Delphi Complete Works of Lucretius

by Titus Lucretius Carus

  flagrabat stomacho flamma ut fornacibus intus.

  1170 nil adeo posses cuiquam leve tenveque membris

  vertere in utilitatem, at ventum et frigora semper.

  in fluvios partim gelidos ardentia morbo

  membra dabant nudum iacientes corpus in undas.

  [1132] And it makes no difference whether we travel to places unfavorable to us and change the atmosphere which wraps us round, or whether nature without our choice brings to us a tainted atmosphere or something to the use of which we have not been accustomed, and which is able to attack us on its first arrival.

  Such a form of disease and a death-fraught miasm erst within the borders of Cecrops defiled the whole land with dead, and dispeopled the streets, drained the town of burghers.

  Rising first and starting from the inmost corners of Egypt, after traversing much air and many floating fields, the plague brooded at last over the whole people of Pandion; and then they were handed over in troops to disease and death.

  First of all they would have the head seized with burning heat and both eyes blood-shot with aglare diffused over; the livid throat within would exude blood and the passage of the voice be clogged and choked with ulcers, and the mind’s interpreter the tongue drip with gore, quite enfeebled with sufferings, heavy in movement, rough to touch.

  Next when the force of disease passing down the throat had filled the breast and had streamed together even into the sad heart of the sufferers, then would all the barriers of life give way.

  The breath would pour out at the mouth a noisome stench, even as the stench of rotting carcasses thrown out unburied.

  And then the powers of the entire mind, the whole body would sink utterly, now on the very threshold of death.

  And a bitter despondency was the constant attendant on insufferable ills and complaining mingled with moaning.

  An ever-recurring hiccup often the night and day through, forcing on continual spasms in sinews and limbs, would break men quite, for wearying those forspent before.

  And yet in none could you perceive the skin on the surface of the body burn with any great heat, but the body would rather offer to the hand a lukewarm sensation and at the same time be red all over with ulcers burnt into it so to speak, like unto the holy fire as it spreads over the frame.

  The inward parts of the men however would burn to the very bones, a flame would bum within the stomach as within furnaces.

  Nothing was light and thin enough to apply to the relief of the body of any one; ever wind and cold alone.

  Many would plunge their limbs burning with disease into the cool rivers, throwing their body naked into the water.

  multi praecipites nymphis putealibus alte

  1175 inciderunt ipso venientes ore patente:

  insedabiliter sitis arida corpora mersans

  aequabat multum parvis umoribus imbrem.

  nec requies erat ulla mali: defessa iacebant

  corpora. mussabat tacito medicina timore,

  1180 quippe patentia cum totiens ardentia morbis

  lumina versarent oculorum expertia somno.

  multaque praeterea mortis tum signa dabantur:

  perturbata animi mens in maerore metuque,

  triste supercilium, furiosus voltus et acer,

  1185 sollicitae porro plenaeque sonoribus aures,

  creber spiritus aut ingens raroque coortus,

  sudorisque madens per collum splendidus umor,

  tenvia sputa minuta, croci contacta colore

  salsaque per fauces rauca vix edita tussi.

  1190 in manibus vero nervi trahere et tremere artus

  a pedibusque minutatim succedere frigus

  non dubitabat. item ad supremum denique tempus

  conpressae nares, nasi primoris acumen

  tenve, cavati oculi, cava tempora, frigida pellis

  1195 duraque in ore, iacens rictu, frons tenta manebat.

  nec nimio rigida post artus morte iacebant.

  octavoque fere candenti lumine solis

  aut etiam nona reddebant lampade vitam.

  quorum siquis, ut est, vitarat funera leti,

  1200 ulceribus taetris et nigra proluvie alvi

  posterius tamen hunc tabes letumque manebat,

  aut etiam multus capitis cum saepe dolore

  corruptus sanguis expletis naribus ibat.

  huc hominis totae vires corpusque fluebat.

  1205 profluvium porro qui taetri sanguinis acre

  exierat, tamen in nervos huic morbus et artus

  ibat et in partis genitalis corporis ipsas.

  et graviter partim metuentes limina leti

  vivebant ferro privati parte virili,

  1210 et manibus sine non nulli pedibusque manebant

  in vita tamen et perdebant lumina partim.

  usque adeo mortis metus iis incesserat acer.

  atque etiam quosdam cepere oblivia rerum

  cunctarum, neque se possent cognoscere ut ipsi.

  1215 multaque humi cum inhumata iacerent corpora supra

  corporibus, tamen alituum genus atque ferarum

  aut procul absiliebat, ut acrem exiret odorem,

  aut, ubi gustarat, languebat morte propinqua.

  [1174] Many tumbled headforemost deep down into the wells, meeting the water straight with mouth wide agape.

  Parching thirst with a craving not to be appeased, drenching their bodies, would make an abundant draught no better than the smallest drop.

  No respite was there of ill: their bodies would lie quite spent.

  The healing art would mutter low in voiceless fear, as again and again they rolled about their eye-balls wide open, burning with disease, never visited by sleep.

  And many symptoms of death besides would then be given, the mind disordered in sorrow and fear, the clouded brow, the fierce delirious expression, the ears too troubled and filled with ringings, the breathing quick or else strangely loud and slow-recurring, and the sweat glistening wet over the neck, the spittle in thin small flakes, tinged with a saffron-color, salt, scarce forced up the rough throat by coughing.

  The tendons of the hands ceased not to contract, the limbs to shiver, a coldness to mount with slow sure pace from the feet upward.

  Then at their very last moments they had nostrils pinched, the tip of the nose sharp, eyes deep-sunk, temples hollow, the skin cold and hard, on the grim mouth a grin, the brow tense and swollen; and not long after their limbs would be stretched stiff in death: about the eighth day of bright sunlight or else on the ninth return of his lamp they would yield up life.

  And if any of them at that time had shunned the doom of death, yet in after time consumption and death would await him from noisome ulcers and the black discharge of the bowels, or else a quantity of purulent blood accompanied by headache would often pass out by the gorged nostrils: into these the whole strength and substance of the man would stream.

  Then too if any one had escaped the acrid discharge of noisome blood, the disease would yet pass into his sinews and joints and onward even into the sexual organs of the body; and some from excessive dread of the gates of death would live bereaved of these parts by the knife; and some though without hands and feet would continue in life, and some would lose their eyes: with such force had the fear of death come upon them.

  And some were seized with such utter loss of memory that they did not know themselves.

  And though bodies lay in heaps above bodies unburied on the ground, yet would the race of birds and beasts either scour faraway, to escape the acrid stench, or where anyone had tasted, it drooped in near-following death.

  nec tamen omnino temere illis solibus ulla

  1220 comparebat avis, nec tristia saecla ferarum

  exibant silvis. languebant pleraque morbo

  et moriebantur. cum primis fida canum vis

  strata viis animam ponebat in omnibus aegre;

  extorquebat enim vitam vis morbida membris.

  1225 incomitata rapi certabant funera vasta

  n
ec ratio remedii communis certa dabatur;

  nam quod ali dederat vitalis aeëris auras

  volvere in ore licere et caeli templa tueri,

  hoc aliis erat exitio letumque parabat.

  1230 Illud in his rebus miserandum magnopere unum

  aerumnabile erat, quod ubi se quisque videbat

  implicitum morbo, morti damnatus ut esset,

  deficiens animo maesto cum corde iacebat,

  funera respectans animam amittebat ibidem.

  1235 quippe etenim nullo cessabant tempore apisci

  ex aliis alios avidi contagia morbi,

  lanigeras tam quam pecudes et bucera saecla,

  idque vel in primis cumulabat funere funus

  nam qui cumque suos fugitabant visere ad aegros,

  1240 vitai nimium cupidos mortisque timentis

  poenibat paulo post turpi morte malaque,

  desertos, opis expertis, incuria mactans.

  qui fuerant autem praesto, contagibus ibant

  atque labore, pudor quem tum cogebat obire

  1245 blandaque lassorum vox mixta voce querellae.

  optimus hoc leti genus ergo quisque subibat.

  Praeterea iam pastor et armentarius omnis

  et robustus item curvi moderator aratri

  languebat, penitusque casa contrusa iacebant

  1250 corpora paupertate et morbo dedita morti.

  exanimis pueris super exanimata parentum

  corpora non numquam posses retroque videre

  matribus et patribus natos super edere vitam.

  nec minimam partem ex agris maeror is in urbem

  1255 confluxit, languens quem contulit agricolarum

  copia conveniens ex omni morbida parte.

  omnia conplebant loca tectaque quo magis aestu,

  confertos ita acervatim mors accumulabat.

  multa siti prostrata viam per proque voluta

  1260 corpora silanos ad aquarum strata iacebant

  interclusa anima nimia ab dulcedine aquarum,

  [1219] Though hardly at all in those days would any bird appear, or the sullen breeds of wild beasts quit the forests.

  Many would droop with disease and die: above all faithful dogs would lie stretched in all the streets and yield up breath with a struggle, for the power of disease would wrench life from their frame.

  Funerals lonely, unattended, would be hurried on with emulous haste.

  And no sure and general method of cure was found; for that which had given to one man the power to inhale the vital air and to gaze on the quarters of heaven, would be destruction to others and would bring on death.

  But in such times this was what was deplorable and above all eminently heart-rending: when a man saw himself enmeshed by the disease, as though he were doomed to death, losing all spirit he would lie with sorrow-stricken heart, and with his, thoughts turned on death would surrender his life then and there.

  Ay for at no time did they cease to catch from one another the infection of the devouring plague, like to woolly flocks and horned herds.

  And this all heaped death on death: whenever any refused to attend their own sick, killing neglect soon after would punish them for their too great love of life and fear of death by a foul and evil death, abandoned in turn, forlorn of help.

  But they who had stayed which shame would then compel them to undergo and the sick man’s accents of affection mingled with those of complaining: this kind of death the most virtuous would meet. * * and different bodies on by them, would perish by infection and the labor different piles, struggling as they did to bury the multitude of their dead: then spent with tears and grief they would go home; and in great part they would take to their bed from sorrow.

  And none could be found whom at so fearful a time neither disease nor death nor mourning assailed.

  Then too every shepherd and herdsman, ay and sturdy guider of the bent plow sickened; and their bodies would lie huddled together in the corners of a hut, delivered over to death by poverty and disease.

  Sometimes you might see lifeless bodies of parents above their lifeless children, and then the reverse of this, children giving up life above their mothers and fathers.

  And in no small measure that affliction streamed from the land into the town, brought thither by the sickening crowd of peasants meeting plague-stricken from every side.

  multaque per populi passim loca prompta viasque

  languida semanimo cum corpore membra videres

  horrida paedore et pannis cooperta perire,

  1265 corporis inluvie, pelli super ossibus una,

  ulceribus taetris prope iam sordeque sepulta.

  omnia denique sancta deum delubra replerat

  corporibus mors exanimis onerataque passim

  cuncta cadaveribus caelestum templa manebant,

  1270 hospitibus loca quae complerant aedituentes.

  nec iam religio divom nec numina magni

  pendebantur enim: praesens dolor exsuperabat.

  nec mos ille sepulturae remanebat in urbe,

  quo prius hic populus semper consuerat humari;

  1275 perturbatus enim totus trepidabat et unus

  quisque suum pro re cognatum maestus humabat.

  multaque res subita et paupertas horrida suasit;

  namque suos consanguineos aliena rogorum

  insuper extructa ingenti clamore locabant

  1280 subdebantque faces, multo cum sanguine saepe

  rixantes, potius quam corpora desererentur,

  inque aliis alium populum sepelire suorum

  certantes; lacrimis lassi luctuque redibant;

  inde bonam partem in lectum maerore dabantur;

  1285 nec poterat quisquam reperiri, quem neque morbus

  nec mors nec luctus temptaret tempore tali.

  [1262] They would fill all places and buildings: wherefore all the more the heat would [destroy them and] thus close-packed death would pile them up in heaps.

  Many bodies drawn forth by thirst and tumbled out along the street would lie extended by the fountains of water, the breath of life cut off from their too great delight in water; and over all the open places of the people and the streets you might see many limbs drooping with their half-lifeless body, foul with stench and covered with rags, perish away from filth of body, with nothing but skin on their bones, now nearly buried in noisome sores and dirt.

  All the holy sanctuaries of the gods too death had filled with lifeless bodies, and all the temples of the heavenly powers in all parts stood burdened with carcasses: all which places the wardens had thronged with guests.

  For now no longer the worship of the gods or their divinities were greatly regarded: so overmastering was the present affliction.

  Nor did those rites of sepulture continue in force in the city, with which that pious folk had always been wont to be buried; for the whole of it was in dismay and confusion, and each man would sorrowfully bury as the present moment allowed.

  And the sudden pressure and poverty prompted to many frightful acts; thus with a loud uproar they would place their own kinsfolk upon the funeral piles of others, and apply torches, quarreling often with much bloodshed sooner than abandon the bodies.

  THE END

  The Biography

  Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini (1380-1459), the Florentine and Roman scholar was responsible for rediscovering a great number of classical Latin manuscripts, including ‘De rerum natura’, the only surviving work by Lucretius.

  LUCRETIUS by William Young Sellar

  LUCRETIUS (Titus Lucretius Carus) (c. 98-55 B.C.), the great Latin didactic poet. Our sole information concerning his life is found in the brief summary of Jerome, written more than four centuries after the poet’s death. Jerome followed, often carelessly, the accounts contained in the lost work of Suetonius De Viris Illustribus, written about two centuries after the death of Lucretius; and, although it is likely that Suetonius used the information transmitted by earlier grammarians, there is nothing to guide us to the original sources. Ac
cording to this account the poet was born in 95 B.C.; he became mad in consequence of the administration of a love-philtre; and after composing several books in his lucid intervals, which were subsequently corrected by Cicero, he died by his own hand in the forty-fourth year of his age. Donatus states in his life of Virgil, a work also based on the lost work of Suetonius, that Lucretius died on the same day on which Virgil assumed the toga virilis, that is, in the seventeenth year of Virgil’s life, and on the very day on which he was born, and adds that the consuls were the same, that is Cn. Pompeius Magnus and M. Licinius Crassus, consuls in 70 and again in 55. The statements cannot be perfectly reconciled; but we may say with certainty that Lucretius was born between 98 and 95 B.C., and died in 55 or 54. A single mention of his poem, the De rerum natura (which from the condition in which it has reached us may be assumed to have been published posthumously) in a letter of Cicero’s to his brother Quintus, written early in 54 B.C., confirms the date given by Donatus as that of the poet’s death. The statements of Jerome have been questioned or disbelieved on the ground of their intrinsic improbability. They have been regarded as a fiction invented later by the enemies of Epicureanism, with the view of discrediting the most powerful work ever produced by any disciple of that sect. It is more in conformity with ancient credulity than with modern science to attribute a permanent tendency to derangement to the accidental administration of any drug, however potent. A work characterized by such strength, consistency and continuity of thought is not likely to have been composed “in the intervals of madness” as Jerome says. Donatus, in mentioning the poet’s death, gives no hint of the act of suicide. The poets of the Augustan age, who were deeply interested both in his philosophy and in his poetry, are entirely silent about the tragical story of his life. Cicero, by his professed antagonism to the doctrines of Epicurus, by his inadequate appreciation of Lucretius himself and by the indifference which he shows to other contemporary poets, seems to have been neither fitted for the task of correcting the unfinished work of a writer whose genius was so distinct from his own, nor likely to have cordially undertaken such a task.

  Yet these considerations do not lead to the absolute rejection of the story. The evidence afforded by the poem rather leads to the conclusion that the tradition contains some germ of fact. It is remarkable that in more than one passage of his poem Lucretius writes with extraordinary vividness of the impression produced both by dreams and by waking visions. It is true that the philosophy of Epicurus put great stress on these, as affording the explanation of the origin of supernatural beliefs. But the insistence with which Lucretius returns to the subject, and the horror with which he recalls the effects of such abnormal phenomena, suggest that he himself may have been liable to such hallucinations, which are said to be consistent with perfect sanity, though they may be the precursors either of madness or of a state of despair and melancholy. Other passages, where he describes himself as ever engaged, even in his dreams, on his task of inquiry and composition, produce the impression of an unrelieved strain of mind and feeling, which may have ended in some extreme reaction of spirit, or in some failure of intellectual power, that may have led him to commit suicide. But the strongest confirmation of the tradition is the unfinished condition in which the poem has reached us. The subject appears indeed to have been fully treated in accordance with the plan sketched out in the introduction to the first book. But that book is the only one which is finished in style and in the arrangement of its matter. In all the others, and especially in the last three, the continuity of the argument is frequently broken by passages which must have been inserted after the first draft of the arguments was written out. Thus, for instance, in his account of the transition from savage to civilized life, he assumes at v. 1011 the discovery of the use of skins, fire, &c., and the first beginning of civil society, and proceeds at 1028 to explain the origin of language, and then again returns, from 1090 to 1160, to speculate upon the first use of fire and the earliest stages of political life. These breaks in continuity show what might also be inferred from frequent repetitions of lines which have appeared earlier in the poem, and from the rough workmanship of passages in the later books, that the poem could not have received the final revision of the author. Nor is there any great difficulty in believing that Cicero edited it; the word “emendavit,” need not mean more than what we call “preparing for press.”