Delphi Complete Works of Lucretius

by Titus Lucretius Carus

  Do leave their shiny husks of own accord,

  Seeking their food and living. Then it was

  This earth of thine first gave unto the day

  The mortal generations; for prevailed

  Among the fields abounding hot and wet.

  And hence, where any fitting spot was given,

  There ‘gan to grow womb-cavities, by roots

  Affixed to earth. And when in ripened time

  The age of the young within (that sought the air

  And fled earth’s damps) had burst these wombs, O then

  Would Nature thither turn the pores of earth

  And make her spurt from open veins a juice

  Like unto milk; even as a woman now

  Is filled, at child-bearing, with the sweet milk,

  Because all that swift stream of aliment

  Is thither turned unto the mother-breasts.

  There earth would furnish to the children food;

  Warmth was their swaddling cloth, the grass their bed

  Abounding in soft down. Earth’s newness then

  Would rouse no dour spells of the bitter cold,

  Nor extreme heats nor winds of mighty powers —

  For all things grow and gather strength through time

  In like proportions; and then earth was young.

  Wherefore, again, again, how merited

  Is that adopted name of Earth — The Mother! —

  Since she herself begat the human race,

  And at one well-nigh fixed time brought forth

  Each breast that ranges raving round about

  Upon the mighty mountains and all birds

  Aerial with many a varied shape.

  But, lo, because her bearing years must end,

  She ceased, like to a woman worn by eld.

  For lapsing aeons change the nature of

  The whole wide world, and all things needs must take

  One status after other, nor aught persists

  Forever like itself. All things depart;

  Nature she changeth all, compelleth all

  To transformation. Lo, this moulders down,

  A-slack with weary eld, and that, again,

  Prospers in glory, issuing from contempt.

  In suchwise, then, the lapsing aeons change

  The nature of the whole wide world, and earth

  Taketh one status after other. And what

  She bore of old, she now can bear no longer,

  And what she never bore, she can to-day.

  In those days also the telluric world

  Strove to beget the monsters that upsprung

  With their astounding visages and limbs —

  The Man-woman — a thing betwixt the twain,

  Yet neither, and from either sex remote —

  Some gruesome Boggles orphaned of the feet,

  Some widowed of the hands, dumb Horrors too

  Without a mouth, or blind Ones of no eye,

  Or Bulks all shackled by their legs and arms

  Cleaving unto the body fore and aft,

  Thuswise, that never could they do or go,

  Nor shun disaster, nor take the good they would.

  And other prodigies and monsters earth

  Was then begetting of this sort — in vain,

  Since Nature banned with horror their increase,

  And powerless were they to reach unto

  The coveted flower of fair maturity,

  Or to find aliment, or to intertwine

  In works of Venus. For we see there must

  Concur in life conditions manifold,

  If life is ever by begetting life

  To forge the generations one by one:

  First, foods must be; and, next, a path whereby

  The seeds of impregnation in the frame

  May ooze, released from the members all;

  Last, the possession of those instruments

  Whereby the male with female can unite,

  The one with other in mutual ravishments.

  And in the ages after monsters died,

  Perforce there perished many a stock, unable

  By propagation to forge a progeny.

  For whatsoever creatures thou beholdest

  Breathing the breath of life, the same have been

  Even from their earliest age preserved alive

  By cunning, or by valour, or at least

  By speed of foot or wing. And many a stock

  Remaineth yet, because of use to man,

  And so committed to man’s guardianship.

  Valour hath saved alive fierce lion-breeds

  And many another terrorizing race,

  Cunning the foxes, flight the antlered stags.

  Light-sleeping dogs with faithful heart in breast,

  However, and every kind begot from seed

  Of beasts of draft, as, too, the woolly flocks

  And horned cattle, all, my Memmius,

  Have been committed to guardianship of men.

  For anxiously they fled the savage beasts,

  And peace they sought and their abundant foods,

  Obtained with never labours of their own,

  Which we secure to them as fit rewards

  For their good service. But those beasts to whom

  Nature has granted naught of these same things —

  Beasts quite unfit by own free will to thrive

  And vain for any service unto us

  In thanks for which we should permit their kind

  To feed and be in our protection safe —

  Those, of a truth, were wont to be exposed,

  Enshackled in the gruesome bonds of doom,

  As prey and booty for the rest, until

  Nature reduced that stock to utter death.

  But Centaurs ne’er have been, nor can there be

  Creatures of twofold stock and double frame,

  Compact of members alien in kind,

  Yet formed with equal function, equal force

  In every bodily part — a fact thou mayst,

  However dull thy wits, well learn from this:

  The horse, when his three years have rolled away,

  Flowers in his prime of vigour; but the boy

  Not so, for oft even then he gropes in sleep

  After the milky nipples of the breasts,

  An infant still. And later, when at last

  The lusty powers of horses and stout limbs,

  Now weak through lapsing life, do fail with age,

  Lo, only then doth youth with flowering years

  Begin for boys, and clothe their ruddy cheeks

  With the soft down. So never deem, percase,

  That from a man and from the seed of horse,

  The beast of draft, can Centaurs be composed

  Or e’er exist alive, nor Scyllas be —

  The half-fish bodies girdled with mad dogs —

  Nor others of this sort, in whom we mark

  Members discordant each with each; for ne’er

  At one same time they reach their flower of age

  Or gain and lose full vigour of their frame,

  And never burn with one same lust of love,

  And never in their habits they agree,

  Nor find the same foods equally delightsome —

  Sooth, as one oft may see the bearded goats

  Batten upon the hemlock which to man

  Is violent poison. Once again, since flame

  Is wont to scorch and burn the tawny bulks

  Of the great lions as much as other kinds

  Of flesh and blood existing in the lands,

  How could it be that she, Chimaera lone,

  With triple body — fore, a lion she;

  And aft, a dragon; and betwixt, a goat —

  Might at the mouth from out the body belch

  Infuriate flame? Wherefore, the man who feigns

  Such beings could have been engendered

  When earth was new and the young sky was
fresh

  (Basing his empty argument on new)

  May babble with like reason many whims

  Into our ears: he’ll say, perhaps, that then

  Rivers of gold through every landscape flowed,

  That trees were wont with precious stones to flower,

  Or that in those far aeons man was born

  With such gigantic length and lift of limbs

  As to be able, based upon his feet,

  Deep oceans to bestride or with his hands

  To whirl the firmament around his head.

  For though in earth were many seeds of things

  In the old time when this telluric world

  First poured the breeds of animals abroad,

  Still that is nothing of a sign that then

  Such hybrid creatures could have been begot

  And limbs of all beasts heterogeneous

  Have been together knit; because, indeed,

  The divers kinds of grasses and the grains

  And the delightsome trees — which even now

  Spring up abounding from within the earth —

  Can still ne’er be begotten with their stems

  Begrafted into one; but each sole thing

  Proceeds according to its proper wont

  And all conserve their own distinctions based

  In nature’s fixed decree.

  ORIGINS AND SAVAGE PERIOD OF MANKIND

  But mortal man

  Was then far hardier in the old champaign,

  As well he should be, since a hardier earth

  Had him begotten; builded too was he

  Of bigger and more solid bones within,

  And knit with stalwart sinews through the flesh,

  Nor easily seized by either heat or cold,

  Or alien food or any ail or irk.

  And whilst so many lustrums of the sun

  Rolled on across the sky, men led a life

  After the roving habit of wild beasts.

  Not then were sturdy guiders of curved ploughs,

  And none knew then to work the fields with iron,

  Or plant young shoots in holes of delved loam,

  Or lop with hooked knives from off high trees

  The boughs of yester-year. What sun and rains

  To them had given, what earth of own accord

  Created then, was boon enough to glad

  Their simple hearts. Mid acorn-laden oaks

  Would they refresh their bodies for the nonce;

  And the wild berries of the arbute-tree,

  Which now thou seest to ripen purple-red

  In winter time, the old telluric soil

  Would bear then more abundant and more big.

  And many coarse foods, too, in long ago

  The blooming freshness of the rank young world

  Produced, enough for those poor wretches there.

  And rivers and springs would summon them of old

  To slake the thirst, as now from the great hills

  The water’s down-rush calls aloud and far

  The thirsty generations of the wild.

  So, too, they sought the grottos of the Nymphs —

  The woodland haunts discovered as they ranged —

  From forth of which they knew that gliding rills

  With gush and splash abounding laved the rocks,

  The dripping rocks, and trickled from above

  Over the verdant moss; and here and there

  Welled up and burst across the open flats.

  As yet they knew not to enkindle fire

  Against the cold, nor hairy pelts to use

  And clothe their bodies with the spoils of beasts;

  But huddled in groves, and mountain-caves, and woods,

  And ‘mongst the thickets hid their squalid backs,

  When driven to flee the lashings of the winds

  And the big rains. Nor could they then regard

  The general good, nor did they know to use

  In common any customs, any laws:

  Whatever of booty fortune unto each

  Had proffered, each alone would bear away,

  By instinct trained for self to thrive and live.

  And Venus in the forests then would link

  The lovers’ bodies; for the woman yielded

  Either from mutual flame, or from the man’s

  Impetuous fury and insatiate lust,

  Or from a bribe — as acorn-nuts, choice pears,

  Or the wild berries of the arbute-tree.

  And trusting wondrous strength of hands and legs,

  They’d chase the forest-wanderers, the beasts;

  And many they’d conquer, but some few they fled,

  A-skulk into their hiding-places...

  With the flung stones and with the ponderous heft

  Of gnarled branch. And by the time of night

  O’ertaken, they would throw, like bristly boars,

  Their wildman’s limbs naked upon the earth,

  Rolling themselves in leaves and fronded boughs.

  Nor would they call with lamentations loud

  Around the fields for daylight and the sun,

  Quaking and wand’ring in shadows of the night;

  But, silent and buried in a sleep, they’d wait

  Until the sun with rosy flambeau brought

  The glory to the sky. From childhood wont

  Ever to see the dark and day begot

  In times alternate, never might they be

  Wildered by wild misgiving, lest a night

  Eternal should possess the lands, with light

  Of sun withdrawn forever. But their care

  Was rather that the clans of savage beasts

  Would often make their sleep-time horrible

  For those poor wretches; and, from home y-driven,

  They’d flee their rocky shelters at approach

  Of boar, the spumy-lipped, or lion strong,

  And in the midnight yield with terror up

  To those fierce guests their beds of out-spread leaves.

  And yet in those days not much more than now

  Would generations of mortality

  Leave the sweet light of fading life behind.

  Indeed, in those days here and there a man,

  More oftener snatched upon, and gulped by fangs,

  Afforded the beasts a food that roared alive,

  Echoing through groves and hills and forest-trees,

  Even as he viewed his living flesh entombed

  Within a living grave; whilst those whom flight

  Had saved, with bone and body bitten, shrieked,

  Pressing their quivering palms to loathsome sores,

  With horrible voices for eternal death —

  Until, forlorn of help, and witless what

  Might medicine their wounds, the writhing pangs

  Took them from life. But not in those far times

  Would one lone day give over unto doom

  A soldiery in thousands marching on

  Beneath the battle-banners, nor would then

  The ramping breakers of the main seas dash

  Whole argosies and crews upon the rocks.

  But ocean uprisen would often rave in vain,

  Without all end or outcome, and give up

  Its empty menacings as lightly too;

  Nor soft seductions of a serene sea

  Could lure by laughing billows any man

  Out to disaster: for the science bold

  Of ship-sailing lay dark in those far times.

  Again, ’twas then that lack of food gave o’er

  Men’s fainting limbs to dissolution: now

  ’Tis plenty overwhelms. Unwary, they

  Oft for themselves themselves would then outpour

  The poison; now, with nicer art, themselves

  They give the drafts to others.

  BEGINNINGS OF CIVILIZATION

  Afterwards,

  When huts they had procured and pelts and fire,
<
br />   And when the woman, joined unto the man,

  Withdrew with him into one dwelling place,

  Were known; and when they saw an offspring born

  From out themselves, then first the human race

  Began to soften. For ’twas now that fire

  Rendered their shivering frames less staunch to bear,

  Under the canopy of the sky, the cold;

  And Love reduced their shaggy hardiness;

  And children, with the prattle and the kiss,

  Soon broke the parents’ haughty temper down.

  Then, too, did neighbours ‘gin to league as friends,

  Eager to wrong no more or suffer wrong,

  And urged for children and the womankind

  Mercy, of fathers, whilst with cries and gestures

  They stammered hints how meet it was that all

  Should have compassion on the weak. And still,

  Though concord not in every wise could then

  Begotten be, a good, a goodly part

  Kept faith inviolate — or else mankind

  Long since had been unutterably cut off,

  And propagation never could have brought

  The species down the ages.

  Lest, perchance,

  Concerning these affairs thou ponderest

  In silent meditation, let me say

  ’Twas lightning brought primevally to earth

  The fire for mortals, and from thence hath spread

  O’er all the lands the flames of heat. For thus

  Even now we see so many objects, touched

  By the celestial flames, to flash aglow,

  When thunderbolt has dowered them with heat.

  Yet also when a many-branched tree,

  Beaten by winds, writhes swaying to and fro,

  Pressing ‘gainst branches of a neighbour tree,

  There by the power of mighty rub and rub

  Is fire engendered; and at times out-flares

  The scorching heat of flame, when boughs do chafe

  Against the trunks. And of these causes, either

  May well have given to mortal men the fire.

  Next, food to cook and soften in the flame

  The sun instructed, since so oft they saw

  How objects mellowed, when subdued by warmth

  And by the raining blows of fiery beams,

  Through all the fields.

  And more and more each day

  Would men more strong in sense, more wise in heart,

  Teach them to change their earlier mode and life

  By fire and new devices. Kings began

  Cities to found and citadels to set,

  As strongholds and asylums for themselves,

  And flocks and fields to portion for each man