Titus Lucretius Carus

“ Terrible as the deeds are terrible;
And to expiate men’s guilt there is the dungeon,
The awful hurling downward from the rock,
Scourgings, mutilations and impalings,
The pitch, the torches and the metal plate.
And even if these be wanting, yet the mind
Conscious of guilt torments itself with goads
And scorching whips, nor in its boding fear
Perceives what end of misery there can be,
Nor what limit at length to punishment,{42}
Nay fears lest these same evils after death
Should prove more grievous. Thus does the life of fools
Become at last an Acheron here on earth. ”

“ All mortals, is that they behold on earth
And in the sky many things happening,
Yet of these operations by no means
Can they perceive the causes, and so fancy
That they must come to pass by power divine.
Therefore when we have understood that nothing
Can be born out of nothing, we shall then
Win juster knowledge of the truth we seek,
Both from what elements each thing can be formed,
And in what way all things can come to pass
Without the intervention of the gods.
For if things came from nothing, any kind
Might be born out of anything; naught then
Would require seed. ”

“ Controls the courses of the sun and moon,
And by what force all that takes place on earth
Is governed, but above all by keen thought
We must investigate whereof consists
The soul and the mind’s nature, and what it is
That comes before us when we wake, if then
We are preyed on by disease, or when we lie
Buried in sleep, and terrifies our minds,
So that we seem face to face to behold
And hear those speaking to us who are dead,
Whose bones the earth now holds in its embrace. ”

“ By death that dies not of his life that dies.
Therefore if you should chance to hear some man
Pitying his own lot, that after death
Either his body must decay in the earth,
Or be consumed by flames or jaws of beasts,
Then may you know that his words ring not true,
That in his heart there lurks some secret sting,
Though he himself deny that he believes
Any sense will remain with him in death.
For in fact he grants not all that he professes,
Nor by the roots does he expel and thrust
Self forth from life, but all unwittingly
Assumes that of self something will survive. ”

“ For the wound gathers strength and grows inveterate
By feeding, while the madness day by day
Increases, and the misery becomes heavier,
Unless you heal the first wounds by new blows,
And roving in the steps of vagrant Venus
So cure them while yet fresh, or can divert
To something else the movements of your mind.{49}
Nor does the man who shuns love go without
The fruits of Venus; rather he makes choice
Of joys that bring no after-pain: for surely
The pleasure of intercourse must be more pure
For those that are heart-whole than for the love-sick. ”

“ None, I presume: for the earth even now abounds
With wild beasts to repletion, and is filled
With shuddering terror throughout its woods, great mountains
And deep forests, regions which we have power
For the most part to avoid. But if the heart
Has not been purged, what tumults then, what dangers
Must needs invade us in our own despite!
What fierce anxieties, offspring of desire,
Rend the distracted man, what mastering fears! ”

“ Laid on us from outside, will often hurt us.
Of such great moment is it what each thing’s
Function may be. Thus then the earth is not
An alien body intruded suddenly,
Nor thrust from elsewhere into an alien air,
But was conceived together with the world
At its first birth as a fixed portion of it,
Just as our limbs are seen to be of us.
Moreover the earth, when shaken suddenly
With violent thunder, by its trembling shakes
All that is over it; which in no wise
Could happen, if it were not closely bound
With the world’s airy parts, and with the sky. ”

“ Throughout the limbs and frame remains unstirred
By any new sensation. But when the mind
Has been perturbed by some more vehement fear,
We see the whole soul feel with it in unison
Through all the limbs; sweating and paleness then
Spread over the whole body; the tongue halts,
Speech dies away, the eyes grow dark with mist,
The ears ring and the limbs sink under us.{34}
And indeed often we see men drop down
From terror of mind. Hence easily we may learn
That the soul is united with the mind;
For when it has been struck by the mind’s force,
Straightway it pushes and propels the body. ”

“ Of men and deities, bountiful Venus, thou
Who under the sky’s gliding constellations
Fillest ship-carrying ocean with thy presence
And the corn-bearing lands, since through thy power
Each kind of living creature is conceived
Then riseth and beholdeth the sun’s light:
Before thee and thine advent the winds and clouds
Of heaven take flight, O goddess: daedal earth
Puts forth sweet-scented flowers beneath thy feet:
Beholding thee the smooth deep laughs, the sky
Grows calm and shines with wide-outspreading light. ”

“ Nor sprinkling altars with much blood of beasts
To add to votive offering votive offering;
But this rather is piety, to have power
To survey all things with a tranquil mind.
For when we lift our eyes to the celestial
Temples of the great universe, and the aether
Studded with glittering stars, and contemplate
The paths of sun and moon, then in our breasts,
Burdened with other evils, this fear too
Begins to lift its reawakened head,
Lest perchance it be true that with the gods
Resides a boundless power, which can move
Upon their various courses the bright stars. ”

“ So greedily do they hug the bonds of Venus,
While their limbs melt, enfeebled by the might
Of pleasure. Finally, when the gathered lust
Has burst forth from the frame, awhile there comes
A brief pause in their passion’s violent heat.
Then returns the same madness: the old frenzy
Revisits them, when they would fain discover
What verily they desire to attain;
Yet never can they find out what device
May conquer their disease: in such blind doubt
They waste away, pined by a secret wound.
Consider too how they consume their strength
And are worn out with toiling ”

“ Is composed of a body which must die,
Also that it was born; and in what way
Matter once congregating and uniting
Established earth sky sea, the stars, the sun,
And the moon’s globe: also what living creatures
Rose from the earth, and which were those that never
At any time were born: next in what way
Mankind began to employ varied speech
One with another by giving names to things:
Then for what causes that fear of the gods
Entered their breasts, and now through the whole world
Gives sanctity to shrines, lakes and groves,
Altars and images of gods. ”

“ Is sick, while in some other hidden part
We experience pleasure; and ofttimes again
The contrary will happen, when a man
Who is distressed in mind, through his whole body
Feels pleasure: in the same way as the foot
Of a sick man may suffer pain, and yet
His head meanwhile is in no pain at all.
Moreover when the limbs are given up
To soft sleep, and the wearied body lies
Diffused without sensation, there is yet
Something else in us which at that same time
Is stirred in many ways, and into itself
Receives all the emotions of delight,
And all the empty troubles of the heart. ”

“ And herds of divers kind, and the wild beasts,
These, as they grow up, have no need of rattles:
To none of them a foster-nurse must utter
Fond broken speech: they seek not different dresses
To suit each season: no, nor do they need
Weapons nor lofty walls whereby to guard
What is their own, since all things for them all
The Earth herself brings forth abundantly,
And Nature, the creatress manifold. ”

“ Lest night eternal should possess the earth
And the sun’s light for ever be withdrawn.
But ’twas a worse anxiety that wild beasts
Often made sleep unsafe for these poor wretches.
For driven from their homes in sheltering rocks
They fled at the entrance of a foaming boar
Or strong lion, yielding up at dead of night
Their leaf-strewn beds in panic to fierce guests.{94}
Yet no more often in those days than now
Would mortal men leave the sweet light of life
With lamentation. ”

“ With his own sense imagines it endued.
So he complains because he was born mortal,
Nor sees that there will be in real death
No other self which living can lament
That he has perished, none that will stand by
And grieve over his burnt and mangled corpse.
For if it be an evil after death
To be mauled by teeth of beasts, why should it seem
Less cruel to be laid out on a pyre
And scorched with hot flames, or to be embalmed
In stifling honey, or to lie stiff and cold
Couched on the cool slab of a chilly stone,
Or to be crushed down under a weight of earth? ”

“ Illuminating earth with borrowed light,
Or throws out its own rays from its own body,
Howe’er that be, moves with a shape no larger
Than seems that shape which our eyes contemplate.
For all things which we look at from far off
Through much air, seem to our vision to grow dim
Before their contours lessen. Therefore the moon,
Seeing that it presents a clear aspect
And definite shape, must needs by us on earth
Be seen on high in its defining outline
Just as it is, and of its actual size.
Lastly consider all those fires of aether
You see from the earth. ”

“ And forests of wild beasts; rocks and waste swamps
Possess it, or the wide land-sundering sea.
Besides, well nigh two-thirds are stolen from men
By burning heat and frost ceaselessly falling.
All that is left for husbandry, even that
The force of Nature soon would overspread
With thorns, unless resisted by man’s force,
Ever wont for his livelihood to groan
Over the strong hoe, and with down-pressed plough
To cleave the earth. ”

“ The breasts being bent downward, the loins raised.
Nor have wives the least need of wanton movements.
For a woman thwarts conception and frustrates it,
If with her loins she joyously lures on
The man’s love, and, with her whole bosom relaxed
And limp, provokes lust’s tide to overflow.
For then she thrusts the furrow from the share’s
Direct path, turning the seed’s stroke aside
From its right goal. And thus for their own ends
Harlots are wont to move, because they wish
Not to conceive nor lie in childbed often,
Likewise that Venus may give men more pleasure. ”

“ Compasses the whole earth with its embrace.
If it begets all things out of itself,
As some have told us, and receives them back
When they have perished, then the whole sky is made
Of a body that had birth and that must die. ”

“ And mind can separately dwell and grow,
All the more must it be denied that mind
Cannot have being quite outside a body
And a living form, in crumbling clods of earth,
In the sun’s fire, or water, or aloft
In the domains of ether. Such things therefore
Are not endowed with divine consciousness,
Because they cannot be quickened into life. ”

“ Or stir our senses, no, not if earth with sea
In ruin shall be mingled, and sea with sky.
And even though the powers of mind and soul
After they have been severed from the body
Were still to feel, yet that to us is nothing,
Who by the binding marriage tie between
Body and soul are formed into one being. ”

“ So since the sun’s heat and the light it sheds
Both reach our senses and caress our limbs,
The form also and contour of the sun
Must needs be seen from the earth in their true scale,
With neither addition nor diminishment. ”

“ Often snatched off by the wind. As when in sleep
A thirsty man seeks to drink, and no liquid
Is given to quench the burning in his limbs,
Yet he pursues the images of water,
Toiling in vain, and still thirsts, though he drink{50}
In a rushing river’s midst; even so in love
Venus deludes lovers with images:
For neither, gaze intently as they may,
Can bodies satiate them, nor with their hands
Can they pluck anything off from the soft limbs,
Aimlessly wandering over the whole body. ”

“ Can come from nothing, since seed is required
For each thing, out of which it may be born
And lift itself into the air’s soft breezes.
Lastly, since it is evident that tilled lands
Excel the untilled, and yield to labouring hands
A richer harvest, we may thence infer
That in the earth there must be primal atoms,
And these, labouring its soil, we stimulate
To rise, when with the coulter we turn up
The fertile clods. But if none such existed,
We should see all things without toil of ours
Spring forth far richer of their own accord. ”

“ On limbs of quadrupeds and on the bodies
Of winged fowl, so the new Earth then put forth
Grasses and brushwood first, and afterwards
Gave birth to all the breeds of mortal things,
That sprang up many in number, in many modes
And divers fashions. For no animals
Can have dropped from the sky, nor can land-creatures
Have issued from the salt pools. Hence it is
That with good reason the Earth has won the name
Of Mother, since from the Earth all things are born.
And many living creatures even now
Rise from the soil, formed by rains, and the sun’s
Fierce heat. ”

“ The night’s shade equal to the light of day.
For in the sun’s mid course between the blasts
Of south wind and of north, the heaven holds
His turning-points apart at distances
Now equalised, since such is the position
Of the whole starry circle, to glide through which
The sun takes up the period of a year,
Lighting the earth and sky with slanting rays,
As is shown by the arguments of those
Who have mapped out all the quarters of the sky,
Adorned with their twelve signs spaced out in order. ”

“ The fierce breed
Of lions first, and the other savage beasts,
Their courage has preserved, foxes their craft,
Stags their swift flight. But the light-slumbering hearts
Of faithful dogs, and the whole family
Born from the seed of burden-bearing beasts,
Also the woolly flocks and horned herds,
All these by man’s protection are preserved.
For their desire has always been to shun
Wild beasts and to live peaceably, supplied{90}
Without toil of their own with food in plenty,
Which to reward their services we give them. ”