On the Nature of the Universe (Oxford World’s Classics) Read online

  That the woman by a sudden move overcomes

  The force of the man and takes control of it;

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  From the mother’s seed then children like the mother

  Are born; as from the father’s children like the father.

  But those you see with figures like to each

  And faces like both parents’, these have sprung

  From the father’s body and the mother’s blood

  When under the goads of Venus through the limbs

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  The coursing seeds are driven, and dashed together

  By two hearts breathing as one in mutual passion,

  And neither masters the other nor is mastered.

  It sometimes also happens that the children

  May look like their grandparents or great-grandparents,

  Since parents in their bodies oft conceal

  Many first elements mixed in many ways,

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  And these deriving from ancestral stock

  Fathers transmit to fathers. From these Venus

  With varying lot makes shapes and reproduces

  The look, the voice, the hair of ancestors;

  Since from a fixed seed all these features come

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  No less than our faces and our limbs and bodies.

  And female children spring from fathers’ seed

  And male are made out of the mother’s substance;

  For always birth derives from seeds of both.

  Whichever parent the child most resembles,

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  Of that it has more than half; which you can see

  Whether the progeny be male or female.

  And it is not the power of gods that blocks

  The generating seed in any man

  So that no darling children call him father

  And he drags out his years in barren love,

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  Which many think, and with much blood in tears

  Sprinkle the altars, honour them with gifts,

  To make their wives pregnant with abundant seed.

  In vain do they importune gods and fates.

  They are barren, some because the seed’s too thick,

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  Others because it is too watery and thin.

  The thin, because it can’t stick in its place,

  At once runs out and so returns aborted.

  The thick comes out too closely clotted, and either

  Cannot fly forward with far-reaching blow,

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  Or cannot penetrate the place, or else, once in,

  Does not mix easily with the woman’s seed.

  For sure love’s harmonies do greatly differ.

  Some men more easily impregnate some women,

  Some women more readily receive a man

  And grow big from him. Many women barren

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  In earlier marriages have later found

  A source from which they could bear little children

  And with sweet progeny enrich themselves.

  And often men whose fruitful wives have been

  Unable to bear a child, for these also

  A woman of matching nature has been found

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  To fortify their ageing years with children.

  So much it matters that seeds can with seeds

  Suited for generation be commingled,

  Thick meeting watery, watery meeting thick.

  It matters too what food supports the life,

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  For some foods make the seeds thicken in the body

  And others make them thin and waste away.

  What matters most of all is the position

  In which the soothing pleasure itself is taken;

  For in the manner of four-footed beasts,

  It is generally thought that women best conceive,

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  Breast down and loins uplifted, so the seeds

  Can take more easily their proper places.

  Wives have no need at all of wanton movements.

  For a woman avoids conception and fights against it,

  If in delight she holds his penis close

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  Between her buttocks, and all her body limp,

  Flows with the waves and sways with every tide.

  She turns the furrow from its rightful course

  Under the ploughshare, makes the seed fall wide.

  Whores do this for their private purposes

  Lest they be filled too often and lie pregnant,

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  And to make their loves more pleasing to their men.

  Clearly our wives can find no use for this.

  And not from power divine or Venus’ shafts

  It sometimes happens that a wench is loved,

  No beauty she; for sometimes she herself

  By what she does, by person neat and clean,

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  And gentle pleasing ways can easily

  Accustom you to share your life with her.

  And for the rest—by custom love is bred.

  Something which feels a blow, however light,

  But frequently, must in the end give way.

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  Do you not see how even a drop of water

  By constant dripping wears away a stone?

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  BOOK FIVE

  Who has the genius to build a song

  Worthy of nature’s majesty, and worthy

  Of these discoveries? Who can find fit words

  To praise the man who left us such great treasures

  Born from his breast and searched out by his mind?

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  No one, I think, from mortal body sprung.

  If I must speak, my noble Memmius,

  As nature’s majesty now known demands,

  He was a god, a god indeed, who first

  Found out that rule and principle of life

  Which bears the name of Wisdom, and by his skill

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  Brought life out from such mighty waves and darkness

  And placed it in such calm and light so clear.

  Only compare the things that others found

  In ancient time, and earned the name divine.

  Ceres they say brought crops to mortal men

  And Bacchus the vine-born liquor of the grape;

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  But life without these things could still abide,

  As even now they say some nations live.

  But good life needs a heart that’s pure and clean.

  So he more rightly earns the name of god

  From whom even now through mighty nations spread

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  Sweet solace comes to soothe the minds of men.

  And if you think the deeds of Hercules

  Can stand in rivalry with his, why then

  You’ll stray much further from true reasoning.

  What harm now could Nemean lion do

  With gaping jaws, or bristling Arcadian boar?

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  What harm the Cretan bull or Lerna’s pest,

  The Hydra fenced about with poisonous snakes?

  What threefold Geryon with his tripled breast?

  What matter now Stymphalus’ horrid birds

  And Diomed’s Thracian horses breathing fire

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  In lands by Bistony and Ismara?

  The golden apples of the Hesperides,

  The snake that guards them with unsleeping eye,

  Enormous body coiled around the tree,

  What mischief by the wild Atlantic shore

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  Could it now do, where no one ever comes

  From lands we know, and natives fear to tread?

  And all the other monsters of this kind,

  All dead; but if they had not been slain, and still

  Were living, why, what mischief could they do?

  None as I think, seeing that even now
r />   Earth teems with wild beasts and is filled with fear

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  Through forests and great mountains and deep thickets;

  Though as a rule it lies within our power

  To shun these places, and leave them unvisited.

  But unless the mind is purged, what battles then

  And perils must enter it against our will!

  How great then the sharp cares with which lust rends

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  The troubled man, how great likewise the fears!

  And what of pride and filth and wantonness?

  What ruin they bring! and luxury and sloth?

  He therefore who has mastered all these vices

  And cast them from the mind by words, not arms,

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  Will it not then be right to find him worthy

  To be counted in the number of the gods?

  Especially since in words from heaven inspired

  He used to teach about the gods themselves,

  And all the nature of the world make plain.

  In his footsteps I tread and his great doctrines

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  I follow, and in my poem I teach how all things

  Must stay within the law of their creation

  And cannot annul the strong statutes of time.

  And herein first of all we have found that mind

  Consists of body that first itself had birth

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  And cannot last intact through endless years,

  But images in dreams deceive the mind

  When we seem to see a man whom life has left.

  Next at this point the order of my theme

  Leads me to show that all the whole wide world

  Came into birth and in the end must die;

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  And in what ways that mass of matter founded

  The earth and sky and sea and stars and sun

  And the moon’s orb; and then what animals

  Arose from the earth, and what were never born;

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  And how men first made use of varied speech

  Among themselves by finding names for things;

  And how into their minds that fear of gods

  Crept in, which over all the world keeps holy

  Shrines, pools, groves, altars, and images of gods;

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  And by what force the courses of the sun

  And the moon’s movements pilot nature steers,

  I shall explain, lest haply we believe

  That these between the earth and sky are free

  Of their own will to make their yearly courses,

  Meet for the growth of crops and animals,

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  Or think they are turned by some design of gods.

  For men who have been well taught about the gods

  That they live free from care may wonder still

  By what design the world goes on, not least

  Those things they see in heaven above their heads;

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  And then to the old religions back they turn,

  And cleave to cruel masters whom they think,

  Unhappy fools, to be all-powerful,

  Not knowing what can be and what cannot,

  Not knowing in a word how everything

  Has finite power and deep-set boundary stone.

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  To proceed, and make no more delay with promises,

  First please observe the earth and sea and sky;

  These three, a threefold nature, Memmius,

  Three forms so unalike, so interwoven,

  One day will give to destruction; all the mass

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  And mighty engine of the world, upheld

  For many centuries, will crash in ruin.

  Nor do I fail to see how strange and new

  This ruin of heaven and earth must strike the mind,

  How hard it is to prove by words of mine;

  As happens when some unaccustomed thing

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  Comes to the ears, something eyes cannot grasp

  Nor hands lay hold of, hands the surest way

  To bring belief to hearts and minds of men.

  Yet I’ll speak out. Perhaps the facts themselves

  Will bring belief and in a little time

  The earth with mighty movements torn apart

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  You will see, and all the world convulsed with shocks.

  This far from us may pilot fortune steer,

  And reason rather than the event declare

  The fearful crash that brings the world’s collapse.

  And now, before I utter oracles

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  More holy and more surely true than those

  The Pythia speaks from Phoebus’ laurelled tripod,

  With words of wisdom I shall comfort you;

  Lest bridled by religion you may think

  That earth and sun and sky, sea, stars, and moon

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  Must last for ever, their bodies being divine;

  Lest you should think that for a monstrous crime

  Men should, like giants, suffer punishment

  Whose reason shakes the ramparts of the world,

  Willing to quench the shining sun in heaven

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  And stain immortal things with mortal speech.

  So far these things are from divinity,

  So little worthy to be counted gods,

  That we should rather find in them the pattern

  Of things possessing neither life nor sense.

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  For clearly not in any and every body

  Can mind and can intelligence exist.

  There can be no trees in the sky, no clouds

  In the salt sea, nor fish live in the fields,

  Nor blood exist in logs nor sap in stones.

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  Everything has its place, certain and fixed,

  Where it must live and grow and have its being.

  So the mind cannot arise without the body,

  Alone, nor exist apart from blood and sinews.

  But if it could, then much more easily

  It would place itself in head or shoulders, or right down

  In heels, or indeed in any part, provided

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  It were in the same man, the same vessel, enclosed;

  And since, within the body, mind and spirit

  By a fixed rule and ordinance are given

  The place where they can live and grow apart,

  All the more strongly then must we deny

  That wholly outside body or animal form

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  In crumbling clods of earth or the sun’s fire

  They can live, or in water or the high shores of sky.

  These things therefore for sure are not endowed

  With consciousness divine, since they are unable

  To be animated with the breath of life.

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  Another thing you cannot believe is this:

  That holy dwelling places of the gods

  Exist in any regions of this world.

  For the nature of the gods is thin, and far removed

  From our senses, and is hardly perceived by the mind.

  We cannot touch it with our hands; therefore

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  It cannot touch anything that we can touch.

  For that cannot touch which cannot itself be touched.

  Wherefore their dwelling places also must differ

  From ours, being thin, like the thinness of their bodies.

  This I will prove to you later at some length.

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  Also, to say that for the sake of men

  The gods willed the creation of the world

  With all its brilliant fabric, and therefore

  We ought to praise their most praiseworthy work

  And think it everlasting and immortal,

  And that a thing by the gods’ ancient rule

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  Founded for all time for the race of men

  May not by any force at any time

  Be shaken, or be challenged by argument,

  And turned right upside down—and to invent

  Similar fictions, all this, Memmius,

  Is nonsense. For what meed of gratitude

  On gods immortal, blest, could we bestow

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  That for our sakes they should do anything?

  And what new thing after so long a time

  Could tempt them in their blest tranquillity

  To wish to change their old life for a new?

  For to take pleasure in new things befits

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  A man the old have hurt; but when past years

  Have brought no ill, and life is sweet, what then

  Could kindle a desire for novelty?

  What ill had it been for us had we not been made?

  Did our life lie in darkness and in grief

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  Until creation’s light first shone abroad?

  A man once born must wish to stay in life

  So long as soothing pleasure keeps him there.

  But he who has never tasted love of life

  Or ever been enrolled among the living,

  How does it hurt him not to have been made?

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  Another point. The pattern of creation,

  The very concept of mankind, how did it come

  Into the minds of gods, that they should know

  What they wanted to make, and grasp it with their minds?

  How was the power of atoms ever known,

  What they could do by changes of position,

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  Had nature herself not given a model for creation?

  So many atoms in so many ways

  Smitten with blows through infinite time, and massed

  By their own weights together, have combined

  In every way, tried every variation,

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  Of things that by them ever could be made.

  No wonder then if into those positions

  And into those movements they came, by which

  Though always new this world is kept in being.

  But even if I had no knowledge of atoms,

  This from the order of the heavens itself

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  And many other facts I would assert—

  That in no way for us the power of gods

  Fashioned the world and brought it into being;

  So great the fault with which it stands endowed.

  In the first place, of all that lies beneath

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  The mighty sweep of sky, a greedy part

  Mountains possess and forests full of wild beasts.

  Rocks hold it, and vast marshes, and the sea

  Which widely separates the shores of lands.

  Nearly two thirds are kept from mortal use

  By burning heat and constant fall of frost;

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  What land is left, nature by her own power