as it travels through the air,
and the messengers of things do not rush warm to the sense.
So dogs often go astray and search for the trail.
Nor yet is this the case only in smells and in the class
of flavors, but likewise the appearances and colors of things
do not all suit the senses of all creatures equally,
so that some are not sharper to the sight of some than of others.
Indeed, the raging lions cannot bear to stand
face to face with, or even to look at, the cock,
which is accustomed, clapping the night away with its wings,
to call up the dawn with its clear voice: so at once they remember flight.
No wonder, since there are certain seeds in the body of cocks
which, when they are cast into the eyes of lions,
pierce through their pupils and cause them
sharp pain, so that the fierce beasts cannot bear to hold their ground,
although these seeds can do no harm at all to our eyes,
either because they do not penetrate, or because, though they penetrate,
a free exit from the eyes is granted them, so that in lingering
they cannot injure our eyes from any side.
Now come, learn what things move the mind, and grasp in a few words
from where the things that come into it come.
First I say this: that images of things wander about
in many ways, many of them, into every part on every side,
thin ones, which easily join together in the air when they meet,
like a spider's web or a leaf of gold.
For indeed these are far thinner in texture
than those which strike the eyes and provoke sight,
since these penetrate through the loose openings of the body and stir
the fine nature of the mind within, and rouse its sensation.
And so we see the limbs of Centaurs and of Scyllas,
and the dog-faces of Cerberus, and the images of those
whose bones, once death has met them, the earth now embraces;
since images of every kind are carried everywhere,
some of which arise spontaneously in the very air itself,
some of which withdraw from various things,
and some which are formed by combination out of the shapes of these.
For certainly the image of a Centaur does not arise from a living one,
since no such living creature ever existed;
but when by chance the image of a horse and of a man meet,
it easily clings together at once, as we said before,
because of their fine nature and thin texture.
Other things of this kind are created by the same process.
And since these are carried along swiftly, with the utmost lightness,
as I showed before, any one of these fine images easily stirs
our mind with a single blow;
for the mind itself is fine and wonderfully mobile.
That these things happen as I relate, you can easily learn from this.
Insofar as this is similar to that which we see with the mind
and with the eyes, it must come about by a similar process.
Now then, since I have taught that when, by chance, through images
which strike the eyes, I come to perceive lions,
one may know that the mind is moved in a similar way
through images of lions and other things which it likewise sees
no less than the eyes do, except that it perceives things even finer.
And by no other process, when sleep has relaxed the limbs,
does the mind stay awake, except that the very same images
provoke our minds as when we are awake,
to such a degree that we surely seem to see one
whom life has left, and whom death and earth now possess.
Nature compels this to happen for this reason: that all
the bodily senses, obstructed, rest throughout the limbs,
and cannot refute the false by means of true things.
Besides, memory lies inert and grows slack in sleep,
and it does not protest that he, whom the mind believes it sees
alive, has long since fallen into the possession of death and destruction.
As for what remains, it is not surprising that images move,
and toss their arms in rhythm, and their other limbs;
for it happens that in dreams the image seems to do this.
For indeed, when the first image perishes and another is born
in a different posture after it, the earlier one seems to have changed its gesture.
Of course this must be thought to happen by a swift process:
so great is the mobility, and so great the abundance of images,
and so great is the supply of particles in any one perceptible
moment of time, that it can keep up the supply.
And many things are asked about these matters, and many things
must be made clear by us, if we wish to set out the matter plainly.
It is asked, first of all, why, whatever desire has come
to anyone, the mind at once thinks of that very thing.
Do images watch over our will, and does an image
meet us as soon as we wish it,
if it is sea, if it is land that we have set our heart on, if finally the sky?
Gatherings of men, a procession, banquets, battles —
does nature create and make ready everything at a mere word?
Especially since, for others in the very same region and place,
the mind thinks of things entirely different, all of them.
What further, when we see images advance in rhythm
in dreams, and move their supple limbs,
when they nimbly throw their supple arms alternately,
and repeat the gesture to our eyes with a foot that keeps time?
Of course the images are steeped in skill, and wander learnedly,
so that they can perform their sport in the time of night.
Or will this rather be true? Because in one single moment,
when we perceive — that is, when a single sound is uttered —
many moments lie hidden, which reason has discovered to exist,
for this reason it happens that at any given moment, each
images stand ready at hand, prepared in each place,
so great is the mobility, so great the abundance of things.
when the first of these dies and another is born in a different
posture from it, the first seems to have changed its gesture.
and because they are thin, the mind cannot discern keenly
anything except what it strains toward; accordingly all things that
besides exist perish, except those which it has itself made ready from itself.
it prepares itself further, and hopes for what is to come,
that it may see what follows from each thing: and so it happens.
do you not see that the eyes too, when the things that are thin
[besides exist perish, except those which it has itself made ready from itself,]
have begun to discern, strain and prepare themselves,
and that without this it cannot happen that we discern keenly?
and yet you can observe, even in things plainly open to view,
that if you do not turn your mind to them, it is just as if for all
time they had been set apart and removed far off.
why then is it strange, if the mind loses everything else
except the things to which it is itself given over?
further, we guess at the greatest matters from small signs,
and we ourselves wrap ourselves in the deceit of self-delusion.
It happens too that sometimes the image supplied
is not of the same kind — she who was before a woman
seems, in one's arms, to be present having become a man,
or one face and age follows another.
sleep and forgetfulness see to it that we do not wonder at this.
In these matters you must eagerly desire to shun this fault,
to flee this error and guard against it with foresight:
do not suppose the clear light-bearing eyes were made
so that we might see ahead, and that we might be able to put forth
long strides, and that for this reason the ends
of calves and thighs, set upon the feet, can bend,
and that arms, further, fitted from strong upper arms,
exist, and hands were given as servants on either side,
so that we might do whatever would serve life's use.
all the other things of this kind that are put forward
are every one perverse, reasoned backward,
since nothing was born in the body so that we might
use it, but what was born creates its own use.
seeing did not exist before the eyes' light-organs were born,
nor pleading in words before the tongue was made,
but rather the origin of the tongue came long before
speech, and the ears were made long before
sound was heard, and finally all the limbs
existed, I think, before there was any use for them;
so they could not have grown for the sake of use.
but on the contrary, to join hand-to-hand contests of battle
and to tear limbs and defile bodies with blood
existed long before bright weapons flew,
and nature compelled the avoiding of a wound earlier
than the left hand, by skill, could offer the shield's defense.
and clearly to commit a weary body to rest
is far older than the soft coverings of a bed,
and slaking thirst existed before the cup was made.
these things, then, can be believed to have been made known
for the sake of use, out of use and life's experience they were found.
but all those other things stand apart, which themselves first
were born, and only afterward gave notice of their usefulness.
in this class especially we see the senses and the limbs;
so, again and again, it is far from possible for you to believe
that they could have been created for the office of usefulness.
Likewise this too is not to be wondered at, that the very
nature of the body of each living creature seeks food.
for indeed I have taught that bodies flow and fall away from things
in many ways, in many manners, but the greater part must do so
from living creatures; because these are set in motion by movement,
much is breathed out through the mouth when they pant wearily,
and much, pressed out from deep within, is carried off in sweat.
by these things, then, the body is thinned, and its whole
nature is undermined — a process which pain follows.
therefore food is taken, so that, given within, it may prop up the limbs
and restore strength, and so that it may stop up the gaping
hunger for eating throughout the limbs and veins.
moisture likewise passes off into every place whatever
demands moisture; and the many gathered bodies of heat
which furnish fires to our stomach
the arriving liquid scatters and quenches, as it would fire,
so that the dry heat cannot burn the limbs any further.
thus, then, panting thirst is washed away from our body,
thus the empty craving is filled.
Now how it comes about that we can put forth our steps
when we wish, and why it has been granted to us to move our limbs,
and what thing has accustomed itself to push forward so great
a burden of our body, I will tell: do you grasp my words.
I say that images of walking first
fall upon our mind and strike it, as we said before.
from this the will arises; for no one begins to do any
thing before the mind has foreseen what it wants.
of what it foresees, an image of that thing stands ready,
so when the mind stirs itself in such a way that it wishes to go
and to step, it at once strikes the force of the soul, which lies
scattered through the limbs and joints in the whole body;
and this is easily done, since it is held joined to it.
from there this in turn strikes the body, and so the whole
mass is little by little pushed forward and set moving.
besides, then the body also grows porous, and the air,
since it must, being always mobile by its nature,
comes and penetrates in abundance through the opened passages,
and is scattered thus to each of the tiny parts
of the body. so by these two means it happens
that the body, like a ship, is carried by sails and wind.
and yet in these matters it does not stand as marvelous
that such tiny corpuscles can turn about
so great a body and swing our whole weight around;
for indeed the wind, thin in its fine-textured body,
drives and pushes a great ship with great effort,
and one hand steers it, however great the force with which it goes,
and turns the single rudder wherever it pleases,
and by pulleys and drums a machine moves many things
of great weight, and lifts them with a light effort.
Now in what ways sleep sends rest through the limbs
and releases the mind's cares from the breast,
I will set forth in sweet-speaking lines rather than in many,
just as the swan's small song is finer than the
clamor of cranes, scattered among the ethereal clouds of the south wind.
give me your attentive ears and a keen mind,
lest you deny that what I say can happen, and turn back,
rejecting true words with a resisting heart,
when the fault is your own and you cannot perceive it.
To begin with, sleep occurs when the force of the soul
is drawn apart through the limbs, and part of it, cast outward, has withdrawn,
and part, pressed together more, has retreated deeper within;
for only then do the limbs finally go slack and grow loose.
for there is no doubt that this sense in us
is the work of the soul, and when sleep hinders it from being,
then we must think that our soul has been thrown into disorder
and cast outward — not all of it; for otherwise the body would lie
drenched in the eternal cold of death.
for if no hidden part of the soul remained
in the limbs, as much fire lies hidden buried under ash,
from where could sense be rekindled suddenly through the limbs,
just as flame can rise up out of hidden fire?
But by what means this change comes about, and from where
the soul can be thrown into disorder and the body grow faint,
I will explain: see that you do not let my words pour out to the winds.
To begin with, it is necessary that the body, on its outer side,
since it is neighbored and touched by the airy breezes,
be pounded and repeatedly struck by their blow,
and for this reason nearly all things are covered either with hide,
or even with shells, or with hard skin, or with bark.
the air also strikes the inner part, in creatures that breathe,
this same air, as it is drawn in and breathed back out.
wherefore, since the body is beaten alike on both sides, and since
blows reach us through the small openings
of the body, down to its first parts and first elements,
a kind of collapse comes upon us little by little through the limbs.
for the arrangement of the first-beginnings
of body and mind is thrown into disorder. so it happens that part of the soul
is drawn out, and part withdraws hidden inward,
and part, torn apart through the limbs, cannot be
joined with itself, nor carry out its motion in common;
for nature blocks off their meeting-places and their paths between.
so sense departs deep within, its motions changed.
and since there is, as it were, nothing to prop up the limbs,
the body grows weak, and all the limbs grow faint,
arms and eyelids droop, and the knees of one lying down
often give way nonetheless, and their strength dissolves.
Then sleep follows food, because what the air does,
food does this same thing, while it is being spread through all the veins.
And that sleep stands far the heaviest,
which you fall into full or weary, because then very many
bodies, bruised by great exertion, throw themselves into disorder.
by the same process it happens that the soul, gathered together
more deeply in one part, and cast outward more abundantly in another,
is more divided within itself and more torn apart inside.
And whatever pursuit each person clings to, bound fast to it,
or whatever matters we have long been occupied with beforehand,
and in which the mind was more intently engaged,
in dreams we generally seem to carry on those same things:
lawyers plead cases and draft laws,
generals fight and go into battles,
sailors carry on their engaged war with the winds,
and I myself pursue this very task, and search out the nature of things
always, and set forth what I have found on my native pages.
so other pursuits and skills generally seem
to hold the minds of men in dreams, deceiving them.
and whoever, for many days running, has given
constant effort to games, we generally see,
that, even when they have already stopped taking them in through their senses,
paths still remain open in the mind
by which those same images of these things can come;
and so for many days those same things keep passing before
their eyes, so that even while awake people seem
to see dancers moving their supple limbs,
and to take in with their ears the lyre's clear song
and its speaking strings, and to see that same seated crowd,
and, together with it, the stage's varied splendors shining.
so much does devotion and will matter,
and the matters in which they have grown used to being occupied —
not for men alone, but truly for every living creature.
for you will see strong horses, when their limbs lie still,
nonetheless sweat in their sleep and pant without pause,
and strain with all their strength as if for the winning prize,
or as if, with the starting-gates thrown open, <they let out cries;>
and hunting dogs, often in soft repose,
nonetheless suddenly throw their legs about, and again and again
give voice, and repeatedly draw in air through their nostrils,
as if they held the found tracks of wild beasts,
and, once woken, often still pursue the empty
images of deer, as if they saw them given over to flight,
until, their delusions shaken off, they come back to themselves.
but the household puppies, that endearing brood accustomed to home,
strain to shake themselves and snatch their bodies up from the ground,
[nonetheless suddenly throw their legs about, and again and again
give voice, and repeatedly draw in air through their nostrils,
as if they held the found tracks of wild beasts,
and, once woken, often still pursue the empty,]
just as if they were gazing at unfamiliar shapes and faces.
and the fiercer the stock from which each breed comes,
the more fiercely, in the same way, it must rage in sleep.
but the various birds take flight, and suddenly with their wings
disturb the gods' groves at the hour of night,
if in light sleep they seem to be waging fights and battles
against hawks in pursuit of them, seen flying.
further, the minds of men, which carry out great deeds
through great efforts, likewise often do and perform the same in sleep,
they storm kings, are taken captive, join battles,
raise a shout, as if they were being slaughtered on the spot.
many fight to the death and give out groans of pain,
and, as if by the bite of a panther or a savage lion,
are being torn apart, and fill everything with great cries.
many speak of great matters in their sleep,
and very often have given away their own deeds by doing so.
many meet death. many, as if hurled headlong
from high mountains to the ground with their whole body,
are terrified, and, as if seized in mind, come back
from sleep to themselves scarcely at all, their body shaken by the turmoil.
likewise a thirsty man sits down beside a river or a pleasant spring
and all but takes the whole stream down his throat.
often, if children, bound fast in sleep, are beside a pool
or shallow tubs, they believe they are lifting up their clothes,
they pour out the strained moisture of their whole body,
while the Babylonian coverlets, splendid in their magnificence, are drenched.
then in those into whom the tide of youth
first instills its seed, when the ripening day itself has brought it forth in their limbs,
images come together from outside, from some other body too,
messengers of a splendid face and a lovely complexion,
which stirs and provokes the places swollen with abundant seed,
so that, as if the whole act had already been carried through, they often pour forth
a huge river's flood and stain their garments.
that which we spoke of before is stirred up in us —
the seed, when maturing age first gives strength to the limbs.
for one thing stirs and provokes one creature, another thing another;
only the power of a human being stirs human seed out of a human being.
and as soon as it is cast out and leaves its own seat,
it departs through the limbs and joints from the whole body,
and, gathering into the fixed places of the sinews, at once
stirs the very generative parts of the body.
the places, provoked, swell with seed, and the will arises
to cast it out toward where dire desire strains,
[it stirs, provoking the places swollen with abundant seed,]
and it seeks that body from which the mind has been wounded by love;
for nearly all generally fall toward the wound, and
blood spurts toward that part from which we are struck by the blow,
and if the enemy is at close range, red fluid covers him.
so then whoever receives the blows of Venus's shafts,
whether a boy with womanish limbs hurls them at him,
or a woman, casting love from her whole body,
toward that source from which he is struck he strains, and longs to come together
and cast his fluid, drawn body from body, into that body;
for silent desire has a presentiment of the pleasure.
this is what Venus is for us; and from this comes the name of Love,
from this first that drop of Venus's sweetness
trickled into the heart, and cold care followed after;
for if she whom you love is absent, images of her are nonetheless present,
and her sweet name hovers about your ears.
but it is fitting to flee the images and the food of love,
to drive them away from oneself, and turn the mind elsewhere,
and to cast the gathered fluid into any bodies at all,
and not to hold it back, once turned to the love of one alone,
and so keep for oneself care and a fixed sorrow;
for the sore comes alive and grows chronic by feeding it,
and day by day the madness swells and the misery grows heavier,
unless you disturb the first wounds with new blows
and, roaming, tend the still-fresh ones with a freely wandering Venus,
or unless you can turn the motions of your mind elsewhere.
Nor does the man who avoids love lack the fruit of Venus;
rather he takes the benefits that come without the penalty;
for the pleasure from it is surely purer for the sound of mind
than for the wretched; for indeed, at the very moment of possessing,
the ardor of lovers wavers in uncertain confusion,
and it is unclear what they should enjoy first, with eyes or with hands.
what they sought, they press tightly, and cause pain
to the body, and often drive their teeth into lips
and fasten kisses on, because the pleasure is not pure,
and goads lie beneath it, which spur them to hurt the very thing,
whatever it is, from which those seeds of frenzy arise.
but Venus lightly softens the pain in the midst of love,
and pleasure, mingled in and soothing, checks the bites.
for the hope lies in this — that from which the ardor takes its rise —
that the flame too can be quenched by that same body.
but nature wholly resists this happening the other way;
and this is the one thing of which, the more we have,
the more the breast burns with dire craving.
for food and drink are taken up into the limbs, within;
and since these can occupy fixed places,
the craving for drink and food is easily filled by this.
but from a person's face and beautiful complexion
nothing is given into the body to enjoy except thin
images; and this poor hope is often snatched off by the wind.
just as when a thirsty man seeks to drink in his sleep, and no water
is given that could quench the burning in his limbs,
but he seeks images of water and labors in vain,
and thirsts in the middle of a rushing river while drinking,
so in love Venus toys with lovers by means of images,
and they cannot satisfy themselves by gazing at the bodies before them,
nor can they scrape anything away with their hands from the tender limbs,
as they wander uncertain over the whole body.
finally, when, limbs joined together, they enjoy the flower
of youth, and the body already has a presentiment of its joys,
and Venus is on the point of sowing the woman's fields,
they cling to each other's body greedily and mingle the wetness
of their mouths, and breathe into one another, pressing mouths with their teeth,
all for nothing, since they can scrape nothing away from it,
nor penetrate and pass with their whole body into the other's whole body;
for at times they seem to want to do just that, and strive for it.
so eagerly do they cling in Venus's fastenings,
while their limbs, undone by the force of pleasure, melt away.
at last, when the desire gathered in the sinews has burst forth,
there comes a brief, small pause in the violent fire.
then the same frenzy returns, and that madness comes back,
when they themselves seek to lay hold of what they desire,
and cannot find any device to master that affliction.
so utterly, uncertain, do they waste away from a hidden wound.
add too that they wear away their strength and are ruined by the exertion,
add that their life is spent under another's command,
their duties languish and their tottering reputation sickens.
meanwhile their fortune slips away, and it turns into
Babylonian perfumes, and lovely Sicyonian slippers smile on her feet,
and, of course, great emeralds with their green light
are set in gold, and sea-colored cloth is worn thin,
worked constantly, drinking in the sweat of lovemaking.
and the goods their fathers won by hard toil become headbands, turbans,
sometimes turned into a cloak, or Elean and Coan robes.
banquets with rich clothing and fare, entertainments,
cups in plenty, perfumes, garlands, wreaths, are made ready,
all for nothing, since out of the very middle of the fountain of delights
something bitter rises up, which chokes them amid the very flowers,
either when the conscious mind itself happens to gnaw at itself
for wasting its life in idleness and perishing in dens of vice,
or because she has flung out some ambiguous word and left it hanging,
which, fixed in his eager heart, comes alive like fire,
or he thinks she casts her eyes about too much, or looks at another,
and sees traces of laughter in her face.
And these ills are found in love that is going well
and most smoothly for its own sake; but in love thwarted and wanting, there are
ills you could grasp even with your eyes' light shut,
past counting; so that it is better to watch beforehand,
in the way I have taught, and to take care not to be lured in.
for to avoid being cast into the snares of love
is not so hard as, once caught in the very nets,
to get out and burst through Venus's strong knots.
and yet, even tangled up and shackled,
you could still escape the danger, unless you stand in your own way
and unless you first overlook all the flaws of mind
or of body in her, whatever woman you long for and desire.
for men, generally blinded by desire, credit her
with charms that are not truly hers.
and so in many ways we see women who are misshapen and ugly
held as darlings and flourishing in the highest esteem.
and men mock one another, and urge each other to make their peace
with Venus, since they are themselves afflicted by a shameful love,
and the wretches often fail to notice their own far greater faults.
the black-skinned girl is "honey-toned," the unwashed and rank one is "unadorned,"
the gray-eyed one a "little Pallas," the sinewy, wooden one a "gazelle,"
the tiny dwarf is "one of the Graces," pure wit through and through,
the huge, monstrous one is "awe-inspiring," and full of dignity.
the one who cannot speak plainly "has a charming lisp," the mute one is "shy";
but the fiery, hateful chatterbox becomes "little torch."
the one who can hardly live for thinness becomes a "slender darling";
the one who is truly half-dead of a cough is "delicate."
but the overlarge, big-breasted one is "Ceres herself, nursing Bacchus,"
the snub-nosed one a "wood-nymph" or a "Satyress," the thick-lipped one "all kiss."
it would be a long task if I tried to tell the rest of this kind.
but still, let her be granted whatever beauty of face you like,
the one from whose limbs the whole force of Venus rises up for you;
still there are other women too; still we lived before without her;
still she does the very same things, and we know an ugly woman does
all the same things, and the poor thing herself fumigates herself with foul smells,
whom her own maids flee far off and laugh at behind her back.
but the shut-out lover, weeping, often
covers her threshold with flowers and garlands, and anoints the proud
doorposts with marjoram oil, and, wretched, presses kisses on the door;
yet if, once let in and coming toward her, a single whiff
should offend him, he would look for respectable reasons to leave,
and his long-rehearsed complaint, deeply conceived, would collapse
then and there, and he would condemn himself for the folly of having granted her
more than it is right to grant a mortal, he now sees.
nor does this escape our own Venuses; all the more do they themselves
conceal with the utmost effort all this backstage of life from those
whom they wish to keep, and bound fast in love,
all for nothing, since you can still, in your own mind, drag
everything out into the light and search into all the laughter,
and, if she is good-natured and not hateful, in your turn
overlook it, and allow for human affairs.
Nor does a woman always sigh with feigned love,
when, embracing, she joins her body with a man's body
and holds him, wetting kisses with clinging lips;
for often she does it from the heart, and, seeking a joy
held in common, she urges love's race to run its full course.
nor in any other way could birds, herds, and wild beasts,
and cattle, and mares, submit to the males,
if their own nature did not itself, because it is in heat, burn with an abundant
desire, and joyfully draw back to meet the Venus of the mounting males.
do you not see too how those whom mutual pleasure has often
bound are tormented as if in shared chains,
when at the crossroads dogs, often wanting to part,
strain apart eagerly with all their strength,
while all the while they stay stuck fast in Venus's strong bonds?
which they would never do, unless they knew mutual joys
that could draw them into deception and hold them bound.
wherefore, again and again, as I say, the pleasure is shared.
And when, in the mingling of seed, the female by chance
overpowers the male's force with a sudden force of her own, and seizes it,
then children are made like their mothers, from the mother's seed,
as they are like their fathers from the father's. but those whom you see
to have the shape of both, mingling the faces of both parents together,
grow from the father's body and the mother's blood,
when the seeds, roused through the limbs by Venus's goads,
clashed together in meeting, as mutual passion breathed as one,
and neither of the two overcame, nor was overcome.
it happens too that sometimes children come to resemble
their grandparents, and often recall the features of great-grandparents,
because parents often conceal within their own body,
mixed in many ways, many first-beginnings,
which fathers hand down to fathers, descended from the family stock.
from these Venus brings forth features by varied chance,
and reproduces the faces, voices, and hair of ancestors;
since these arise no more from a fixed seed
than do our faces, bodies, and limbs.
and a female line arises from the father's seed,
and males come into being, begotten from the mother's body;
for offspring always consists of a twofold seed,
and whichever parent the thing that is created more resembles,
of that parent it holds more than an equal share; and this you can perceive,
whether the offspring is a male child, or a female one is its origin.
Nor do the divine powers ever bar anyone's generative seed,
so that he should never be called father
by sweet children, and should spend his life with a barren Venus —
as many generally suppose, and, in their grief, drench altars
with much blood and burn offerings on them,
so as to make their wives pregnant with abundant seed;
all in vain do they wear out the gods' power and the lots of fate;
for some are barren because their seed is, in part, too thick,
and others, in turn, because it is too watery and thin beyond what is fitting.
because the thin seed cannot fix its hold fast in place,
it dissolves at once, and, drawn back, gives way in miscarriage.
and further, since the thicker seed, being denser than is fitting,
is sent forth, either it does not shoot out with as full a thrust,
or it cannot penetrate the places as well, or, once it has penetrated,
the seed mixes only with difficulty with the woman's seed.
for couples clearly differ greatly in the harmony of their lovemaking.
and some men make some women conceive more readily, while from others
other women take up the burden more readily and grow heavy.
and many women were barren through many earlier
marriages, and yet later found a man from whom they could
conceive, and grow rich through sweet childbearing.
and men whose fertile wives at home had often been unable
to bear them children — for them too a matching
nature was found, so that they could secure their old age with children.
so greatly does it matter that the seeds should be able
to mix with seeds fit for generation,
and that thick should suit thin, and thin suit thick.
and it matters too on what diet life is nourished;
for by some foods the seeds thicken in the limbs,
and by others, in turn, they grow thin and waste away.
and in what ways the pleasing act itself is carried out —
this too matters a great deal; for it is generally thought
that wives conceive more after the manner of beasts and in the
fashion of four-footed creatures, because in this way the parts can take
the seed, with the chest lowered and the loins raised.
and wives have no need at all of soft, yielding movements.
for a woman prevents herself from conceiving and works against it,
if she herself, with delight, meets her man's lovemaking with her hips
and stirs waves of motion with her whole body gone limp;
for she throws the furrow off its straight direction and course
from the plowshare, and turns the seed's stroke away from its place.
and prostitutes are used to moving this way for their own purpose,
so that they should not be repeatedly made pregnant and lie with child,
and, at the same time, so that lovemaking itself might be more pleasing to the men;
which seems to be of no use at all to our own wives.
Nor is it by any divine agency, nor by Venus's arrows,
that a woman of lesser beauty sometimes comes to be loved;
for a woman herself sometimes brings this about by her own doing,
by compliant ways and by a body kept neatly groomed,
so that she easily accustoms you to spending your life with her.
and beyond this, habit itself fashions love;
for whatever is struck by a blow, however light, if struck often,
is nonetheless overcome and gives way over a long span of time.
do you not see too that drops of water falling on stone
wear the stone through over a long span of time?

======== Book V — The World, Its Birth and Its Death ========

Who has the strength, with a mind powerful enough,
to build a song worthy of the majesty of things and of these discoveries?
Or who has such power in words that he could fashion praise
to match the merits of the one who left to us such
rewards, won and sought out by his own mind?
No one born of mortal flesh will be equal to it, I think.
For if, as the known majesty of the universe itself demands,
it must be said: that man was a god, a god, illustrious Memmius,
who first discovered that reasoned way of life which
is now called wisdom, and who by his skill
set life — tossed on such waves and in such darkness —
into so calm and so clear a light.
Compare the ancient divine discoveries of others.
For Ceres is said to have brought forth grain for mortals, and Liber
the liquid drink born of the vine;
yet life could go on without these things,
as report has it that some peoples even now live without them.
But one could not live well without a mind made pure;
so this man more rightly seems to us to be a god,
from whom, spread now through great nations,
sweet comforts of life soothe our minds.
But if you think the deeds of Hercules outrank his,
you will be carried far indeed from true reasoning.
For what harm now to us would the great gaping jaws
of that Nemean lion do, or the bristling Arcadian boar,
or how greatly would the birds that haunt Stymphalus hinder us?
Finally, what could the bull of Crete do, or the Lernaean scourge,
the hydra, ringed about with venomous snakes?
Or what the three-bodied strength of triple Geryon,
or the horses of Diomedes breathing fire from their nostrils
among the Thracian and Bistonian lands and by Ismarus,
or the serpent guarding the golden gleaming apples
of the Hesperides, fierce, glaring savagely, its monstrous body
coiled about the tree's trunk — what harm, finally, would it do
near the Atlantic shore and the grim stretches of that sea,
where none of our people goes and no barbarian dares?
And the other monsters of this sort that have been destroyed,
if they had not been conquered, what harm would they do us alive, after all?
None, I think: even now the earth teems to its fill
with wild beasts, and is filled with trembling terror
through groves and great mountains and deep forests —
places which for the most part it lies in our power to avoid.
But unless the mind is purged, what battles for us
and dangers must then work their way in, whether we wish it or not!
How greatly then do the sharp cares of desire tear
at the anxious man, and how great, equally, the fears!
Or pride, filth, and insolence? What great
disasters they bring about! And luxury and sloth?
So the man who has subdued all these, and from the mind
driven them out with words, not with arms — will it not be fitting
to judge this man worthy to be counted among the gods?
especially since he was accustomed to speak, well and in godlike fashion,
many things to mortals now, as if giving utterance from the gods themselves,
and to lay open the whole nature of things in his words.
Following in his footsteps, while I
pursue his reasonings and teach in my own words by what compact
each thing was created, and how necessary it is to abide within it,
unable to break time's strong laws,
among which foremost the nature of the mind has been found
to consist, being created, of a body born with it,
and unable to endure sound through a long age,
but that phantoms are wont in dreams to deceive the mind,
when we seem to see one whom life has abandoned —
what remains, now the order of my argument has brought me to this point:
that I must give the reasoned account that the world too consists of a mortal body
and is likewise born;
and by what means that gathering-together of matter
founded earth, sky, sea, stars, sun,
and the moon's globe; then what living things arose
upon the earth, and which were never born at any time;
and in what way, as speech grew varied, the human race
began to speak among themselves using names for things;
and by what means that fear of the gods worked its way into
hearts — fear which through the round world watches over the sacred
shrines, pools, groves, altars, and images of the gods.
Besides, the course of the sun and the moon's movements
I will explain — by what force guiding nature bends them,
lest perhaps we think that these things, between heaven and earth,
freely, of their own accord, traverse their everlasting courses,
obligingly, to make crops and living things grow,
or think that they are wheeled about by some design of the gods.
For even those who have rightly learned that the gods lead a carefree life,
if all the same they wonder, meanwhile, by what plan
each thing can be carried on, especially in those matters
that are seen above our heads in the regions of the sky,
are carried back again into their old superstitions
and take on harsh masters, believing they can do anything —
masters whom, poor wretches, they believe capable, not knowing what can be,
what cannot, and what limited power, finally, belongs to each thing,
by what principle, and how deeply fixed its boundary lies.
As for the rest — lest I delay you further with promises —
first look upon the seas, the lands, and the sky;
whose threefold nature, three bodies, Memmius,
three forms so unlike, three such fabrics,
one single day will consign to destruction; and though sustained through many years,
the mass and machinery of the world will fall in ruin.
Nor does it escape me how new and strange a thing to the mind
it must seem, that the destruction of sky and earth lies ahead,
and how hard it is for me to win conviction of this by words —
as happens when you bring some unfamiliar thing before the ears
and yet cannot set it before the sight of the eyes
or place it in the hands — the road by which belief
travels most directly into the human breast and the mind's chambers.
But still, I will speak it out. The fact itself will lend credence to my words,
perhaps, and once violent earthquakes have arisen
you will see everything shaken to pieces in a short time.
May guiding fortune steer that far away from us,
and may reasoning rather than the fact itself persuade us
that all things, overcome, can collapse in a dread-sounding crash.
But before I set about this — before I pour forth pronouncements on the matter,
more sacred and far more certain in their reasoning than
those the Pythia speaks from Apollo's tripod and laurel —
I will lay out for you many comforts in well-taught words;
lest, reined in by religious scruple, you should perhaps think
that earth and sun and sky, sea, stars, and moon
must remain eternal because their bodies are divine,
and therefore should think it right, in the fashion of the Giants,
that all such men pay the penalty for a monstrous crime —
men who by their own reasoning would overthrow the ramparts of the world
and wish to quench the glorious sun of heaven,
branding immortal things with mortal speech;
things so utterly removed from any divine power,
and so unworthy to be reckoned among the gods,
that they should rather be thought fit to give us a notion
of what is altogether without living motion and feeling.
For indeed it cannot be thought that mind and judgment
could exist together with just any body whatsoever.
Just as in the sky no tree can exist, nor in the salt sea
can clouds be, nor can fish live in fields,
nor blood exist in wood, nor sap in stones —
it is fixed and settled where each thing grows and has its place,
so the nature of the mind cannot arise alone, without a body,
nor exist apart, far off from sinews and blood.
For if it could, the force of the mind itself might just as well
exist in the head, or the shoulders, or the very heels,
and would be apt to arise in any part at all,
so long as it remained in the same man, in the same vessel.
But since it is fixed and evidently settled, even in our own body,
where the soul and mind separately can exist and grow,
all the more must it be denied
that the whole of it could endure outside the body and its living form,
in the crumbling clods of earth, or in the fire of the sun,
or in water, or in the high shores of the sky.
They are not, therefore, endowed with divine feeling,
since they cannot be alive with a living soul.
Likewise this too is something you cannot believe: that there are
sacred dwellings of the gods in any part of the world.
For the nature of the gods is subtle and far removed
from our senses, scarcely seen even by the mind's understanding;
and since it escapes the touch and the blow of hands,
it should touch nothing that is itself tangible to us;
for what cannot itself be touched cannot touch anything else.
Therefore their dwellings too must be
unlike our dwellings, made subtle of their own substance —
which I will prove to you later, in ample discourse.
To say, moreover, that the gods wished to prepare
the glorious nature of the world for the sake of men, and that therefore
it is fitting to praise their praiseworthy work
and think it will be everlasting and immortal,
and that it is not right — this thing which by the gods' age-old design
was founded for the human race to last for all time —
ever to be shaken loose from its foundations by any force,
or troubled by words and overturned from top to bottom,
and to invent and pile on other things of this kind, Memmius —
that is folly. For what advantage could our gratitude
bestow upon the immortal and blessed gods,
that they should set about doing anything for our sake?
Or what new thing, after so long a time, could entice
those who before were at rest, to want to change their former life?
For it seems that only he ought to rejoice in new things
whom the old ones vex; but the one to whom nothing troublesome happened
in the time gone by, when he was living his life pleasantly —
what could kindle in such a one a love of change?
Or what evil would it have been for us, not to have been created?
Or, I suppose, life lay in darkness and grief
until the birth-giving origin of things dawned?
For whoever has been born must wish to remain
in life, so long as beguiling pleasure holds him fast;
but he who has never truly tasted the love of life,
and was never among the living — what harm is it to him not to have been created?
Further — the model for making things, and even
the very knowledge of men — where was it first implanted in the gods,
so that they might know and picture in mind what they wanted to make,
or how was the power of the first-beginnings ever made known,
and what they could do among themselves with their order changed around,
if nature herself had not given the pattern of creation?
For the first-beginnings of things, in so many ways,
driven by blows from infinite time now past,
and by their own weight, have grown accustomed, once set moving, to be borne along
and to meet in every fashion and try out every combination —
whatever they, coming together, could create among themselves —
so that it is no wonder if they have also fallen
into such arrangements, and come into such motions,
as those by which this sum of things is now carried on, forever renewing itself.
But even if I did not know what the first-beginnings of things are,
this, nonetheless, I would dare to affirm from the very workings of the sky itself,
and to establish from many other facts as well:
that the nature of things was in no way made ready for us
by divine power — so great a flaw does it stand possessed of.
To begin with: as much as the vast dome of the sky covers,
of that, a greedy portion mountains and forests, haunts of wild beasts,
have taken for themselves; crags and vast marshes possess it,
and the sea, which holds the shores of the lands far apart.
Then, further, of what remains, nearly two more parts, blazing heat
and the ceaseless fall of frost take away from mortal use.
What tillable land remains, nature by her own force
would still choke over with brambles, did not human strength resist her,
accustomed, for life's sake, to groan over the sturdy hoe
and cleave the soil with the pressed-down plough.
If we did not turn the fertile clods with the ploughshare
and subdue the soil of the earth, rousing it to bring forth,
things could not of their own accord rise up into the clear air.
And yet sometimes, though sought with great labor,
when already they leaf out over the fields and all things flower,
either the sun in the sky scorches them with excessive heat,
or sudden rains destroy them, and icy frosts,
and blasts of wind batter them with violent gusts.
Besides, why does nature feed and foster
that dread race of wild beasts, hostile to humankind on land and sea?
Why do the seasons of the year bring diseases?
Why does untimely death roam abroad?
Then further, the child — like a sailor cast up
by savage waves — lies naked on the ground, an infant lacking all
help for life, when first, into the shores of light,
nature has poured him out from his mother's womb by her labor,
and he fills the place with mournful crying, as is fitting
for one who has so much evil left to pass through in life.
But the various flocks, herds, and wild beasts grow up
with no need of little rattles, nor must anyone offer them
the fond, broken lisping speech of a kindly nurse,
nor do they seek varied clothes to suit the season of the weather;
finally, they need no weapons, no high walls
to guard what is theirs, since to all of them, all things abundantly
the earth herself brings forth, and nature, that skilled artisan of things.
To begin with, since the body of the earth, and moisture,
and the light breath of the winds, and warm vapors —
out of which this sum of things is seen to be composed —
all consist of a body born and mortal,
the whole nature of the world must be reckoned of the same kind.
For indeed, those things whose parts and members we see
to be, in a body that is born, of mortal shape —
these same wholes we find are likewise mortal
and born as well. And so, since I see the greatest
members and parts of the world, once consumed, born again,
we may know that for the sky too, and likewise for the earth,
there was some beginning in time, and a destruction is to come.
Do not think, in this matter, that I have seized on this
rashly for my own purpose — taking earth and fire to be mortal,
and not doubting that moisture and air perish
too, and saying that these same things are born and grow again.
To begin with, a certain part of the earth, scorched
by unceasing suns and much beaten by the tread of feet,
breathes out a mist of dust, and clouds of it flying up,
which strong winds scatter through the whole air.
A part of the clods, too, is called back into a flood
by rains, and rivers grazing their banks gnaw them away.
Besides, for its part, whatever earth nourishes and makes grow
is given back to it; and since it seems, beyond doubt,
that she is at once the all-bearing mother of things and their common tomb,
therefore the earth, you see, is drained away, and, replenished, grows again.
As for what remains: that with fresh moisture the sea, rivers, and springs
are ever abounding, and that waters flow on unceasingly,
there is no need of words — the great rush of waters
declares it from every side. But whatever water is first
taken away, so that in the total sum no moisture ever runs to excess,
partly this is because strong winds, sweeping the sea's surface,
diminish it, and the sun in the sky unravels it with his rays,
partly because it is spread out underground, through all the lands;
for the brine is filtered out, and back it seeps,
the substance of the moisture, and gathers at the source for all
the rivers; from there it flows over the lands in a sweet stream,
along the channel once cut, by which its waters have carried their liquid tread.
Now, then, I will speak of the air, which in its whole body
is changed innumerable times, hour by separate hour.
For always, whatever flows away from things — all of it
is carried into the great sea of air; and unless that air, in return,
gave back bodies to things and renewed what flows away from them,
everything by now would have been dissolved and turned into air.
It does not cease, therefore, being born out of things and falling
back into things, since it is settled that all things flow ceaselessly.
Likewise the abundant fountain of liquid light, the sun in the sky,
continually floods the heaven with fresh brightness
and instantly replenishes light with new light.
For whatever first of its brightness perishes,
wherever it happens to fall — this you can recognize from the following:
as soon as clouds begin to pass beneath the sun
and, as it were, to break its rays of light apart,
at once the whole lower portion of them perishes
and the earth is shadowed, wherever the clouds are carried;
so that you may know that things always stand in need of fresh brightness,
and that each first outpouring of brightness perishes,
and things cannot be seen in the sunlight by any other means
unless the very fountainhead of light perpetually replenishes it.
Why, even those nightly, earthly
lights for you — hanging lamps, and torches bright with flashing
flames, thick with much soot —
hasten on by a like process, heat as their servant,
to supply new light; they press on, trembling with fires,
press on, nor does the light leave gaps in between as though broken:
so hastily, from all their fires, is
their destruction hastened on by the swift renewal of flame.
So, then, it must be thought that sun, moon, and stars
cast their light from one fresh rising after another,
and always lose whatever flame comes first —
lest you should chance to believe these things endure inviolable.
Finally, do you not see that even stones are conquered by time,
that tall towers collapse and rocks crumble away,
that the shrines of the gods and their images grow weary and fall apart,
and their sacred godhead cannot push back the bounds of fate,
nor strive against the covenants of nature?
Finally, do we not see the monuments of men crumbling away —
[to inquire further — you might believe that each thing grows old in its own way,]
do not boulders torn loose fall from high mountains,
unable to bear and endure the strong forces of time
for any finite span? For they would not suddenly fall, torn loose,
if they had endured, from infinite time past,
every battering of age without ever being shattered.
Finally, now consider this: that which all around and above
holds the earth in its embrace — if it brings forth from itself
all things, as some relate, and takes back what has perished,
then the whole of it consists, being born, of a mortal body.
For whatever thing feeds and nourishes other things out of itself
must be diminished — then renewed, when it takes those things back.
Besides, if there was no birth-origin
for lands and sky, and they had always been eternal,
why, before the Theban war and the fall of Troy,
did other poets not also sing of other deeds?
Why have so many deeds of men fallen away so often, and nowhere
do they still flourish, set fast in the eternal monuments of fame?
But, as I think, the sum of things is a new thing, and recent
is the nature of the world, nor did it take its beginnings long ago.
That is why certain arts even now are still being refined,
still growing; now much has been added to ships,
and only recently musicians have brought forth melodic sounds;
finally, this very nature of things and its system was discovered
only lately, and I myself, found among the very first to do so,
am now the one able to turn it into the speech of my own land.
But if perhaps you believe that all these same things existed before now,
but that generations of men perished in a scorching blaze,
or that cities fell in some vast convulsion of the world,
or that, from ceaseless rains, ravening
rivers overran the lands and swallowed up towns,
all the more must you, defeated, confess
that the destruction of earth and sky as well is still to come;
for when things were assailed by such great sicknesses and such great perils,
if then a still grimmer cause had come to bear upon them,
they would have brought disaster and vast ruin far and wide.
Nor by any other reasoning do we appear to be mortal
among ourselves, except that we fall sick with the same diseases
as those whom nature has removed from life.
Besides, whatever things remain eternal must do so
either because, having a solid body, they repel blows
and let nothing penetrate them that could their tightly-packed
inner parts pull apart — as is true of the bodies
of matter, whose nature we have shown before —
or because they can endure through the whole of time for this reason,
that they are exempt from blows, as the void is,
which stays untouched and is affected not at all by any stroke,
or else because there is no supply of room around them
into which, as it were, things could scatter and be dissolved,
as the sum of all sums is eternal, nor is there, outside it,
any place into which its parts could fly apart, nor are there bodies
that could fall upon it and dissolve it with a mighty blow.
But neither, as I have taught, is the nature of the world
of a solid body — since void is mixed in among things —
nor yet is it like the void; and moreover bodies are not lacking
which, chancing to have arisen out of the infinite,
could crash down upon this sum of things with violent tumult,
or bring on some other disaster of ruin;
nor further does the extent of space and the depth of room
run short, into which the ramparts of the world could be scattered,
or perish, struck down by some other force whatsoever.
The door of death, therefore, is not barred to the sky,
nor to sun and earth, nor to the deep waves of the sea,
but stands open, gaping back with a monstrous, vast mouth.
Wherefore you must also confess that these same things are born;
for things that are of mortal body could not,
out of infinite time already passed, up to now, have been able
to defy the mighty forces of measureless age.
Finally, since the greatest members of the world so greatly
fight among themselves, stirred up by a war anything but holy,
do you not see that some end of their long struggle
could be granted them — say, when the sun and all its heat
have drunk up every moisture and won the mastery?
This they are striving to do, but their attempts are not yet accomplished;
so much do the rivers supply, and beyond that they threaten
to drown everything in flood, out of the sea's deep gulf —
in vain, since the winds sweeping the sea's surface
lessen it, and the sun in the sky, unraveling it with his rays;
and they are confident they can dry up everything
before the water could reach the goal of what it undertook.
breathing out so great a war, in a contest of equal forces,
they struggle to fight out a great matter between themselves,
though meanwhile fire has once already gained the upper hand,
and once, as the story goes, water reigned over the fields.
for fire prevailed once, and, spreading round, burned up much,
when the ravening force of the sun's horses dragged Phaethon
over trackless wastes, through the whole sky and over all the lands.
But the almighty father, then stirred by fierce anger,
struck great-hearted Phaethon down with a sudden bolt of lightning —
cast him down off his horses onto the earth; and the Sun, meeting him
as he fell, caught up the eternal lamp of the world,
and gathered the scattered horses back together and yoked them, trembling,
then, guiding all things, set them going again along their own path —
so, at least, the old Greek poets have sung.
which is thrust far too wide of true reasoning.
For fire can gain the mastery when, of matter,
more bodies than usual have arisen out of the infinite;
then its powers fall away, overcome by some cause,
or things perish, burned up by the scorching winds.
Water likewise once began to prevail, having risen in excess,
as the story goes, when it overwhelmed the lives of men with its waves;
then, when its force, turned back by some cause, withdrew —
whatever of it had arisen out of the infinite —
the rains ceased and the rivers lessened their force.
But by what means that hurling-together of matter
founded the earth and sky and the deep places of the sea,
and the courses of sun and moon, I will now set out in order.
For certainly the first-beginnings of things did not, by design,
arrange themselves each in its own order with sagacious mind,
nor indeed did they agree among themselves what motions each should produce;
But because the first-beginnings of things, many in many ways,
driven by blows out of infinite time already past,
and by their own weight, have grown accustomed, once set moving, to be carried
and to meet together in every fashion, trying out every combination
they might create, coming together among themselves,
for this reason it happens that, scattered abroad through a vast stretch of time,
by trying every kind of meeting and motion,
at last those combinations come together which, suddenly thrown together,
often become the beginnings of great things —
of earth, sea, and sky, and of the race of living creatures.
Here, at that time, neither could the sun's wheel be seen with its abundant light,
flying high, nor the stars of the great world,
nor sea, nor sky, nor finally earth, nor air,
nor could anything be seen like the things we know,
but only a strange new condition and mass that had arisen.
From there the regions began to scatter apart, and like parts
began to join with like, and things began to divide the world,
separating its members and arranging its great regions
out of first-beginnings of every kind, whose discord —
in distances, paths, connections, weights, blows,
collisions, motions — threw everything into confusion, mingling conflicts,
because of their unlike forms and varied shapes,
since not all of them could remain joined together in that way,
nor produce fitting motions among themselves,
that is, to separate the high sky from the lands,
and the sea set apart, to lie open with its own separate moisture,
and, likewise apart, the fires of the pure and separate ether.
For indeed, first, the several bodies of earth,
because they were heavy and entangled, kept converging
in the middle, and all took up the lowest seats;
and the more entangled among themselves they came together,
the more they squeezed out those things which would make up the sea, the stars, the sun,
and the moon, and the ramparts of the great world;
for all these things are made rather of light and round
seeds, and of far smaller elements
than earth is. That is why, through the sparse openings of the earth,
bursting out bit by bit, the fire-bearing ether first raised itself up,
and, being light, carried off many fires along with it —
not by a process much different from what we often see,
when first, golden, through the dew-jeweled grass,
the morning beams of the radiant sun grow red,
and lakes breathe out mist, and the ever-flowing rivers,
and the earth itself at times seems to be smoking;
and when all these gather together, rising upward, on high,
clouds, their body now condensed, weave a veil beneath the sky.
So, then, at that time, the light and diffusible ether,
its body now condensed, spread itself round on every side and enclosed things,
and, widely diffused on every side into every quarter,
thus enclosed all the rest in a greedy embrace.
Upon this followed the beginnings of sun and moon,
whose globes revolve in the air lying between the two regions;
which neither earth claimed for itself, nor the vast ether,
because they were neither so heavy that they settled down,
nor so light that they could glide along the outermost edges,
and yet they are so placed between the two, that they turn
like living bodies and stand out as parts of the whole world —
just as in ourselves certain limbs may remain
at rest, even while there are others that move.
With these things, then, withdrawn, the earth suddenly
sank down, where now the vast blue expanse of the sea stretches out,
and flooded the hollows with its salt tide.
And day by day, the more, all around, the surging tides of ether
and the rays of the sun pressed in upon the earth on every side,
packing it tight at its outer edges with repeated blows,
so that, driven in upon itself, condensed, it drew together at the center,
the more, squeezed out from its body, the salty sweat
increased the sea, flowing forth, and its swimming plains;
and the more, escaping outward, those many bodies
of vapor and air flew forth and condensed, far from the earth,
the gleaming regions of the sky.
The plains sank down, and the slopes of the high mountains
grew higher; for the rocks could not settle downward,
nor could all the regions sink equally by the same amount.
So, then, the weight of the earth, its body now condensed,
became fixed, and, as it were, all the slime of the world flowed together,
heavy, into the lowest place, and settled to the bottom like dregs;
then the sea, then the air, then the fire-bearing ether itself,
all were left pure, with their liquid bodies,
one lighter than another; and the most liquid, ether,
and the lightest, flows above the airy breezes,
and does not mingle its liquid body with the turbulent currents of air;
it lets all that below be turned by violent
whirlwinds, lets it be thrown into confusion by shifting storms,
while it itself carries its own fires onward, gliding with a steady motion.
That the ether flows steadily and can move with a single, uniform force
the Pontus shows us — a sea that flows with a fixed current,
preserving always one unbroken course of motion.
Now let us sing what the cause is of the motions of the stars.
To begin with, if the great vault of the sky revolves,
we must say that air presses upon the pole from either side
and holds it in from outside and encloses it on both ends;
then that another current flows above and presses in the same direction
in which the eternal stars of the wheeling world glitter as they turn;
or another beneath, which, from the opposite side, drives the circle upward,
just as we see rivers turn wheels and their scoop-buckets.
It is also possible that the whole sky might stay
fixed in place, even while the bright constellations are carried along,
either because the swift currents of enclosed ether,
seeking a path, whirl around in a circle, and the fires
roll everywhere through the topmost precincts of the sky,
or because air flowing in from elsewhere, from outside,
drives and turns the fires, or because they themselves can creep along,
wherever each one's fuel calls and invites them onward,
their flaming bodies feeding everywhere throughout the sky.
For which of these causes applies in this particular world
is hard to state for certain; but what can be, and comes to be, throughout the whole,
in the various worlds created by various means —
that I teach, and I go on to set out several possible causes
for the motions of the stars that could hold throughout the universe;
of which, nevertheless, one must be the cause in this case too,
the one that stirs the constellations into motion; but which of these it is,
it is by no means for one advancing step by step to lay down for certain.
And as for the earth resting in the mid-region of the world —
it is fitting that its weight should gradually vanish and diminish,
and that it should have a different nature beneath it,
joined from the very start of time and fitted as one
with the airy parts of the world, in which, embedded, it has its life.
For this reason it is no burden, and it does not weigh down the air,
just as a man's own limbs are no weight to him,
nor is the head a burden to the neck, nor, finally, do we feel
the whole weight of the body resting in the feet;
but whatever weights come from outside and are laid upon us
do hurt us, though often much smaller.
So much, indeed, does it matter what capacity each thing has.
So, then, the earth is not something foreign, suddenly
brought in and thrust upon breezes not its own, from elsewhere,
but was conceived equally from the very origin of the world,
and is a fixed part of it, just as our limbs seem to us a fixed part of ourselves.
Besides, when the earth is suddenly shaken by great thunder,
it shakes with its motion all the things that lie above it;
which it could not do by any means, unless it were
bound fast to the airy parts of the world and to the sky;
for they cling together by roots held in common,
joined from time's very beginning, and grown as one.
Do you not see, too, with how great a weight
the most subtle force of the soul sustains our body,
because it is so closely joined and fitted to it as one?
Finally, to lift the body with a swift leap —
what has the power to do this, except the force of the soul that governs the limbs?
Do you see now how much power a subtle nature
can have, when it is joined with a heavy body — as air
is joined to lands, and the force of mind is joined to us?
Nor can the sun's disk be much greater, nor its heat much less,
than it appears to be to our senses.
For from whatever distance fires can cast
their light, and breathe warm heat upon our limbs,
they lose nothing of their flame's substance across great intervals,
nor does the fire appear any smaller to the eye.
Accordingly, since the sun's heat and its outpoured light
reach our senses and the places they strike are bright,
its shape too, and its outline, must from this be seen truly,
so that you cannot truly add anything to it, more or less.
[reach our senses and the places they touch are bright]
And the moon, whether it moves, lighting up places with borrowed light,
or casts its own light from its own body,
whatever the case, it moves with a shape no greater
than it appears to be, as we perceive it with our eyes.
For, in fact, all things that we view from far off,
through a great stretch of air, appear blurred in outline
before their edge shrinks. So the moon, of necessity,
since it presents a clear appearance and a definite shape,
marked as it is at its outer edges, whatever
its true size, must appear to us from here, up in the sky, just that size.
Finally, whatever fires of the sky you see from here,
you may be sure they can be smaller by only the merest trifle,
or larger by some slight and brief amount.
since whatever fires we perceive on earth,
as long as their flicker and their bright glow can still be made out,
seem, at times, to change by some very small amount
in their outline, one way or the other, the further off they are.
Likewise this is not to be wondered at — by what means
that small sun can send out so much light
as, flooding all the seas and lands and sky,
to fill them and drench everything with its warm heat.
[however large it truly is, it should appear to us from here, up in the sky, just that large]
for it may be that here a single fountain, opened up
for the whole world, richly flowing, gushes and bursts out with light,
because in this way, from every part of the world, the elements of heat
gather together on every side, and thus their combined mass
flows together, so that from one single source this heat streams forth.
Do you not see too how widely a small spring of water
sometimes waters meadows, and floods out over the fields?
It is also possible that, from no great fire of the sun,
a blaze seizes the air with hot flarings,
if by chance the air is so ready and so suited,
that, once struck, it can be kindled by small sparks of heat —
just as sometimes we see crops and stubble
catch fire everywhere from a single spark.
Perhaps too the sun, shining high with its rosy lamp,
possesses much fire around itself in hidden blazes,
marked by no visible gleam,
heat-bearing, only to intensify the force of its rays.
Nor does one single, straightforward account of the sun lie open,
as to how, from the summer quarters, it comes round
to the winter turning-point of Capricorn, and, returning from there,
turns back toward the solstice-marks of Cancer,
and how the moon in its months seems to traverse that same span
in which the sun spends its yearly course.
Not, I say, is a single cause assigned for these things.
For it seems this could happen, foremost among the reasons,
as the revered opinion of the man Democritus sets forth:
the closer each star is to the earth,
the less it can be swept along with the whirling of the sky;
for the swift and keen forces of that whirl vanish
and grow weaker down below, and so the sun is left behind,
little by little, along with the constellations that follow it,
because it lies much lower than the blazing signs.
And this is still more true of the moon: the lower
its course lies, far from the sky, and the closer it draws to the earth,
the less it can keep pace with the constellations in its course.
And the more feebly it is carried by that weaker whirl,
being lower than the sun, by so much the more do all the constellations
overtake it and pass it by, wheeling around.
That is why it happens that the moon seems to return
to each sign more swiftly — because the signs come back around to it.
It happens too that, from the crosswise regions of the world, air currents,
flowing alternately, each in turn at a fixed time,
might thrust the sun away from the summer signs
as far as the wintry turning-points and cold rigor,
and might throw it back from the icy shadows of cold
all the way to the heat-bearing regions and the blazing signs.
And by a like reasoning it must be thought that the moon and the stars,
which trace out great years in their great orbits,
can move by currents of air alternating from different quarters.
Do you not see too that clouds, driven by opposing winds,
travel in opposite directions, the lower ones against the upper?
Why should those stars be any less able, through the great circuits of the sky,
to be carried along by currents that differ among themselves?
But night overwhelms the lands with a vast murk,
either when the sun, at the end of its long course, has reached the sky's furthest edge
and, grown weak, breathes out its fires,
shaken by the journey and worn down by so much air,
or because that same force compels it to turn its course beneath the earth
which carried its disc above the lands.
Likewise, at a fixed time, Matuta spreads the rosy
dawn along the shores of the sky and unfolds its light,
either because that same sun, returning beneath the earth,
gets there ahead of time, trying to kindle the sky with its rays,
or because fires and many seeds of heat
are accustomed to gather and flow together at a fixed time,
which cause the sun's light to be born ever anew;
just as, from the high mountains of Ida, so the story goes,
scattered fires are seen at the rising light of dawn,
which then gather together, as it were, into a single mass and form a disc.
Nor yet, in these matters, ought it to seem
wondrous that these seeds of fire can, at so fixed a time,
flow together and renew the sun's brightness.
For we see many things happen at a fixed time
in all matters. Trees blossom at a fixed time
and at a fixed time shed their blossom.
No less does age ordain that teeth fall out at a fixed
time, and that the beardless boy grow soft down on his cheeks,
and likewise let a soft beard hang down from his jaws.
Lastly, lightning, snow, rains, clouds, winds
do not occur at times of year that are wholly unpredictable.
For since the first beginnings of causes were shaped this way,
and things of the world fell out thus from their very first origin,
they now also return, linked together, in a fixed order.
Likewise it is possible to explain how the days grow and the nights waste away,
and the daylight hours diminish, as the nights gain in length,
either because that same sun, running beneath the earth and above it
by unequal arcs, divides the regions of the sky,
splitting its circuit into unequal parts,
and what it has subtracted from one side, it restores
on the opposite side, returning there by just that much more,
until it arrives at that point of the sky where the year's
turning-knot equalizes the shadows of night with the hours of light;
for midway between the blasts of the north wind and the south,
the sky marks off its turning-points with an equal division,
owing to the position of the whole sign-bearing circle,
in which the sun, moving slowly along, completes its yearly round,
lighting up lands and sky with its slanting rays,
as the reasoning of those makes clear, who have marked out
all the regions of the sky, adorned with their assigned constellations.
or because the air is thicker in certain regions,
and so beneath the earth the trembling gleam of fire falters
and cannot easily penetrate through and emerge to its rising;
for this reason, in the winter season, the long nights
linger, until the radiant beacon of day arrives.
Or else, because thus, in alternating parts of the year,
the fires are accustomed to gather together more slowly or more swiftly,
the fires that cause the sun to rise from a fixed quarter —
for this reason it comes about that they seem to speak the truth.
The moon can shine, struck by the sun's rays,
and, day by day, turn that light more toward us
in appearance, the further it withdraws from the sun's disc,
until it has shone fully with a full light directly opposite the sun,
and, as it rises, has looked down on the sun's setting from on high;
then, little by little, it must, as it were, draw its light back into hiding
as well, the closer it now glides
toward the sun's fire, from the other side of the zodiac, along its circuit —
as those hold who imagine the moon to be
like a ball, and to keep its course of travel beneath the sun.
There is also a reason why it might, with light of its own,
revolve and give back varying shapes of brightness;
for it is possible there is another body, which is carried along
and glides together with it, meeting it in every way and getting in its way,
and it cannot be seen, because it moves without any light of its own.
and it can revolve, as the globe of a ball would, if
it were tinged with gleaming light on one half,
and by that turning of the ball give off varying shapes,
until it turns whichever part is brightened with light,
to face our view and our open eyes;
then, little by little, it twists back and withdraws
the light-bearing part of that sphere, that ball;
as the Chaldean teaching of Babylon, in refuting the rival view,
strives in turn to disprove the astrologers' art —
as if that could not happen, the thing each side contends for,
or as if there were less reason to dare embrace this view than that one.
Finally, why should a new moon not always be created,
in a fixed order of shapes and with fixed forms,
and each one that has been created perish, day by separate day,
and another be renewed in its part and place,
it is hard to demonstrate by reasoning and prove convincingly in words,
when you see so many things created in so fixed an order.
Spring advances, and Venus, and Venus's herald,
winged, walks before her; close on the footsteps of Zephyr
comes mother Flora, strewing the way ahead of them, and
fills everything with splendid colors and scents.
Next in order follows parching Heat, and, his companion,
dusty Ceres, and the yearly blasts of the north winds.
Then Autumn arrives, and together with him walks Bacchus, crying "Euhoe."
Then other storms and winds follow,
the high-thundering Vulturnus, and the South wind, strong with its lightning.
At last Midwinter brings snows, and restores
the sluggish chill. Winter follows behind her, chattering with the teeth of frost.
So it is the less to be wondered at, if at a fixed time the moon
is born, and at a fixed time is destroyed again,
since so many things can happen at so fixed a time.
Likewise too the eclipses of the sun, and the moon's hidden withdrawals,
you must reckon can come about from several causes.
For why should the moon be able to cut off the earth from the sun's
light, and block the sun's high face from view for the lands,
throwing its dark disc in the way of the burning rays,
while at the same time some other body should be thought unable to do the same —
a body which always moves along devoid of light?
And why should the sun too, grown languid, not be able to let its fires die down
at a fixed time, and renew its light,
once it has passed through regions in the air hostile to its flames,
which cause its fires to be quenched and to die out?
And why should the earth, in turn, be able to rob the moon
of its light, and hold the sun, overwhelmed, above itself,
while, month by month, the moon glides through the rigid shadow of the cone,
while at the same time some other body could not slip beneath the moon,
or glide above the sun's disc,
breaking in between its rays and its outpoured light?
And yet, if the moon itself shines with its own brightness,
why should it not be able to grow faint in a certain region of the sky,
while it passes through regions hostile to its own light?
[while, month by month, it glides through the rigid shadow of the cone]
As for what remains: since, throughout the blue expanses of the great world,
I have shown by what means everything that happens could be explained,
so that we might come to know the varied courses of the sun and the moon's movements,
what force and what cause sets them going,
and in what way, their light blocked out, they might be eclipsed
and cover the unsuspecting lands with darkness,
when they, as it were, close their eyes shut, and then, their light open again,
look out upon all things, flooding every place bright with clear light —
now I return to the newness of the world, and to the soft young
fields of the earth — what, in its fresh fruitfulness, it first
raised up into the shores of light, and entrusted to the uncertain winds.
To begin with, the earth gave forth the race of grasses, and their green brightness,
around the hills and across all the plains,
the flowering meadows gleamed with a greening color,
and to the various trees was then given, up through the air,
a great contest of growth, with the reins let loose.
Just as feathers and hair and bristles are first produced
on the limbs of four-footed creatures and on the bodies of winged flyers,
so then the new earth first raised up
grasses and shrubs, and thereafter created the generations of mortal beings,
many of them, in many ways, arising by varied means.
For living creatures cannot have fallen down out of the sky,
nor can land creatures have come forth out of the salt lagoons.
It follows, then, that the earth has rightly won the name of mother,
since all things have been created out of the earth.
And even now many living creatures still arise out of the earth,
formed by rains and by the warm heat of the sun;
so it is the less to be wondered at, if more creatures arose then,
and larger ones, grown to maturity when earth and sky were new.
First the race of winged things and the various birds
hatched, leaving their eggs in the season of spring,
as now in summer the cicadas leave
their smooth husks of their own accord, seeking sustenance and life.
Then it was that the earth first gave forth mortal generations.
For much heat and moisture then abounded in the fields.
Wherever a suitable region of the place offered itself,
there grew up wombs, clinging to the earth by roots;
and when the ripe age of the infants had opened these,
fleeing moisture and seeking after the air,
nature there would turn the openings of the earth
and force it to pour out through opened veins a fluid
like milk, just as now every woman,
when she has given birth, is filled with sweet milk, because all
that rush of nourishment is turned toward her breasts.
The earth gave food to the children, the warmth clothing, the grass a bed
it offered, abundant with much soft down.
But the world's youth stirred up neither harsh frosts
nor excessive heats nor winds of great force.
For all things grow together equally and take on their strength.
Therefore again and again, having gained the name of mother,
the earth holds it deservedly, since she herself created the human
race and poured forth, at nearly one fixed time, every
animal that ranges wildly through the great mountains,
and at the same time the birds of the air in their varied forms.
But since she must have some limit to her bearing,
she ceased, as a woman wearied by long age.
For time changes the nature of the whole world,
and one condition must take over all things from another,
nor does anything remain like itself: all things migrate,
nature changes all things and compels them to turn.
For one thing rots away and grows feeble with age,
while another grows up and comes forth from contempt.
So thus time changes the nature of the whole
world, and one state takes the earth over from another,
what it could do before it cannot, what it could not do before it now can.
And then the earth also strove to create many
monstrous things, risen up with strange face and limbs —
the androgyne, between the two and neither, removed from both,
some deprived of feet, others in turn bereft of hands,
some found mute without a mouth, others blind without a face,
and some bound fast in every limb, clinging through the whole body,
unable to do anything or to move anywhere,
unable to avoid harm or take what use required.
Other monsters and prodigies of this kind she created,
in vain, since nature forbade their growth
and they could not reach the desired flower of youth
nor find food nor be joined in the works of Venus.
For we see that many things must come together
in order that creatures may forge onward by propagation;
first that there be nourishment, then that seeds be able
to flow through the limbs when the body's members are relaxed,
and that the female be able to be joined to the male, that each
have the means by which they exchange mutual joys between them.
And many generations of living things must then have perished
and been unable to forge offspring by propagation.
For whatever creatures you see feeding on the vital airs,
either cunning or courage or else swiftness
has kept that race safe from the beginning of its age.
And there are many that, by their usefulness to us,
remain commended, handed over to our protection.
First the fierce race of lions and their savage generations
courage has guarded, foxes their cunning, and stags their flight.
But the light-sleeping hearts of dogs with their faithful breast,
and every race born of beast-of-burden stock,
and the wool-bearing flocks together and the horned generations,
all these, Memmius, have been handed over to the protection of men;
for eagerly they fled wild beasts and followed peace
and won abundant food without labor of their own,
which we give them as rewards for the sake of their usefulness.
But those to whom nature gave none of these things, nor could
by their own accord live, nor give to us
any usefulness, for which we might suffer their
kind to be fed and kept safe under our protection —
these of course lay as prey and gain for others,
all of them entangled in their own fatal chains,
until nature reduced that race to destruction.
But Centaurs never existed, nor at any time
can there be such a thing, of double nature and twofold body,
compacted from limbs of different origin, with the power
of each part, from this side and that, sufficient to match the other.
One can grasp this, however dull-witted, from what follows.
First, when three years have gone briskly round,
the horse flowers in its prime, but not at all the boy; for often even now
he will seek in his sleep the milk-giving breast.
Later, when the horse's strong powers fail in decrepit age
and its limbs grow feeble as life ebbs away,
only then does youth, flowering in the boy's years,
come upon him and clothe his cheeks with soft down;
lest by chance you believe that Centaurs could be made
from man and the beast-of-burden stock of horses, nor that they exist,
or Scyllas, half-sea in body, girt about with savage
dogs, and other such things of this kind,
whose limbs we see at discord with one another;
for they neither flower together nor take on their strength
in their bodies at the same time, nor shed it in decrepit age,
nor burn with a like passion, nor agree in their ways,
nor are the same things pleasing throughout their limbs.
Indeed one may see bearded goats often grow fat
on hemlock, which for man is a sharp poison.
And since flame commonly sears and consumes the tawny
bodies of lions just as it burns every kind
of flesh and blood that exists anywhere on earth,
how could it be that, with a threefold body in one,
a lion in front, a serpent behind, itself in the middle, the Chimaera
could breathe fierce flame outward from its mouth?
So too whoever imagines that such creatures could be born
when the earth was new and the sky fresh,
relying on this one empty word "newness" alone,
may by the same reasoning babble much else from his mouth —
he may say that then golden rivers commonly
flowed over the lands and that trees regularly bloomed with jewels,
or that man was born with such vast reach of limb
that he could set his feet' stride across the deep seas
and turn the whole sky about him with his hands.
For though there were many seeds of things in the earth
at the time when the earth first poured forth living creatures,
that is still no sign that mixed creatures could have been created
among themselves, with the compacted limbs of living things,
because the kinds of grasses and grain crops and thriving
orchards which even now abound from the earth
still cannot be created intertwined with one another,
but each thing proceeds by its own way, and all
keep their distinctions by a fixed compact of nature.
And that human race in the fields was then far
harder, as befitted what the hard earth had created,
and built within on larger and more solid bones,
fastened through its flesh with strong sinews,
not easily seized by heat or by cold
or by strange food or any failing of the body.
And through many cycles of the sun's revolving round the sky
they dragged out life after the wandering manner of wild beasts.
Nor was there any sturdy guider of the curved plow,
nor did anyone know how to work the fields with iron
nor to plant new shoots in the earth, nor to lop
old branches from tall trees with pruning-hooks.
What the sun and rains had given, what the earth had created
of its own accord, that gift satisfied their hearts enough.
Among the acorn-bearing oaks they mostly nourished
their bodies; and what you now see in winter time
ripening to a deep red color, the arbutus,
the earth then bore in far greater abundance still.
And besides much else the flowering youth of the world then
bore as coarse food, ample for wretched mortals.
But rivers and springs called them to slake their thirst,
just as now the rush of water down from great mountains
calls far and wide to the thirsting generations of beasts.
Finally, as they wandered, they held the known woodland shrines
of the nymphs, from which they knew that gliding streams
washed the wet rocks with abundant flow,
wet rocks, dripping above with green moss,
and in part bubbled and burst forth over the level plain.
Nor yet did they know how to handle fire or to use
skins and to clothe their bodies with the spoils of beasts,
but dwelt in groves and hollow mountains and forests
and hid their filthy limbs among the bushes
when driven to avoid the lashings of the winds and rains.
Nor could they look to the common good, nor by any
customs among themselves did they know how to live, nor by any laws.
Whatever prize fortune had offered to each, he carried off,
each one taught by his own accord to thrive and live for himself.
And Venus joined the bodies of lovers in the woods;
for either mutual desire brought each woman together,
or the man's violent force and unchecked lust,
or a price — acorns and arbutus berries or choice pears.
And trusting in the marvelous strength of their hands and feet
they hunted down the woodland generations of wild beasts
with thrown stones and the club of great weight.
Many they overcame, a few they avoided by hiding;
and like bristly swine they gave their woodland limbs
naked to the earth by night when overtaken,
wrapping themselves round about with leaves and branches.
Nor did they, in great lament, seek the day and the sun
through the fields in fear, wandering in the shadows of night,
but silent they awaited, buried in sleep,
until the sun should bring its rosy torch-light to the sky.
For since from childhood they had always been used to seeing
darkness and light born in alternating turn,
it could never be that they should wonder at this
nor distrust that eternal night might hold
the lands forever, the sun's light forever withdrawn.
But this was rather their concern, that the generations of wild beasts
often made rest unsafe for the wretched.
And driven from their home they fled their rocky shelters
at the coming of the foam-mouthed boar and the mighty lion,
and in the dead of night, trembling, they yielded up,
to their savage guests, beds strewn with leaves.
Nor then, much more than now, did mortal generations
leave the sweet light of life with lamentation.
For then more often it was that some one of them, seized,
provided living food for beasts, devoured by their teeth,
and filled the groves and mountains and forests with his groaning
as he saw his living flesh entombed in a living tomb.
But those whom flight had saved with body gnawed,
afterward, holding their trembling palms over their foul wounds,
called upon Orcus with horrifying cries,
until savage writhing pains deprived them of life,
helpless, ignorant of what their wounds required.
But not many thousands of men, led beneath their standards,
did a single day give over to destruction, nor the storm-tossed
waters of the sea dash ships and men against the rocks.
For often the sea, having risen up in vain and to no purpose,
raged and lightly laid aside its empty threats,
nor could the smiling deceit of the calm sea,
treacherous, entice anyone into ruin with its laughing waves.
The wicked art of shipbuilding then lay unknown.
Then again a want of food gave over their failing
limbs to death, while now instead abundance of things overwhelms them.
They then, unwary, would often pour poison
upon themselves; now, more skillfully, they give it to others.
Thereafter, when they had gotten huts and skins and fire,
and woman joined to man withdrew into one dwelling
* * *
[these things] became known, and they saw offspring created from themselves,
then the human race first began to soften.
For fire brought it about that their chilled bodies
could no longer so easily bear the cold beneath the sky's covering,
and Venus lessened their strength, and children by their
endearments easily broke down the proud spirit of their parents.
Then too neighbors began, desiring it, to join
friendship among themselves, neither to harm nor be harmed,
and they commended to protection children and the race of women,
when with voice and gesture, stammering, they signified
that it was right that all should have pity on the weak.
And yet concord could not be brought about in every way,
but a good and great part kept their compacts faithfully;
or else the human race would even then have been wholly destroyed,
nor could its offspring have carried on the generations until now.
But nature drove them to send forth the varied sounds
of the tongue, and usefulness pressed out the names of things,
in no very different way from that in which infancy itself,
lacking speech, is seen to draw children on to gesture,
when it makes them point with a finger at what is present.
For each creature feels the power it has, to what use it may put it.
Before horns are grown upon a calf's brow,
in anger it butts with them and presses on in hostility.
But the cubs of panthers and the whelps of lions
fight already with claws and feet and biting,
even when teeth and claws are scarcely yet formed.
The whole race of birds, moreover, we see
trust in their wings and seek trembling aid from their feathers.
Therefore to suppose that someone back then distributed names
to things, and that from him men learned the first words,
is foolish. For why should this one man be able to mark all things
with words and utter the tongue's various sounds,
while at the same time others should be thought unable to do this?
Besides, if others too had not likewise used
words among themselves, where did the inborn knowledge of
usefulness come from, planted, and where did this man first get the power
to know what he wished to do and see it in his mind?
Likewise one man alone could not compel and subdue
the many, conquering them, so that they should wish to learn the names of things.
Nor is it easy to teach in any way and persuade the deaf
what needs to be done; for they would not endure it,
nor in any way would they let their ears bear any longer
the unheard sounds of a voice battering them in vain.
Finally, what is so very marvelous in this matter,
if the human race, whose voice and tongue were vigorous,
should mark different things by different sounds according to varied feeling?
Since dumb cattle, since even the generations of wild beasts
regularly raise different and varied cries,
when there is fear or pain, and again when joys well up.
Indeed one may learn this from things plainly evident.
When the great mouths of Molossian hounds, provoked,
their soft jaws first snarl, baring their hard teeth,
their bristling rage threatens in a far different sound
than when they are already barking and filling everything with their voices;
but when they try tenderly to lick their pups with their tongue,
or when they dandle them — powerful though they are in paw and bite —
mimic gentle bites with poised teeth,
they fawn in a whimper of voice, far different in kind,
and again when left alone they whine within the house, or when
they flee with body cowering from blows, whimpering.
Again, does not the neighing likewise seem to differ,
when among mares a young stallion in the flower of his age
rages, struck by the winged spurs of Love,
and gives forth a snorting from flared nostrils for the charge,
and when otherwise he neighs with limbs shaken in some other way?
Finally the race of winged things and various birds,
hawks and ospreys and gulls, seeking sustenance
and life amid the salt waves of the sea,
utter far different cries at different times,
both when they contend over food and struggle over prey.
And some change their harsh-sounding songs
along with the weather, as the ancient generations of crows
and flocks of ravens, when they are said to call for water and rain,
and sometimes to summon winds and gales.
Therefore if varied feelings compel animals,
mute though they are, to send forth varied cries,
how much more fitting was it that mortal men should then have been able
to mark one thing and another, different things, by different sounds!
Lest by chance you silently ask this in these matters —
it was lightning that first brought fire down to earth
for mortals; from it all the heat of flames is spread abroad.
For we see many things set ablaze, kindled by heavenly
fires, when the sky's stroke has bestowed its heat.
And yet too, when a branching tree, buffeted by winds and swaying,
sways and leans, pressing against the branches
of another tree, fire is squeezed out, rubbed forth by mighty
force, and at times the fervid heat of flame flashes out,
while branches and trunks rub against one another.
Either of these could have given fire to mortals.
Then the sun taught them to cook food and soften it
with the heat of flame, since they saw many things grown mellow,
subdued through the fields by the beating of its rays and its heat.
And day by day more and more, those who excelled in talent
and were vigorous in mind showed others how to change
their former food and life for new things and for fire.
Kings began to found cities and to place a citadel,
a stronghold and refuge for themselves,
and they divided cattle and lands and gave them out
according to each man's looks and strength and talent;
for looks counted for much, and strength was vigorous then.
Later property was invented, and gold discovered,
which easily stripped honor from the strong and the handsome;
for most men, however strong and however handsome
by birth, follow the party of whoever is richer.
But if a man should govern his life by true reason,
great riches for a man are to live sparingly
with a calm mind; for there is never a lack of a little.
But men wished to become famous and powerful,
so that their fortune might rest on a stable foundation
and, being wealthy, they might be able to lead a peaceful life —
in vain, since in struggling to rise to the summit of honor
they made the path of the way dangerous,
and yet even from the summit, envy, like a lightning bolt,
sometimes casts down those struck, scornfully, into foul Tartarus;
since envy, like lightning, most often sets ablaze
the summits and whatever is raised higher than the rest;
so that it is far better to obey in peace
than to wish to rule affairs with power and hold kingdoms.
Therefore let them sweat, wearied, to no purpose, and bleed
struggling along ambition's narrow path;
since they get their wisdom from another's mouth and seek
things from what they have heard rather than from their own senses,
nor is it any more so now, nor will it be soon, than it was before.
Therefore, once kings were slain, the ancient majesty
of thrones and proud scepters lay overthrown,
and the illustrious blood-stained emblem of the highest head
mourned its great honor beneath the feet of the crowd;
for what was too greatly feared before is trampled eagerly underfoot.
So the matter returned to the lowest dregs and to turmoil,
as each man sought command and supremacy for himself.
Then some taught how to create magistrates
and established laws, so that they might be willing to use statutes.
For the human race, worn out with living by violence,
lay weakened by feuds; the more readily did it
of its own accord submit to laws and strict statutes.
For since each man prepared to avenge himself
more fiercely out of anger than is now permitted under fair laws,
for this reason men grew weary of living by violence.
From this, fear of punishment taints the prizes of life.
For violence and wrong entangle whoever does them,
and generally return upon the one from whom they arose,
nor is it easy for one who violates by his deeds
the common compacts of peace to lead a calm and peaceful life.
For even though he deceives the race of gods and men,
still he ought to distrust that it will remain hidden forever;
since indeed many, often speaking in their sleep
or raving in sickness, are said to have betrayed themselves
and brought hidden wrongs and sins out into the open.
Now what cause spread the divine power of gods
through great nations, and filled cities with altars,
and prompted the undertaking of solemn rites,
which now flourish in great affairs and places,
which is why, even now, a dread has been planted in mortals
which raises new shrines of the gods over the whole world
and compels them to throng there on festival days —
it is not so difficult to render the reason for this in words.
For indeed even then the mortal generations used to see
in their waking mind the outstanding faces of gods,
and even more, in their sleep, marvelous in the growth of their bodies.
To these, then, they attributed feeling, because
they seemed to move their limbs and to send forth proud
words befitting their splendid appearance and their vast strength.
And they granted them eternal life, because their
appearance was always renewed and their form remained,
and yet still, altogether, they thought that beings furnished with such great
strength could not readily be overcome by any force.
And they thought them to excel greatly too in fortune,
because the fear of death would trouble none of them,
and also because in their sleep they saw them do many
marvelous things and take no toil from it themselves.
Besides they saw the courses of the sky turn
in a fixed order, and the varied seasons of the years,
nor could they discover by what causes this came about.
Therefore they took refuge in handing all things over
to the gods and making all things turn at their nod.
And they placed the seats and temples of the gods in the sky,
because night and moon are seen to roll through heaven,
moon, day and night, and night's stern constellations,
and the night-wandering torches of the sky and the flying flames,
clouds, sun, rains, snow, winds, lightning bolts, hail,
and the swift roarings and great mutterings of threats.
O unhappy race of men, when they attributed
such deeds to the gods and joined to them bitter wrath!
What groans they then brought upon themselves, what wounds
upon us, what tears for our descendants!
Nor is it piety to be seen often veiled, turning
toward a stone, and to approach every altar,
nor to lie prostrate on the ground and spread out one's palms
before the shrines of gods, nor to sprinkle altars
with much blood of four-footed beasts, nor to link vow to vow,
but rather to be able to view all things with a peaceful mind.
For when we look up at the heavenly regions of the great
world above, and the ether fixed with twinkling stars,
and the paths of the sun and moon come into our mind,
then, in hearts already weighed down by other ills, that
care too begins to lift its awakened head,
fearing that there may perhaps be some immense power of the gods
over us, which turns the bright stars in their varied motion;
for the lack of reasoning troubles the doubting mind,
whether there ever was a birth-origin of the world,
and likewise whether there is an end, to what point the ramparts
of the world can bear this labor of their unresting motion,
or whether, granted eternal welfare by divine gift,
they can, gliding on through the everlasting course of time,
defy the mighty powers of immeasurable age.
Besides, whose mind is not gripped by dread of the gods,
whose limbs do not shrink in fear,
when the scorched earth trembles beneath lightning's
dreadful stroke, and mutterings run through the great sky?
Do not peoples and nations tremble, and proud kings
shrink, their limbs struck with fear of the gods,
lest for some foully committed deed or arrogant word
the grave time of reckoning for punishment has drawn near?
When too the utmost force of a violent wind at sea
sweeps a fleet's commander over the waters
together with his strong legions and his elephants,
does he not seek the peace of the gods with vows and beg in prayer
for calm winds and favoring breezes, fearful?
In vain, since, caught still in the violent whirlwind,
he is carried none the less to the shoals of death.
So thoroughly does some hidden power grind down
human affairs and seem to trample underfoot
the splendid fasces and the cruel axes, making sport of them.
Finally, when the whole earth rocks beneath men's feet
and shaken cities fall, or totter uncertainly,
what wonder is it if mortal generations despise
themselves, and leave to the powers of the gods great
and marvelous force in affairs, believing them to govern all things?
As for what remains, bronze and gold and iron were discovered,
and at the same time the weight of silver and the might of lead,
when fire had burned down vast forests with its heat
upon great mountains, whether sent by lightning from the sky,
or because men, waging woodland war among themselves,
had brought fire upon their enemies for the sake of terror,
or because, drawn on by the goodness of the soil, they wished
to open up rich fields and turn the country into pasture,
or to kill wild beasts and grow rich on the spoil;
for hunting by pit and by fire arose before
the fencing of a glade with nets and the rousing of it with hounds.
Whatever it was, from whatever cause the flaming heat
had, with dreadful roar, eaten the forests away
from their very roots, and thoroughly scorched the earth with fire,
there flowed, through boiling veins, into the hollow places
of the earth a stream of silver and gold combining,
and likewise of bronze and lead. And when men saw these,
afterward, congealed and gleaming with bright color
on the ground, they picked them up, captivated by their bright and smooth charm,
and saw them shaped in a form similar to
the hollows that each had left as its mold.
Then it dawned on them that these, liquefied by heat, could
run into any shape and form of things at will,
and further that they could, by hammering, be drawn out
into any point, however sharp and thin, at the edges
of blades, so that they might fashion weapons for themselves and be able to cut
forests and hew timber and plane smooth beams
and bore and pierce and drill things through.
And they set about doing this no less with silver
and gold than with bronze at first, strong in violent force,
in vain, since their overpowered strength gave way
and they could not equally sustain the hard labor.
For bronze was then of higher value, and gold lay
useless, its edge blunted and dulled;
now bronze lies neglected, gold has risen to the highest honor.
So the rolling course of time changes the value of things.
What was once prized, in the end comes to be of no honor;
while another thing succeeds and comes forth from contempt,
and day by day is more sought after and flourishes,
discovered, and held among mortals in wondrous honor.
Now, Memmius, by what means the nature of iron
was discovered is easy for you yourself to learn.
The ancient weapons were hands, nails, and teeth,
and stones, and likewise branches broken from the forests,
and flame and fire, once these had first become known.
Later the power of iron and of bronze was discovered.
And the use of bronze was known before that of iron,
since its nature is more workable and its supply greater.
With bronze they worked the soil of the earth, and with bronze they stirred
the waves of war and sowed vast wounds,
and seized cattle and lands; for easily to them,
armed, all things gave way, being bare and unarmed.
Then little by little the iron sword advanced,
and the form of the bronze sickle turned into disgrace,
and with iron they began to cut into the soil of the earth,
and the contests of uncertain war were made equal.
And it was earlier that men mounted armed upon a horse's
ribs and guided it with reins and worked it with the right hand
than that they dared war's dangers with a two-horse chariot.
And the yoking of two horses came before the yoking of two pairs,
and before men mounted, armed, scythe-bearing chariots.
Then the Carthaginians taught towered Lucanian oxen,
with their snake-like hands and hideous bodies, to
endure the wounds of war and throw the great ranks of Mars into confusion.
So one thing bore another from grim discord,
a horror to the human peoples in arms,
and day by day added to the terrors of war.
They tried too to use bulls in the service of war,
and attempted to send savage boars against the enemy.
And some sent forth mighty lions in advance
with armed trainers and savage handlers,
who might be able to control and hold them with chains,
in vain, since, heated with the carnage all mixed together, the beasts,
savage, threw the ranks into confusion with no distinction,
shaking their terrifying crests of their heads on every side,
nor could the horsemen calm their horses' hearts,
terrified by the roaring, and turn them with the reins upon the enemy.
The lionesses, enraged, hurled their bodies in a leap
in all directions, and bared their faces at those coming against them
and tore down from behind men who never saw them coming,
those they had seized, and threw them wounded to the ground, overpowered,
fixed fast by strong bites and hooked claws.
And the bulls tossed their own allies and trampled them underfoot
and gored the flanks and bellies of the horses from beneath
with their horns, and, threatening in mind, ripped up the ground.
And the boars slashed their allies with strong tusks,
savage, staining, broken, their own weapons with their blood,
[staining, broken, their own weapons with their blood in turn,]
and dealt mingled destruction of horsemen and footmen alike.
For horses swerved sideways to escape the fierce
thrust of teeth, or, reared up, struck at the air with their feet,
in vain, since, hamstrung, you would see them
fall and cover the ground with a heavy collapse.
If any they thought sufficiently tamed at home before,
they saw them break out in the doing of the deed,
with wounds, uproar, flight, terror, tumult,
nor could they lead back any part of them;
for every varied kind of beast scattered in flight,
as now often Lucanian oxen, badly mangled by iron,
scatter in flight, once they have dealt much havoc upon their own side.
But they did not so much wish to do this in hope of victory,
as to give their enemies cause to groan, though they themselves might perish,
they who distrusted their numbers and lacked arms.
If this indeed happened as they intended. But I am scarcely persuaded that they
could not have foreseen and perceived beforehand in their mind
how foul and common a disaster it would become.
And you may more readily maintain this to have happened in every
case among the various worlds created by various means,
than in any one fixed circle of lands whatsoever.
Plaited clothing came before woven covering.
Woven cloth came after iron, since with iron the loom is made,
nor by any other means can such delicate things be produced,
heddles and spindle, shuttle, and sounding reeds.
And nature compelled men to work wool
before the female sex did; for by far the male
sex excels in skill and is much more expert in every craft,
until stern farmers found fault with it,
wishing to hand it over to be done by women's hands
and themselves equally to endure the hard labor
and in hard toil to harden their limbs and hands.
But nature herself, the creator of things, was the very
model and origin of sowing and grafting,
since berries and falling acorns from trees
gave forth, in season, swarms of seedlings beneath;
which is why grafting shoots onto branches also became appealing,
and plant new saplings in the earth throughout the fields.
Then they tried one kind of cultivation after another for the sweet
little plot, and saw the wild fruits grow mild
in the earth through coaxing and gentle tending.
And day by day they forced the forests more
to retreat up the mountain and yield the lower ground to cultivation,
so that they might have on hills and plains meadows, lakes,
streams, crops, and thriving vineyards, and that a belt
of gray-green olive might be able to run threading through,
spread out over hills and valleys and plains;
as now you see all things marked out with varied charm,
which men adorn, interplanted with sweet fruit trees,
and enclose all around, planted thick with fruitful orchards.
But to imitate the liquid voices of birds with the mouth
came long before men could, in tuneful song, celebrate
smooth melodies and delight the ears.
And the whistling of the zephyrs through the hollows of reeds first
taught countrymen to blow into hollow hemlock-stalks.
Then little by little they learned the sweet lament
which the pipe pours out, struck by the fingers of players,
discovered through pathless groves and forests and glades,
through the deserted haunts of shepherds and their divine leisure.
[thus each single thing, little by little, time draws forth
into the open, and reason brings up into the shores of light.]
These things soothed their spirits and delighted them
when sated with food; for then all such things are welcome.
So often, lying together on the soft grass
beside a stream of water, beneath the branches of a tall tree,
with no great wealth they kept their bodies pleasantly,
especially when the weather smiled and the seasons
of the year painted the greening grass with flowers.
Then were jesting, then talk, then sweet laughter
used to arise; for then the rustic muse was in its prime.
Then playful merriment moved them to wreathe head and shoulders
with flowers and leaves, playfulness stirred them,
and to advance their limbs out of rhythm, moving them
clumsily, and to strike mother earth with a clumsy foot;
from which arose laughter and sweet peals of merriment,
because all these things, being new, were then the more marvelous and vigorous.
And from this, for those who lay awake, there were comforts
in drawing out voices in many modes and bending them into song
and running with curved lip over the reed-pipes;
which is why, even now, people awake at night keep this practice going.
And they learned to keep rhythm, yet in the meantime they gain
no greater delight or fruit from it
than the woodland race of earth-born men used to gain.
For what is at hand, unless we have known before
something sweeter, pleases most and seems to prevail,
and a later thing found, generally better, often
ruins and changes our feeling toward everything that came before.
So hatred of the acorn began, so those beds
strewn with grass and heaped with leaves were abandoned;
likewise the garment of animal hide, once scorned, fell out of use;
which I imagine was discovered amid such envy
that whoever first wore it met death by ambush,
and yet, torn apart among the envious with much blood,
it was destroyed and they could not turn it to use.
Then, therefore, it was hides, now it is gold and purple that
vex the life of men with cares and wear it out with war;
wherefore, I think, the greater blame rests with us.
For cold tormented the earth-born men, naked, without
hides; but it harms us not at all to go without
purple clothing fitted with great emblems and gold,
provided only there be some plain garment to keep off the cold.
Therefore the human race labors always in vain and to no
purpose, and wastes its life in empty cares,
doubtless because it has not learned what the limit of possession
is, and how far true pleasure can grow at all;
and this, little by little, has carried life out into the deep
and stirred up from the depths the great tides of war.
But the watchful sun and moon, circling round
the great revolving temple of the world with their light,
taught men thoroughly that the seasons of the years turn
and that the affair is carried on by a fixed method and a fixed order.
Already they were passing their lives fenced by strong towers,
and the land was divided and tilled in separate portions,
then the sea flourished with sail-winged ships,
they already had allies and confederates by settled treaty,
when poets began to hand down deeds done
in verses; nor were letters discovered much before this.
For this reason our age cannot look back to see what
was done earlier, except where reasoning points out the traces.
Ships, and the cultivation of fields, walls, laws,
weapons, roads, clothing, and other things of this kind,
the prizes and pleasures of life, all of them entirely,
songs, paintings, and finely made, polished statues,
practice and, together with it, the experience of the tireless mind
taught men little by little, as they advanced step by step.
So each single thing, little by little, time draws forth
into the open, and reason raises it up into the shores of light;
for they saw one thing grow clear from another in their minds,
until by their arts they came to the very peak.

======== Book VI — Weather, Plague, and the Ends of Things ========

First, to sick mortals, fruit-bearing crops
did Athens, of glorious name, once distribute,
and restored life, and laid down laws,
and first gave life's sweet consolations,
when she bore a man found with such a heart
that he once poured out everything from a truth-telling mouth;
and his glory, though he is gone, because of his divine discoveries,
spread long ago, is carried now to the sky.
For when this man saw that whatever use demands
for living was by now almost all prepared for mortals,
and that, as far as they could manage, their life stood secure,
that men flowed with wealth and were powerful
in honor and praise, and excelled in their sons' good name,
and yet that none the less each still had an anxious heart at home,
and that their mind, against its will, harassed their life without
a pause, and was forced to rage with hostile complaints,
he understood then that the vessel itself was the flaw,
and that everything was spoiled within it by that flaw,
whatever good things came to it, gathered from outside;
partly because he saw it was leaking and full of holes,
so that by no means could it ever be filled,
partly because it seemed, with a foul taste as it were, to foul
everything it had taken in, within.
With truth-telling words, then, he purged our hearts
and set a limit to craving and to fear,
and set out what the highest good was, toward which
we all strive, and showed the way, by a narrow path,
along which we could press toward it on a straight course,
and what evil there was, scattered everywhere in mortal affairs,
arising by nature and flying about in various forms,
whether by chance or by force — since nature had so prepared it —
and by which gates it was fitting to meet each one;
and he showed that the human race for the most part vainly
rolls sad waves of care in its breast.
For just as children tremble and fear everything in blind
darkness, so we, in the light, are afraid
at times of things no more to be feared than
what children shudder at in the dark, and imagine will come.
This terror of the mind, then, and these shadows, must
be dispelled not by the sun's rays nor day's bright shafts,
but by the aspect and reasoned account of nature.
So I will press on the more to weave through what I have begun, in words.
And since I have taught that the world's precincts are mortal
and that the sky consists of a body that was born,
and that whatever happens in it, and must happen,
mostly dissolves again, hear now what remains further,
since once I have mounted the glorious chariot —
* * *
guide me to the bright markers set along the final track
as I run the course, show the way ahead, skillful Muse,
Calliope, rest of mortals and delight of gods,
that with you as my guide I may win the crown with high praise.
* * *
of winds arise, so that all things may again be calmed,
* * *
whatever they were, may be turned, their fury appeased.
The other things which mortals see happen on earth
and in the sky, when their minds often hang in fear
and dread of the gods makes their spirits low
and presses them down to the ground — because
ignorance of causes forces them to hand over
to the gods the power over things, and to grant them dominion —
[of whose workings they can by no reasoning see the causes,
and think they happen by divine will] —
for even those who have learned well that the gods lead a carefree life,
if all the same, meanwhile, they wonder by what means
each thing can be brought about, especially in those matters
which are seen above our heads in the regions of the upper air,
are carried back again into the old ways
of religion, and take on harsh masters, believing in their misery
that these can do all things, not knowing what can be
and what cannot — in short, by what reasoning each power
has a fixed limit and a deep-set boundary —
so that, wandering, they are carried the more by blind reasoning.
Unless you spit these notions from your mind and cast them far off,
as unworthy of the gods and foreign to their peace,
the sacred powers of the gods, diminished by you yourself, for you
will often do harm — not because the supreme force of the gods
can be violated, so that it should conceive a wish, out of anger, to seek harsh punishment,
but because you yourself will imagine that beings at rest in placid peace
roll great waves of wrath,
and you will not approach the shrines of the gods with a peaceful heart,
nor will you be able to receive, with your mind at tranquil peace,
the images that are carried from their sacred body into the minds of men,
messengers of divine form —
from this one may see what sort of life then follows.
And indeed, though much has already gone forth from me,
so that the truest reasoning may drive this far from us,
much still remains, and must be adorned with polished
verses; there is an account of the heavens to be grasped,
storms and bright lightning-bolts to be sung,
what they do and for what cause each is carried along —
so that you not tremble, out of your senses, at the sky's divided regions,
wondering from where the flying fire has come, or to which
side it has turned from here, or how, through walled-in places,
it has crept in, and how from there it has raised its dominance up.
[of whose workings they can by no reasoning see the causes,
and think they happen by divine will.]
First, the blue vault of the sky is shaken by thunder
because clouds flying high aloft
in the upper air clash, with winds fighting against each other.
For no sound comes from a clear part of the sky;
but wherever the clouds are massed in a denser train,
the more often, from there, a roaring rises with a great rumble.
Besides, clouds cannot have a body packed
as densely as stones and timber are, nor yet
as thin as mists and flying smoke;
for either, pressed down by dead weight, they would have to fall
like stones, or, like smoke, they would be unable to hold together
or to hold in cold snows and showers of hail.
They also give off a sound over the open plains of the world,
as canvas, once stretched taut over great theaters,
gives a crackling sound, tossed among the masts and beams,
and at times, torn through, rages under insolent breezes
and mimics the fragile sound of sheets of paper.
You can recognize that kind of sound in thunder too,
or when hung cloth and flying sheets of paper
the wind's blows toss and flap through the air.
For it happens too, at times, that clouds do not so much collide
front against front, as pass by sideways,
grazing bodies in a drawn-out motion, with opposing movement —
which is why that dry sound scrapes the ear, and for a long time
is drawn out, until they have emerged from the narrow region.
In this way too, all things often seem, shaken by thunder,
to tremble heavily and, suddenly torn apart,
the vast walls of the spacious world seem to have burst asunder,
when suddenly a gathered blast of strong wind
has twisted itself into the clouds and, shut in there,
with a whirling eddy forces the cloud, more and more from every side,
to become hollow, with a thick body all around;
afterward, when its force and its sharp onrush have broken it up,
then, torn apart, it gives out a crash with a terrifying, crackling sound.
Nor is it strange, since a small bladder full of air
often, when suddenly burst, gives out no small sound.
There is also this account: that when winds blow through clouds
they make sounds; for indeed we see clouds
often carried along in many shapes, branching and rough,
just as, when the blasts of the northwest wind
blow through a dense forest, the leaves give a sound and the branches a crash.
It happens too, at times, that the roused force of a strong wind
tears a cloud apart, breaking through it with a straight onrush;
for what a blast can do there, a plain fact shows —
here, where it is milder, yet on earth it still
uproots tall trees, tearing them up from their deepest roots.
There are also waves moving through the clouds, which give out
a heavy murmur as they break — and the same happens on deep
rivers and the great sea, when the swell breaks.
It happens too, when the burning force of the lightning-bolt
of the lightning; and if this cloud, amid much moisture, has received
it slaughters the fire at once with a great roar,
just as glowing iron, taken from hot furnaces,
hisses, when we have plunged it nearby into cold water.
Further, if a drier cloud takes in the fire,
it burns, suddenly kindled, with a huge sound,
as if a flame were roaming through laurel-crowned mountains,
burning them with a great onrush in a whirlwind of winds;
and nothing burns with a more terrible crackling sound in flame
than Phoebus's Delphic laurel.
Finally, often a great crash of frost, and the collapse
of hail, gives a sound high up in the great clouds;
for when the wind packs them tightly, the massed
mountains of storm-cloud, mixed with hail, are broken up close.
It also flashes with lightning, when clouds have struck out
many seeds of fire by their collision, as if one stone
were to strike another, or iron; for then too light
leaps out, and the fire scatters bright sparks.
But it happens that we take in the thunder with our ears after
our eyes see the flash, because things that set the sight in motion always reach the ears
more slowly than they reach the sight.
One can recognize this from this too: if, far off, you see someone
felling the growth of a tree with a two-edged axe,
it happens that you see the blow before the stroke gives its sound
through the ears; so too we see the flash before
we hear the thunder, which is sent out along with the fire,
equally, from a similar cause, born of the same collision.
In this way too, clouds tinge places with swift light,
and the storm flashes with a quivering onrush,
when wind has invaded a cloud and, whirling there in the same place,
has made the cloud, as I taught before, thicken into a hollow shape;
it grows hot by its own motion — just as you see all things
grow hot through and blaze when heated by motion, and a leaden
sling-bullet even melts, spun along a long course.
So this heated force, when it has torn the black cloud apart,
scatters the seeds of heat, squeezed out suddenly as if by force,
which make the flickering flashes of flame;
then the sound follows, which reaches the ears more slowly
than what arrives at the light of our eyes.
This happens, clearly, with dense clouds, and at the same time built up high,
piled one upon another with a strange force.
Do not let it deceive you that from below we see
rather how broad they are than how far up they are piled.
For observe: when winds carry clouds that look like mountains
crosswise through the air,
or when you will see them heaped up along great mountains,
one mass above another, and pressing down from on high,
set in place at rest, with winds buried all around —
then you will be able to recognize their great masses
and, as it were, caverns built of overhanging rocks,
to see, which, when a storm has arisen, the winds
have filled, and, shut in, rage with a great rumbling.
in the clouds and the caverns, they threaten like wild beasts,
now from here, now from there, sending roars through the clouds,
and, seeking a way out, they whirl around, and gather
seeds of fire from the clouds, and so force
many together, and roll flame within hollow furnaces,
until, torn apart, they flash out flickering from the cloud.
This is also the cause why that swift
gold-colored liquid fire flies down to earth:
because the clouds themselves must have very many
seeds of fire; for indeed, when they are without any moisture,
their color is mostly flame-hued and bright to look at.
For indeed they must take in much
from the light of the sun, so that they rightly redden and pour out fires.
So when the wind, driving these, has forced them together
and compressed the space, pressing them in, they pour out, squeezed,
the seeds that make the flame's flashing colors.
It also flashes with lightning when the clouds of the sky grow thin;
for when the wind gently draws them apart as they go
and dissolves them, those seeds that make the flash
must fall out reluctantly; then, without foul
terror or sound, it flashes, with no uproar.
For the rest, the nature that thunderbolts are endowed with,
what it consists of, is declared by their blows, and the burnt-in
marks of vapor, and the signs of heavy breath of reeking sulfur;
for these are signs of fire, not of wind or of rain.
Besides, they often set the roofs of houses ablaze
and master the buildings themselves with swift flame.
This subtle fire, beyond ordinary fires,
nature has made from minute and mobile
particles, so that absolutely nothing can stand against it.
For the powerful lightning-bolt passes through the walls of houses
as a shout or voices do; it passes through rocks, through bronze,
and in an instant of time makes bronze and gold liquid.
It also makes wine suddenly vanish from unbroken vessels,
since, no doubt, the heat as it arrives, and, having crept in,
easily loosens everything around and makes the sides
of the vessel porous, and, entering into the wine itself,
nimbly dissolves and scatters its first-particles.
The sun's warmth seems unable to bring this about
even in a whole age, though it is so powerful with its flashing heat.
So much more mobile and dominating is this force.
Now, in what way lightning-bolts are generated, and with such force
that they can burst towers with their blow,
tear apart houses and wrench off beams and timbers,
dislodge and shake loose men's monuments,
kill men, and lay flocks low far and wide,
and all the rest of this kind, by what force they can do it —
I will explain, and not detain you longer over my promises.
We must think lightning-bolts are born from clouds packed thick
and piled high; for none are ever sent from a clear sky,
nor from lightly massed clouds.
For beyond doubt, a plain fact shows this happens so;
for then clouds thicken through the whole air,
so that on every side we would think all the darkness of Acheron
had left it and filled the great caverns of the sky,
so utterly does the foul night of storm-clouds, once risen,
hang overhead with the face of black dread,
when the storm begins to forge its lightning-bolts.
Besides, very often too a black storm-cloud out over the sea,
like a river of pitch let down from the sky, so falls
into the waves, borne along, dark, from far off, and drags
a storm heavy with lightning-bolts and squalls,
itself first filled with fires and winds,
so that even on land men shudder and seek shelter.
So we must think that the storm above our heads
is likewise deep; for such darkness could not
overwhelm the lands, unless many clouds were built up
on high, one on another, with the sun shut out;
nor could they, coming on, overwhelm with so great a downpour
as to make rivers flood and fields swim,
if the sky were not built up high with clouds.
Here, then, everything is full of winds and fires;
that is why roarings and lightning happen everywhere.
For indeed I have taught above that hollow clouds
have very many seeds of heat, and must
take in much from the sun's rays and their warmth.
So when this same wind that forces them into one
place, wherever it may be, has squeezed out much of the seed
of heat, and has mixed itself at the same time with that fire,
a whirlwind, having wormed its way in, spins in the narrow space
and sharpens the lightning-bolt within hot furnaces;
for it is kindled by a twofold cause: by its own
motion it grows hot, and by contact with fire.
Then, when the force of the wind has grown thoroughly hot, and the heavy
onset of fire has come on, the lightning, now ripe as it were,
suddenly splits the cloud, and the fire, roused, flies out,
lighting up every place with its flashing brightness.
A heavy sound follows it, so that the precincts of the sky
seem suddenly burst and to crash down from above.
Then a tremor shakes the earth heavily, and rumblings
run across the deep sky; for almost the whole
storm then, shaken, trembles, and roarings are stirred.
From this shaking follows a heavy, drenching rain,
so that the whole sky seems turned into a downpour
and, rushing headlong, seems to call things back to a flood.
So great a sound is sent forth by the cloud's rending
and the wind's squall, when it flies out with a burning blow.
There is also the case when a force of wind, roused from outside,
falls upon a cloud grown strong, with its top now ripe;
and when it has split it, at once that fiery
whirl falls, which we call by our native name, the lightning-bolt.
The same thing happens in other quarters, wherever the force is carried.
It also happens at times that a gust of wind sent without fire
catches fire nonetheless over a long stretch and course,
as it comes, losing along its way certain
large bodies, which cannot penetrate the air together,
and carrying along, scraped from the air itself, other
tiny ones, which, mixed in as it flies, make fire —
by much the same account as a leaden sling-bullet
often grows hot in its course, when it has let go many bodies
of cold and taken up fire from the air.
It happens too that the force of the blow itself rouses the fire,
when the cold force of a wind, sent without fire, has struck,
no doubt because, when it has struck with a violent blow,
elements of heat can flow together out of it,
and at the same time out of that thing which then receives the blow;
just as, when we strike stone with iron, fire flies out,
and, though the force of the iron is cold, none the less
seeds of hot brightness rush together at the blow.
So too, then, a thing must be kindled by lightning,
if it happened to be a fitting and suitable match for flame.
Nor can the force of wind be altogether and simply
cold, when it is sent down from above with such great force,
but that, if it is not kindled with fire on its way,
it still arrives at least warmed, mixed with heat.
The lightning's mobility, moreover, and its heavy blow,
and the swift gliding course lightning-bolts generally run,
come about because the force itself, roused within the clouds,
first gathers itself and takes a great effort of motion;
then, when the cloud could not contain the increase of its onrush,
the force is squeezed out and so flies with a strange onrush,
like things sent flying from powerful engines of war.
Add that it is made of small and light
elements, and nothing can easily withstand a nature of that kind;
for it slips and penetrates between the narrow gaps of paths,
and so it does not stick fast, delayed by many obstructions,
and for this reason it flies gliding with a swift onrush.
Then, since by nature all weights altogether
strain downward, when a blow is added to that natural weight,
its mobility is doubled and its force grows heavier,
so that it scatters, with more violence and speed, whatever
stands in its way, with its blows, and pursues its course.
Finally, because it comes with a long-driven onrush, it must
take on mobility again and again, which grows as it goes
and increases its strong powers and reinforces the blow;
for it makes whatever seeds belong to it,
from all around, be carried as it were into one place,
throwing them all together into that rolling course.
Perhaps, coming on, it drags from the air itself certain
bodies, which by their blows kindle its mobility.
And it comes through things unharmed, and passes through many
whole, since the liquid fire slips through their pores;
and it shatters much, when the bodies of the lightning itself
have struck the bodies of things, at the point where their web is held together.
Further, it easily dissolves bronze, and makes gold
melt at once, since its force is made of small,
fine bodies and of light elements,
which easily work their way in, and having worked their way in suddenly
dissolve every knot and loosen every bond.
In autumn above all, the high house of the sky, bright with stars,
house of the sky is shaken on every side, and the whole earth,
and when the flowering season of spring unfolds itself.
For in cold, fires are lacking, and winds fail
in heat, nor are the clouds of so dense a body.
So when the seasons of the sky stand between the two extremes,
then all the various causes of lightning come together.
For the very joint of the year mixes cold with heat,
and both of these are needed for a cloud to forge lightning,
so that there is discord among things, and with great tumult
the raging air surges with fires and winds.
so that there is discord among things, and with great tumult
the raging air surges with fires and winds.
For the first part of heat is the last part of cold;
that is the season of spring; and so unlike things must
fight among themselves, and, mixed, be thrown into confusion.
And when the last heat, mixed with the first cold,
rolls round — the season that is called by the name of autumn —
here too the fierce winters clash with the summers.
That is why these are to be called the straits of the year;
and it is no wonder if at that season very many
lightning-bolts occur, and turbulent storms are stirred in the sky,
since it is disturbed on both sides by a two-edged war,
on one side with flames, on the other with winds mixed with wet.
This is truly to see through the nature of fire-bearing
lightning itself, and to see by what force it does each thing —
not, unrolling Etruscan chants in vain, backward,
to search out signs of the hidden mind of the gods,
wondering from where the flying fire has come, or to which
side it has turned from here, or how, through walled-in places,
it has crept in, and how from there it has raised its dominance up,
or what harm the lightning-bolt's stroke can do, sent from the sky.
But if Jupiter and the other shining gods
shake the heavenly precincts with a terrifying sound
and hurl fire wherever any one of them wishes,
why do they not strike those whose guilt is reckless and detestable,
so that, pierced, they breathe out the flames of the lightning-bolt
from a transfixed chest, a sharp lesson for mortals,
while instead one who is conscious in himself of no shameful deed
is rolled, innocent, in flames, and caught entangled,
seized suddenly by the heavenly whirlwind and its fire?
Why also do they aim at empty places, and toil in vain?
Is it then that they are practicing their arms and strengthening their muscles?
And why do they let their father's weapon be blunted
against the ground? Why does he himself allow it, and not spare it for his enemies?
Finally, why does Jupiter never hurl his lightning
and pour out its sounds over the earth when the whole sky is clear?
Is it that as soon as clouds have come up, he then
descends into them himself, so as to fix the aim of his weapon's blow close at hand?
And by what plan does he send it into the sea? What fault
does he find with the waves, and the liquid mass, and the swimming plains?
Besides, if he wants us to guard against the lightning's stroke,
why does he hesitate to let us see it sent?
But if instead he wants to catch us unaware with his fire,
why does he thunder from that direction, so that we can avoid it,
why does he first stir up darkness and roarings and rumblings?
And how could you believe he sends it at the same time
into many quarters? Or would you ever dare to claim
that this never happens, that blows fall at one and the same moment in several places?
But it has often happened, and must happen,
just as it rains and showers fall in many regions at once,
so lightning-bolts too are made many at one time.
Finally, why does he shatter the sacred shrines of the gods
and his own splendid seats with a hostile bolt,
and break the well-made images of the gods, and strip
his own likenesses of their honor with a violent wound?
And why does he mostly aim for high places, and why do we see
most traces of his fire on mountain-tops?
For the rest, it is easy from these facts to learn
the manner in which the things the Greeks, from the fact, named "presteres,"
come down, sent from above, into the sea.
For it happens sometimes that, as if a column let down,
something descends from the sky into the sea, around which the straits
seethe heavily, whipped up by blowing gusts,
and whatever ships are caught in that turmoil then
come into the utmost danger, tossed about.
This happens when at times the roused force of a wind
cannot break the cloud it has begun to attack, but presses it down, so that it becomes
like a column let down from the sky into the sea,
gradually, as if something were thrust down and stretched out into the waves
by a blow of fist and arm from above;
and when it has split this apart, from here the wind's force
bursts out into the sea, and stirs up a strange seething in the waves;
for the whirling eddy descends and draws that cloud
down together with it, with its slow-moving mass;
and as soon as it has forced this, grown heavy, down to the sea's surface,
it plunges itself whole and sudden into the water, and makes
the whole sea seethe, stirring it with a huge roar.
It also happens that a whirlwind wraps itself in clouds,
scraping up seeds of cloud from the air,
and imitates, as it were, a "prester" let down from the sky;
when this has let itself down to the earth and dissolved,
it spews out the whirlwind's monstrous force, and of a squall.
But since this happens altogether rarely, and mountains must
stand in its way on land, it appears more often
in the wide view of the sea and the open sky.
Clouds thicken when many bodies, flying about,
have suddenly come together here, in the space of the sky,
rougher ones, able in some way, tangled together,
to be held pressed together among themselves though small.
These first make small clouds stand together;
then these gather among themselves and flock together,
and by joining grow, and are carried by the winds
until a fierce storm has risen up.
It also happens that the closer the peaks of mountains
are to the sky, the more, the higher they stand, they smoke
continually with a thick haze of tawny cloud,
because, when clouds first form,
before the eyes can see them thin, the winds
carry them and force them to the mountains' highest peaks;
then at last it happens that, once a greater mass has gathered,
and thickened, they can appear, and at the same time from the very
peak of the mountain seem to rise into the upper air.
For plain fact and feeling show that windy places lie open
above, when we climb high mountains.
Besides, that nature lifts up very many bodies
from the whole sea, clothes hung on the shore make plain,
when they take on a clinging dampness.
So the more it seems that much can rise too
from the salt swell of the sea, to swell the clouds;
for all moisture is of one kindred nature.
Besides, from all rivers, and from the earth itself, we see
mists and vapor rising,
which, like a breath pressed out, are carried upward from here
and cover the sky with their haze, and gradually, by coming
together, build up high clouds;
for the heat of the starry sky above presses down too,
and, as it were by thickening, weaves an undercoat of cloud into the blue.
It also happens that those bodies come into the sky from outside
which make the flying clouds and storm-clouds;
for I have taught that their number is beyond counting,
and the sum of the deep is infinite, and I have shown
with what great mobility such bodies fly,
and how suddenly they are apt to cross an unspeakable
distance. So it is no wonder if, in a short time, often
with such great winds a storm and darkness
cover seas and lands, pressing down from above,
since on every side, through all the pores of the upper air,
and as it were through the breathing-holes around the great world,
an outlet and an inlet is granted for these elements.
Now come, in what way rainy moisture gathers
in high clouds, and, sent down to earth as a shower,
falls — I will explain. First, I will show that many seeds
of water rise up together with the clouds themselves,
out of everything, and that both grow together at the same rate,
both the cloud and the water that is in the clouds,
just as our body grows together with our blood,
and sweat too, and whatever moisture is in our limbs at all.
They also often take in much moisture of the sea,
like hanging fleeces of wool,
when winds carry the clouds above the great sea.
By a like reasoning, moisture is lifted from all
rivers into the clouds. And when the seeds of water
have gathered well from everywhere, added in many ways,
the crowded clouds compete to send out moisture
in two ways: for the force of the wind presses it,
and the mass of storm-cloud itself, gathered into a greater crowd,
bears down from above and forces the showers to flow out.
Besides, when the clouds are thinned by winds too,
or are dissolved, struck from above by the sun's heat,
they send out rainy moisture and drip, as when wax
above a warm fire melts away in quantity.
But a violent downpour comes when the heaped-up clouds
are pressed hard by both forces, their own weight and the wind's onrush.
But rains are used to holding back a long time and delaying,
when many seeds of water are stirred up,
and clouds and storm-clouds, one after another, dripping,
are carried on, above and from every part at large,
and the whole steaming earth breathes back its moisture.
Here, when the sun with its rays, amid the dark storm,
has struck opposite against the storm-cloud's spray, facing it,
then the color of the rainbow arises in the black clouds.
As for the rest, that grow upward and are made upward,
and that thicken in the clouds, all of it, altogether,
all of it — snow, wind, hail, and cold frosts,
and the great force of frost, the hard binding of waters,
and the delay that everywhere checks rivers as they rush on —
it is quite easy, all the same, to find and see in the mind
how all of it comes about and for what reason it is made,
once you have well understood what belongs to the elements.
Now come, learn what account there is
for earthquakes. And first, take it that the earth is
full of windy caverns, both below and above alike,
and bears within its lap many lakes and many pools
and cliffs and broken rocks;
and we must think that under the earth's back many rivers, hidden,
roll their sunken waves with force;
for fact itself demands that the earth be like itself throughout.
With these things, then, set beneath and underlying it,
the earth trembles above, shaken by great collapses,
when time has undermined vast caverns below.
Indeed whole mountains fall, and suddenly, with a great
collapse, tremors spread widely from there.
And rightly so, since whole houses beside the road tremble,
shaken by wagons of no great weight,
and no less do they leap up, if anything along the road
jolts the iron rims of the wheels on either side.
It also happens, when a huge clod, worn loose by age,
rolls down from the land into the vast, watery pools,
that the earth too, tottering, is tossed by the wave's swell of water,
just as a vessel among liquids cannot stand still, unless the water
has stopped being tossed about within by its uncertain swell.
Besides, when wind, gathered in one part, along hollow
places under the earth, presses forward and pushes,
straining with great force against the deep caverns,
the earth leans in the direction the wind's downward force presses.
Then the buildings of houses raised above the earth,
and the higher each is built toward the sky,
lean, and threaten, tipped toward that same side,
and the projecting beams hang, ready to give way.
And people fear to believe that the nature of the great world
has some destructive time and ruin awaiting it,
when they see so vast a mass of earth leaning down!
Yet if the winds did not let up, no force could check
things, or hold them back from rushing to destruction;
but now, since they let up in turns and grow strong again
and, as if gathered, come back and yield, repulsed,
the earth more often threatens ruin for this reason
than it brings it about; for it leans, then springs back again,
and, having slipped, recovers its own place under its weight.
In this way, then, all buildings sway,
the tops more than the middles, the middles more than the base, the base scarcely at all.
There is also this same cause of a great tremor:
when suddenly some very great force of wind and breath,
whether risen from outside or from the earth itself,
has thrown itself into the hollow places of the earth, and there,
among great caverns, first roars with a tumult,
whirling as it is carried, then afterward, its roused force
stirred up, bursts out, and at once splits the deep
earth apart and makes a great chasm.
This happened at Sidon in Syria, and at Aegium
in the Peloponnese, cities which this outburst of wind
disturbed, and the earthquake that rose from it.
And besides, many city walls have fallen from great
shocks on land, and many cities, sunk down
through the sea, have settled to the bottom together with their own people.
But if it does not burst out, still the force of the wind itself
and the wild strength of the gust, scattered through the earth's many pores,
spreads like a shudder, and drives a tremor through from there —
just as when cold reaches deep into our limbs,
it shakes us against our will, forcing us to tremble and move.
So people tremble with fear on both counts throughout their cities,
fearing the roofs above, dreading the caverns below,
lest the earth's nature suddenly dissolve,
or, torn apart, spread wide its gaping chasm
and, in its confusion, want to fill it with its own ruins.
So people may believe, as much as they like, that sky and earth
are decreed to be unshaken, to an everlasting safety;
yet all the same, at times, the very present force of the danger
plants this goad too, from one direction of fear —
that the ground might suddenly be snatched from under their feet
and follow into the pit, and the whole sum of things, its foundation gone,
collapse utterly, and the world's ruin become one confused mass.
* * *
First, people wonder that nature does not make the sea
grow any greater, given so great a downflow of waters into it,
with all the rivers coming from every side.
Add the wandering rains and flying storms,
which sprinkle and soak all the seas and lands;
add its own springs; yet all of these together, against the sea's
whole sum, would scarcely amount to the increase of a single drop.
So it is less strange that the great sea does not grow.
Besides, the sun draws off a great part with its heat;
for indeed we see the sun, with its burning rays,
dry out clothes soaked with moisture;
but we see the seas, many and spread wide beneath.
So, though from any one place the sun
draws off only a small part of moisture from the surface,
over so great an expanse it will still carry off a great deal from the waves.
Then, further, the winds too can lift away a great part
of the moisture, sweeping the surface — since we very often
see roads made dry by the wind in a single night,
and the soft crusts of mud harden.
Besides, I have taught that clouds too lift away much
moisture, drawn up in great quantity from the sea's surface,
and scatter it far and wide over the whole circle of the lands,
when it rains on earth and winds carry the clouds.
Finally, since the earth is of a porous body
and is joined to the sea, girding its shores on every side,
it must be that, as water flows from the land into the sea,
it likewise seeps back into the land from the salt sea;
for the harsh brine is filtered out, and the substance
of the water flows back, and all of it gathers to the source of the rivers,
from where it returns over the land in a sweet stream,
by the path that its liquid foot once cut, carrying the waves.
Now what the reason is, that through the throat of a mountain like Etna
fires sometimes breathe out with so great a whirlwind,
I will explain; for it was no ordinary disaster that arose
when the storm of flame, ruling over the fields of Sicily,
turned the faces of neighboring peoples toward itself,
when, seeing all the smoking precincts of the sky sparkle,
they filled their hearts with fearful care,
wondering what new thing nature was contriving.
In these matters you must look deep and far,
and look out widely into every direction,
so that you may remember that the sum of things is deep,
and see how very small a part, and how tiny a fraction,
the sky is, of the whole sum of everything,
not even so great a part as one man is of the whole earth.
If you clearly set this before you and look straight at it,
and clearly see it, you will leave off wondering at much.
For does any one of us wonder, if someone has taken
a fever into his limbs, risen with a burning heat,
or any other pain of disease through his body?
A foot swells up suddenly, a sharp pain
often seizes the teeth, invades the very eyes,
holy fire breaks out and, creeping over the body,
burns whatever part it has seized, and crawls through the limbs —
no doubt because there are seeds of many things,
and this earth and sky carry enough of disease and harm,
from which the force of boundless sickness can grow.
So too we must think that for the whole sky and earth
there is enough supplied out of the infinite,
from which the earth, suddenly shaken, can be moved,
and a swift whirlwind can race through sea and land,
Etna's fire can overflow, and the sky can burst into flame —
for that too happens, and the heavenly precincts blaze,
and rainy storms come with a heavier onset,
whenever it happens that the seeds of water have gathered so.
"But the burning heat of that fire is too vast, too wild," someone says.
Of course — just as a river looks biggest
to one who has never before seen a bigger one, and a huge
tree, or a man, seems so, and everything of every kind
that anyone has seen the biggest of, he imagines to be huge,
though all of it, together with sky and earth and sea,
is nothing next to the whole sum of the entire universe.
Still now, in what way that fire, suddenly stirred up,
breathes out from Etna's vast furnaces, I will
explain. First, the nature of the whole mountain is hollow
underneath, propped up almost entirely on caverns of rock.
In all its caverns, further, there is wind and air.
For wind comes about when air is stirred up and driven on.
When this, once it has grown hot through, and made everything around it hot,
raging against the rocks it touches, and the ground, and from them
has struck out a hot fire with swift flames,
it rises up and hurls itself out high, straight through the throat.
So it carries its heat far and wide, and scatters ash
far off, and rolls up smoke in thick darkness,
and at the same time flings out rocks of astonishing weight —
do not doubt that this is the turbulent force of wind and breath.
Besides, in great part, the sea, at the mountain's
base, breaks its waves and dissolves its swell.
From this sea all the way up, caverns of the mountain reach
down to deep throats below. Here one must admit that
* * *
the facts compel us to grant it penetrates deep from the open sea,
to breathe out and so to send up flame,
and to hurl rocks and to raise clouds of sand.
For at the very top there are craters, as they themselves
call them — what we call throats and mouths.
There are also some things of which it is not enough to name a single
cause, but several, one of which is still the true one —
as if you were to see, far off, some man's lifeless
body lying, it is fitting to name every cause
of death, so that the one true one is included among them;
for you could not say that he died by the sword,
nor by cold, nor from disease, nor by poison,
but we know that something of this kind happened to him.
We have to say the same in many other matters.
The Nile rises in summer and floods over its plains,
the only one of its kind on earth, the river of all Egypt.
It waters Egypt often, in the middle of the heat,
either because in summer north winds blow against its mouths,
at that season of the year, the winds they call the etesian,
and, blowing against the river, hold back its waters,
forcing them backward, and fill it up and make it stay in place;
for no doubt these blasts blow against the river's
current, driven from the icy stars of the pole,
while that river comes from the heat-bearing region, from the south,
rising among tribes of men scorched black,
far off, from the middle region of day.
It may also be that a great mass of gathered sand
blocks its mouths against it, with waves opposing,
when the sea, stirred by winds, drives sand within,
so that by this means the river's outlet becomes less free,
and likewise the waves' downward rush becomes less.
It may also be that rains fall more, perhaps, near its source
at that season, when the etesian blasts of the north winds
then drive all the clouds into those regions.
No doubt, once driven together toward the middle region of day,
they gather there, and at last, against the high mountains
the clouds, pressed together, are forced and driven by their weight.
Perhaps it grows from deep among the high mountains
of the Ethiopians, when the sun, ranging over everything,
with its melting rays forces the white snows to come down onto the plains.
Now come, I will explain what kind of nature the places
called Avernian, and their pools, are endowed with, whatever they are.
First, the name Avernian was given them for good reason,
because they are hostile to all birds,
from that region, since when flying things have come there,
forgetting the oarage of their wings, they let their sails go slack
and fall headlong, their soft necks hanging loose,
onto the ground, if that is the nature of the place there,
or into the water, if a pool of Avernus lies beneath.
That place is near Cumae, where mountains, packed
with sharp sulfur, steam, filled up by hot springs.
There is also one within the walls of Athens, on the very
peak of the citadel, by the temple of Pallas of Triton, the kind goddess,
where noisy crows never fly to land with their wings,
not even when the altars smoke with offerings;
not that they flee it out of Pallas's harsh anger,
for the sake of her ever-watchful guardianship, as Greek poets have sung,
but nature's own working brings this about, by itself.
In Syria too, it is said, there is a place that can be seen
where, as soon as four-footed creatures set
foot, its very force compels them to collapse heavily,
as if they were suddenly sacrificed to the gods of the dead below.
All these things happen by a natural cause,
and the origin is plain, from what causes they arise;
do not let it be believed that a gate of Orcus's
regions can exist here, and that then we should think
that gods of the dead lead souls down from here into the shores of Acheron,
as swift-footed stags are often thought
to lead the creeping generations of snakes out of their hiding-places, by their scent.
How far removed this is from the true account,
hear now; for I am trying now to speak of the matter itself.
First I say this, which I have also said often before,
that there are shapes of things of every kind in the earth,
many which are food, many which are vital, and many which can
strike disease into us and hasten death.
And I have shown before that some things are more suited
than others to the way of life of different living creatures,
because of the unlike nature and the unlike
textures among them, and their unlike first shapes.
Many hostile things pass through the ears, many make their way
in through the nostrils themselves, harsh and rough to the touch,
and not a few are to be avoided by touch, and not a few
by sight, or are bitter, whatever ones there are, to taste.
Next, one may see how many things are harshly hostile
to man's senses, and foul and burdensome.
First, a heavy shade is cast by certain trees,
so much so that they often cause headaches,
if anyone has lain stretched out on the grass beneath them.
There is also, on the great mountains of Helicon, a tree
accustomed to kill a man with the foul smell of its flower.
Clearly all these things rise from the earth for this reason,
because the earth carries, in many different ways, many seeds
of many things, mixed together, and hands them on distinct.
And when a freshly extinguished lamp at night offends
the nostrils with its sharp smell, it puts to sleep at once
anyone who is prone to collapse and foam at the mouth from disease.
and a woman lies senseless, put to sleep by heavy castoreum,
and the shining work slips from her soft hands,
if she has smelled it at the time when her monthly flow is loosed.
And many things besides loosen the drooping limbs throughout the frame
and shake the soul loose from its seat within.
Then too, if you linger in hot baths
too full, and bathe yourself in a seat of boiling water,
how easily it happens that you often collapse in the middle of it!
And the heavy force and smell of charcoal creeps in
how easily into the brain, unless we have first taken water beforehand!
But when a burning fever, mastering the limbs, has seized the body,
then the smell of wine becomes like a killing blow.
Do you not see too that sulfur is born in the earth itself,
and that bitumen congeals with a foul smell,
and then, when men follow veins of silver and gold,
searching out the earth's hidden depths with iron,
what odors Scaptensula breathes out from below?
Or what harm the gold mines exhale!
What faces they give men back, and what colors!
Do you not see or hear that men die in a short time,
as they usually do, and how quickly their store of life fails,
those whom a great force of necessity confines to such work?
The earth, then, boils out all these vapors
and breathes them out into the open and the exposed regions of the sky.
So too the Avernian places must send up to birds
a death-dealing force. This force, which rises from the earth into the air,
so as to poison a portion of the sky's space --
and as soon as a bird is carried there on its wings,
it is hindered there, seized by the hidden poison,
so that it falls straight down from the spot, wherever the vapor aims.
And when it has fallen there, that same force of that vapor
takes away the remnants of life from all its limbs.
For indeed at first it stirs up something like a fever;
afterward it happens — when they have already fallen into the very
springs of the poison — that life too must be vomited up there,
because a great store of harm has gathered round about.
It happens too, sometimes, that this force and vapor of Avernus
disperses the air that lies between the birds and the earth,
so that this place is left almost empty.
And when flying creatures come into the region of this place,
at once the vain effort of their wings falters,
and all the striving of both wings is betrayed.
Here, when they cannot press down and find purchase with their wings,
of course their own weight forces them to glide down to the ground --
their nature does -- and, lying now almost through the empty void,
they scatter their life-breath through every pore of the body.
* * *
Further, the water in wells becomes colder in summer,
because the earth dries out from heat, and if it has any seeds
of heat properly its own, it sends them off into the air.
The more, then, the earth is drained of heat,
the colder too becomes the moisture hidden in the earth.
When, further, the whole earth is pressed by cold and contracts,
and as it were congeals, then of course by contracting
it squeezes into the wells whatever heat it itself carries.
They say there is a spring at the shrine of Ammon, which by daylight
is cold, and is said to be warm at night-time.
Men marvel at this spring excessively, and think
that it grows hot in part beneath the earth by the fierce sun,
when night has covered the lands with dreadful darkness.
But this is far, far removed from true reasoning.
For when the sun, touching the bare body of the water
from above, has not been able to make it warm,
though the light above enjoys such great heat,
how could it, here below, through so dense a body of earth,
thoroughly cook the moisture and warm it with hot vapor?
especially since it can scarcely, through the walls of houses,
insinuate its heat with its burning rays.
What, then, is the explanation? No doubt because the earth
around the spring is more porous than the rest of the ground,
and many seeds of fire lie close to the body of the water.
When night overwhelms the earth with its dew-bringing waters,
at once the earth grows cold to its depths and contracts.
By this process it happens that, as though squeezed by a hand,
it presses into the spring whatever seeds of fire it holds,
which make the touch and warmth of the water hot.
Then, when the risen sun with its rays has loosened the earth
and made it porous, its hot vapor mingling in,
the first-beginnings of fire return again to their old seats,
and all the water's heat retreats back into the earth.
For this reason the spring becomes cold in the daylight.
Besides, the water's moisture is buffeted by the sun's rays
and grows porous in the daylight from the quivering heat;
and so it happens that whatever seeds of fire it holds
it releases -- just as frost often, which it holds within itself,
lets go, and dissolves the ice and loosens its knots.
There is also a cold spring, over which tow, placed
above it, at once throws out flame once fire has caught,
and a torch, lit in like manner,
likewise blazes over the water, wherever the breezes drive it floating.
No doubt because there are very many seeds of heat in the water,
and it must be that from the earth itself, from its very depths,
bodies of fire rise up through the whole spring
and at the same time breathe out and pass forth into the air,
yet not so many that the spring could become warm;
and besides, a force compels them, scattered,
to burst forth suddenly through the water and to gather together upward.
Of this kind, in the sea, is the spring of Aradus, whose fresh water
gushes up and pushes back the salt waves around it;
and in many other regions the sea offers
timely relief to thirsty sailors,
because it spews out fresh water amid the salt waves.
So, then, through that spring they can burst forth
and gush out; and when those seeds, meeting the tow,
or clinging to the substance of the torch,
come together, they catch fire easily at once, because tow and torch too
themselves hold within them many seeds of fire.
Do you not see too that, when you bring flax, recently
put out, near a lamp at night, it catches fire before
it has touched the flame -- and a torch in the same way?
And many other things too, touched first by the heat itself,
catch fire at a distance before the flame soaks them up close.
This, then, must be thought to happen also in that spring.
As for what remains, I shall begin to explain by what law of
nature it comes about that this stone can draw iron,
which the Greeks call Magnes, from its native name,
because it arose in the native territory of the Magnetes.
Men marvel at this stone; for it often
produces a chain of rings hanging from itself.
For sometimes one can see five or even more
hanging down in a row, swaying in the light breezes,
when one hangs clinging from another below,
and one from another, and each feels the stone's power and its bonds;
so thoroughly does its force prevail, passing through.
In matters of this kind, many things must be established first,
before you can give the explanation of the thing itself,
and one must approach it by all too long a roundabout way;
and so I ask all the more for your attentive ears and mind.
First, from all things whatsoever we see,
it must be that bodies constantly flow, and are sent forth and scattered,
bodies which strike the eyes and provoke sight.
And smells flow constantly from certain things;
as cold from rivers, heat from the sun, spray from the waves
of the sea, that eater-away of walls, along the shores;
and varied sounds never cease to stream through the air;
then too, moisture of a salty taste often comes into the mouth
when we move about near the sea, and, on the other hand,
when we watch wormwood being mixed and diluted, its bitterness touches us.
So thoroughly does each thing, flowing from all things,
move outward and get sent off in every direction to all parts,
and no delay, no rest is ever granted to this flowing,
since we perceive it constantly, and can always
see, smell, and hear things sounding.
Now I shall go over again how porous a body all things have --
a thing made clear already in the first book too.
For indeed, although this bears on the knowledge of many things,
it is above all necessary, for this very matter
which I am setting out to discuss, to establish first
that nothing is manifest except body mixed with void.
First, it happens that in caves the rocks overhead
sweat moisture and drip with trickling drops.
Sweat likewise trickles from our whole body,
beard and hair grow over every limb, over every joint.
Food is distributed into all the veins, and increases and nourishes
even the outermost parts of the body, the very fingernails.
We feel cold likewise pass through bronze, and hot heat too,
and likewise we feel it pass through gold
and through silver, when we hold full cups.
Then, too, voices fly through the stone partitions of houses,
and smell, and cold, and the heat of fire pass through --
heat which is used to penetrate even the strength of iron,
and lastly, wherever the sky's encircling breastplate confines things,
a diseased force too, when it creeps in from outside;
and once a storm has risen on earth and in the sky, these things
duly pass into sky and earth, however far off,
since nothing exists that is not bound together with a porous body.
To this it may be added that not all the bodies, which are thrown off
from things, whatever they are, are endowed with the same sensory quality,
nor are they suited in the same way to all things.
First, the sun bakes the earth and makes it dry,
but it melts ice, and forces the high snows piled up
on high mountains to waste away with its rays;
then too, wax turns liquid when placed in its heat.
Fire likewise makes bronze liquid and melts gold,
but it shrivels hide and flesh and draws them together.
Water's moisture, further, hardens iron once it comes from the fire,
but it softens hide and flesh hardened by heat.
The wild olive delights bearded she-goats to such a degree,
as if it truly ran with ambrosia and were steeped in nectar;
though for man there exists nothing more bitter than its sour leaf.
Then too, the pig flees marjoram and fears every
perfume; for to bristly pigs it is a sharp poison,
though it seems at times to refresh us.
But conversely, though filth is the foulest
filthiness to us, this same thing seems pleasant to pigs,
so that they wallow there wholly, insatiably.
This too remains, before I proceed to speak
of the matter itself, which seems needing to be said first.
Since many pores are assigned to various things,
they must be endowed with a nature unlike each other,
and each must have its own nature and its own passages.
For indeed living creatures have various senses,
each of which perceives its own particular object in itself;
for we perceive that sound penetrates by one passage, taste by another,
from savors, and the smells of odor by yet another.
[Clearly the nature of the passages compels this to happen,
varying in many ways, as we showed a little before.]
Besides, one thing seems to flow through rock,
another through wood, another to pass through gold,
and another to travel out through silver and through glass;
for appearance seems to flow this way, heat to travel that way,
and the same things seem to let one thing pass through more quickly than another.
Clearly the nature of the passages compels this to happen,
varying in many ways, as we showed a little before,
on account of the unlike nature and texture of things.
Therefore, when these points have been well established and set in place,
all laid down before us and made ready,
as for what remains, the explanation will easily be given from this, and the whole
cause will become clear, which draws the force of iron.
First, it must be that very many seeds flow from this stone,
or a current, which disperses the air with its blows,
wherever it is situated between the stone and the iron.
When this space is emptied, and a great empty
place arises in the middle, at once the first-beginnings of the iron
fall, slipping into the void, joined together, and so it happens
that the ring itself follows and moves along with its whole body.
And no thing clings together, tightly bound and interlocked
by its own first elements,
more than the nature of strong iron and its cold roughness.
So it is the less a wonder -- though it is called surprising --
if many bodies, arising from the iron, cannot
be carried into the void, without the ring itself following;
which it does, and follows, until it reaches
the stone itself, and clings there fast with hidden joints.
This same thing happens in every direction; wherever an empty
place occurs, whether crosswise or from above,
the neighboring bodies are at once carried into the void;
for indeed they are set in motion by blows from elsewhere, and cannot
of their own accord rise upward into the air.
To this too is added -- why this can happen the more --
that this process too is helped by an added aid and motion,
namely that, as soon as the air in front of the ring becomes
more rarefied, and the place more emptied and voided,
at once it happens that whatever air is situated behind
carries it forward, as it were, from behind, and pushes it on.
For the air placed all around always buffets things;
but it happens that it pushes the iron forward at such a time
because on one side a space stands empty and receives it into itself.
This air, which I describe to you, insinuating itself finely
into the small parts through the iron's many pores,
thrusts and drives it, just as wind drives a ship and its sails.
Then too, all things must have air
within their body, since they have a porous body, and air
is given all around and set close against all things.
This air, then, which lies hidden deep within the iron,
is always tossed about in restless motion, and so
it beats upon the ring, without doubt, and stirs it within;
clearly it is carried in that same direction in which it has already
once rushed headlong, and taken its effort toward the empty part.
It happens too that the nature of iron sometimes withdraws
from this stone, being used, in turn, to flee and to follow.
I have seen too Samothracian iron rings leap about
and iron filings likewise rage within bronze
basins, when this Magnesian stone was placed beneath them;
so much does the iron seem eager to flee from the stone.
Such discord is created when bronze is placed between them,
because, no doubt, when the current of the bronze
has already taken possession beforehand and occupied the iron's open passages,
the stone's current comes later and finds everything
already full in the iron, and has no way to pass through as before;
so it is forced to strike and beat with its wave
against the iron's own web; and in this way the iron repels it,
and drives it back through the bronze, though it often reabsorbs it too.
Stop wondering, in these matters, at this: that the current
from this stone cannot likewise drive other things as well.
For some stand firm relying on their weight, gold being of this kind;
while some, because they have so porous a body, let the current
fly through untouched, and so cannot be driven anywhere,
wood being seen to belong to this kind.
The nature of iron, then, placed between these two extremes,
when it has received certain small bodies of air, then it happens
that the stones of Magnesia drive it along by their stream.
Yet these things are not so foreign to other matters
that too few examples of this kind are supplied to me,
which I could mention as fitted to each other in singular ways.
You see first that stones alone are bonded together by lime.
Wood is joined together as one by bull-glue,
so that the grain of planks more often gapes open through a flaw
than the bull-hide bonds are able to loosen the joints.
The juices born of the vine dare to mix
with the waters of springs, when heavy pitch and light olive oil cannot.
And the purple color of the shellfish is joined in one
body with wool, so that it can never be separated,
not if you were to renew the effort with Neptune's wave,
not if the whole sea wished to wash it out with all its waters.
Then too, some other thing -- not gold itself -- binds gold to gold,
and is it not the case that bronze is joined to lead by white tin?
How many other things, besides, one may find! What then?
You have no need at all of such long digressions,
nor is it fitting for me to spend so much effort here;
rather it is better to grasp many things briefly, in few words.
The textures of these things have fallen out so mutually matched,
that the hollows of one fit the solids of the other,
and of this one with that one, and this joining stands as the best.
There is also a kind, as though things folded together with rings and hooks,
by which certain things can be held coupled to each other;
and this seems to happen more in the case of this stone and iron.
Now what the explanation is for diseases, or from where suddenly
a deadly force of disease can arise and kindle a fatal disaster
for the human race and for herds of cattle,
I shall explain. First, I have taught above that there exist seeds
of many things that are life-giving for us,
and, on the other hand, that many must fly about
which bring on disease and death; and when these have by chance arisen
and thrown the sky into disorder, the air becomes diseased.
And all this force of diseases and pestilence
either comes from outside, descending through the sky from above
like clouds and mists, or often itself arises
and rises up from the earth, when the earth, soaked with damp,
has taken on a rotten stench, struck by untimely rains and suns.
Do you not see too that those who come from far off, from their own
country and home, whoever they are, are afflicted
by the strangeness of a new sky and waters, precisely because things differ so greatly?
For how different do we think the sky of the Britons is
from that of Egypt, where the world's axis slants,
and how different is the sky of Pontus from that of Gades, and on
as far as the races of men blackened with a sun-scorched color?
And when we see these four regions differing from one another
in accordance with the four winds and the quarters of the sky,
then the color and appearance of men are seen to differ
greatly, and diseases too hold sway, each kind over its own race.
There is the disease elephantiasis, which arises by the streams of the Nile
in the middle of Egypt, and nowhere else besides.
In Attica the feet are afflicted, and the eyes in Achaean
territory. So one place is hostile to some parts,
another to other parts and limbs; the varying air brings this about.
So, when a sky that happens to be alien to us
stirs itself, and hostile air begins to creep,
it creeps forward gradually like mist and cloud, and disturbs
everything it passes over, and forces it to change,
and it happens too that, when it finally reaches our own sky,
it corrupts it and makes it like itself and foreign to us.
This sudden disaster, then, and new pestilence,
either falls into the waters, or settles into the crops themselves,
or into other food of men and fodder of cattle,
or else its force remains suspended in the air itself,
and when, breathing, we draw in from there the mingled air,
it must be that we absorb that force equally into our body.
By a like process, pestilence often comes to cattle too,
and sickness now to the sluggish, bleating flocks.
And it makes no difference whether we ourselves come into places
hostile to us, and change the sky's covering,
or whether nature of its own accord brings to us
a sky already corrupted, or something we are not accustomed to use,
which can attack us on its fresh arrival.
This process of disease, and its death-bearing heat, once
made the fields within the borders of Cecrops fatal to death
and laid waste the roads, and drained the city of citizens.
For, coming from deep within, having arisen in the territory of Egypt,
having traveled through much air and the swimming plains of the sea,
it settled at last on the whole people of Pandion.
Then in throngs they were given over to disease and death.
First, their heads burned, kindled with fever,
and both eyes reddened, suffused with light.
Their throats too sweated, black within with blood,
and the passage of the voice, choked with sores, closed up,
and the tongue, the mind's interpreter, oozed with blood,
weakened by the affliction, sluggish in movement, rough to the touch.
Then, when the disease force had filled the chest through the throat,
and had flowed together into the sufferers' grieving heart,
then indeed all the bars of life gave way.
The breath rolled out from the mouth a foul smell,
such as rank cast-out corpses reek with.
And the strength of the mind, altogether, and the whole
body grew faint, now on the very threshold of death.
And an anguished distress was the constant companion
of their unbearable afflictions, mixed with groaning complaint,
and frequent sobbing, often through night and day,
continually seizing up their sinews and limbs, forcing them,
wore them out, already exhausted before, wearying them further.
And you could observe in no one that the topmost surface
of the body's outer part grew hot with excessive heat;
but rather it offered to the hands only a lukewarm touch,
and at the same time the whole body was red, as though branded
with sores, while the sacred fire spread through the limbs.
But the innermost part of men burned right down to the bones,
a flame burned in the stomach as in a furnace within.
There was nothing at all light and thin you could apply
to anyone's limbs to give relief -- only wind and cold, always.
Some flung their limbs, burning with disease, into cold
rivers, casting their naked bodies into the waves.
Many plunged headlong deep into well-water,
falling in as they came with mouth agape,
an unquenchable thirst, drenching their parched bodies,
made a heavy downpour seem no more than a few drops.
And there was no respite from the affliction: their exhausted
bodies lay prostrate. Medicine muttered in silent fear,
seeing how often their eyes, wide open, burning with disease,
rolled about, deprived of sleep.
And besides, many signs of death were given then:
the mind's understanding thrown into confusion by grief and fear,
a grim brow, a wild and fierce expression,
ears, moreover, troubled and full of ringing noises,
breath frequent or else deep and rarely drawn,
and a glistening wetness of sweat streaming down the neck,
thin, scant spittle, tinged with the color of saffron
and salty, brought up with difficulty through a hoarse cough from the throat.
In the hands, truly, the sinews contracted and the limbs trembled,
and from the feet the cold did not hesitate to creep up
little by little. Likewise, right up to the very last moment
the nostrils pinched, the tip of the nose
sharp and thin, the eyes sunken, the temples hollow, the skin cold
and hard on the face, the mouth gaping, the brow remained stretched taut.
Nor did the limbs lie over-rigid afterward in death.
And on about the eighth bright light of the sun,
or else on the ninth torch of day, they gave back their life.
And if any of them, as happens, had escaped the death that kills outright,
yet later, with foul ulcers and a black flux of the bowels,
a wasting and death still awaited him,
or else, often with a great pain in the head,
corrupted blood would flow, filling the nostrils.
Into this all a man's strength and body flowed away.
And whoever had escaped this sharp flow of foul blood,
the disease would still pass into his sinews and limbs
and into the very generative parts of the body.
And some, gravely fearing the threshold of death,
lived on, deprived by the knife of their virile member,
and not a few remained without hands and feet,
yet still in life, and some lost their eyes.
So sharp a fear of death had come upon them.
And forgetfulness of all things seized some,
so that they could not even recognize themselves.
And though many unburied bodies lay on the ground, one on top
of another, still the race of birds and beasts
either sprang away far off, to escape the sharp smell,
or, once it had tasted, sickened, with death close at hand.
And yet in those days scarcely any bird at all
appeared, nor did the grim races of wild beasts
come out from the woods; most of them sickened with the disease
and died. Above all, the faithful strength of dogs,
laid low in the streets everywhere, gave up its life with difficulty;
for the force of disease wrenched life from their limbs.
Vast funeral processions, unaccompanied, vied to be hurried away,
and no sure common method of cure was found;
for what had granted one man leave to draw the life-giving
breezes of air in his mouth, and to gaze on the vault of the sky,
was ruin for others, and was preparing their death.
One thing amid all this was greatly to be pitied,
and full of misery: that when anyone saw himself
entangled in the disease, as though condemned to death,
he lay there failing in spirit, his heart grieving,
and, gazing on the funerals about him, lost his life then and there.
For indeed the greedy contagion of the disease never ceased
at any time to catch one person from another,
just as with woolly flocks and horned herds,
and this above all piled funeral on funeral,
for whoever shunned visiting their own sick,
too fond of life and fearing death,
was soon after punished by a shameful and evil death,
neglect slaying them, abandoned and destitute of help.
But those who had stayed by went to their deaths by contagion
and by exhaustion, which shame then compelled them to face,
along with the coaxing voice of the weary, mixed with the voice of complaint.
And so it was all the best who underwent this kind of death.
Besides, by now every shepherd and every herdsman,
and likewise the sturdy guider of the curved plow,
sickened, and their bodies lay huddled deep within their huts,
given over to death by poverty and disease.
Over the lifeless bodies of children one could sometimes
see the lifeless bodies of parents, and in turn
children breathing out their life over their mothers and fathers.
And no small part of that grief flowed into the city
from the fields, brought there by the sickening
throng of farmers, gathering in from every diseased quarter.
The more they filled every place and building with the heat of disease,
the more death piled them up in heaps, crowded together.
Many bodies, laid low by thirst and rolling along the road
and in front of it, lay stretched out by the fountains of water,
their breath cut off by the excessive sweetness of the waters.
And in many open places of the city and streets, everywhere,
you could see limbs, faint, with a half-dead body,
filthy with squalor and covered with rags, perishing,
in bodily filth, skin alone stretched over bones,
buried now almost in foul ulcers and grime.
In the end, death had filled all the sacred shrines of the gods
with lifeless bodies, and everywhere the temples of the heavenly ones
remained burdened throughout with corpses,
places which the temple-keepers had filled up with guests.
And no longer was the worship of the gods, nor their divine power,
given much weight; present suffering overwhelmed everything.
Nor did that custom of burial remain in the city
by which this people had always been accustomed to be buried before;
for the whole city was thrown into panic and trembled, and each person
buried his own kinsman in grief, as best he could.
And sudden crisis and dreadful poverty urged many things;
for people would place their own kin on others' funeral pyres,
built up high, with great outcry,
and set torches beneath, often with much blood shed
in the quarrels, rather than let the bodies be abandoned,
and people struggled, over one another's pyres, to bury
their own dead; worn out with tears and grief they went back home;
and then a good many took to their beds from grief;
and no one could be found whom neither disease
nor death nor mourning assailed at such a time.