Book V — The World, Its Birth and Its Death

Lucretius · a new plain-English translation from the original language

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.

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