Delphi Complete Works of Lucretius

by Titus Lucretius Carus

Yet need not these be held together hooked:

  In fact, though rough, they’re globular besides,

  Able at once to roll, and rasp the sense.

  And that the more thou mayst believe me here,

  That with smooth elements are mixed the rough

  (Whence Neptune’s salt astringent body comes),

  There is a means to separate the twain,

  And thereupon dividedly to see

  How the sweet water, after filtering through

  So often underground, flows freshened forth

  Into some hollow; for it leaves above

  The primal germs of nauseating brine,

  Since cling the rough more readily in earth.

  Lastly, whatso thou markest to disperse

  Upon the instant — smoke, and cloud, and flame —

  Must not (even though not all of smooth and round)

  Be yet co-linked with atoms intertwined,

  That thus they can, without together cleaving,

  So pierce our body and so bore the rocks.

  Whatever we see...

  Given to senses, that thou must perceive

  They’re not from linked but pointed elements.

  The which now having taught, I will go on

  To bind thereto a fact to this allied

  And drawing from this its proof: these primal germs

  Vary, yet only with finite tale of shapes.

  For were these shapes quite infinite, some seeds

  Would have a body of infinite increase.

  For in one seed, in one small frame of any,

  The shapes can’t vary from one another much.

  Assume, we’ll say, that of three minim parts

  Consist the primal bodies, or add a few:

  When, now, by placing all these parts of one

  At top and bottom, changing lefts and rights,

  Thou hast with every kind of shift found out

  What the aspect of shape of its whole body

  Each new arrangement gives, for what remains,

  If thou percase wouldst vary its old shapes,

  New parts must then be added; follows next,

  If thou percase wouldst vary still its shapes,

  That by like logic each arrangement still

  Requires its increment of other parts.

  Ergo, an augmentation of its frame

  Follows upon each novelty of forms.

  Wherefore, it cannot be thou’lt undertake

  That seeds have infinite differences in form,

  Lest thus thou forcest some indeed to be

  Of an immeasurable immensity —

  Which I have taught above cannot be proved.

  And now for thee barbaric robes, and gleam

  Of Meliboean purple, touched with dye

  Of the Thessalian shell...

  The peacock’s golden generations, stained

  With spotted gaieties, would lie o’erthrown

  By some new colour of new things more bright;

  The odour of myrrh and savours of honey despised;

  The swan’s old lyric, and Apollo’s hymns,

  Once modulated on the many chords,

  Would likewise sink o’ermastered and be mute:

  For, lo, a somewhat, finer than the rest,

  Would be arising evermore. So, too,

  Into some baser part might all retire,

  Even as we said to better might they come:

  For, lo, a somewhat, loathlier than the rest

  To nostrils, ears, and eyes, and taste of tongue,

  Would then, by reasoning reversed, be there.

  Since ’tis not so, but unto things are given

  Their fixed limitations which do bound

  Their sum on either side, ‘tmust be confessed

  That matter, too, by finite tale of shapes

  Does differ. Again, from earth’s midsummer heats

  Unto the icy hoar-frosts of the year

  The forward path is fixed, and by like law

  O’ertravelled backwards at the dawn of spring.

  For each degree of hot, and each of cold,

  And the half-warm, all filling up the sum

  In due progression, lie, my Memmius, there

  Betwixt the two extremes: the things create

  Must differ, therefore, by a finite change,

  Since at each end marked off they ever are

  By fixed point — on one side plagued by flames

  And on the other by congealing frosts.

  The which now having taught, I will go on

  To bind thereto a fact to this allied

  And drawing from this its proof: those primal germs

  Which have been fashioned all of one like shape

  Are infinite in tale; for, since the forms

  Themselves are finite in divergences,

  Then those which are alike will have to be

  Infinite, else the sum of stuff remains

  A finite — what I’ve proved is not the fact,

  Showing in verse how corpuscles of stuff,

  From everlasting and to-day the same,

  Uphold the sum of things, all sides around

  By old succession of unending blows.

  For though thou view’st some beasts to be more rare,

  And mark’st in them a less prolific stock,

  Yet in another region, in lands remote,

  That kind abounding may make up the count;

  Even as we mark among the four-foot kind

  Snake-handed elephants, whose thousands wall

  With ivory ramparts India about,

  That her interiors cannot entered be —

  So big her count of brutes of which we see

  Such few examples. Or suppose, besides,

  We feign some thing, one of its kind and sole

  With body born, to which is nothing like

  In all the lands: yet now unless shall be

  An infinite count of matter out of which

  Thus to conceive and bring it forth to life,

  It cannot be created and — what’s more —

  It cannot take its food and get increase.

  Yea, if through all the world in finite tale

  Be tossed the procreant bodies of one thing,

  Whence, then, and where in what mode, by what power,

  Shall they to meeting come together there,

  In such vast ocean of matter and tumult strange? —

  No means they have of joining into one.

  But, just as, after mighty ship-wrecks piled,

  The mighty main is wont to scatter wide

  The rowers’ banks, the ribs, the yards, the prow,

  The masts and swimming oars, so that afar

  Along all shores of lands are seen afloat

  The carven fragments of the rended poop,

  Giving a lesson to mortality

  To shun the ambush of the faithless main,

  The violence and the guile, and trust it not

  At any hour, however much may smile

  The crafty enticements of the placid deep:

  Exactly thus, if once thou holdest true

  That certain seeds are finite in their tale,

  The various tides of matter, then, must needs

  Scatter them flung throughout the ages all,

  So that not ever can they join, as driven

  Together into union, nor remain

  In union, nor with increment can grow —

  But facts in proof are manifest for each:

  Things can be both begotten and increase.

  ’Tis therefore manifest that primal germs,

  Are infinite in any class thou wilt —

  From whence is furnished matter for all things.

  Nor can those motions that bring death prevail

  Forever, nor eternally entomb

  The welfare of the world; nor, further, can

  Those motions that give birth to things and growth

  Keep them fore
ver when created there.

  Thus the long war, from everlasting waged,

  With equal strife among the elements

  Goes on and on. Now here, now there, prevail

  The vital forces of the world — or fall.

  Mixed with the funeral is the wildered wail

  Of infants coming to the shores of light:

  No night a day, no dawn a night hath followed

  That heard not, mingling with the small birth-cries,

  The wild laments, companions old of death

  And the black rites.

  This, too, in these affairs

  ’Tis fit thou hold well sealed, and keep consigned

  With no forgetting brain: nothing there is

  Whose nature is apparent out of hand

  That of one kind of elements consists —

  Nothing there is that’s not of mixed seed.

  And whatsoe’er possesses in itself

  More largely many powers and properties

  Shows thus that here within itself there are

  The largest number of kinds and differing shapes

  Of elements. And, chief of all, the earth

  Hath in herself first bodies whence the springs,

  Rolling chill waters, renew forevermore

  The unmeasured main; hath whence the fires arise —

  For burns in many a spot her flamed crust,

  Whilst the impetuous Aetna raves indeed

  From more profounder fires — and she, again,

  Hath in herself the seed whence she can raise

  The shining grains and gladsome trees for men;

  Whence, also, rivers, fronds, and gladsome pastures

  Can she supply for mountain-roaming beasts.

  Wherefore great mother of gods, and mother of beasts,

  And parent of man hath she alone been named.

  Her hymned the old and learned bards of Greece

  Seated in chariot o’er the realms of air

  To drive her team of lions, teaching thus

  That the great earth hangs poised and cannot lie

  Resting on other earth. Unto her car

  They’ve yoked the wild beasts, since a progeny,

  However savage, must be tamed and chid

  By care of parents. They have girt about

  With turret-crown the summit of her head,

  Since, fortressed in her goodly strongholds high,

  ’Tis she sustains the cities; now, adorned

  With that same token, to-day is carried forth,

  With solemn awe through many a mighty land,

  The image of that mother, the divine.

  Her the wide nations, after antique rite,

  Do name Idaean Mother, giving her

  Escort of Phrygian bands, since first, they say,

  From out those regions ’twas that grain began

  Through all the world. To her do they assign

  The Galli, the emasculate, since thus

  They wish to show that men who violate

  The majesty of the mother and have proved

  Ingrate to parents are to be adjudged

  Unfit to give unto the shores of light

  A living progeny. The Galli come:

  And hollow cymbals, tight-skinned tambourines

  Resound around to bangings of their hands;

  The fierce horns threaten with a raucous bray;

  The tubed pipe excites their maddened minds

  In Phrygian measures; they bear before them knives,

  Wild emblems of their frenzy, which have power

  The rabble’s ingrate heads and impious hearts

  To panic with terror of the goddess’ might.

  And so, when through the mighty cities borne,

  She blesses man with salutations mute,

  They strew the highway of her journeyings

  With coin of brass and silver, gifting her

  With alms and largesse, and shower her and shade

  With flowers of roses falling like the snow

  Upon the Mother and her companion-bands.

  Here is an armed troop, the which by Greeks

  Are called the Phrygian Curetes. Since

  Haply among themselves they use to play

  In games of arms and leap in measure round

  With bloody mirth and by their nodding shake

  The terrorizing crests upon their heads,

  This is the armed troop that represents

  The arm’d Dictaean Curetes, who, in Crete,

  As runs the story, whilom did out-drown

  That infant cry of Zeus, what time their band,

  Young boys, in a swift dance around the boy,

  To measured step beat with the brass on brass,

  That Saturn might not get him for his jaws,

  And give its mother an eternal wound

  Along her heart. And ’tis on this account

  That armed they escort the mighty Mother,

  Or else because they signify by this

  That she, the goddess, teaches men to be

  Eager with armed valour to defend

  Their motherland, and ready to stand forth,

  The guard and glory of their parents’ years.

  A tale, however beautifully wrought,

  That’s wide of reason by a long remove:

  For all the gods must of themselves enjoy

  Immortal aeons and supreme repose,

  Withdrawn from our affairs, detached, afar:

  Immune from peril and immune from pain,

  Themselves abounding in riches of their own,

  Needing not us, they are not touched by wrath

  They are not taken by service or by gift.

  Truly is earth insensate for all time;

  But, by obtaining germs of many things,

  In many a way she brings the many forth

  Into the light of sun. And here, whoso

  Decides to call the ocean Neptune, or

  The grain-crop Ceres, and prefers to abuse

  The name of Bacchus rather than pronounce

  The liquor’s proper designation, him

  Let us permit to go on calling earth

  Mother of Gods, if only he will spare

  To taint his soul with foul religion.

  So, too, the wooly flocks, and horned kine,

  And brood of battle-eager horses, grazing

  Often together along one grassy plain,

  Under the cope of one blue sky, and slaking

  From out one stream of water each its thirst,

  All live their lives with face and form unlike,

  Keeping the parents’ nature, parents’ habits,

  Which, kind by kind, through ages they repeat.

  So great in any sort of herb thou wilt,

  So great again in any river of earth

  Are the distinct diversities of matter.

  Hence, further, every creature — any one

  From out them all — compounded is the same

  Of bones, blood, veins, heat, moisture, flesh, and thews —

  All differing vastly in their forms, and built

  Of elements dissimilar in shape.

  Again, all things by fire consumed ablaze,

  Within their frame lay up, if naught besides,

  At least those atoms whence derives their power

  To throw forth fire and send out light from under,

  To shoot the sparks and scatter embers wide.

  If, with like reasoning of mind, all else

  Thou traverse through, thou wilt discover thus

  That in their frame the seeds of many things

  They hide, and divers shapes of seeds contain.

  Further, thou markest much, to which are given

  Along together colour and flavour and smell,

  Among which, chief, are most burnt offerings.

  Thus must they be of divers shapes composed.

  A smell of scorching enters in our frame

  Where the
bright colour from the dye goes not;

  And colour in one way, flavour in quite another

  Works inward to our senses — so mayst see

  They differ too in elemental shapes.

  Thus unlike forms into one mass combine,

  And things exist by intermixed seed.

  But still ‘tmust not be thought that in all ways

  All things can be conjoined; for then wouldst view

  Portents begot about thee every side:

  Hulks of mankind half brute astarting up,

  At times big branches sprouting from man’s trunk,

  Limbs of a sea-beast to a land-beast knit,

  And nature along the all-producing earth

  Feeding those dire Chimaeras breathing flame

  From hideous jaws — Of which ’tis simple fact

  That none have been begot; because we see

  All are from fixed seed and fixed dam

  Engendered and so function as to keep

  Throughout their growth their own ancestral type.

  This happens surely by a fixed law:

  For from all food-stuff, when once eaten down,

  Go sundered atoms, suited to each creature,

  Throughout their bodies, and, conjoining there,

  Produce the proper motions; but we see

  How, contrariwise, nature upon the ground

  Throws off those foreign to their frame; and many

  With viewless bodies from their bodies fly,

  By blows impelled — those impotent to join

  To any part, or, when inside, to accord

  And to take on the vital motions there.

  But think not, haply, living forms alone

  Are bound by these laws: they distinguished all.

  For just as all things of creation are,

  In their whole nature, each to each unlike,

  So must their atoms be in shape unlike —

  Not since few only are fashioned of like form,

  But since they all, as general rule, are not

  The same as all. Nay, here in these our verses,

  Elements many, common to many words,

  Thou seest, though yet ’tis needful to confess

  The words and verses differ, each from each,

  Compounded out of different elements —

  Not since few only, as common letters, run

  Through all the words, or no two words are made,

  One and the other, from all like elements,

  But since they all, as general rule, are not

  The same as all. Thus, too, in other things,

  Whilst many germs common to many things

  There are, yet they, combined among themselves,

  Can form new wholes to others quite unlike.

  Thus fairly one may say that humankind,

  The grains, the gladsome trees, are all made up