Lucretius · a new plain-English translation from the original language
First, to sick mortals, fruit-bearing crops
did Athens, of glorious name, once distribute,
and restored life, and laid down laws,
and first gave life's sweet consolations,
when she bore a man found with such a heart
that he once poured out everything from a truth-telling mouth;
and his glory, though he is gone, because of his divine discoveries,
spread long ago, is carried now to the sky.
For when this man saw that whatever use demands
for living was by now almost all prepared for mortals,
and that, as far as they could manage, their life stood secure,
that men flowed with wealth and were powerful
in honor and praise, and excelled in their sons' good name,
and yet that none the less each still had an anxious heart at home,
and that their mind, against its will, harassed their life without
a pause, and was forced to rage with hostile complaints,
he understood then that the vessel itself was the flaw,
and that everything was spoiled within it by that flaw,
whatever good things came to it, gathered from outside;
partly because he saw it was leaking and full of holes,
so that by no means could it ever be filled,
partly because it seemed, with a foul taste as it were, to foul
everything it had taken in, within.
With truth-telling words, then, he purged our hearts
and set a limit to craving and to fear,
and set out what the highest good was, toward which
we all strive, and showed the way, by a narrow path,
along which we could press toward it on a straight course,
and what evil there was, scattered everywhere in mortal affairs,
arising by nature and flying about in various forms,
whether by chance or by force — since nature had so prepared it —
and by which gates it was fitting to meet each one;
and he showed that the human race for the most part vainly
rolls sad waves of care in its breast.
For just as children tremble and fear everything in blind
darkness, so we, in the light, are afraid
at times of things no more to be feared than
what children shudder at in the dark, and imagine will come.
This terror of the mind, then, and these shadows, must
be dispelled not by the sun's rays nor day's bright shafts,
but by the aspect and reasoned account of nature.
So I will press on the more to weave through what I have begun, in words.
And since I have taught that the world's precincts are mortal
and that the sky consists of a body that was born,
and that whatever happens in it, and must happen,
mostly dissolves again, hear now what remains further,
since once I have mounted the glorious chariot —
* * *
guide me to the bright markers set along the final track
as I run the course, show the way ahead, skillful Muse,
Calliope, rest of mortals and delight of gods,
that with you as my guide I may win the crown with high praise.
* * *
of winds arise, so that all things may again be calmed,
* * *
whatever they were, may be turned, their fury appeased.
The other things which mortals see happen on earth
and in the sky, when their minds often hang in fear
and dread of the gods makes their spirits low
and presses them down to the ground — because
ignorance of causes forces them to hand over
to the gods the power over things, and to grant them dominion —
[of whose workings they can by no reasoning see the causes,
and think they happen by divine will] —
for even those who have learned well that the gods lead a carefree life,
if all the same, meanwhile, they wonder by what means
each thing can be brought about, especially in those matters
which are seen above our heads in the regions of the upper air,
are carried back again into the old ways
of religion, and take on harsh masters, believing in their misery
that these can do all things, not knowing what can be
and what cannot — in short, by what reasoning each power
has a fixed limit and a deep-set boundary —
so that, wandering, they are carried the more by blind reasoning.
Unless you spit these notions from your mind and cast them far off,
as unworthy of the gods and foreign to their peace,
the sacred powers of the gods, diminished by you yourself, for you
will often do harm — not because the supreme force of the gods
can be violated, so that it should conceive a wish, out of anger, to seek harsh punishment,
but because you yourself will imagine that beings at rest in placid peace
roll great waves of wrath,
and you will not approach the shrines of the gods with a peaceful heart,
nor will you be able to receive, with your mind at tranquil peace,
the images that are carried from their sacred body into the minds of men,
messengers of divine form —
from this one may see what sort of life then follows.
And indeed, though much has already gone forth from me,
so that the truest reasoning may drive this far from us,
much still remains, and must be adorned with polished
verses; there is an account of the heavens to be grasped,
storms and bright lightning-bolts to be sung,
what they do and for what cause each is carried along —
so that you not tremble, out of your senses, at the sky's divided regions,
wondering from where the flying fire has come, or to which
side it has turned from here, or how, through walled-in places,
it has crept in, and how from there it has raised its dominance up.
[of whose workings they can by no reasoning see the causes,
and think they happen by divine will.]
First, the blue vault of the sky is shaken by thunder
because clouds flying high aloft
in the upper air clash, with winds fighting against each other.
For no sound comes from a clear part of the sky;
but wherever the clouds are massed in a denser train,
the more often, from there, a roaring rises with a great rumble.
Besides, clouds cannot have a body packed
as densely as stones and timber are, nor yet
as thin as mists and flying smoke;
for either, pressed down by dead weight, they would have to fall
like stones, or, like smoke, they would be unable to hold together
or to hold in cold snows and showers of hail.
They also give off a sound over the open plains of the world,
as canvas, once stretched taut over great theaters,
gives a crackling sound, tossed among the masts and beams,
and at times, torn through, rages under insolent breezes
and mimics the fragile sound of sheets of paper.
You can recognize that kind of sound in thunder too,
or when hung cloth and flying sheets of paper
the wind's blows toss and flap through the air.
For it happens too, at times, that clouds do not so much collide
front against front, as pass by sideways,
grazing bodies in a drawn-out motion, with opposing movement —
which is why that dry sound scrapes the ear, and for a long time
is drawn out, until they have emerged from the narrow region.
In this way too, all things often seem, shaken by thunder,
to tremble heavily and, suddenly torn apart,
the vast walls of the spacious world seem to have burst asunder,
when suddenly a gathered blast of strong wind
has twisted itself into the clouds and, shut in there,
with a whirling eddy forces the cloud, more and more from every side,
to become hollow, with a thick body all around;
afterward, when its force and its sharp onrush have broken it up,
then, torn apart, it gives out a crash with a terrifying, crackling sound.
Nor is it strange, since a small bladder full of air
often, when suddenly burst, gives out no small sound.
There is also this account: that when winds blow through clouds
they make sounds; for indeed we see clouds
often carried along in many shapes, branching and rough,
just as, when the blasts of the northwest wind
blow through a dense forest, the leaves give a sound and the branches a crash.
It happens too, at times, that the roused force of a strong wind
tears a cloud apart, breaking through it with a straight onrush;
for what a blast can do there, a plain fact shows —
here, where it is milder, yet on earth it still
uproots tall trees, tearing them up from their deepest roots.
There are also waves moving through the clouds, which give out
a heavy murmur as they break — and the same happens on deep
rivers and the great sea, when the swell breaks.
It happens too, when the burning force of the lightning-bolt
of the lightning; and if this cloud, amid much moisture, has received
it slaughters the fire at once with a great roar,
just as glowing iron, taken from hot furnaces,
hisses, when we have plunged it nearby into cold water.
Further, if a drier cloud takes in the fire,
it burns, suddenly kindled, with a huge sound,
as if a flame were roaming through laurel-crowned mountains,
burning them with a great onrush in a whirlwind of winds;
and nothing burns with a more terrible crackling sound in flame
than Phoebus's Delphic laurel.
Finally, often a great crash of frost, and the collapse
of hail, gives a sound high up in the great clouds;
for when the wind packs them tightly, the massed
mountains of storm-cloud, mixed with hail, are broken up close.
It also flashes with lightning, when clouds have struck out
many seeds of fire by their collision, as if one stone
were to strike another, or iron; for then too light
leaps out, and the fire scatters bright sparks.
But it happens that we take in the thunder with our ears after
our eyes see the flash, because things that set the sight in motion always reach the ears
more slowly than they reach the sight.
One can recognize this from this too: if, far off, you see someone
felling the growth of a tree with a two-edged axe,
it happens that you see the blow before the stroke gives its sound
through the ears; so too we see the flash before
we hear the thunder, which is sent out along with the fire,
equally, from a similar cause, born of the same collision.
In this way too, clouds tinge places with swift light,
and the storm flashes with a quivering onrush,
when wind has invaded a cloud and, whirling there in the same place,
has made the cloud, as I taught before, thicken into a hollow shape;
it grows hot by its own motion — just as you see all things
grow hot through and blaze when heated by motion, and a leaden
sling-bullet even melts, spun along a long course.
So this heated force, when it has torn the black cloud apart,
scatters the seeds of heat, squeezed out suddenly as if by force,
which make the flickering flashes of flame;
then the sound follows, which reaches the ears more slowly
than what arrives at the light of our eyes.
This happens, clearly, with dense clouds, and at the same time built up high,
piled one upon another with a strange force.
Do not let it deceive you that from below we see
rather how broad they are than how far up they are piled.
For observe: when winds carry clouds that look like mountains
crosswise through the air,
or when you will see them heaped up along great mountains,
one mass above another, and pressing down from on high,
set in place at rest, with winds buried all around —
then you will be able to recognize their great masses
and, as it were, caverns built of overhanging rocks,
to see, which, when a storm has arisen, the winds
have filled, and, shut in, rage with a great rumbling.
in the clouds and the caverns, they threaten like wild beasts,
now from here, now from there, sending roars through the clouds,
and, seeking a way out, they whirl around, and gather
seeds of fire from the clouds, and so force
many together, and roll flame within hollow furnaces,
until, torn apart, they flash out flickering from the cloud.
This is also the cause why that swift
gold-colored liquid fire flies down to earth:
because the clouds themselves must have very many
seeds of fire; for indeed, when they are without any moisture,
their color is mostly flame-hued and bright to look at.
For indeed they must take in much
from the light of the sun, so that they rightly redden and pour out fires.
So when the wind, driving these, has forced them together
and compressed the space, pressing them in, they pour out, squeezed,
the seeds that make the flame's flashing colors.
It also flashes with lightning when the clouds of the sky grow thin;
for when the wind gently draws them apart as they go
and dissolves them, those seeds that make the flash
must fall out reluctantly; then, without foul
terror or sound, it flashes, with no uproar.
For the rest, the nature that thunderbolts are endowed with,
what it consists of, is declared by their blows, and the burnt-in
marks of vapor, and the signs of heavy breath of reeking sulfur;
for these are signs of fire, not of wind or of rain.
Besides, they often set the roofs of houses ablaze
and master the buildings themselves with swift flame.
This subtle fire, beyond ordinary fires,
nature has made from minute and mobile
particles, so that absolutely nothing can stand against it.
For the powerful lightning-bolt passes through the walls of houses
as a shout or voices do; it passes through rocks, through bronze,
and in an instant of time makes bronze and gold liquid.
It also makes wine suddenly vanish from unbroken vessels,
since, no doubt, the heat as it arrives, and, having crept in,
easily loosens everything around and makes the sides
of the vessel porous, and, entering into the wine itself,
nimbly dissolves and scatters its first-particles.
The sun's warmth seems unable to bring this about
even in a whole age, though it is so powerful with its flashing heat.
So much more mobile and dominating is this force.
Now, in what way lightning-bolts are generated, and with such force
that they can burst towers with their blow,
tear apart houses and wrench off beams and timbers,
dislodge and shake loose men's monuments,
kill men, and lay flocks low far and wide,
and all the rest of this kind, by what force they can do it —
I will explain, and not detain you longer over my promises.
We must think lightning-bolts are born from clouds packed thick
and piled high; for none are ever sent from a clear sky,
nor from lightly massed clouds.
For beyond doubt, a plain fact shows this happens so;
for then clouds thicken through the whole air,
so that on every side we would think all the darkness of Acheron
had left it and filled the great caverns of the sky,
so utterly does the foul night of storm-clouds, once risen,
hang overhead with the face of black dread,
when the storm begins to forge its lightning-bolts.
Besides, very often too a black storm-cloud out over the sea,
like a river of pitch let down from the sky, so falls
into the waves, borne along, dark, from far off, and drags
a storm heavy with lightning-bolts and squalls,
itself first filled with fires and winds,
so that even on land men shudder and seek shelter.
So we must think that the storm above our heads
is likewise deep; for such darkness could not
overwhelm the lands, unless many clouds were built up
on high, one on another, with the sun shut out;
nor could they, coming on, overwhelm with so great a downpour
as to make rivers flood and fields swim,
if the sky were not built up high with clouds.
Here, then, everything is full of winds and fires;
that is why roarings and lightning happen everywhere.
For indeed I have taught above that hollow clouds
have very many seeds of heat, and must
take in much from the sun's rays and their warmth.
So when this same wind that forces them into one
place, wherever it may be, has squeezed out much of the seed
of heat, and has mixed itself at the same time with that fire,
a whirlwind, having wormed its way in, spins in the narrow space
and sharpens the lightning-bolt within hot furnaces;
for it is kindled by a twofold cause: by its own
motion it grows hot, and by contact with fire.
Then, when the force of the wind has grown thoroughly hot, and the heavy
onset of fire has come on, the lightning, now ripe as it were,
suddenly splits the cloud, and the fire, roused, flies out,
lighting up every place with its flashing brightness.
A heavy sound follows it, so that the precincts of the sky
seem suddenly burst and to crash down from above.
Then a tremor shakes the earth heavily, and rumblings
run across the deep sky; for almost the whole
storm then, shaken, trembles, and roarings are stirred.
From this shaking follows a heavy, drenching rain,
so that the whole sky seems turned into a downpour
and, rushing headlong, seems to call things back to a flood.
So great a sound is sent forth by the cloud's rending
and the wind's squall, when it flies out with a burning blow.
There is also the case when a force of wind, roused from outside,
falls upon a cloud grown strong, with its top now ripe;
and when it has split it, at once that fiery
whirl falls, which we call by our native name, the lightning-bolt.
The same thing happens in other quarters, wherever the force is carried.
It also happens at times that a gust of wind sent without fire
catches fire nonetheless over a long stretch and course,
as it comes, losing along its way certain
large bodies, which cannot penetrate the air together,
and carrying along, scraped from the air itself, other
tiny ones, which, mixed in as it flies, make fire —
by much the same account as a leaden sling-bullet
often grows hot in its course, when it has let go many bodies
of cold and taken up fire from the air.
It happens too that the force of the blow itself rouses the fire,
when the cold force of a wind, sent without fire, has struck,
no doubt because, when it has struck with a violent blow,
elements of heat can flow together out of it,
and at the same time out of that thing which then receives the blow;
just as, when we strike stone with iron, fire flies out,
and, though the force of the iron is cold, none the less
seeds of hot brightness rush together at the blow.
So too, then, a thing must be kindled by lightning,
if it happened to be a fitting and suitable match for flame.
Nor can the force of wind be altogether and simply
cold, when it is sent down from above with such great force,
but that, if it is not kindled with fire on its way,
it still arrives at least warmed, mixed with heat.
The lightning's mobility, moreover, and its heavy blow,
and the swift gliding course lightning-bolts generally run,
come about because the force itself, roused within the clouds,
first gathers itself and takes a great effort of motion;
then, when the cloud could not contain the increase of its onrush,
the force is squeezed out and so flies with a strange onrush,
like things sent flying from powerful engines of war.
Add that it is made of small and light
elements, and nothing can easily withstand a nature of that kind;
for it slips and penetrates between the narrow gaps of paths,
and so it does not stick fast, delayed by many obstructions,
and for this reason it flies gliding with a swift onrush.
Then, since by nature all weights altogether
strain downward, when a blow is added to that natural weight,
its mobility is doubled and its force grows heavier,
so that it scatters, with more violence and speed, whatever
stands in its way, with its blows, and pursues its course.
Finally, because it comes with a long-driven onrush, it must
take on mobility again and again, which grows as it goes
and increases its strong powers and reinforces the blow;
for it makes whatever seeds belong to it,
from all around, be carried as it were into one place,
throwing them all together into that rolling course.
Perhaps, coming on, it drags from the air itself certain
bodies, which by their blows kindle its mobility.
And it comes through things unharmed, and passes through many
whole, since the liquid fire slips through their pores;
and it shatters much, when the bodies of the lightning itself
have struck the bodies of things, at the point where their web is held together.
Further, it easily dissolves bronze, and makes gold
melt at once, since its force is made of small,
fine bodies and of light elements,
which easily work their way in, and having worked their way in suddenly
dissolve every knot and loosen every bond.
In autumn above all, the high house of the sky, bright with stars,
house of the sky is shaken on every side, and the whole earth,
and when the flowering season of spring unfolds itself.
For in cold, fires are lacking, and winds fail
in heat, nor are the clouds of so dense a body.
So when the seasons of the sky stand between the two extremes,
then all the various causes of lightning come together.
For the very joint of the year mixes cold with heat,
and both of these are needed for a cloud to forge lightning,
so that there is discord among things, and with great tumult
the raging air surges with fires and winds.
so that there is discord among things, and with great tumult
the raging air surges with fires and winds.
For the first part of heat is the last part of cold;
that is the season of spring; and so unlike things must
fight among themselves, and, mixed, be thrown into confusion.
And when the last heat, mixed with the first cold,
rolls round — the season that is called by the name of autumn —
here too the fierce winters clash with the summers.
That is why these are to be called the straits of the year;
and it is no wonder if at that season very many
lightning-bolts occur, and turbulent storms are stirred in the sky,
since it is disturbed on both sides by a two-edged war,
on one side with flames, on the other with winds mixed with wet.
This is truly to see through the nature of fire-bearing
lightning itself, and to see by what force it does each thing —
not, unrolling Etruscan chants in vain, backward,
to search out signs of the hidden mind of the gods,
wondering from where the flying fire has come, or to which
side it has turned from here, or how, through walled-in places,
it has crept in, and how from there it has raised its dominance up,
or what harm the lightning-bolt's stroke can do, sent from the sky.
But if Jupiter and the other shining gods
shake the heavenly precincts with a terrifying sound
and hurl fire wherever any one of them wishes,
why do they not strike those whose guilt is reckless and detestable,
so that, pierced, they breathe out the flames of the lightning-bolt
from a transfixed chest, a sharp lesson for mortals,
while instead one who is conscious in himself of no shameful deed
is rolled, innocent, in flames, and caught entangled,
seized suddenly by the heavenly whirlwind and its fire?
Why also do they aim at empty places, and toil in vain?
Is it then that they are practicing their arms and strengthening their muscles?
And why do they let their father's weapon be blunted
against the ground? Why does he himself allow it, and not spare it for his enemies?
Finally, why does Jupiter never hurl his lightning
and pour out its sounds over the earth when the whole sky is clear?
Is it that as soon as clouds have come up, he then
descends into them himself, so as to fix the aim of his weapon's blow close at hand?
And by what plan does he send it into the sea? What fault
does he find with the waves, and the liquid mass, and the swimming plains?
Besides, if he wants us to guard against the lightning's stroke,
why does he hesitate to let us see it sent?
But if instead he wants to catch us unaware with his fire,
why does he thunder from that direction, so that we can avoid it,
why does he first stir up darkness and roarings and rumblings?
And how could you believe he sends it at the same time
into many quarters? Or would you ever dare to claim
that this never happens, that blows fall at one and the same moment in several places?
But it has often happened, and must happen,
just as it rains and showers fall in many regions at once,
so lightning-bolts too are made many at one time.
Finally, why does he shatter the sacred shrines of the gods
and his own splendid seats with a hostile bolt,
and break the well-made images of the gods, and strip
his own likenesses of their honor with a violent wound?
And why does he mostly aim for high places, and why do we see
most traces of his fire on mountain-tops?
For the rest, it is easy from these facts to learn
the manner in which the things the Greeks, from the fact, named "presteres,"
come down, sent from above, into the sea.
For it happens sometimes that, as if a column let down,
something descends from the sky into the sea, around which the straits
seethe heavily, whipped up by blowing gusts,
and whatever ships are caught in that turmoil then
come into the utmost danger, tossed about.
This happens when at times the roused force of a wind
cannot break the cloud it has begun to attack, but presses it down, so that it becomes
like a column let down from the sky into the sea,
gradually, as if something were thrust down and stretched out into the waves
by a blow of fist and arm from above;
and when it has split this apart, from here the wind's force
bursts out into the sea, and stirs up a strange seething in the waves;
for the whirling eddy descends and draws that cloud
down together with it, with its slow-moving mass;
and as soon as it has forced this, grown heavy, down to the sea's surface,
it plunges itself whole and sudden into the water, and makes
the whole sea seethe, stirring it with a huge roar.
It also happens that a whirlwind wraps itself in clouds,
scraping up seeds of cloud from the air,
and imitates, as it were, a "prester" let down from the sky;
when this has let itself down to the earth and dissolved,
it spews out the whirlwind's monstrous force, and of a squall.
But since this happens altogether rarely, and mountains must
stand in its way on land, it appears more often
in the wide view of the sea and the open sky.
Clouds thicken when many bodies, flying about,
have suddenly come together here, in the space of the sky,
rougher ones, able in some way, tangled together,
to be held pressed together among themselves though small.
These first make small clouds stand together;
then these gather among themselves and flock together,
and by joining grow, and are carried by the winds
until a fierce storm has risen up.
It also happens that the closer the peaks of mountains
are to the sky, the more, the higher they stand, they smoke
continually with a thick haze of tawny cloud,
because, when clouds first form,
before the eyes can see them thin, the winds
carry them and force them to the mountains' highest peaks;
then at last it happens that, once a greater mass has gathered,
and thickened, they can appear, and at the same time from the very
peak of the mountain seem to rise into the upper air.
For plain fact and feeling show that windy places lie open
above, when we climb high mountains.
Besides, that nature lifts up very many bodies
from the whole sea, clothes hung on the shore make plain,
when they take on a clinging dampness.
So the more it seems that much can rise too
from the salt swell of the sea, to swell the clouds;
for all moisture is of one kindred nature.
Besides, from all rivers, and from the earth itself, we see
mists and vapor rising,
which, like a breath pressed out, are carried upward from here
and cover the sky with their haze, and gradually, by coming
together, build up high clouds;
for the heat of the starry sky above presses down too,
and, as it were by thickening, weaves an undercoat of cloud into the blue.
It also happens that those bodies come into the sky from outside
which make the flying clouds and storm-clouds;
for I have taught that their number is beyond counting,
and the sum of the deep is infinite, and I have shown
with what great mobility such bodies fly,
and how suddenly they are apt to cross an unspeakable
distance. So it is no wonder if, in a short time, often
with such great winds a storm and darkness
cover seas and lands, pressing down from above,
since on every side, through all the pores of the upper air,
and as it were through the breathing-holes around the great world,
an outlet and an inlet is granted for these elements.
Now come, in what way rainy moisture gathers
in high clouds, and, sent down to earth as a shower,
falls — I will explain. First, I will show that many seeds
of water rise up together with the clouds themselves,
out of everything, and that both grow together at the same rate,
both the cloud and the water that is in the clouds,
just as our body grows together with our blood,
and sweat too, and whatever moisture is in our limbs at all.
They also often take in much moisture of the sea,
like hanging fleeces of wool,
when winds carry the clouds above the great sea.
By a like reasoning, moisture is lifted from all
rivers into the clouds. And when the seeds of water
have gathered well from everywhere, added in many ways,
the crowded clouds compete to send out moisture
in two ways: for the force of the wind presses it,
and the mass of storm-cloud itself, gathered into a greater crowd,
bears down from above and forces the showers to flow out.
Besides, when the clouds are thinned by winds too,
or are dissolved, struck from above by the sun's heat,
they send out rainy moisture and drip, as when wax
above a warm fire melts away in quantity.
But a violent downpour comes when the heaped-up clouds
are pressed hard by both forces, their own weight and the wind's onrush.
But rains are used to holding back a long time and delaying,
when many seeds of water are stirred up,
and clouds and storm-clouds, one after another, dripping,
are carried on, above and from every part at large,
and the whole steaming earth breathes back its moisture.
Here, when the sun with its rays, amid the dark storm,
has struck opposite against the storm-cloud's spray, facing it,
then the color of the rainbow arises in the black clouds.
As for the rest, that grow upward and are made upward,
and that thicken in the clouds, all of it, altogether,
all of it — snow, wind, hail, and cold frosts,
and the great force of frost, the hard binding of waters,
and the delay that everywhere checks rivers as they rush on —
it is quite easy, all the same, to find and see in the mind
how all of it comes about and for what reason it is made,
once you have well understood what belongs to the elements.
Now come, learn what account there is
for earthquakes. And first, take it that the earth is
full of windy caverns, both below and above alike,
and bears within its lap many lakes and many pools
and cliffs and broken rocks;
and we must think that under the earth's back many rivers, hidden,
roll their sunken waves with force;
for fact itself demands that the earth be like itself throughout.
With these things, then, set beneath and underlying it,
the earth trembles above, shaken by great collapses,
when time has undermined vast caverns below.
Indeed whole mountains fall, and suddenly, with a great
collapse, tremors spread widely from there.
And rightly so, since whole houses beside the road tremble,
shaken by wagons of no great weight,
and no less do they leap up, if anything along the road
jolts the iron rims of the wheels on either side.
It also happens, when a huge clod, worn loose by age,
rolls down from the land into the vast, watery pools,
that the earth too, tottering, is tossed by the wave's swell of water,
just as a vessel among liquids cannot stand still, unless the water
has stopped being tossed about within by its uncertain swell.
Besides, when wind, gathered in one part, along hollow
places under the earth, presses forward and pushes,
straining with great force against the deep caverns,
the earth leans in the direction the wind's downward force presses.
Then the buildings of houses raised above the earth,
and the higher each is built toward the sky,
lean, and threaten, tipped toward that same side,
and the projecting beams hang, ready to give way.
And people fear to believe that the nature of the great world
has some destructive time and ruin awaiting it,
when they see so vast a mass of earth leaning down!
Yet if the winds did not let up, no force could check
things, or hold them back from rushing to destruction;
but now, since they let up in turns and grow strong again
and, as if gathered, come back and yield, repulsed,
the earth more often threatens ruin for this reason
than it brings it about; for it leans, then springs back again,
and, having slipped, recovers its own place under its weight.
In this way, then, all buildings sway,
the tops more than the middles, the middles more than the base, the base scarcely at all.
There is also this same cause of a great tremor:
when suddenly some very great force of wind and breath,
whether risen from outside or from the earth itself,
has thrown itself into the hollow places of the earth, and there,
among great caverns, first roars with a tumult,
whirling as it is carried, then afterward, its roused force
stirred up, bursts out, and at once splits the deep
earth apart and makes a great chasm.
This happened at Sidon in Syria, and at Aegium
in the Peloponnese, cities which this outburst of wind
disturbed, and the earthquake that rose from it.
And besides, many city walls have fallen from great
shocks on land, and many cities, sunk down
through the sea, have settled to the bottom together with their own people.
But if it does not burst out, still the force of the wind itself
and the wild strength of the gust, scattered through the earth's many pores,
spreads like a shudder, and drives a tremor through from there —
just as when cold reaches deep into our limbs,
it shakes us against our will, forcing us to tremble and move.
So people tremble with fear on both counts throughout their cities,
fearing the roofs above, dreading the caverns below,
lest the earth's nature suddenly dissolve,
or, torn apart, spread wide its gaping chasm
and, in its confusion, want to fill it with its own ruins.
So people may believe, as much as they like, that sky and earth
are decreed to be unshaken, to an everlasting safety;
yet all the same, at times, the very present force of the danger
plants this goad too, from one direction of fear —
that the ground might suddenly be snatched from under their feet
and follow into the pit, and the whole sum of things, its foundation gone,
collapse utterly, and the world's ruin become one confused mass.
* * *
First, people wonder that nature does not make the sea
grow any greater, given so great a downflow of waters into it,
with all the rivers coming from every side.
Add the wandering rains and flying storms,
which sprinkle and soak all the seas and lands;
add its own springs; yet all of these together, against the sea's
whole sum, would scarcely amount to the increase of a single drop.
So it is less strange that the great sea does not grow.
Besides, the sun draws off a great part with its heat;
for indeed we see the sun, with its burning rays,
dry out clothes soaked with moisture;
but we see the seas, many and spread wide beneath.
So, though from any one place the sun
draws off only a small part of moisture from the surface,
over so great an expanse it will still carry off a great deal from the waves.
Then, further, the winds too can lift away a great part
of the moisture, sweeping the surface — since we very often
see roads made dry by the wind in a single night,
and the soft crusts of mud harden.
Besides, I have taught that clouds too lift away much
moisture, drawn up in great quantity from the sea's surface,
and scatter it far and wide over the whole circle of the lands,
when it rains on earth and winds carry the clouds.
Finally, since the earth is of a porous body
and is joined to the sea, girding its shores on every side,
it must be that, as water flows from the land into the sea,
it likewise seeps back into the land from the salt sea;
for the harsh brine is filtered out, and the substance
of the water flows back, and all of it gathers to the source of the rivers,
from where it returns over the land in a sweet stream,
by the path that its liquid foot once cut, carrying the waves.
Now what the reason is, that through the throat of a mountain like Etna
fires sometimes breathe out with so great a whirlwind,
I will explain; for it was no ordinary disaster that arose
when the storm of flame, ruling over the fields of Sicily,
turned the faces of neighboring peoples toward itself,
when, seeing all the smoking precincts of the sky sparkle,
they filled their hearts with fearful care,
wondering what new thing nature was contriving.
In these matters you must look deep and far,
and look out widely into every direction,
so that you may remember that the sum of things is deep,
and see how very small a part, and how tiny a fraction,
the sky is, of the whole sum of everything,
not even so great a part as one man is of the whole earth.
If you clearly set this before you and look straight at it,
and clearly see it, you will leave off wondering at much.
For does any one of us wonder, if someone has taken
a fever into his limbs, risen with a burning heat,
or any other pain of disease through his body?
A foot swells up suddenly, a sharp pain
often seizes the teeth, invades the very eyes,
holy fire breaks out and, creeping over the body,
burns whatever part it has seized, and crawls through the limbs —
no doubt because there are seeds of many things,
and this earth and sky carry enough of disease and harm,
from which the force of boundless sickness can grow.
So too we must think that for the whole sky and earth
there is enough supplied out of the infinite,
from which the earth, suddenly shaken, can be moved,
and a swift whirlwind can race through sea and land,
Etna's fire can overflow, and the sky can burst into flame —
for that too happens, and the heavenly precincts blaze,
and rainy storms come with a heavier onset,
whenever it happens that the seeds of water have gathered so.
"But the burning heat of that fire is too vast, too wild," someone says.
Of course — just as a river looks biggest
to one who has never before seen a bigger one, and a huge
tree, or a man, seems so, and everything of every kind
that anyone has seen the biggest of, he imagines to be huge,
though all of it, together with sky and earth and sea,
is nothing next to the whole sum of the entire universe.
Still now, in what way that fire, suddenly stirred up,
breathes out from Etna's vast furnaces, I will
explain. First, the nature of the whole mountain is hollow
underneath, propped up almost entirely on caverns of rock.
In all its caverns, further, there is wind and air.
For wind comes about when air is stirred up and driven on.
When this, once it has grown hot through, and made everything around it hot,
raging against the rocks it touches, and the ground, and from them
has struck out a hot fire with swift flames,
it rises up and hurls itself out high, straight through the throat.
So it carries its heat far and wide, and scatters ash
far off, and rolls up smoke in thick darkness,
and at the same time flings out rocks of astonishing weight —
do not doubt that this is the turbulent force of wind and breath.
Besides, in great part, the sea, at the mountain's
base, breaks its waves and dissolves its swell.
From this sea all the way up, caverns of the mountain reach
down to deep throats below. Here one must admit that
* * *
the facts compel us to grant it penetrates deep from the open sea,
to breathe out and so to send up flame,
and to hurl rocks and to raise clouds of sand.
For at the very top there are craters, as they themselves
call them — what we call throats and mouths.
There are also some things of which it is not enough to name a single
cause, but several, one of which is still the true one —
as if you were to see, far off, some man's lifeless
body lying, it is fitting to name every cause
of death, so that the one true one is included among them;
for you could not say that he died by the sword,
nor by cold, nor from disease, nor by poison,
but we know that something of this kind happened to him.
We have to say the same in many other matters.
The Nile rises in summer and floods over its plains,
the only one of its kind on earth, the river of all Egypt.
It waters Egypt often, in the middle of the heat,
either because in summer north winds blow against its mouths,
at that season of the year, the winds they call the etesian,
and, blowing against the river, hold back its waters,
forcing them backward, and fill it up and make it stay in place;
for no doubt these blasts blow against the river's
current, driven from the icy stars of the pole,
while that river comes from the heat-bearing region, from the south,
rising among tribes of men scorched black,
far off, from the middle region of day.
It may also be that a great mass of gathered sand
blocks its mouths against it, with waves opposing,
when the sea, stirred by winds, drives sand within,
so that by this means the river's outlet becomes less free,
and likewise the waves' downward rush becomes less.
It may also be that rains fall more, perhaps, near its source
at that season, when the etesian blasts of the north winds
then drive all the clouds into those regions.
No doubt, once driven together toward the middle region of day,
they gather there, and at last, against the high mountains
the clouds, pressed together, are forced and driven by their weight.
Perhaps it grows from deep among the high mountains
of the Ethiopians, when the sun, ranging over everything,
with its melting rays forces the white snows to come down onto the plains.
Now come, I will explain what kind of nature the places
called Avernian, and their pools, are endowed with, whatever they are.
First, the name Avernian was given them for good reason,
because they are hostile to all birds,
from that region, since when flying things have come there,
forgetting the oarage of their wings, they let their sails go slack
and fall headlong, their soft necks hanging loose,
onto the ground, if that is the nature of the place there,
or into the water, if a pool of Avernus lies beneath.
That place is near Cumae, where mountains, packed
with sharp sulfur, steam, filled up by hot springs.
There is also one within the walls of Athens, on the very
peak of the citadel, by the temple of Pallas of Triton, the kind goddess,
where noisy crows never fly to land with their wings,
not even when the altars smoke with offerings;
not that they flee it out of Pallas's harsh anger,
for the sake of her ever-watchful guardianship, as Greek poets have sung,
but nature's own working brings this about, by itself.
In Syria too, it is said, there is a place that can be seen
where, as soon as four-footed creatures set
foot, its very force compels them to collapse heavily,
as if they were suddenly sacrificed to the gods of the dead below.
All these things happen by a natural cause,
and the origin is plain, from what causes they arise;
do not let it be believed that a gate of Orcus's
regions can exist here, and that then we should think
that gods of the dead lead souls down from here into the shores of Acheron,
as swift-footed stags are often thought
to lead the creeping generations of snakes out of their hiding-places, by their scent.
How far removed this is from the true account,
hear now; for I am trying now to speak of the matter itself.
First I say this, which I have also said often before,
that there are shapes of things of every kind in the earth,
many which are food, many which are vital, and many which can
strike disease into us and hasten death.
And I have shown before that some things are more suited
than others to the way of life of different living creatures,
because of the unlike nature and the unlike
textures among them, and their unlike first shapes.
Many hostile things pass through the ears, many make their way
in through the nostrils themselves, harsh and rough to the touch,
and not a few are to be avoided by touch, and not a few
by sight, or are bitter, whatever ones there are, to taste.
Next, one may see how many things are harshly hostile
to man's senses, and foul and burdensome.
First, a heavy shade is cast by certain trees,
so much so that they often cause headaches,
if anyone has lain stretched out on the grass beneath them.
There is also, on the great mountains of Helicon, a tree
accustomed to kill a man with the foul smell of its flower.
Clearly all these things rise from the earth for this reason,
because the earth carries, in many different ways, many seeds
of many things, mixed together, and hands them on distinct.
And when a freshly extinguished lamp at night offends
the nostrils with its sharp smell, it puts to sleep at once
anyone who is prone to collapse and foam at the mouth from disease.
and a woman lies senseless, put to sleep by heavy castoreum,
and the shining work slips from her soft hands,
if she has smelled it at the time when her monthly flow is loosed.
And many things besides loosen the drooping limbs throughout the frame
and shake the soul loose from its seat within.
Then too, if you linger in hot baths
too full, and bathe yourself in a seat of boiling water,
how easily it happens that you often collapse in the middle of it!
And the heavy force and smell of charcoal creeps in
how easily into the brain, unless we have first taken water beforehand!
But when a burning fever, mastering the limbs, has seized the body,
then the smell of wine becomes like a killing blow.
Do you not see too that sulfur is born in the earth itself,
and that bitumen congeals with a foul smell,
and then, when men follow veins of silver and gold,
searching out the earth's hidden depths with iron,
what odors Scaptensula breathes out from below?
Or what harm the gold mines exhale!
What faces they give men back, and what colors!
Do you not see or hear that men die in a short time,
as they usually do, and how quickly their store of life fails,
those whom a great force of necessity confines to such work?
The earth, then, boils out all these vapors
and breathes them out into the open and the exposed regions of the sky.
So too the Avernian places must send up to birds
a death-dealing force. This force, which rises from the earth into the air,
so as to poison a portion of the sky's space --
and as soon as a bird is carried there on its wings,
it is hindered there, seized by the hidden poison,
so that it falls straight down from the spot, wherever the vapor aims.
And when it has fallen there, that same force of that vapor
takes away the remnants of life from all its limbs.
For indeed at first it stirs up something like a fever;
afterward it happens — when they have already fallen into the very
springs of the poison — that life too must be vomited up there,
because a great store of harm has gathered round about.
It happens too, sometimes, that this force and vapor of Avernus
disperses the air that lies between the birds and the earth,
so that this place is left almost empty.
And when flying creatures come into the region of this place,
at once the vain effort of their wings falters,
and all the striving of both wings is betrayed.
Here, when they cannot press down and find purchase with their wings,
of course their own weight forces them to glide down to the ground --
their nature does -- and, lying now almost through the empty void,
they scatter their life-breath through every pore of the body.
* * *
Further, the water in wells becomes colder in summer,
because the earth dries out from heat, and if it has any seeds
of heat properly its own, it sends them off into the air.
The more, then, the earth is drained of heat,
the colder too becomes the moisture hidden in the earth.
When, further, the whole earth is pressed by cold and contracts,
and as it were congeals, then of course by contracting
it squeezes into the wells whatever heat it itself carries.
They say there is a spring at the shrine of Ammon, which by daylight
is cold, and is said to be warm at night-time.
Men marvel at this spring excessively, and think
that it grows hot in part beneath the earth by the fierce sun,
when night has covered the lands with dreadful darkness.
But this is far, far removed from true reasoning.
For when the sun, touching the bare body of the water
from above, has not been able to make it warm,
though the light above enjoys such great heat,
how could it, here below, through so dense a body of earth,
thoroughly cook the moisture and warm it with hot vapor?
especially since it can scarcely, through the walls of houses,
insinuate its heat with its burning rays.
What, then, is the explanation? No doubt because the earth
around the spring is more porous than the rest of the ground,
and many seeds of fire lie close to the body of the water.
When night overwhelms the earth with its dew-bringing waters,
at once the earth grows cold to its depths and contracts.
By this process it happens that, as though squeezed by a hand,
it presses into the spring whatever seeds of fire it holds,
which make the touch and warmth of the water hot.
Then, when the risen sun with its rays has loosened the earth
and made it porous, its hot vapor mingling in,
the first-beginnings of fire return again to their old seats,
and all the water's heat retreats back into the earth.
For this reason the spring becomes cold in the daylight.
Besides, the water's moisture is buffeted by the sun's rays
and grows porous in the daylight from the quivering heat;
and so it happens that whatever seeds of fire it holds
it releases -- just as frost often, which it holds within itself,
lets go, and dissolves the ice and loosens its knots.
There is also a cold spring, over which tow, placed
above it, at once throws out flame once fire has caught,
and a torch, lit in like manner,
likewise blazes over the water, wherever the breezes drive it floating.
No doubt because there are very many seeds of heat in the water,
and it must be that from the earth itself, from its very depths,
bodies of fire rise up through the whole spring
and at the same time breathe out and pass forth into the air,
yet not so many that the spring could become warm;
and besides, a force compels them, scattered,
to burst forth suddenly through the water and to gather together upward.
Of this kind, in the sea, is the spring of Aradus, whose fresh water
gushes up and pushes back the salt waves around it;
and in many other regions the sea offers
timely relief to thirsty sailors,
because it spews out fresh water amid the salt waves.
So, then, through that spring they can burst forth
and gush out; and when those seeds, meeting the tow,
or clinging to the substance of the torch,
come together, they catch fire easily at once, because tow and torch too
themselves hold within them many seeds of fire.
Do you not see too that, when you bring flax, recently
put out, near a lamp at night, it catches fire before
it has touched the flame -- and a torch in the same way?
And many other things too, touched first by the heat itself,
catch fire at a distance before the flame soaks them up close.
This, then, must be thought to happen also in that spring.
As for what remains, I shall begin to explain by what law of
nature it comes about that this stone can draw iron,
which the Greeks call Magnes, from its native name,
because it arose in the native territory of the Magnetes.
Men marvel at this stone; for it often
produces a chain of rings hanging from itself.
For sometimes one can see five or even more
hanging down in a row, swaying in the light breezes,
when one hangs clinging from another below,
and one from another, and each feels the stone's power and its bonds;
so thoroughly does its force prevail, passing through.
In matters of this kind, many things must be established first,
before you can give the explanation of the thing itself,
and one must approach it by all too long a roundabout way;
and so I ask all the more for your attentive ears and mind.
First, from all things whatsoever we see,
it must be that bodies constantly flow, and are sent forth and scattered,
bodies which strike the eyes and provoke sight.
And smells flow constantly from certain things;
as cold from rivers, heat from the sun, spray from the waves
of the sea, that eater-away of walls, along the shores;
and varied sounds never cease to stream through the air;
then too, moisture of a salty taste often comes into the mouth
when we move about near the sea, and, on the other hand,
when we watch wormwood being mixed and diluted, its bitterness touches us.
So thoroughly does each thing, flowing from all things,
move outward and get sent off in every direction to all parts,
and no delay, no rest is ever granted to this flowing,
since we perceive it constantly, and can always
see, smell, and hear things sounding.
Now I shall go over again how porous a body all things have --
a thing made clear already in the first book too.
For indeed, although this bears on the knowledge of many things,
it is above all necessary, for this very matter
which I am setting out to discuss, to establish first
that nothing is manifest except body mixed with void.
First, it happens that in caves the rocks overhead
sweat moisture and drip with trickling drops.
Sweat likewise trickles from our whole body,
beard and hair grow over every limb, over every joint.
Food is distributed into all the veins, and increases and nourishes
even the outermost parts of the body, the very fingernails.
We feel cold likewise pass through bronze, and hot heat too,
and likewise we feel it pass through gold
and through silver, when we hold full cups.
Then, too, voices fly through the stone partitions of houses,
and smell, and cold, and the heat of fire pass through --
heat which is used to penetrate even the strength of iron,
and lastly, wherever the sky's encircling breastplate confines things,
a diseased force too, when it creeps in from outside;
and once a storm has risen on earth and in the sky, these things
duly pass into sky and earth, however far off,
since nothing exists that is not bound together with a porous body.
To this it may be added that not all the bodies, which are thrown off
from things, whatever they are, are endowed with the same sensory quality,
nor are they suited in the same way to all things.
First, the sun bakes the earth and makes it dry,
but it melts ice, and forces the high snows piled up
on high mountains to waste away with its rays;
then too, wax turns liquid when placed in its heat.
Fire likewise makes bronze liquid and melts gold,
but it shrivels hide and flesh and draws them together.
Water's moisture, further, hardens iron once it comes from the fire,
but it softens hide and flesh hardened by heat.
The wild olive delights bearded she-goats to such a degree,
as if it truly ran with ambrosia and were steeped in nectar;
though for man there exists nothing more bitter than its sour leaf.
Then too, the pig flees marjoram and fears every
perfume; for to bristly pigs it is a sharp poison,
though it seems at times to refresh us.
But conversely, though filth is the foulest
filthiness to us, this same thing seems pleasant to pigs,
so that they wallow there wholly, insatiably.
This too remains, before I proceed to speak
of the matter itself, which seems needing to be said first.
Since many pores are assigned to various things,
they must be endowed with a nature unlike each other,
and each must have its own nature and its own passages.
For indeed living creatures have various senses,
each of which perceives its own particular object in itself;
for we perceive that sound penetrates by one passage, taste by another,
from savors, and the smells of odor by yet another.
[Clearly the nature of the passages compels this to happen,
varying in many ways, as we showed a little before.]
Besides, one thing seems to flow through rock,
another through wood, another to pass through gold,
and another to travel out through silver and through glass;
for appearance seems to flow this way, heat to travel that way,
and the same things seem to let one thing pass through more quickly than another.
Clearly the nature of the passages compels this to happen,
varying in many ways, as we showed a little before,
on account of the unlike nature and texture of things.
Therefore, when these points have been well established and set in place,
all laid down before us and made ready,
as for what remains, the explanation will easily be given from this, and the whole
cause will become clear, which draws the force of iron.
First, it must be that very many seeds flow from this stone,
or a current, which disperses the air with its blows,
wherever it is situated between the stone and the iron.
When this space is emptied, and a great empty
place arises in the middle, at once the first-beginnings of the iron
fall, slipping into the void, joined together, and so it happens
that the ring itself follows and moves along with its whole body.
And no thing clings together, tightly bound and interlocked
by its own first elements,
more than the nature of strong iron and its cold roughness.
So it is the less a wonder -- though it is called surprising --
if many bodies, arising from the iron, cannot
be carried into the void, without the ring itself following;
which it does, and follows, until it reaches
the stone itself, and clings there fast with hidden joints.
This same thing happens in every direction; wherever an empty
place occurs, whether crosswise or from above,
the neighboring bodies are at once carried into the void;
for indeed they are set in motion by blows from elsewhere, and cannot
of their own accord rise upward into the air.
To this too is added -- why this can happen the more --
that this process too is helped by an added aid and motion,
namely that, as soon as the air in front of the ring becomes
more rarefied, and the place more emptied and voided,
at once it happens that whatever air is situated behind
carries it forward, as it were, from behind, and pushes it on.
For the air placed all around always buffets things;
but it happens that it pushes the iron forward at such a time
because on one side a space stands empty and receives it into itself.
This air, which I describe to you, insinuating itself finely
into the small parts through the iron's many pores,
thrusts and drives it, just as wind drives a ship and its sails.
Then too, all things must have air
within their body, since they have a porous body, and air
is given all around and set close against all things.
This air, then, which lies hidden deep within the iron,
is always tossed about in restless motion, and so
it beats upon the ring, without doubt, and stirs it within;
clearly it is carried in that same direction in which it has already
once rushed headlong, and taken its effort toward the empty part.
It happens too that the nature of iron sometimes withdraws
from this stone, being used, in turn, to flee and to follow.
I have seen too Samothracian iron rings leap about
and iron filings likewise rage within bronze
basins, when this Magnesian stone was placed beneath them;
so much does the iron seem eager to flee from the stone.
Such discord is created when bronze is placed between them,
because, no doubt, when the current of the bronze
has already taken possession beforehand and occupied the iron's open passages,
the stone's current comes later and finds everything
already full in the iron, and has no way to pass through as before;
so it is forced to strike and beat with its wave
against the iron's own web; and in this way the iron repels it,
and drives it back through the bronze, though it often reabsorbs it too.
Stop wondering, in these matters, at this: that the current
from this stone cannot likewise drive other things as well.
For some stand firm relying on their weight, gold being of this kind;
while some, because they have so porous a body, let the current
fly through untouched, and so cannot be driven anywhere,
wood being seen to belong to this kind.
The nature of iron, then, placed between these two extremes,
when it has received certain small bodies of air, then it happens
that the stones of Magnesia drive it along by their stream.
Yet these things are not so foreign to other matters
that too few examples of this kind are supplied to me,
which I could mention as fitted to each other in singular ways.
You see first that stones alone are bonded together by lime.
Wood is joined together as one by bull-glue,
so that the grain of planks more often gapes open through a flaw
than the bull-hide bonds are able to loosen the joints.
The juices born of the vine dare to mix
with the waters of springs, when heavy pitch and light olive oil cannot.
And the purple color of the shellfish is joined in one
body with wool, so that it can never be separated,
not if you were to renew the effort with Neptune's wave,
not if the whole sea wished to wash it out with all its waters.
Then too, some other thing -- not gold itself -- binds gold to gold,
and is it not the case that bronze is joined to lead by white tin?
How many other things, besides, one may find! What then?
You have no need at all of such long digressions,
nor is it fitting for me to spend so much effort here;
rather it is better to grasp many things briefly, in few words.
The textures of these things have fallen out so mutually matched,
that the hollows of one fit the solids of the other,
and of this one with that one, and this joining stands as the best.
There is also a kind, as though things folded together with rings and hooks,
by which certain things can be held coupled to each other;
and this seems to happen more in the case of this stone and iron.
Now what the explanation is for diseases, or from where suddenly
a deadly force of disease can arise and kindle a fatal disaster
for the human race and for herds of cattle,
I shall explain. First, I have taught above that there exist seeds
of many things that are life-giving for us,
and, on the other hand, that many must fly about
which bring on disease and death; and when these have by chance arisen
and thrown the sky into disorder, the air becomes diseased.
And all this force of diseases and pestilence
either comes from outside, descending through the sky from above
like clouds and mists, or often itself arises
and rises up from the earth, when the earth, soaked with damp,
has taken on a rotten stench, struck by untimely rains and suns.
Do you not see too that those who come from far off, from their own
country and home, whoever they are, are afflicted
by the strangeness of a new sky and waters, precisely because things differ so greatly?
For how different do we think the sky of the Britons is
from that of Egypt, where the world's axis slants,
and how different is the sky of Pontus from that of Gades, and on
as far as the races of men blackened with a sun-scorched color?
And when we see these four regions differing from one another
in accordance with the four winds and the quarters of the sky,
then the color and appearance of men are seen to differ
greatly, and diseases too hold sway, each kind over its own race.
There is the disease elephantiasis, which arises by the streams of the Nile
in the middle of Egypt, and nowhere else besides.
In Attica the feet are afflicted, and the eyes in Achaean
territory. So one place is hostile to some parts,
another to other parts and limbs; the varying air brings this about.
So, when a sky that happens to be alien to us
stirs itself, and hostile air begins to creep,
it creeps forward gradually like mist and cloud, and disturbs
everything it passes over, and forces it to change,
and it happens too that, when it finally reaches our own sky,
it corrupts it and makes it like itself and foreign to us.
This sudden disaster, then, and new pestilence,
either falls into the waters, or settles into the crops themselves,
or into other food of men and fodder of cattle,
or else its force remains suspended in the air itself,
and when, breathing, we draw in from there the mingled air,
it must be that we absorb that force equally into our body.
By a like process, pestilence often comes to cattle too,
and sickness now to the sluggish, bleating flocks.
And it makes no difference whether we ourselves come into places
hostile to us, and change the sky's covering,
or whether nature of its own accord brings to us
a sky already corrupted, or something we are not accustomed to use,
which can attack us on its fresh arrival.
This process of disease, and its death-bearing heat, once
made the fields within the borders of Cecrops fatal to death
and laid waste the roads, and drained the city of citizens.
For, coming from deep within, having arisen in the territory of Egypt,
having traveled through much air and the swimming plains of the sea,
it settled at last on the whole people of Pandion.
Then in throngs they were given over to disease and death.
First, their heads burned, kindled with fever,
and both eyes reddened, suffused with light.
Their throats too sweated, black within with blood,
and the passage of the voice, choked with sores, closed up,
and the tongue, the mind's interpreter, oozed with blood,
weakened by the affliction, sluggish in movement, rough to the touch.
Then, when the disease force had filled the chest through the throat,
and had flowed together into the sufferers' grieving heart,
then indeed all the bars of life gave way.
The breath rolled out from the mouth a foul smell,
such as rank cast-out corpses reek with.
And the strength of the mind, altogether, and the whole
body grew faint, now on the very threshold of death.
And an anguished distress was the constant companion
of their unbearable afflictions, mixed with groaning complaint,
and frequent sobbing, often through night and day,
continually seizing up their sinews and limbs, forcing them,
wore them out, already exhausted before, wearying them further.
And you could observe in no one that the topmost surface
of the body's outer part grew hot with excessive heat;
but rather it offered to the hands only a lukewarm touch,
and at the same time the whole body was red, as though branded
with sores, while the sacred fire spread through the limbs.
But the innermost part of men burned right down to the bones,
a flame burned in the stomach as in a furnace within.
There was nothing at all light and thin you could apply
to anyone's limbs to give relief -- only wind and cold, always.
Some flung their limbs, burning with disease, into cold
rivers, casting their naked bodies into the waves.
Many plunged headlong deep into well-water,
falling in as they came with mouth agape,
an unquenchable thirst, drenching their parched bodies,
made a heavy downpour seem no more than a few drops.
And there was no respite from the affliction: their exhausted
bodies lay prostrate. Medicine muttered in silent fear,
seeing how often their eyes, wide open, burning with disease,
rolled about, deprived of sleep.
And besides, many signs of death were given then:
the mind's understanding thrown into confusion by grief and fear,
a grim brow, a wild and fierce expression,
ears, moreover, troubled and full of ringing noises,
breath frequent or else deep and rarely drawn,
and a glistening wetness of sweat streaming down the neck,
thin, scant spittle, tinged with the color of saffron
and salty, brought up with difficulty through a hoarse cough from the throat.
In the hands, truly, the sinews contracted and the limbs trembled,
and from the feet the cold did not hesitate to creep up
little by little. Likewise, right up to the very last moment
the nostrils pinched, the tip of the nose
sharp and thin, the eyes sunken, the temples hollow, the skin cold
and hard on the face, the mouth gaping, the brow remained stretched taut.
Nor did the limbs lie over-rigid afterward in death.
And on about the eighth bright light of the sun,
or else on the ninth torch of day, they gave back their life.
And if any of them, as happens, had escaped the death that kills outright,
yet later, with foul ulcers and a black flux of the bowels,
a wasting and death still awaited him,
or else, often with a great pain in the head,
corrupted blood would flow, filling the nostrils.
Into this all a man's strength and body flowed away.
And whoever had escaped this sharp flow of foul blood,
the disease would still pass into his sinews and limbs
and into the very generative parts of the body.
And some, gravely fearing the threshold of death,
lived on, deprived by the knife of their virile member,
and not a few remained without hands and feet,
yet still in life, and some lost their eyes.
So sharp a fear of death had come upon them.
And forgetfulness of all things seized some,
so that they could not even recognize themselves.
And though many unburied bodies lay on the ground, one on top
of another, still the race of birds and beasts
either sprang away far off, to escape the sharp smell,
or, once it had tasted, sickened, with death close at hand.
And yet in those days scarcely any bird at all
appeared, nor did the grim races of wild beasts
come out from the woods; most of them sickened with the disease
and died. Above all, the faithful strength of dogs,
laid low in the streets everywhere, gave up its life with difficulty;
for the force of disease wrenched life from their limbs.
Vast funeral processions, unaccompanied, vied to be hurried away,
and no sure common method of cure was found;
for what had granted one man leave to draw the life-giving
breezes of air in his mouth, and to gaze on the vault of the sky,
was ruin for others, and was preparing their death.
One thing amid all this was greatly to be pitied,
and full of misery: that when anyone saw himself
entangled in the disease, as though condemned to death,
he lay there failing in spirit, his heart grieving,
and, gazing on the funerals about him, lost his life then and there.
For indeed the greedy contagion of the disease never ceased
at any time to catch one person from another,
just as with woolly flocks and horned herds,
and this above all piled funeral on funeral,
for whoever shunned visiting their own sick,
too fond of life and fearing death,
was soon after punished by a shameful and evil death,
neglect slaying them, abandoned and destitute of help.
But those who had stayed by went to their deaths by contagion
and by exhaustion, which shame then compelled them to face,
along with the coaxing voice of the weary, mixed with the voice of complaint.
And so it was all the best who underwent this kind of death.
Besides, by now every shepherd and every herdsman,
and likewise the sturdy guider of the curved plow,
sickened, and their bodies lay huddled deep within their huts,
given over to death by poverty and disease.
Over the lifeless bodies of children one could sometimes
see the lifeless bodies of parents, and in turn
children breathing out their life over their mothers and fathers.
And no small part of that grief flowed into the city
from the fields, brought there by the sickening
throng of farmers, gathering in from every diseased quarter.
The more they filled every place and building with the heat of disease,
the more death piled them up in heaps, crowded together.
Many bodies, laid low by thirst and rolling along the road
and in front of it, lay stretched out by the fountains of water,
their breath cut off by the excessive sweetness of the waters.
And in many open places of the city and streets, everywhere,
you could see limbs, faint, with a half-dead body,
filthy with squalor and covered with rags, perishing,
in bodily filth, skin alone stretched over bones,
buried now almost in foul ulcers and grime.
In the end, death had filled all the sacred shrines of the gods
with lifeless bodies, and everywhere the temples of the heavenly ones
remained burdened throughout with corpses,
places which the temple-keepers had filled up with guests.
And no longer was the worship of the gods, nor their divine power,
given much weight; present suffering overwhelmed everything.
Nor did that custom of burial remain in the city
by which this people had always been accustomed to be buried before;
for the whole city was thrown into panic and trembled, and each person
buried his own kinsman in grief, as best he could.
And sudden crisis and dreadful poverty urged many things;
for people would place their own kin on others' funeral pyres,
built up high, with great outcry,
and set torches beneath, often with much blood shed
in the quarrels, rather than let the bodies be abandoned,
and people struggled, over one another's pyres, to bury
their own dead; worn out with tears and grief they went back home;
and then a good many took to their beds from grief;
and no one could be found whom neither disease
nor death nor mourning assailed at such a time.