On the Nature of Things

For the rest, give empty ears and a keen mind, / set apart from cares, to true reasoning, / so that you do not scorn and cast aside my gifts, laid out for you with faithful care, / before you have understood them. / For I shall set out for you the highest workings of heaven and the gods, / and reveal the first beginnings of things, / from which nature creates all things, makes them grow and feeds them, / and into which, once they perish, nature dissolves them again. / In setting out our account we are accustomed to call these matter / and creative bodies of things, and to name them seeds of things, / and to refer to these same things / as first bodies, because from them, as first, all things exist.note

When human life lay foully before our eyes on the ground, / crushed beneath the heavy weight of religion, / which showed its head from the regions of the sky, / looming over mortals with its horrible face, / a man of Greece was the first who dared to lift his mortal eyes / against it, and the first to stand against it. / Neither stories of the gods nor thunderbolts nor the sky with its menacing / rumble held him down, but they only spurred the more the keen / courage of his mind, so that he longed to be the first to break / the tight bolts of nature’s gates. / So the living force of his mind won through, and he went forth / far beyond the flaming walls of the world, / and traveled the whole immeasurable universe in thought and mind, / and from there, victorious, brings back to us what can arise / and what cannot—in short, by what principle each thing / has its limited power and its deep-set boundary stone.note

You yourself, sooner or later, overcome by the terrifying words / of the seers, will seek to fall away from us. / Indeed, how many dreams they can invent for you even now, / dreams that could overturn the course of your life / and throw all your fortunes into confusion with fear! / And with good reason; for if men saw that there was a fixed end / to their troubles, they would have some means, some strength / to stand against religion and the threats of the seers. / As it is, there is no means of resisting, no power, / since they must fear eternal punishment in death.

Nor does it escape my mind that the dark discoveries of the Greeks / are hard to illuminate in Latin verse, / especially since much must be dealt with in new words / because of the poverty of our language and the novelty of the subject; / but still your worth and the pleasure I hope for / from our sweet friendship persuade me to endure any labor / and lead me to stay awake through the clear nights, / searching for the words, the poem, by which at last / I may hold out a bright light to your mind, / by which you may see deep into hidden things. / This terror of the mind, then, and this darkness must be dispelled / not by the rays of the sun or the bright shafts of day, / but by the face of nature and her reasoning.

Our first principle will take its start from this: / nothing is ever made from nothing by divine power. / For fear holds all mortals in its grip / because they see many things happen on earth and in the sky / whose causes they can in no way see, / and they suppose these things happen by divine will. / Therefore, once we have seen that nothing can be created / from nothing, we shall then see more clearly from there what we seek: / both from what each thing can be created / and how all things come about without the work of the gods.

For if things came from nothing, then from all things / every kind could be born; nothing would need seed. / First, men could spring from the sea, and from the earth / the scaly tribe, and birds could burst from the sky; / cattle and other herds, every kind of wild beast, / born at random, would occupy farmland and wilderness alike. / Nor would the same fruit stay constant on trees, / but would change: all trees could bear all fruit. / For if there were no creative bodies for each thing, / how could things have a fixed mother? / But as it is, since each thing is created from fixed seeds, / it is born and comes out into the shores of light / from where the matter and first bodies of each thing are; / and for this reason all things cannot be born from all things, / because in particular things there is a distinct capacity.

Besides, why do we see the rose put forth in spring, grain in the heat, / vines at the urging of autumn, / if not because, when the fixed seeds of things have flowed together / in their own time, whatever is created comes into view / while the seasons are right and the living earth / safely brings its tender things out into the shores of light? / But if they came from nothing, they would spring up suddenly / at unfixed intervals and at alien times of year, / since there would be no first beginnings that could be kept / from creative union by an unfavorable season.

Nor again, for things to grow, would there be need of time / for seed to come together, if they could grow from nothing; / for little infants would suddenly become young men, / and trees would leap up, suddenly risen from the earth. / Plainly none of this happens, since all things / grow little by little, as is right from fixed seed, / and as they grow keep their kind; so you may recognize / that each thing grows large and is nourished from its own matter.

Add to this that without fixed rains in the year / the earth could not send up its gladdening produce, / nor again could the nature of living things, cut off from food, / propagate its kind and preserve life; / so that you should rather think that many bodies are shared / by many things, as we see letters shared by words, / than that anything can exist without beginnings.note

Then again, why could nature not produce men so huge / that they could wade across the ocean on foot / and tear great mountains apart with their hands / and outlive many generations of living things, / if not because a fixed matter has been assigned to things / for their birth, from which it is settled what can arise? / So we must admit that nothing can come from nothing, / since things need seed, from which each, once created, / can be brought forth into the soft breezes of the air.

Lastly, since we see that cultivated land is better than untilled / and returns better yield to the work of hands, / there are evidently first beginnings of things in the earth / which we, turning the fertile clods with the plowshare / and working the soil of the earth, call forth to birth; / but if there were none, you would see everything, without our labor, / come into being far better of its own accord.

Add to this that nature dissolves each thing back again / into its own bodies and does not destroy things into nothing. / For if anything were mortal in all its parts, / each thing would be snatched suddenly from our eyes and perish; / for there would be no need of any force / that could cause its parts to break up and undo their bonds. / But as it is, since each thing consists of eternal seed, / until a force has met it that can shatter things with a blow / or pierce within through the void spaces and dissolve them, / nature does not allow the destruction of anything to be seen.

Besides, whatever things time removes through age, / if it destroys them utterly, using up all their matter, / from where does Venus bring back the race of living things, kind by kind, / into the light of life? Or, once brought back, from where does the inventive earth / nourish and increase them, kind by kind, providing food? / From where do native springs and rivers flowing from far away / keep the sea supplied? From where does the ether feed the stars? / For everything that is of mortal body must have been / consumed by infinite time and the days gone by. / But if in that span, in the age gone by, there have existed / those things from which this sum of things is made and remade, / they are surely endowed with an immortal nature. / So no single thing can return to nothing.

Then again, the same force and cause would destroy all things alike, / if eternal matter did not hold them together, / bound more or less tightly in its interlocking; / for mere touch would surely be cause enough of death, / since there would be nothing of eternal body, whose / fabric each force would need to undo. / But as it is, since the bonds of the beginnings with one another / differ, and matter is eternal, / things stay with their bodies intact until a force strong enough / is found to meet them, matched to the texture of each. / So nothing returns to nothing, but all things / return, by breaking up, into the bodies of matter. / Lastly, the rains perish when Father Sky / has flung them down into the lap of Mother Earth; / but shining crops spring up, and branches grow green / on the trees; the trees themselves grow and are weighed down with fruit.

Now come, since I have taught that things cannot be created / from nothing, nor, once born, be called back to nothing, / in case you should nevertheless begin to distrust my words / because the first beginnings of things cannot be seen with the eyes, / hear besides of bodies which you yourself must / admit exist in things and yet cannot be seen.

First, the force of the wind, once roused, lashes the body / and overwhelms huge ships and scatters the clouds; / at times it runs across the plains in a swift whirlwind, / strewing them with great trees, and harries the mountaintops / with forest-breaking blasts: so wildly, with a shrill / roar, the sea rages and storms with menacing rumble.

Then again, we perceive the various smells of things, / yet we never see them coming to our nostrils; / nor do we see heat, nor can we take in cold / with our eyes, nor do we usually see sounds; / yet all these must consist of a bodily / nature, since they can strike the senses; / for nothing can touch or be touched except body.

Then again, clothes hung up on a wave-breaking shore / grow damp, and spread out in the sun they dry. / Yet no one has seen how the water’s moisture settled in them, / nor again how it fled in the heat. / So the moisture is dispersed into tiny parts / which the eyes can in no way see. / Moreover, as many years of sun come round, / a ring on the finger is worn thin underneath by wearing, / the fall of dripping water hollows the stone, the curved plow’s / iron share imperceptibly wears away in the fields, / and we see the paved stones of the streets / already worn by the feet of the crowd; then, by the gates, bronze / statues show their right hands worn thin / by the frequent touch of those who greet them and pass by. / So we see these things diminish, since they have been worn down. / But what bodies leave them at each moment, / grudging nature has shut off from our sight.

Lastly, whatever time and nature add to things / little by little, forcing them to grow in due measure, / no straining keenness of the eyes can see; / nor, again, whatever grows old with age and wasting; / nor, with rocks that overhang the sea, eaten by the gnawing salt, / could you see what they lose at each moment. / So nature does her work by unseen bodies.

And yet all things are not held packed tight on every side / by the nature of body; for there is void in things. / To have learned this will be useful to you in many matters, / and will not let you wander in doubt and always be asking / about the sum of things and distrusting my words. / Therefore there is intangible place, void and empty. / If there were not, things could in no way / move; for what is the function of body, / to obstruct and stand in the way, would be present at all times / to all things; so nothing could advance, / since nothing would make a beginning of giving way.

Besides, however solid things may be thought to be, / you can see from this that they have loose-textured body. / In rocks and caves the liquid moisture of water / seeps through, and everything weeps with abundant drops. / Food spreads itself through the whole body of living things; / trees grow and put forth fruit in their season / because food is diffused through the whole of them, from the deepest roots / up through the trunks and through all the branches. / Sounds pass through walls and fly across the closed / rooms of houses; numbing cold seeps through to the bones. / If there were no voids through which the separate bodies / could pass, you would see this happen in no way at all.

Then again, why do we see some things outweigh others / though they are no larger in shape? / For if there is as much body in a ball of wool / as in lead, they should weigh the same, / since it is the function of body to press everything downward, / while the nature of void, on the contrary, remains without weight. / So what is equally large and yet seems lighter / plainly declares that it has more void in it; / but the heavier, on the other hand, shows that it has more body in it / and far less empty space within. / So there is, clearly, what we are seeking with keen reasoning, / mixed in with things: what we call void.

On this subject, so that it cannot lead you away from the truth, / I am compelled to forestall a notion some people invent. / They say that the waters give way to the scaly fish as they push forward / and open liquid paths, because the fish leave spaces behind them / into which the yielding waves can flow together; / so too, they say, other things can move among one another / and change their place, although everything is full. / Clearly this whole idea has been accepted on false reasoning. / For where, after all, will the scaly fish be able to advance / unless the waters have given them room? And where, again, / can the waves give way when the fish cannot move? / So either we must deprive all bodies of motion, / or we must say that void is mixed in with things, / from which each thing takes its first start in moving.

Lastly, if two broad bodies spring apart swiftly / after colliding, then surely the air must take possession / of all the void that comes to be between the bodies. / And however quickly it flows in with rushing currents / all around, it will still not be able to fill the whole space / at one moment; for it must first occupy / each place in turn, and only then will all be filled. / But if perhaps someone thinks that, when the bodies spring apart, / this happens because the air condenses itself, / he is wrong; for then a void comes to be that was not there before, / and likewise a void that existed before is filled; / nor can air condense in such a way, / nor, even if it could, could it, I think, without void / draw itself into itself and gather its parts together.

So, however long you delay by raising many objections, / you must still admit that there is void in things. / And besides, I could, by recounting many / arguments, scrape together belief in my words. / But for a keen mind these small traces are enough, / by which you can come to know the rest by yourself. / For just as hounds very often find by scent / the leaf-covered lairs of a mountain-roaming beast, / once they have picked up sure traces of its track, / so you yourself will be able, on your own, to see one thing from another / in matters like these, and to work your way into all the dark / hiding places and drag out the truth from there.

But now, to return to weaving the web I began in words: / all nature, then, as it is in itself, consists of two / things; for there are bodies and there is void, / in which they are placed and through which they move this way and that. / For the sensation shared by all declares that body exists / of itself; and unless trust in this is first firmly founded and stands, / there will be nothing to appeal to on hidden things / so as to prove anything by the reasoning of the mind. / Then again, if there were no place and space, which we call void, / bodies could not be situated anywhere / or move anywhere at all, this way or that; / as I showed you a little earlier, above. / Besides, there is nothing you can say is separate from all / body and set apart from void, / to be found as a third nature, as it were, in the count.

Besides, whatever exists of itself will either act / or must itself be acted upon by other things acting, / or it will be such that things can exist and happen in it. / But nothing can act or be acted upon without body, / nor, again, can anything provide place except void and empty space. / So besides void and bodies, no third nature / of itself can be left in the number of things, / neither one that ever falls under our senses / nor one that anyone could grasp by the reasoning of the mind.

For whatever has a name, you will find it either a property / joined to these two things, or you will see it is an event of them. / A property is that which can never, without fatal / breaking apart, be separated and set aside, / as weight is to rocks, heat to fire, wetness to water, / touch to all bodies, intangibility to void. / Slavery, on the other hand, poverty and riches, / freedom, war, concord, and other things whose / coming and going leave nature unharmed, / these we are accustomed, rightly, to call events. / Time likewise does not exist of itself, but from things themselves / comes our sense of what has been done in the past, / then of what is present, and of what will follow after; / and we must admit that no one senses time of itself, / apart from the motion of things and their calm rest.note

Bodies, moreover, are partly first beginnings of things, / partly those formed from a union of first beginnings. / But the first beginnings of things no force / can quench; for in the end they prevail by the solidity of their body. / And yet it seems hard to believe that anything / with a solid body can be found among things. / For the lightning of the sky passes through the walls of houses, / as shouting and voices do; iron glows white in fire, / and rocks leap apart in fierce, seething heat; / the rigid hardness of gold is shaken loose and melted by heat, / and the ice of bronze, conquered by flame, turns liquid; / heat seeps through silver, and so does piercing cold, / since we have felt both, holding cups in our hands as custom is, / when the dew of water was poured in from above. / So true is it that nothing among things seems to be solid.

First, since we have found that there exists a twofold nature / of two things far unlike each other, / body and place, in which each thing happens, / each of them must exist by itself, for itself, and unmixed. / For wherever there is empty space, which we call void, / there body is not; and again, wherever / body holds its ground, there is by no means empty void. / The first bodies, then, are solid and without void.

Besides, since there is void in things that have come to be, / solid matter must stand around it; / nor can any thing be shown by true reasoning / to hide void in its body and hold it within, / unless you allow that what encloses it is solid. / And that can be nothing but a union / of matter, able to enclose the void in things. / Matter, therefore, which consists of solid body, / can be everlasting, while all else is dissolved.

Then again, if there were nothing that was empty, / everything would be solid; if, on the other hand, there were not definite bodies / to fill whatever places they occupied, / all the space there is would stand as empty void. / Clearly, then, body is marked off from void / in alternation, since the whole is neither completely full / nor again empty; there are, then, definite bodies, / which can mark off empty space from full. / These can neither be dissolved when struck by blows from outside, / nor pierced deep within and unraveled, / nor assailed in any other way and made to totter— / as I showed you a little earlier. / For it seems that nothing can be crushed without void, / or broken, or split in two by cutting, / or take in moisture, or seeping cold either, / or piercing fire, by which all things are destroyed.

Besides, if matter had not been everlasting, / all things would long ago have returned utterly to nothing, / and whatever we see would have been reborn from nothing. / But since I have taught above that nothing can be created / from nothing, nor can what has been born be called back to nothing, / the first beginnings must be of immortal body, / into which all things can be dissolved at their last hour, / so that there may be matter to supply the renewal of things. / The first beginnings, then, are solid in their singleness, / nor could they in any other way have been preserved through the ages / to renew things from infinite time past. / Lastly, if nature had set no limit / to the breaking of things, the bodies of matter / would by now have been so worn down by the breaking of past ages / that nothing conceived from them after a fixed time / could reach the full limit of its life.

Add to this that, though the bodies of matter / are utterly solid, we can still give an account of all / the things that become soft—air, water, earth, heat— / of how they come to be and by what force each works, / since void is once and for all mixed in with things. / But if, on the other hand, the first beginnings of things were soft, / there will be no accounting for how hard flints and iron / can be created; for all nature / will lack from the start a foundation to begin from. / They are strong, then, in solid singleness, / and by their denser union all things / can be packed close and show great strength. / Again, even if no limit had been set to the breaking / of bodies, still, from everlasting time, some bodies / must survive even now in things, / ones that have not yet been assailed by any danger.

Lastly, since a limit has been set for things, kind by kind, / to their growth and their hold on life, / and since what each can do under the laws of nature, / and what it cannot, stands decreed, / and nothing changes, but all things hold so constant / that the many-colored birds, one generation after another, / all show the markings of their kind upon their bodies, / they must, clearly, have a body of unchanging / matter too; for if the first beginnings of things / could be overcome in some way and changed, / it would then be uncertain what can arise / and what cannot—in short, by what principle each thing / has its limited power and its deep-set boundary stone, / nor could the generations, kind by kind, so often repeat / the nature, habits, way of life and movements of their parents.note

Then again, since there is in each case an extreme point / of that body which our senses / can no longer make out, that point, clearly, exists without parts / and is of the smallest nature; it never was / separate by itself, nor will it ever be able to be hereafter, / since it is itself a part of something else, the first and single part; / then other and other similar parts in order / fill out, in close-packed ranks, the nature of the body; / and since these cannot exist by themselves, they must / cling to that from which they can in no way be torn. / The first beginnings, then, are solid in their singleness, / packed close, cohering tightly with their least parts, / not put together by a meeting of those parts, / but rather strong in everlasting singleness; / from them nature allows nothing to be torn away or diminished, / keeping them safe as seeds for things.

Besides, unless there is a least, the tiniest / bodies will each consist of infinite parts, / since the half of a half will always have / its own half, and nothing will set a limit. / So what will there be to distinguish the sum of things from the least? / Nothing; for however utterly / infinite the whole sum is, still the tiniest things / will consist of infinite parts just the same. / Since true reasoning protests against this and denies / that the mind can believe it, you must be won over and admit / that there exist things endowed with no parts at all, / of the smallest nature. And since these exist, / you must admit that those too are solid and everlasting.

Lastly, if nature, creator of things, had made a habit / of forcing all things to be broken down into least parts, / she could no longer renew anything from them, / because things that are enriched with no parts / cannot have what creative matter / must have—varied connections, weights, blows, / collisions, motions, by which each thing happens.

Therefore those who have thought that the matter of things / is fire, and that the sum of things consists of fire alone, / seem to have strayed far from true reasoning. / Heraclitus leads them into battle, first of all, / famous for his dark speech—among the empty-headed, rather / than among the serious Greeks who seek the truth; / for fools admire and love all the more / what they see lurking under twisted words, / and set down as true whatever can prettily tickle / the ears and is painted with a charming sound.note

For how, I ask, could things be so varied / if they were created from fire alone, pure fire? / It would be no use for hot fire to be packed dense / or made rare, if the parts of fire had the same / nature that fire as a whole has too. / The heat would be fiercer when the parts were drawn together, / fainter when they were scattered and dispersed. / Beyond this there is nothing you could think could happen / in such conditions—much less could all the great variety / of things come from fires dense and rare.

This too: if they were to allow void mixed in with things, / fires could be packed dense or left rare; / but since they see many things that would contradict them, / and shrink from leaving pure void in things, / fearing the steep path, they lose the true road; / nor do they see, on the other hand, that if void is taken from things, / all would be packed dense, and from all things one / body would be made, which could send out nothing swiftly from itself, / as heat-bearing fire throws out light and warmth, / so that you can see it is not made of close-packed parts.

But if perhaps they believe that in some other way / fires can be quenched in their union and change their substance, / then surely, if they allow this with no part held back, / all heat, clearly, will perish utterly into nothing, / and whatever is created will come from nothing; / for whatever changes and passes out of its own bounds, / that is at once the death of what it was before. / So something must survive in them unharmed, / or else all things would return utterly to nothing for you, / and the store of things would be reborn from nothing and flourish.

Now then, since there are certain utterly fixed bodies / which keep their nature always the same, / by whose going or coming and change of order things / change their nature and bodies are transformed, / you may know that these bodies of things are not made of fire. / For it would make no difference that some depart and go away / and others are added and some change their order, / if all still kept the nature of heat; / for whatever they created would be fire in every way. / But, as I think, this is how it is: there are certain bodies whose / collisions, motions, order, position, shapes / produce fires, and when their order is changed they change / their nature; and they are not like fire, nor like any / other thing that can send off bodies / to our senses and touch our touch by striking it.

Besides, why should anyone rather do away with all things / and wish to leave only the nature of heat, / than deny that fire exists and yet let some other nature exist? / For it seems equal madness to say either.

Therefore those who have thought that the matter of things / is fire, and that the sum of things can consist of fire, / and those who have set up air as the source / for the birth of things, or whoever has thought that water / by itself forms things, or that earth creates / all things and turns into all the natures of things, / seem to have wandered far, far from the truth. / Add too those who double the first beginnings of things, / joining air to fire and earth to water, / and those who think all things can grow / from four things—from fire, earth, breath, and rain.

Yet he, and those I spoke of above, far inferior / in many ways and much lesser than he, / though they discovered much that was good and divinely inspired, / and gave responses, as it were, from the inner shrine of the heart, / more holy and far more certain in reasoning than / the Pythia pronounces from Phoebus’ tripod and laurel, / still, over the first beginnings of things, they came to ruin, / and there, great as they were, they had a great and heavy fall.note

First, because they posit motion while taking void from things, / and they leave things soft and rare— / air, sun, fire, earth, animals, crops— / yet do not mix void into their bodies; / then, because they will have it that there is no limit at all to the cutting / of bodies, no halt set to their breaking, / and nothing at all that is least in things, / though we see that the extreme point of each thing / is what seems to our senses to be least, / so that you may infer from this that in things you cannot see, / the extreme point they have is the least.

Add to this, too, that since they make the first beginnings of things / soft—things we see are born / and have mortal bodies—the sum of things / would by now have had to return utterly to nothing, / and the store of things be reborn from nothing and flourish; / and you will know by now how far both of these are from the truth.

Then, these elements are in many ways hostile to one another, / poison to each other; so either they will perish when they meet, / or they will scatter, just as, when a storm has gathered, / we see lightning, rain, and wind scatter.

Lastly, if all things are created from four things / and all things are dissolved back into them again, / why should these be called the first beginnings of things / any more than, the other way round, things be thought theirs? / For they are born from each other in turn and change their color / and their whole nature among themselves, from all time. / [we see lightning, rain, and wind scatter.] / But if perhaps you think that the body of fire and of earth / and the airy breezes and the moisture of water come together / in such a way that none changes its nature in the union, / no thing can be created from them for you, / no living thing, nor one with lifeless body, like a tree; / for each, in the union of this motley heap, will show / its own nature, and air will be seen to remain mixed / together with earth and with moisture.note

What is more, they begin from the sky and its fires, / and make fire first turn into the breezes / of air, from this rain be born, and earth be created / from rain, and then all things return back from earth, / first moisture, after that air, then heat, / and these never cease to change into one another, to travel / from sky to earth, from earth to the stars of the heavens. / This the first beginnings must by no means do. / For something unchangeable must survive, / so that all things may not be reduced utterly to nothing; / for whatever changes and passes out of its own bounds, / that is at once the death of what it was before.

Now let us also examine the homoeomeria (“likeness of parts”) of Anaxagoras, / as the Greeks call it, a word that the poverty of our native speech / does not allow us to say in our own tongue; / but still, the thing itself is easy to set out in words. / First, as for what he calls the homoeomeria of things: / bones, you see, from tiny, minute / bones, and from tiny, minute / bits of flesh, flesh is born, and blood created / from many drops of blood coming together— / so he thinks—and gold can form from specks / of gold, and earth grow together from little earths, / fires from fires, moisture from moistures; / the rest he imagines and thinks on the same principle. / And yet he does not allow that there is void anywhere in things, / nor that there is a limit to the cutting of bodies. / So on both counts he seems to me to go wrong / just as those did whom we spoke of above.note

Add that he imagines his first beginnings far too feeble— / if they are first beginnings, these things endowed with a nature like / that of things themselves, which equally suffer / and perish, with nothing to rein them back from destruction. / For which of them will hold out under heavy pressure, / so as to escape death in the very teeth of destruction? / Fire, or water, or air? Which of these? Blood, or bones? / None, I think, since each thing will be utterly and equally / as mortal as the things we plainly see / vanish from our eyes, overcome by some force. / But that things cannot fall back into nothing, nor again / grow from nothing, I call to witness what I have already proved.

Besides, since food increases the body and nourishes it, / we may know that veins and blood and bones / … / Or if they say that all foods are of a mixed body / and contain in them tiny bodies of sinews, / and bones, and veins altogether, and parts of blood, / it will follow that all food, both dry and liquid itself, / must be thought to consist of things of other kinds, / of bones and sinews and gore and blood mixed together.note

Besides, if all the bodies that grow from the earth / are in the earth, the earth must consist / of things of other kinds, which spring up from the earth. / Carry this over too, and you may use just as many words: / if flame lies hidden in logs, and smoke and ash, / logs must consist of things of other kinds, / [besides, whatever bodies the earth feeds and increases] / of things of other kinds, which spring from logs.

Here a slender loophole for hiding is left, / which Anaxagoras seizes: he thinks that all things / lie hidden, mixed in all things, but that only that one / shows itself of which most is mixed in, / placed more in view and in the front line. / But this is driven far from true reasoning; / for then crops too, when they are broken beneath the menacing / strength of the millstone, ought often to give off some sign / of blood, or of the things that are nourished in our body.

Lastly, if you think that whatever you see among visible things / cannot come about unless you imagine that the bodies / of matter are endowed with a like nature, / on this reasoning the first beginnings of things are lost to you: / it will follow that they shake with quivering laughter and guffaw, / and wet their faces and cheeks with salty tears.

Now come, learn what remains, and hear it more clearly. / I am well aware how obscure these things are; but a great hope / of praise has struck my heart with its sharp thyrsus / and at the same time driven into my breast a sweet love / of the Muses. Inspired by it now, with a vigorous mind, / I roam the pathless haunts of the Pierides, trodden / by no one’s foot before. It is a joy to approach untouched springs / and drink from them, a joy to pluck new flowers / and seek for my head a splendid crown from places / where the Muses have never before wreathed anyone’s brow: / first, because I teach of great things and press on / to free the mind from the tight knots of religion; / then, because on so dark a subject I compose such lucid / verses, touching everything with the Muses’ charm.note

But since I have taught that the utterly solid bodies of matter / fly about unconquered through all eternity, / now come, let us unfold whether there is some limit / to their sum or not; and likewise what we have found to be void, / or place and space, in which all things happen— / let us look closely whether it is wholly bounded / or stretches out immeasurable, vast and deep.

All that exists, then, is bounded in no direction / along any of its paths; for then it would have to have an edge. / But it seems that nothing can have an edge / unless there is something beyond to bound it, so that a point is seen / past which the nature of our senses cannot follow it. / Now since we must admit there is nothing outside the sum of things, / it has no edge, and so it lacks limit and measure. / Nor does it matter in which of its regions you stand; / so true is it that, whatever place anyone takes up, / the whole stretches away from him boundless, just as far, on every side.

Besides, suppose for a moment that all existing space / were bounded, and someone ran forward to its farthest / edges, the very last man, and threw a flying spear: / would you rather that, hurled with mighty strength, / it go where it was sent and fly far off, / or do you think that something can stop it and block its way? / For you must admit and adopt one or the other. / Yet each of them shuts off your escape and forces you / to grant that the universe stretches out, free of any limit. / For whether there is something that stops it and prevents it / from reaching where it was aimed and lodging itself at its limit, / or it is carried on beyond, it did not set out from the limit. / In this way I will follow you, and wherever you set / the farthest edges, I will ask: what then will become of the spear? / It will turn out that no limit can stand anywhere, / and that the room for flight will always prolong the escape.

Besides, if all the space of the whole universe / were shut in on every side by fixed borders / and were bounded, then the store of matter / would by now have flowed together from everywhere, by its solid weight, to the bottom, / and nothing could happen beneath the canopy of the sky, / nor would there be any sky at all, nor the light of the sun, / since all matter would lie heaped up, / having settled down through infinite time. / But as it is, no rest, of course, is given to the bodies / of the first beginnings, because there is no bottom at all / where they might, as it were, flow together and take up their seats. / Always, in ceaseless motion, all things go on / in every part, and from below, out of the infinite, / swift bodies of matter are supplied.

Lastly, before our eyes one thing is seen to bound another: / air walls off the hills, and mountains the air; / land bounds the sea, and sea in turn all lands; / but the universe has nothing outside to bound it. / There is, then, a nature of place, a space so deep / that neither could bright thunderbolts run through it in their course, / gliding on through the endless stretch of time, / nor by traveling make the distance left to go any less at all; / so vast is the room that lies open to things everywhere, / free of limits, in every direction on every side.

Moreover, nature keeps the sum of things itself / from being able to set a limit for itself, for she forces body / to be bounded by void, and what is void to be bounded by body, / so that by this alternation she makes the whole infinite; / or else, if one of the two did not bound the other, / it would still stretch out, by its single nature, beyond measure— / and neither sea nor land nor the shining temples of the sky / nor the mortal race nor the sacred bodies of the gods / could hold their ground for the brief space of an hour; / for the store of matter, driven apart from its gathering, / would be swept along, dissolved, through the great void— / or rather it would never have come together and created / anything at all, since, scattered, it could never have been forced together.

In these matters, Memmius, shun far the belief / that all things, as they say, press toward the center of the whole, / and that for this reason the nature of the world stands firm without any / blows from outside, and top and bottom cannot break apart / in any direction, because all things press toward the center— / if you believe that anything can stand upon itself— / and that the heavy things beneath the earth all press / upward and rest on the earth upside down, / like the images of things we now see in water; / and in the same way they contend that living creatures roam about / upside down, and cannot fall off the earth into the regions of sky / below them any more than our bodies / can of their own accord fly up into the temples of the sky; / that when they see the sun, we are looking at the stars of night, / and that they share the seasons of the sky with us by turns / and spend nights equal to our days.

Besides, since they do not imagine that all bodies / press toward the center, but those of earth and of liquid, / the moisture of the sea and the great waters from the mountains, / and whatever is held, as it were, in an earthy body, / while on the other hand they declare that the thin breezes of air / and hot fires alike are carried away from the center, / and that for this reason the whole ether round about twinkles with stars / and the sun’s flame feeds through the blue of the sky, / because all heat, fleeing the center, gathers there, / and that the topmost branches of trees could not come into leaf / at all,

These things you will come to know fully, led on with little effort; / for one thing will grow clear from another, and blind night / will not snatch away your path before you have seen through / to the farthest reaches of nature: so will things kindle light for things.

Now come, by what motion the creative bodies of matter / beget the various things, and break up what they have begotten, / and by what force they are compelled to do so, and what / power of movement has been given them to travel through the great void, / I will explain: be sure you give yourself to my words. / For certainly matter does not cling together / packed tight, since we see each thing grow less, / and we see all things, as it were, flowing away over the long years, / and age withdrawing them from our eyes, / while yet the sum of things is seen to stay unharmed, / because the bodies that leave each thing / lessen what they depart from and endow with growth what they come to; / they force the one to grow old, the other in turn to flourish, / and they do not linger there. So the sum of things is renewed / forever, and mortal creatures live by exchange with one another.

If you think the first beginnings of things can stand still / and by standing still give birth to new motions of things, / you wander far astray from true reasoning. / For since they wander through the void, all the first beginnings / of things must be carried along either by their own weight / or perhaps by the blow of another. For when, speeding, they have often / met and collided, it happens that they suddenly leap apart / in different directions; and no wonder, since they are utterly hard, / with solid weight, and nothing behind them stands in their way. / And to see more clearly that all the bodies of matter / are tossed about, remember that in the whole universe / there is no bottom, and the first bodies have nowhere / to come to rest, since space is without limit or measure / and stretches out immeasurable in every direction on every side, / as I have shown at length and proved by sure reasoning.

Of this, as I describe it, an image and likeness / is always moving and present before our eyes. / For look closely whenever the sun’s rays are let in / and pour their light through the darkened rooms of houses: / you will see many tiny bodies in many ways through the void / mingling in the very light of the rays, / and, as if in everlasting conflict, waging wars and battles, / fighting in troops and never pausing, / driven on by frequent unions and separations; / so that you can guess from this what it is for the first beginnings / of things to be always tossed about in the great void. / So far as it goes, a small thing can give / a pattern of great things and traces of knowledge.

All the more fitting is it that you turn your mind to these / bodies that are seen tumbling in the sun’s rays, / because such tumbling also shows that there are motions / of matter beneath, hidden and unseen. / For there you will see many, struck by unseen blows, / change their course and, driven back, return / now here, now there, in every direction on every side. / This wandering, you see, comes to all of them from the first beginnings. / For first the first beginnings of things move of themselves; / then those bodies that are formed in a small union / and are, as it were, nearest to the powers of the first beginnings / are set moving, driven by their unseen blows, / and they in turn stir up bodies a little larger.

Now what speed has been given to the bodies of matter / you may learn from this in a few words, Memmius. / First, when dawn sprinkles the lands with new light, / and various birds, flitting through the pathless woods, / fill the places through the soft air with their liquid voices, / how suddenly the sun, once risen at such a time, / is wont to clothe everything, flooding it with its light, / we see is plain and evident to all. / But the heat the sun sends out, and its clear light, / do not travel through empty void; so they are forced / to go more slowly, while they beat their way, as it were, through waves of air; / nor do the tiny particles of heat travel one by one, / but entwined with one another and massed together; / so they are at once held back by one another and hindered / from outside, so that they are forced to go more slowly.

But some, against this, ignorant of matter, / maintain that nature, without the will of the gods, could not, / so exactly suited to human purposes, / change the seasons of the year and create crops / and all the rest that divine pleasure, the guide of life, / urges mortals to approach, and itself leads them on, / coaxing them to propagate their generations through the acts of Venus, / so that the human race may not perish. When they imagine / that the gods set up all things for their sake, in every respect / they seem to have strayed far from true reasoning. / For even if I did not know what the first beginnings of things are, / I would dare to affirm this from the very workings of the sky, / and to show it from many other things: / that the nature of the world was by no means created / for us by divine power: it stands endowed with so great a flaw. / These things, Memmius, I will make clear to you later; / now I will set out what remains to be said about motions.

Now is the place, I think, in these matters to confirm / this too for you: that no bodily thing can by its own force / be carried upward or travel upward. / Do not let the bodies of flames deceive you in this; / for they are born moving upward and take on growth upward, / and upward grow the shining crops and trees, / although all weights, so far as in them lies, are carried downward. / Nor, when fires leap up to the roofs of houses / and with swift flame taste the rafters and beams, / must we think they do this of their own accord, without force from below. / In the same way blood let out from our body / spurts out, leaping high, and splashes gore. / Do you not see, too, with what force the moisture of water / spits out rafters and beams?

But if perhaps someone believes that heavier bodies, / since they are carried faster straight through the void, / could fall from above on lighter ones and so produce / blows that could give rise to creative motions, / he strays far off from true reasoning. / For whatever falls through water and thin air / must speed its fall in proportion to its weight, / because the body of water and the thin nature / of air cannot delay every thing equally, / but give way sooner, overcome by heavier ones. / But empty void, on the other hand, cannot give support to anything / in any direction or at any time, / but it goes on giving way, as its nature seeks; / therefore all things must be carried through the still void / at equal speed, though driven by unequal weights.

Lastly, if every motion is always linked to another, / and a new one always arises from the old in fixed order, / and the first beginnings do not, by swerving, make / some beginning of motion to break the laws of fate, / so that cause may not follow cause from infinite time, / from where does this free will arise for living things throughout the earth, / from where, I ask, comes this will wrested from the fates, / by which we go forward wherever pleasure leads each of us, / and likewise swerve our motions, not at a fixed time / nor at a fixed place, but where the mind itself has carried us? / For beyond doubt it is his own will that gives each one / the beginning in these things, and from it motions flow through the limbs. / Do you not see, too, that when the starting gates are thrown open / in an instant, the eager strength of the horses / cannot burst forth as suddenly as their mind itself desires?

Nor was the store of matter ever more tightly packed, / nor again spread out at greater intervals; / for nothing is added to it, nor does anything perish from it. / Therefore, in the same motion that the bodies of the first beginnings / are in now, they were in ages past, / and hereafter they will always be carried in the same way; / and the things that have been accustomed to be born will be born / under the same conditions, and will exist and grow and flourish in strength, / as far as is granted to each by the laws of nature. / Nor can any force change the sum of things; / for there is nothing outside into which any kind of matter / could escape from the universe, nor anything from which a new force / could arise and burst into the universe and change the whole / nature of things and turn its motions aside.

In these matters it is no wonder why, / although all the first beginnings of things are in motion, / the whole of things still seems to stand wholly at rest, / except where something makes motions with its own body. / For the whole nature of the first bodies lies far / below our senses; so, since you cannot see the bodies themselves, / their motions too must be hidden from us; / especially since things we can see often hide / their motions all the same when set far off at a distance. / For often on a hillside, cropping the lush pasture, / the woolly flocks creep on to wherever, calling each one, / the grasses, jeweled with fresh dew, invite them, / and the lambs, well fed, play and frisk prettily; / all of which seems to us, from far off, blurred together, / like a patch of white resting on a green hill.

Now come, learn next what the beginnings of all things / are like, and how widely they differ in form, / how varied they are in shapes of many kinds— / not that only a few are endowed with a like form, / but because, as a rule, they are not all identical to one another. / No wonder: for since their supply is so vast / that there is, as I have shown, no end to it and no total, / it must surely be that not all of them, in every case, / are of equal build and marked by a like shape.

Besides, take the human race, and the mute swimming / herds of scaly creatures, the glad cattle and wild beasts, / and the many-colored birds that throng the gladdening haunts of water / around riverbanks and springs and lakes, / and those that fly all through the pathless woods and fill them: / take any one of these you like, kind by kind, / and you will find they still differ from each other in shape. / In no other way could offspring know their mother, / or mother offspring; yet we see that they can, / and that they are known to one another no less than humans are.

Lastly, take any grain you like: still you will not find / every one of its kind like every other, / without some difference in form running between them. / In the same way we see the tribe of shells / painting the lap of the earth, where with soft waves / the sea pounds the thirsty sand of the curving shore. / So again and again, by like reasoning, it must be / that, since the first beginnings of things exist by nature / and were not made by hand to one fixed pattern, / some of them fly about with shapes unlike each other.

It is very easy for us to explain by reasoning of the mind / why the fire of lightning flows far more piercingly / than our own fire, which springs from earthly torches: / for you could say that the heavenly fire of the thunderbolt / is finer, made of small shapes, / and so passes through openings that this fire / of ours, sprung from wood and born of the pine torch, cannot. / Again, light passes through horn, but rain / is thrown back. Why, unless those bodies of light / are smaller than those that make up the nourishing liquid of water?

Add to this that the liquids of honey and milk / roll over the tongue in the mouth with a pleasant sensation, / while the foul nature of wormwood and of harsh / centaury twists the mouth with its loathsome taste; / so you may readily see that from smooth and round elements / are made the things that can touch the senses pleasantly, / while whatever seems bitter and harsh / is held together by elements more hooked, / and for that reason tends to tear open paths into our / senses and to break into the body as it enters.

There are also some that cannot rightly be thought smooth / nor altogether hooked with bent-back points, / but rather have tiny angles jutting out a little, so that they / can tickle the senses rather than hurt them; / of this kind is wine lees, and the taste of elecampane.

Then again, that hot fire and icy frost, / toothed in different ways, prick the body’s senses, / the touch of each gives us proof. / For touch—yes, touch, by the holy powers of the gods!— / is the body’s sense, whether when something from outside / works its way in, or when something born in the body hurts it / or gives pleasure as it goes out in the generative acts of Venus, / or when, after a collision, seeds riot within the body itself / and, stirred up, throw sensation into confusion among themselves— / as when, perhaps, you strike some part of your own body / with your hand, and try it for yourself. / Therefore the first beginnings must differ widely in their shapes, / since they are able to produce such varied sensations.

Then again, things that seem to us hardened and dense / must consist of elements more hooked together / and be held fast, deeply knit, as if by branching parts. / In this class, foremost of all, adamantine rocks / stand in the front line, accustomed to scorning blows, / and stout flints, and the strength of hard iron, / and bronze bolts that cry out as they hold firm at the doors. / Those things, on the other hand, must be made rather of smooth and round / elements which are liquid, with a flowing body. / For a scoop of poppy seed pours as easily as water; / for the little globes do not hold one another back, / and when struck, each rolls just as readily downhill.

Now that I have taught this, I will go on to link a fact that, / fastened to this, draws its proof from it: that the first beginnings of things / vary within a finite range of shapes. / For if this were not so, then some seeds / would have to be of infinite bodily size. / For within the same small compass of any one / body, the shapes cannot vary much / among themselves. Suppose that first bodies consist of three / smallest parts, or enlarge them by a few more: / surely, when you have taken all the parts of one body, / placing them top and bottom, switching right with left, / and tested in every way what look of form / each arrangement gives to that whole body, / then, if you want to vary the shapes further, / you will have to add other parts.

Now that I have taught this, I will go on to link a fact that, / fastened to this, draws its proof from it: that the first beginnings of things / that are made with a like shape / are infinite in number. For since the difference / of shapes is finite, those that are alike must / be infinite, or else the sum of matter / must be finite—which I have proved is not so. / … / I will show in verse that the little bodies of matter / from infinity keep up the sum of things / on every side by an unbroken succession of blows.

So the motions of destruction cannot prevail / forever and bury health for all eternity, / nor, again, can the motions that beget and increase / things preserve forever what they have created. / So, in an even contest, the war of the first beginnings / is waged, a war joined from infinite time. / Now here, now there, the life-giving forces of things conquer, / and in turn are conquered. With the funeral mingles the wail / that babies raise as they look upon the shores of light; / and no night has followed day, nor dawn night, / that has not heard, mingled with the feeble cries of newborns, / the laments that attend on death and the black funeral.

In these matters it is fitting also to keep this sealed / and hold it stored in a mind that remembers: / that there is nothing whose nature is plain to see / that consists of one kind of first beginnings, / and nothing that is not made of mixed seed. / And the more forces and powers a thing possesses / within itself, the more it shows that there are in it the most kinds / of first beginnings and varied shapes.

First, the earth holds within her first bodies / from which springs, rolling cool waters, / constantly renew the boundless sea; she holds the source of fires; / for in many places the ground of the earth is kindled and burns, / and from the depths the onslaught of Etna rages with fire. / Then, too, bright crops and thriving orchards / she has the means to raise up for the races of humankind, / and the means, too, to offer rivers, leaves, and glad pastures / to the mountain-roaming tribe of wild beasts. / So she has been called Great Mother of the gods, mother of beasts, / and begetter of our body—she alone.

Her the ancient learned poets of the Greeks have sung / as driving, seated in a chariot, a pair of yoked lions, / teaching that the great earth hangs in the expanse of air / and that earth cannot rest upon earth. / They yoked wild beasts to her because offspring, however wild, / ought to be tamed and softened by the loving care of parents. / And they ringed the top of her head with a mural crown / because, fortified in commanding places, she upholds cities. / Adorned with this emblem, the image of the divine Mother / is carried now through great lands, striking awe. / Her the various nations, by an ancient rite of worship, / call the Idaean Mother, and they give her Phrygian bands / as companions, because they declare that from those regions first / crops began to be produced throughout the world. / They assign her Galli because, as for those who have outraged the power / of the Mother and been found ungrateful to their parents, / they wish to show that these must be thought unworthy / to bring forth living offspring into the shores of light.note

And so, often, cropping the grass of a single field, / woolly flocks and the warlike breed of horses / and herds of horned cattle, under the same canopy of sky, / slaking their thirst from a single stream of water, / live with unlike appearances, and keep their parents’ / nature, and each after its kind copies their ways. / So great is the difference of matter in any kind of grass, / so great in any river too.

Then again, any single living creature among them all / is made up of bones, blood, veins, heat, moisture, flesh, sinews, / which in turn differ widely, / made of first beginnings of unlike shape.

Then again, take whatever things are set aflame and burned by fire: / if nothing else, they still carry in their body / the means to throw out fire and send up light / and shoot out sparks and scatter ash far and wide. / Ranging over everything else with the same reasoning of mind, / you will find, then, that they hide the seeds of many things / in their body and hold within them varied shapes.

Again, you see many things to which color and taste together / are given along with smell—above all, most fruits. / These, then, must consist of varied shapes; / for smell penetrates into our limbs where color does not go, / and color likewise separately, separately taste, steals / into our senses; so you may know they differ in their first shapes. / Unlike forms, then, come together into one mass, / and things consist of mixed seed.

Indeed, all through these very verses of mine / you see many elements—letters—common to many words, / and yet you must admit that verses and words / are made up of letters that differ from one another; / not that only a few common letters run through them, / or that no two consist of exactly the same, / but because, as a rule, they are not all identical to one another. / So too in other things, though much is shared in common / by many things, the first beginnings of things / can still make up wholes unlike each other; / so that it may rightly be said that from different ones are made / the human race, and crops, and thriving trees.

Yet you must not think that all things can be joined / in every way; for you would see monsters arise everywhere, / half-beast forms of men come into being, and tall / branches sometimes sprouting from a living body, / and many limbs of land creatures joined to those of sea creatures, / and Chimaeras breathing flame from foul mouths / fed by all-begetting nature throughout the lands. / Plainly none of this happens, since we see that all things, / created from fixed seeds by a fixed mother, / can preserve their kind as they grow. / Clearly this must happen according to a fixed principle. / For from all foods, its own proper bodies pass inside / into the limbs of each creature and, joined together, produce / the fitting motions; but on the other hand we see / nature throw alien bodies back onto the earth, and many, with unseen / bodies, flee from the body, driven out by blows, / which could neither join anywhere nor, within, / move in harmony with the vital motions and imitate them.

Now come, learn words sought out by my sweet labor, / lest you perhaps suppose that the white things you see / shining before your eyes are made of white first beginnings, / or that black things are born of black seed; / or believe that things steeped in any other color / bear it because the bodies of matter / are dyed with a color like it; / for the bodies of matter have no color / at all, neither like things nor unlike. / And if perhaps it seems to you that no casting of the mind / can reach such bodies, you wander far off the path. / For since the blind from birth, who have never / beheld the light of the sun, still know bodies by touch / that from the beginning of their life were joined to no color, / you may know that our mind too can come / to a notion of bodies that are coated with no color.

Since I have won the point that this can be, I will now teach that it is so. / For every color changes entirely into every other; / and this the first beginnings must by no means do; / for something unchangeable must survive, / so that all things may not be reduced utterly to nothing; / for whatever changes and passes out of its own bounds, / that is at once the death of what it was before. / So beware of tinging the seeds of things with color, / or else all things would return utterly to nothing for you.

Besides, if no nature of color has been given / to the first beginnings, and they are endowed with various shapes / from which they produce and vary colors of every kind, / then, since it matters greatly for all the seeds / with what others and in what position they are held together, / and what motions they give and receive among themselves, / you could at once very easily give an account / of why things that were black in color a moment ago / can suddenly become as white as marble— / as the sea, when great winds have churned its surface, / turns into white-capped waves of gleaming marble. / For you could say that what we often see as black, / once its matter has been mixed up, and the order / of its first beginnings changed, and some things added and some taken away, / at once comes to look gleaming and white.

Then again, the reason that leads and lures us / at times to assign colors to the first beginnings of things / falls away, since white things are not created from white, / nor things called black from black, but from varied seeds. / For indeed white things will arise far more readily / from no color at all than from black / or any other color that fights against it and resists.

Besides, since colors cannot exist without light, / and the first beginnings of things do not come out into the light, / you may know that they are clothed in no color at all; / for what color could there be in blind darkness? / Indeed, color changes in the light itself, according to whether / it gleams when struck by direct or slanting light: / so the plumage of doves appears in the sun, / the plumage that sits around the nape and rings the neck; / for sometimes it happens to be red as a bright garnet, / at other times, as one sees it, it seems / to mix green emeralds with blue. / And the peacock’s tail, when it is filled with abundant light, / changes its colors in just the same way as it turns; / and since these are produced by a certain impact of light, / you may know that they must be thought unable to arise without it.

And since the pupil receives a certain kind of blow / when it is said to perceive the color white, / and another kind again when it perceives black and the rest, / and it does not matter what color the things you touch / may have, but rather with what shape they are fitted, / you may know that the first beginnings have no need of color, / but produce varied touches by their various forms.

Besides, since color is not fixed by nature / to fixed shapes, and all the forms of the first beginnings / can exist in any sheen whatever, / why are the things made of them not likewise, / in every kind, suffused with colors of every sort? / For then crows too, as they fly, ought often / to flash white color from white wings, / and swans to become black from black seed, / or any other color, single or varied.

Moreover, the more each thing is pulled apart / into tiny pieces, the more you can see / its color gradually fade and die out, / as happens when purple cloth is torn into small shreds: / the purple, the scarlet, far the brightest of colors, / when pulled apart thread by thread, is entirely lost; / from this you may learn that the particles breathe out all their color / before they are broken down to the seeds of things.

Lastly, since you grant that not all bodies give out / a voice or a smell, it follows for that reason / that you do not assign sounds and smells to all: / so, since we cannot perceive all things with our eyes, / you may know that some things exist as bereft of color / as some are without any smell and removed from sound, / and that the keen mind can recognize these no less / than it can mark things deprived of other qualities.

But in case you think that the first bodies remain / stripped of color alone: they are also set apart from warmth / and cold entirely, and from hot vapor; / they move along barren of sound and starved of flavor, / and throw off from their body no odor of their own.

Now, whatever we see to have sensation, you must / still admit is all made up of first beginnings / without sensation. Nor do the plain facts refute this / or fight against it, the things known to us and ready to hand; / rather, they themselves lead us by the hand and compel us to believe / that living creatures, as I say, are born from things without sensation. / For we can see living worms emerging / from foul dung, when the sodden earth has taken on / a rot from untimely rains.

Besides, all things likewise change themselves. / Rivers change themselves into leaves, and lush pastures / into cattle; cattle change their nature into / our bodies; and from our bodies, often, / the strength of wild beasts grows, and the bodies of the mighty-winged birds. / So nature turns all food into living bodies / and from it brings forth all the senses of living creatures, / in much the same way as it unfolds dry wood / into flames and turns it all into fire. / Do you see now, then, that it matters greatly / in what order the first beginnings of things are each placed, / and with what others they are mixed, to give and receive motions?

Then again, what is it that strikes the mind itself, / that moves it and compels it to express various feelings, / so that you won’t believe the sentient is born from the insentient? / Surely it is that stones and wood and earth, mixed / together, still cannot yield living sensation. / In these matters, then, it will be well to remember / that I do not say that sensations are born at once from any and all / things whatever that create sentient beings, / but that it matters greatly, first, how tiny they are, / the things that make the sentient, and with what shape they are endowed, / and lastly what they are in motions, orders, positions.

Next, those who maintain that the sentient can be created / from sentient things, and these in turn from others used to feeling, / … / when they make them soft; for all sensation is joined / to flesh, sinews, veins—all things that we see / are soft and made of mortal body. / But still, grant for now that these could remain eternal: / surely, even so, they must either have the sensation of a part / or be thought to be like whole living creatures. / But parts, necessarily, cannot feel by themselves: / for the mind rejects every sensation of the limbs on their own, / and neither a hand cut off from us nor any / part of the body at all can keep sensation by itself. / It remains that they must resemble whole living creatures, / so that they can feel in harmony with living sensation throughout.

But if someone perhaps says that sensation can arise / from non-sensation only through change, / or through a kind of birth by which it is brought forth, / it will be enough to make plain to him and prove / that there is no birth unless a union has first been formed, / and that nothing changes without uniting.

First of all, there can be no senses in any body / before the nature of the living creature itself is born, / because, of course, its matter is held scattered / in air, rivers, earth, and the things born from earth, / and has not come together in the right way and brought / the fitting vital motions together, by which the all-seeing / senses are kindled and watch over each living creature.

Besides, a blow heavier than nature can bear / suddenly strikes down any living creature, and goes on to throw / all the senses of body and mind into confusion. / For the positions of the first beginnings are broken up, / and the vital motions are deeply obstructed, / until the matter, shaken throughout the limbs, / loosens the knots of the vital spirit from the body / and, scattering it, drives it out through all the pores; / for what else can we suppose a blow can do / when dealt, except shatter and dissolve each thing?

Besides, since pain occurs when the bodies of matter, / disturbed by some force through the living flesh and limbs, / tremble within in their seats, / and when they move back into place sweet pleasure arises, / you may know that the first beginnings cannot be assailed / by any pain, nor take any pleasure from themselves, / since they are not made up of any bodies / of first beginnings by whose change of motion they might suffer / or reap some fruit of life-giving sweetness. / They should not, then, be endowed with any sensation.

Lastly, if, so that every living creature can feel, / sensation must now be assigned to its first beginnings, / what of those from which the human race is specifically made? / No doubt they shake with trembling laughter and guffaw, / and sprinkle their faces and cheeks with dewy tears, / and are skilled at saying much about the mixture of things, / and go on to ask what their own first beginnings are; / since, being made like whole mortal beings, / they too must be made up of other elements, / and those in turn of others, so that you never dare to stop; / for I will follow you: whatever you say speaks and laughs / and is wise must be made of others that do these same things.

Lastly, we are all sprung from heavenly seed; / all have that same father, from whom our nourishing mother, / the earth, when she has received the liquid drops of moisture, / grows pregnant and bears shining crops and lush trees / and the human race, bears every species of wild beast, / providing the food on which all feed their bodies / and lead a sweet life and propagate their young; / and so she has rightly won the name of mother. / Likewise what came from earth before goes back / into the earth, and what was sent from the shores of the upper air / is carried back again and received by the temples of the sky.

Now turn your mind to me, to true reasoning. / For a new thing is struggling hard to reach / your ears, and a new aspect of things to show itself. / But there is nothing so easy that it does not at first / prove harder to believe, and likewise / nothing so great or so wonderful / that everyone does not, little by little, wonder at it less. / Take first the clear, pure color of the sky / and all it holds within it, the stars wandering everywhere, / the moon, and the sun’s radiance with its brilliant light: / if all these were now shown to mortals for the first time, / if they were suddenly, unexpectedly, set before them, / what could be called more wonderful than these things, / or what would the nations beforehand have dared less to believe could be? / Nothing, I think: so marvelous would this sight have been.

First of all, for us, in every direction all around, / on either side, above and below, through the whole, / there is no limit, as I have shown; the fact itself / proclaims it aloud, and the nature of the deep shines clear. / In no way, then, should it be thought likely, / when space lies empty and infinite in every direction, / and seeds in countless numbers, in a bottomless sum, / fly about in many ways, driven by eternal motion, / that this one world of lands and sky alone was created, / and that all those bodies of matter outside do nothing— / especially since this world was made by nature, as the seeds of things / themselves, of their own accord, colliding by chance, / driven together in many ways, at random, in vain and to no purpose, / at last grew together—those which, suddenly cast together, / were to become each time the beginnings of great things, / of earth and sea and sky and the race of living creatures.

Besides, when much matter is ready, / when space is at hand, and no thing and no cause / stands in the way, surely things must be carried out and brought to be. / Now, if the store of seeds is so great / that the whole lifetime of living creatures could not count it, / and the same nature remains in them, able to throw the seeds of things / together into every place in the same way / as they have been thrown together here, you must admit / that there are other worlds in other regions / and various races of men and species of wild beasts.

Add to this that in the sum of things there is no one thing / that is born unique and grows unique and alone / without belonging to some species, with very many / of the same kind. Take living creatures first: with your mind as guide / you will find that so it is with the mountain-roaming race of wild beasts, / so with the twofold offspring of humankind, so, lastly, with the mute / flocks of the scaly ones and all the bodies of flying things. / Therefore, by the same reasoning, you must admit that sky / and earth and sun, moon, sea, and all the rest that exist / are not unique, but rather beyond all number, / since a deeply fixed boundary of life / awaits them just as surely, and they are made of a body that was born / just as much as every species that abounds here in its kinds.

If you hold these things well learned, nature is seen / at once to be free, stripped of proud masters, / doing all things by herself, of her own accord, without the gods. / For—by the holy hearts of the gods, in tranquil peace, / that pass a calm age and a serene life!— / who can rule the sum of the immeasurable, who can hold / in hand and steer the mighty reins of the deep, / who can turn all the heavens alike and warm / all the fruitful lands with fires from the upper air, / or be present in every place at every time, / to make darkness with clouds and shake the clear / sky with thunder, then hurl lightning bolts, and often / wreck his own temples, and, withdrawing into deserts, / rage there, practicing with his weapon, which often passes by / the guilty and kills the innocent and the undeserving?

And after the birth-time of the world and the first day / of sea and earth, and the rising of the sun, / many bodies were added from outside, seeds added / all around, which the great universe brought together by hurling, / from which sea and lands could grow, and from which / the dwelling of the sky could gain space and raise its lofty roof / far from the earth, and the air could rise up. / For by blows from every place all bodies are allotted, / each to its own, and withdraw to their own kinds: / moisture goes to moisture, earth grows with earthy body, / fires forge fire, and ether ether, / until nature, creator of things, the perfecter, / has brought all things to the final limit of growth, / as happens when no more is now given within / the vital veins than flows out and departs.

So, then, the walls of the great world all around, too, / will be stormed and collapse into crumbling ruins; / for food must restore all things by renewing them, / food must prop them up, food must sustain all things— / in vain, since neither do the veins take in / enough, nor does nature supply as much as is needed.

And indeed, even now the age is broken, and the exhausted earth / barely creates tiny creatures—she who created all / species and gave birth to the huge bodies of wild beasts. / For, I think, no golden rope let down the mortal species / from heaven above onto the fields, / nor did the sea and the waves that beat the rocks create them, / but the same earth bore them that now feeds them from herself. / Besides, the shining crops and lush vineyards / she herself first created for mortals, of her own accord; / she herself gave sweet fruits and lush pastures, / which now scarcely grow large though increased by our labor; / and we wear out oxen and the strength of farmers, / we wear out the iron plow, and the fields barely provide for us: / so sparing are they of their fruits, and so they increase our labor.note

You who first could raise so clear a light from such deep darkness, / shedding light on the blessings of life, / you I follow, glory of the Greek people, and in your / deep-pressed tracks I now firmly set my own footprints, / not so much eager to compete as out of love, / because I long to imitate you; for why would a swallow vie / with swans, or what could young goats on trembling limbs / achieve in a race to match the strong horse’s might? / You, father, are the discoverer of things; you give us / a father’s precepts, and from your pages, famous one, / as bees in flowery glades sip from everything, / so we likewise feed on all your golden words— / golden, and ever most worthy of everlasting life. / For as soon as your reasoning begins to proclaim aloud / the nature of things, sprung from a divine mind, / the terrors of the mind scatter, the walls of the world / open wide.

And since I have taught what the beginnings of all things / are like, and how, differing in their varied shapes, / they fly about of their own accord, driven by eternal motion, / and in what way each thing can be created out of them, / next after these matters, it seems, the nature of the mind / and of the spirit must now be made clear in my verses, / and that fear of Acheron driven headlong out of doors, / which troubles human life from its very depths, / suffusing everything with the blackness of death, and leaves no / pleasure clear and pure.

First, I say that the mind, which we often call the understanding, / in which the counsel and governance of life are lodged, / is a part of a human being no less than hand and foot / and eyes are parts of the whole living creature. / … / that the sense of the mind is not lodged in any fixed part, / but is a certain vital condition of the body, / which the Greeks call harmony, because it makes us / live with sensation, though the mind is in no part; / just as good health is often said to belong / to the body, and yet it is not any part of the healthy person, / so they do not place the sense of the mind in a fixed part; / and in this they seem to me to go badly astray.note

So it often happens that the body, which is plain to see, is sick, / while we are glad in some other, hidden part; / and often, in turn, the reverse happens, / when someone wretched in mind is glad in his whole body; / just as when a sick man’s foot is in pain, / his head meanwhile may happen to feel no pain at all.

Besides, when the limbs are given over to soft sleep / and the heavy body lies sprawled without sensation, / there is something else in us which at that time / is stirred in many ways and takes into itself / all the motions of joy and the heart’s empty cares.

Now, so that you may also recognize that the spirit too is in the limbs / and that the body does not feel by harmony, / first of all it happens that when much of the body is taken away, / life often still lingers in our limbs.

And again, that same life, when a few bodies of heat / have fled and air has been breathed out through the mouth, / at once deserts the veins and leaves the bones; / so that from this you may learn that not all bodies / play an equal part or equally uphold our well-being, / but that these rather, which are the seeds of wind and warm heat, / see to it that life lingers in the limbs. / There is, then, a vital heat and wind in the body / itself, which deserts our limbs as we die. / Therefore, since the nature of mind and spirit has been found / to be, as it were, a part of a human being, give back the name / of harmony, brought down to the musicians from lofty Helicon, / or else they themselves drew it from somewhere else and carried it over / to that thing which at the time lacked a name of its own. / Whatever it is, let them keep it: you, hear the rest of my words.

Now I say that mind and spirit are held joined / together and make up one nature between them, / but that the head, as it were, which rules in the whole body, / is the counsel that we call mind and understanding. / And this stays lodged in the middle region of the breast. / For here fear and dread leap up, around these parts / joys caress us: here, then, are understanding and mind. / The rest of the spirit, scattered through the whole body, / obeys, and moves at the nod and impulse of the mind. / The mind alone has thoughts by itself and for itself, and rejoices for itself, / when nothing moves either spirit or body at the same time.

This same reasoning shows that the nature of mind and spirit / is bodily; for when it is seen to drive the limbs, / to snatch the body from sleep, to change the face, / and to steer and turn the whole human being— / none of which we see can happen without touch, / nor touch, in turn, without body—must we not admit / that mind and spirit are made of bodily nature? / Besides, you see that the mind is affected along with the body / and shares its feelings with it in our body. / If the dread force of a weapon falls short of destroying life, / though driven deep inside, splitting bones and sinews, / still there follows a faintness, and a pleasant sinking / to the ground, and, on the ground, a turmoil that arises in the mind, / and now and then a wavering wish, as it were, to rise. / Therefore the nature of the mind must be bodily, / since it suffers from bodily weapons and blows.

Now, of what kind of body this mind is made, and from what / it is composed, I shall go on to give you an account in words. / First of all, I say that it is extremely fine and made of / exceedingly minute bodies. That this is so, / you may note from what follows, and so come to know it well.

Nothing is seen to happen so swiftly / as what the mind proposes should happen and itself begins; / the mind, then, sets itself in motion faster than any of the things / whose nature we see plainly before our eyes. / But what is so exceptionally mobile must consist / of seeds exceedingly round and exceedingly minute, / so that they can be moved when struck by a small impulse. / For water moves and flows at the slightest impulse, / being made, of course, of small and rolling shapes. / But the nature of honey, by contrast, is more cohesive, / its liquid more sluggish and its movement slower: / for the whole mass of its matter clings more closely together, / no doubt because it is not made of bodies so smooth, / nor so fine and round.

This fact, too, declares its nature, / how fine the texture it is made of, and in how small a space / it would be contained if it could be gathered into a ball: / that as soon as the carefree rest of death has taken hold / of a man, and the nature of mind and spirit has departed, / you can see nothing taken away from the whole body / in appearance, nothing in weight: death leaves everything intact / except vital sensation and warm heat. / Therefore the whole spirit must be made of very small / seeds, woven through veins, flesh, and sinews, / inasmuch as, when it has all left the whole body, / the outer contour of the limbs still keeps itself / intact, and not a scrap of weight is missing.

Yet we must not think this nature is simple. / For a thin breath, mixed with heat, deserts / the dying, and heat in turn draws air along with it; / nor is there any heat that does not have air mixed in; / for since its nature is loose in texture, many / first beginnings of air must move within it. / So the nature of the mind has now been found to be threefold; / and yet these are not enough, all together, to create sensation, / since the mind does not admit that any of them can create / the sense-bearing motions, or, in the end, what one turns over in the mind. / So a certain fourth nature must be added / to these as well; it is altogether without a name; / nothing exists more mobile or finer than it, / or made of smaller and smoother elements; / it is the first to distribute the sense-bearing motions through the limbs.

Now, how these are mixed with one another, and in what ways / arranged so that they thrive, I am eager to explain, but / the poverty of my native tongue drags me back against my will; / still, as far as I can touch on it in summary, I shall touch on it. / For the first beginnings of the elements run in and out among one another / with their motions, so that no single one can be separated off / nor any power be set apart by space, / but they are, as it were, the many forces of a single body. / Just as in the flesh of any living creature, generally, / there is smell and a certain color and taste, and yet from all these / is made up one complete bulk of body, / so heat and air and the unseen power of wind, / mixed together, create one nature, along with that mobile / force which distributes to them from itself the beginning of motion, / from which the sense-bearing motion first arises through the flesh.

This nature, then, is held in by the whole body, / and is itself the body’s guardian and the cause of its well-being; / for they cling together by common roots / and clearly cannot be torn apart without destruction. / Just as it is not easy to tear the scent out of lumps of incense / without its nature perishing too, / so it is not easy to draw the nature of mind and spirit / out of the whole body without everything dissolving. / With their beginnings so interwoven from their first origin, / they come into being endowed with a shared life, / and neither, it seems, without the force of the other, / can the power of body or of mind feel by itself, apart, / but by shared motions on both sides between them / sensation is kindled and fanned in us through the flesh.

Besides, the body by itself is never born, / nor grows, nor, clearly, lasts after death. / For it is not as with the liquid of water, which often gives off the heat / that has been put into it, yet is not torn apart for that reason / but remains intact—not so, I say, can the abandoned limbs / endure the separation of the spirit, / but they perish utterly, torn apart, and rot away. / So from the start of life the body and the spirit, / through mutual contact, learn the motions of life, / even while stored in the mother’s limbs and womb, / so that their separation cannot happen without ruin and harm; / so that you may see, since the cause of their well-being is joined, / that their nature too is joined.

What remains: if anyone denies that the body feels / and believes that the spirit, mixed through the whole body, / takes on this motion which we call sensation, / he fights against things that are both plain and true. / For who will ever explain what it is for the body to feel, / if not what the fact itself has plainly shown and taught us? / “But when the spirit has gone, the body is wholly without sensation.” / Yes, for it loses what was never its own in life, / and much else besides it loses when it is driven out of life.

Then again, to say that the eyes can see nothing, / but that the mind looks out through them as through open doors, / is hard, since their very sense leads us the other way; / for sense drags us and thrusts us right up to the eyes’ own sight, / especially since we often cannot see bright things, / because our eyes are blinded by the light. / That does not happen with doors; for the open doorways / through which we ourselves look suffer no strain. / Besides, if our eyes serve as doors, / then surely, with the eyes taken out, the mind ought / to see things better, now that the very doorposts are removed.

In these matters you can by no means accept / what the venerable doctrine of Democritus lays down: / that the first beginnings of body and mind, set singly / side by side, alternate and so bind the limbs together. / For not only are the elements of the spirit much smaller / than those of which our body and flesh are made, / but they are also fewer in number, and are scattered sparsely / through the limbs, so that you can at least guarantee this: / that however small the first bodies are that, cast upon us, can stir / sense-bearing motions in the body, so great / are the intervals that the first beginnings of the spirit keep.note

And the mind does more to keep the bolts of life shut fast, / and has more sovereignty over life, than the force of the spirit. / For without understanding and mind no part of the spirit can stay / in the limbs for even the smallest part of time, / but it follows readily in the mind’s train, departs into the air, / and leaves the limbs icy in the chill of death.

Now come: so that you may learn that the minds and light spirits / of living creatures are born and are mortal, / verses long sought out and found with sweet toil, / worthy of your life, I shall go on to set out. / Make sure you yoke both of them under a single name, / and when, for instance, I go on to speak of the spirit, / teaching that it is mortal, believe that I speak of the mind too, / inasmuch as they are one and form a single joined thing.

First of all, since I have shown that it is fine and consists of minute / bodies, and is made of beginnings much smaller / than the flowing liquid of water / or mist or smoke—for it far surpasses them in mobility / and is moved when struck by a slighter cause, / seeing that it is moved even by images of smoke and mist; / as when, lulled in sleep, we see altars breathe out / steam on high and send up smoke; / for without doubt these are images that come to us— / now, then, since you see that when vessels are shattered / the liquid flows away on every side and the water runs off, / and since mist and smoke scatter into the air, / believe that the spirit too is dispersed and perishes much / more quickly, and is sooner dissolved into its first bodies, / once it has been taken from a man’s limbs and has departed; / for indeed, since the body, which was, as it were, its vessel, / cannot hold it in when shaken apart by some cause / and made porous by blood drawn from the veins, / how could you believe it could be held in by any air, / which is more porous than our body and less able to hold it?

Besides, we perceive that the mind is born along with the body, / grows up with it, and grows old with it. / For just as children toddle about with a weak and tender / body, so a slender judgment of mind goes with it. / Then, when their age has matured into sturdy strength, / their counsel too is greater and the strength of their mind increased. / Later, when the body has been shaken by the mighty strength / of time and the limbs have sunk down, their strength blunted, / the wit limps, the tongue raves, the mind totters, / everything fails and gives out at one and the same time. / It follows, then, that the whole nature of the spirit too is dissolved, / like smoke, into the high breezes of the air; / since we see it born together with the body and together with it / grow, and, as I have shown, weary with age, fall apart at the same time.

Add to this that we see that, just as the body itself / is subject to monstrous diseases and harsh pain, / so the mind is subject to sharp cares, grief, and fear; / so it is fitting that it should share in death as well. / What is more, in the body’s diseases the mind often wanders / off the path; for it loses its reason and talks nonsense, / and at times, in a heavy lethargy, it is carried off into a deep / and endless sleep, with drooping eyes and nodding head, / from which it neither hears voices nor can recognize / the faces of those who, calling it back to life, / stand around with tears bedewing their faces and cheeks. / So you must admit that the mind too is dissolved, / since the contagions of disease penetrate into it; / for pain and disease are both craftsmen of death, / as we have been well taught before now by the destruction of many.

What is more, often someone, seized suddenly by the force of a disease, / before our very eyes, as though by a stroke of lightning, / falls down and foams at the mouth, groans and trembles in his limbs, / loses his wits, stiffens his sinews, writhes, pants / fitfully, and wears out his limbs with thrashing, / no doubt because the force of the disease, spread through the limbs, / drives and churns the spirit, as on the salt sea, foaming, / the waves seethe under the mighty strength of the winds. / A groan, moreover, is forced out, because the limbs are racked / with pain, and above all because the seeds of the voice / are driven out and carried forth from the mouth in a mass, / along what is, as it were, their usual and well-built road. / Loss of reason comes about because the force of mind and spirit / is thrown into confusion and, as I have shown, divided apart, / is torn asunder and scattered by that same poison.

Again, since we see that the mind, like a sick body, can be healed, / and we see that it can be turned by medicine, / this too foretells that the mind lives a mortal life. / For anyone must add parts, or shift them from their order, / or take away at least a whit from the whole, / who undertakes and sets out to change the mind / or seeks to alter any other nature. / But what is immortal will not let its parts be shifted, / or anything be added, or a single whit flow away; / for whatever changes and passes out of its own bounds, / that is at once the death of what it was before. / So the mind, whether it falls sick, gives off the signs / of mortality, as I have shown, or whether it is turned by medicine. / So plainly does the truth seem to confront false reasoning, / to bar its escape as it tries to flee, / and to prove it false with a two-edged refutation.

Lastly, we often see a man go little by little / and lose his vital sense limb by limb: / first the toes and nails of his feet turn livid, / then the feet and legs die, and after that / the tracks of icy death creep slowly on through the other limbs. / And since this nature of the spirit is split apart, and does not / come forth whole at a single moment, it must be counted mortal. / But if perhaps you think it can draw itself inward / through the limbs and gather its parts into one, / and so withdraw sensation from all the limbs, / still that place where so great a store of spirit / is gathered ought to show itself with heightened sense; / and since there is no such place anywhere, no doubt, as we said before, / it is torn apart and scattered abroad, and so it dies.

And since the mind is one part of a man, and stays fixed / in a set place, just as the ears and eyes are, / and the other senses that steer our life, / and since, just as a hand or eye or nostrils, set apart / and severed from us, cannot feel or even exist, / but in a short time are left to rot, / so the mind cannot exist by itself, without the body / and the man himself, which seems to be, as it were, its vessel— / or whatever else you would rather imagine / more closely joined to it, since the body clings to it by a close bond.

Lastly, the living powers of body and mind / have strength and enjoy life only when joined together; / for the nature of the mind cannot put forth the motions of life / without the body, alone and by itself, nor again / can the body, bereft of spirit, endure and use its senses. / Just as the eye by itself, torn out by its roots, / cannot see anything apart from the whole body, / so spirit and mind by themselves are plainly powerless.

Lastly, since the body cannot endure the spirit’s / parting without rotting away in a foul stench, / why do you doubt that the power of the spirit, rising from the depths, / has streamed out, spread abroad like smoke, / and that the body, changed and rotting, has collapsed / in such great ruin because its foundations, shaken deep from their place, / are seeping out, and the spirit’s too, through the limbs / and through all the winding passages that are in the body, / and through its pores? So in many ways you can learn / that the nature of the spirit left through the limbs divided up, / and was torn apart within the body itself / before it slipped out and swam away into the breezes of the air.

Why, even while it still turns within the bounds of life, / the spirit often seems, from some cause, to be shaken / and ready to go, to be loosed from the whole body entire, / and the face seems to grow faint as at the final hour, / and all the limbs to fall limp from the bloodless body. / This is what happens when we say someone’s mind has failed / or their spirit has left them; then there is panic, and all / long to catch hold again of the last bond of life; / for then the mind and the power of the spirit are shaken to pieces, / all of it. And these totter together with the body itself, / so that a slightly heavier cause could dissolve them.

Why then do you doubt that, once cast forth outside the body, / weak, out in the open, its covering stripped away, / it could not only not last through all time, / but could not hold together for even the briefest moment? / For no one dying seems to feel his spirit / go out whole from his entire body, / or rise first to the throat and the gullet above; / rather he feels it fail in its set place, / just as he knows that each of his other senses, in its own part, / dissolves. But if our mind were immortal, / in dying it would not complain so much of dissolving, / but rather of going out and leaving its garment behind, like a snake.

Lastly, why are the thought and judgment of the mind never / born in the head or the feet or the hands, but cling in all men / to one seat and to set regions, / unless set places are assigned to each thing for its birth, / and where each thing, once created, can endure, / and so exists with its limbs arranged in their many ways / that the order of the members is never turned upside down? / So surely does thing follow thing: flame is not wont to be born / in rivers, nor cold to be begotten in fire.

Besides, if the nature of the spirit is immortal / and can feel when separated from our body, / we must, I think, suppose it endowed with the five senses. / In no other way can we picture to ourselves / the spirits below wandering in Acheron. / And so painters and earlier generations of writers / have brought spirits on stage endowed with the senses. / But neither eyes nor nostrils nor hand itself / can exist for the spirit apart, nor tongue apart, nor ears; / so spirits cannot feel, or even exist, by themselves.

And since we feel that vital sense is present in the whole body, / and see that the whole is alive, / if some force should suddenly cut it through the middle with a swift blow, / so as to sever each half apart, / no doubt the power of the spirit too will be divided, / cut apart, and dashed asunder along with the body. / But what is split and falls away into any parts / plainly denies that its nature is eternal.

Besides, if the nature of the spirit is immortal / and slips into the body at our birth, / why can we not remember the life we spent before as well, / nor keep any traces of the things we did? / For if the power of the mind is so greatly changed / that all memory of past deeds has dropped away, / that, I think, is not far off from death; / therefore you must admit that the spirit that was before / has perished, and that the one that is now has now been created.

Besides, if, when our body is already complete, / the living power of the mind is carried into us / at the moment we are born and cross the threshold of life, / it would not fit that it should be seen to grow / with the body and together with the limbs, in the very blood; / rather it ought to live alone by itself, as in a cage, / and yet so that the whole body still overflows with sense.

Besides, are seeds of the spirit left behind or not / in the lifeless body? If they are left and remain there, / it cannot rightly be held immortal, / since it has departed diminished, some of its parts lost. / But if it has fled, carried off with its members so intact / that it has left no parts of itself in the body, / from where do corpses, their flesh now going rank, breathe out / worms, and from where does so great a swarm of living things, / boneless and bloodless, surge through the swelling limbs? / But if perhaps you believe that spirits slip into the worms / from outside and can come, each one, into its own body, / and do not consider why many thousands of spirits / should gather where one has withdrawn, still this question / seems worth asking and putting to the test: / do the spirits hunt out each of the seeds / of the little worms and build themselves a dwelling, / or do they slip, as it were, into bodies already complete?

Lastly, why does fierce violence go with the grim breed / of lions, cunning with foxes, and flight with deer? / Why is fear passed down from their fathers, and a father’s dread spurs their limbs? / And why do all other traits of this kind grow in the limbs / and in the temper from the very start of life, / if not because, from its own fixed seed and breed, / the power of the mind grows up together with each body? / But if it were immortal and used to change / bodies, living creatures would have mixed-up characters: / a dog of Hyrcanian breed would often flee / the charge of an antlered stag, and the hawk would tremble through the breezes / of the air, fleeing at the dove’s approach; / men would lose their wits, and the wild tribes of beasts would be wise.note

Lastly, that spirits should stand ready at the matings of Venus / and the births of beasts seems quite absurd— / immortals waiting for mortal limbs / in numbers beyond number, and competing in headlong haste / among themselves over which shall slip in first and foremost; / unless perhaps the spirits have struck a treaty / that whichever comes flying first shall slip in / first, and they shall not fight among themselves at all.

Lastly, no tree can exist in the sky, no clouds in the deep / sea, nor can fish live in the fields, / nor blood be found in wood, nor sap in stones. / It is fixed and ordained where each thing is to grow and dwell. / So the nature of the mind cannot arise alone / without the body, nor exist far from sinews and blood. / For if it could, far sooner could the power of the mind itself / be in the head or shoulders or the bottom of the heels, / and it would be wont to be born in any part at all, / so long as it stayed in the same man and the same vessel. / But since in our body too it is plainly fixed / and ordained where spirit and mind can each exist / and grow apart, all the more must we deny / that it can endure or be born wholly outside the body.

But if perhaps it should rather be held immortal because / it is kept safe, fortified by things that preserve life, / or because things hostile to its well-being never come at all, / or because those that do come are somehow driven back / and retreat before we can feel any harm they do, / … / For besides the fact that it sickens along with the diseases of the body, / there comes something that often torments it about the future, / keeps it wretched in fear and wears it out with cares, / and for past wrongdoing its misdeeds bring the bite of remorse. / Add the madness that belongs to the mind alone, and forgetfulness of things; / add that it sinks into the black waters of lethargy.note

So when you see a man chafing at his own fate, / that after death he will either rot with his body laid in the ground, / or be destroyed by flames or by the jaws of wild beasts, / you may know that he does not ring true, and that there lurks / some hidden goad in his heart, though he himself denies / believing that he will have any feeling in death. / For he does not, I think, grant what he professes, nor its grounds; / he does not tear himself up by the roots and cast himself out of life, / but, unaware, makes something of himself survive. / For when a living man pictures to himself / that birds and beasts will tear his body in death, / he pities himself; for he does not separate himself from it, / nor remove himself enough from the cast-out body, but imagines / that it is himself, and, standing by, taints it with his own feeling.

This too men often do when they have taken their places at table, / cups in hand, their faces shaded with garlands: / they say from the heart, “Brief is this enjoyment for us poor mortals; / soon it will be over, and never after can we call it back.” / As if, in death, this were chief among their woes, / that thirst should burn the poor wretches up and parch them dry, / or that a longing for something else should weigh on them. / For no one misses himself and his life / when mind and body alike are quiet in sleep; / for all we care, that sleep might go on forever, / and no longing for ourselves touches us; / and yet at that time those first beginnings throughout our limbs / are not wandering far from their sense-giving motions, / since a man, startled from sleep, gathers himself together.

Lastly, if the nature of things should suddenly find a voice / and should herself rebuke one of us like this: / “What troubles you so much, mortal, that you give yourself up / to such sick grief? Why do you groan and weep at death? / For if your past life has been pleasing to you, / and all its blessings have not, as if poured into a leaky jar, / run through and been lost unenjoyed, / why not leave like a guest who has had his fill of life, / and take, you fool, your untroubled rest with a calm mind? / But if all you have enjoyed has been poured away and lost, / and life is hateful to you, why seek to add more, / only for it to be lost again and all perish unenjoyed? / Why not rather make an end of life and toil? / For there is nothing more I can devise or discover for you / to please you: all things are always the same.

No one is handed over to the pit, or to black Tartarus; / matter is needed so that later generations may grow; / yet all of them, when their life is done, will follow you; / and so, no less than you, these have fallen before and will fall. / So one thing will never cease to rise from another, / and life is given to none to own, to all to use. / Look back, too, and see how the ages of eternal time / that passed before we were born have been nothing to us. / This, then, is the mirror nature holds up to us of the time / to come, when at last we are dead. / Does anything there seem horrible? Does anything look / grim? Is it not more untroubled than any sleep?

And surely all the things that tradition says exist / in deep Acheron are all here with us, in life. / There is no wretched Tantalus fearing the great rock / that hangs in the air, as the story goes, numb with empty terror; / rather, in life an idle fear of the gods oppresses / mortals, and they fear whatever fall chance may bring to each. / Nor do birds burrow into Tityos as he lies in Acheron, / nor could they find anything to probe beneath that vast chest / through all eternity, to be sure. / However huge the sprawl of his body, / though he covered not just nine acres with outstretched limbs / but the whole round of the earth, / he still could not endure eternal pain / or supply food from his own body forever.note

This too you might say to yourself from time to time: / “Even good Ancus, you know, closed his eyes on the light, / and he was a better man than you, you shameless man, in many ways. / Since then many other kings and lords of the world / have fallen, who ruled over mighty nations. / Even he who once laid a road across the great sea / and gave his legions a path to march over the deep, / and taught them to walk on foot across the salt lagoons, / and scorned the roaring of the sea as his horses pranced over it, / lost the light and poured out his spirit from a dying body. / The scion of the Scipios, thunderbolt of war, terror of Carthage, / gave his bones to the earth as if he were the lowest slave. / Add the discoverers of sciences and of graces, / add the companions of the Muses of Helicon—among them Homer, / who alone held the scepter, sleeps the same sleep as the others.note

Lastly, what evil, what great craving for life / drives us to tremble so much in doubtful dangers? / Surely a fixed end of life awaits mortals, / and death cannot be avoided: we must meet it. / Besides, we move round in the same place and stay there always, / and no new pleasure is hammered out by living longer; / but while what we crave is absent, it seems to surpass / all else; then, once we have it, we crave something else, / and an equal thirst for life holds us, always open-mouthed. / And it is doubtful what fortune later years will bring, / what chance will bring us, or what end is at hand. / Nor by prolonging life do we take one jot / from the time of death, nor can we subtract anything / to make us, perhaps, dead for a shorter while.

I roam the pathless haunts of the Pierides, trodden / by no one’s foot before. It is a joy to approach untouched springs / and drink from them, a joy to pluck new flowers / and seek for my head a splendid crown from places / where the Muses have never before wreathed anyone’s brow: / first, because I teach of great things and press on / to free the mind from the tight knots of religion; / then, because on so dark a subject I compose such lucid / verses, touching everything with the Muses’ charm.note

But since I have taught what the beginnings of all things / are like, and how, differing in their varied shapes, / they fly about of their own accord, driven by eternal motion, / and in what way each thing can be created out of them, / [now I shall begin to treat for you what is closely bound up with these matters:] / [that there exist what we call images of things,] / [which should be called, as it were, films or bark;] / and since I have taught what the nature of the mind is, / and from what things it draws its strength when joined with the body, / and how, torn apart, it returns to its first beginnings, / now I shall begin to treat for you what is closely bound up with these matters: / that there exist what we call images of things, / for the image bears an appearance and form like that thing / from whose body, whatever it is, it is said to have poured off and to wander;note

First, since among visible things many things send off / bodies, some loosely dispersed, / as logs send off smoke and fires heat, / and some more closely woven and compact, as when at times / cicadas in summer lay aside their smooth sheaths, / and when calves at birth shed membranes from the surface / of their bodies, and likewise when the slippery snake / sloughs off its skin among the thorns—for we often see / the brambles decked with their fluttering spoils— / since these things happen, a thin image too must / be sent off from things, from their outermost surface.

Besides, every smell, smoke, heat and other such / things stream out of things in scattered form, / because, arising deep within, as they come out / they are split up along the winding path, and there are no straight / doorways for them to struggle out through once they have arisen. / But on the other hand, when the thin film of surface color / is thrown off, there is nothing that can tear it apart, / since it lies ready, placed in the front rank.

Lastly, whatever images appear to us in mirrors, / in water, and in every shining surface must, / since they are endowed with an appearance like that of things, / consist of images sent off from those things. / [For why those things should fall away and depart from things] / [rather than those that are thin, no one can open his mouth to say.] / There are, then, thin images, like those things in form, / which, though no one can make them out singly, / yet, thrown back by constant, repeated rebound, / give back a sight from the mirror’s level surface; / and by no other means, it seems, could they be preserved / so well that shapes so like each thing are given back.

Now come: how fine the stuff of which an image is made— / grasp that. And first, since the first beginnings lie so far / below our senses, and are so much smaller / than the things our eyes first begin to be unable to see, / still, to confirm this too, learn in a few words / how fine are the beginnings of all things. / First, there are creatures so tiny that a third / of them could by no means be seen. / What must we think any one of their guts is like! / What of the ball of the heart, or the eyes? The limbs? The joints? / How tiny they are! And what, further, of the first beginnings, / whatever they are, of which their spirit and the nature of their mind must consist? / Do you not see how fine they are, and how minute?

But lest you think that only those images of things / wander that depart from things, / there are also some that are born of their own accord and form / by themselves in this part of the sky that is called air; / these, shaped in many ways, are carried aloft, / as we sometimes see clouds easily gather on high / and mar the clear face of the heavens, / caressing the air with their motion; for often the faces of Giants / seem to fly by and trail a broad shadow, / sometimes great mountains and rocks torn from / the mountains seem to go before and pass across the sun, / then some monster seems to drag and draw on other clouds. / And, melting, they never stop changing their appearance / and turning into the outlines of every kind of form.

Now how easily and swiftly they are produced, / and flow constantly from things, and slip away and withdraw— / … / for there is always something on the surface of things in abundance / for them to shoot off. And when this reaches other things, / it passes through—clothing, for example; but when it reaches rough rocks / or the matter of wood, there straightaway / it is torn apart, so that it can give back no image. / But when bright and dense objects have been placed / in its way—a mirror above all—none of this happens; / for they cannot pass through, as through clothing, nor yet / be torn apart; the smoothness takes care to keep them safe. / That is why images stream back to us from there.

Besides, when the weather of the sky has just been perfectly clear, / all of a sudden it becomes foully overcast, / so that you would think all the darkness had deserted Acheron / on every side and filled the great caverns of the sky. / So thoroughly, when the foul night of storm clouds has risen, / do the faces of black Terror hang over us from above; / yet how tiny a part of these an image is, no one / can say, nor render an account of it in words.

Now come: how swift the motion with which images travel, / and what speed has been given them as they swim through the air, / so that a brief hour is spent on a long journey, / to whatever place each heads with its varying impulse, / I shall tell in verses sweet rather than many; / as the swan’s brief song is better than the cry of cranes / scattered among the lofty clouds of the south wind.

First, you can very often see that things that are light / and made of tiny bodies are swift. / Of this kind are the sun’s light and its heat, / because they are made of tiny first bodies, / which are, so to speak, hammered on, and do not hesitate / to cross the space of air, driven by the blow behind; / for light is instantly supplied by light, / and flash spurred on by flash, as in an unbroken line. / Therefore by like reasoning images must be able / to run across an unspeakable distance / in an instant of time: first, because a tiny cause / far behind them carries them on and propels them, / and for the rest, they are borne along with such winged lightness; / next, because they are sent out endowed with so loose / a texture that they can easily pass into anything / and, as it were, seep through the space of air.

Besides, if some particles of things sent out from deep / within to the outside, like the sun’s light / and heat, are seen in an instant of the day to glide down / and spread themselves through the whole expanse of the sky, / and to fly over sea and lands and flood the sky, / what then of those that stand ready in the front rank, / when they are thrown off and nothing holds back their release? / Do you not see how much faster and farther they must go, / and run through many times the space / in the same time that the sun’s rays spread across the sky?

This too seems an especially true proof / of how swift the motion is with which images of things travel: / that as soon as a shining pool of water is set out / under the open sky, at once, if the sky is starry, the clear / stars of the heavens answer, gleaming in the water. / Do you see now, then, in what an instant an image / falls from the borders of the sky to the borders of the earth? / So again and again you must admit that bodies are sent off / that 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, which eats away walls along the shores, / and various sounds never cease to fly through the air. / Then, a moist salty taste often comes into the mouth / when we walk beside the sea; and when we watch, close by, / wormwood being diluted and mixed, its bitterness touches us.

Besides, since a shape handled in the dark / is recognized as the same one that / is seen in the light and bright radiance, / touch and sight must be moved by a like cause. / Now then, if we feel a square thing, and it affects us / in the dark, what square thing will be able in the light / to strike our sight, unless its image? / So the cause of seeing seems to lie in images, / and without them nothing can be seen.

Now these images of things I speak of are carried / everywhere and are thrown off, scattered, in all directions; / but because we can see only with our eyes, / it happens that wherever we turn our gaze, all / things there strike against it with form and color. / And how far each thing is from us, the image / makes us see, and takes care that we distinguish it; / for when it is sent off, it at once pushes and drives / whatever air lies between itself and the eyes, / and all that air thus glides through our eyes / and, as it were, brushes the pupils, and so passes through. / That is why we see how far away / each thing is. And the more air is driven on ahead, / and the longer the breeze that brushes our eyes, / the farther away each thing is seen to be.

In these matters we must not think it at all surprising / that, though the images that strike the eyes cannot / be seen one by one, the things themselves are perceived. / For when the wind too lashes us bit by bit, and when / sharp cold flows, we do not usually feel each single / particle of that wind and of that cold, / but rather the whole at once, and we perceive blows / being dealt to our body then, just as if some thing / were lashing it and giving us a sense of its own body outside us. / Besides, when we strike a stone with a finger, we touch / the very outermost part of the rock and its surface color, / yet we do not feel that by touch; rather we feel / the hardness itself of the rock, deep within.

Now come, learn why the image is seen beyond / the mirror: for certainly it seems set far back within. / It is like those things outside that are truly seen through / a door, when the doorway offers an open view through it / and lets many things outside be seen from the house; / for that sight too is produced by a double, twofold air. / First the air on this side of the doorposts is perceived, / then the doors themselves follow, right and left, / then the light from outside brushes the eyes, and / the second air, and the things outside that are truly seen through.

Now, the part of our body that is on the right / appears in mirrors on the left, because, / when the image, coming to the mirror’s flat surface, strikes it, / it is not turned around intact, but is pushed straight / back, as if someone, before a plaster mask / were dry, should dash it against a pillar or beam, / and it at once kept its shape straight on the front / and pressed itself out, thrust backward. / It will happen that the eye which was before the right / is now the left, and the left in exchange the right.

It happens too that an image is passed from mirror to mirror, / so that even five or six images are commonly produced. / For whatever things lie hidden behind, in the inner part, / from there, however tortuously and deeply removed, / all can be drawn out through winding passages, / and by means of several mirrors be seen to be in the house. / So thoroughly does the image shine across from mirror to mirror; / and when it is given as left, it becomes right again, / then turns back once more and reverts to the same position.

What is more, all mirrors with little sides / that have a curve like the curve of our own flank / send images back to us the right way round, / either because the image is passed from mirror to mirror / and flies to us after being struck back twice, or else because / the image is turned around as it comes, since / the mirror’s curved shape teaches it to turn toward us.

Then again, you would think the images step along with us, set / their feet down as we do and copy our gestures, / because from whatever part of the mirror you move away, / from there the images at once cannot return; / since nature compels all things to be carried back / and to rebound from things, returned at equal angles.

Again, the eyes shun bright things and avoid looking at them. / The sun even blinds them if you keep straining toward it, / because its own power is great, and from on high / its images are carried through the clear air / and strike the eyes, throwing their structure into disorder.

Besides, any sharp brightness often scorches / the eyes, because it holds many seeds / of fire, which breed pain in the eyes by working their way in. / Besides, whatever the jaundiced look at / turns sallow, because from their body many seeds / of sallowness flow out to meet the images of things, / and many, too, are mixed within their eyes, / which by their contagion paint everything with pallor.

We see out of darkness the things that are in the light / because, when the black air of the gloom, being nearer, / enters the open eyes first and takes possession of them, / the shining, bright air follows at once, / which, as it were, cleanses them and scatters the black shadows / of that other air; for this air is many times / more mobile, many times finer and more potent. / As soon as it has filled the passages of the eyes with light / and opened those that the air had blocked before— / the black air—at once the images of things follow / that are situated in the light, and stir the eyes so that we see. / We cannot do the reverse, from light into darkness, / because the air of the gloom that comes after / is thicker, and fills all the openings / and blocks the passages of the eyes, so that the images / of no things can be thrown in and move them.

And when we see a city’s square towers from far off, / it often happens that they look round, / because every angle is seen blunted from afar, / or rather is not seen at all: its blow / is lost, and its impact does not glide through to our sight, / since, while the images are carried through much air, / the air forces the angle to grow dull by frequent collisions. / When in this way every angle has escaped our sense at once, / the stone structures look as though turned on a lathe— / yet not like things that are close at hand and truly round, / but they appear to resemble them a little, as in a sketch.

Our shadow, too, seems to us to move in the sun / and to follow our footsteps and copy our gestures— / if you believe that air deprived of light can / walk along, following the movements and gestures of men; / for what we are accustomed to call a shadow / can be nothing else but air empty of light. / Of course: because the earth, in fixed places one after another, / is robbed of the sun’s light wherever, as we walk, / we get in its way, and likewise the part we have left is filled again, / that is why what was our body’s shadow / seems to have followed us constantly, directly in line with us. / For new rays of light are always pouring out, / and the first ones perish, as if wool were being drawn into a fire. / So the earth is easily robbed of light / and likewise filled again, and washes the black shadows off itself.

Yet we do not grant that the eyes are deceived one bit in this. / For to see in what place there is light and shadow / is their business; but whether the lights are the same or not, / and whether the shadow that was here is the same one now passing there, / or rather what I said a little earlier happens— / this, in the end, the reasoning of the mind must decide; / the eyes cannot know the nature of things. / So do not pin this fault of the mind on the eyes.

The ship we sail in moves while it seems to stand still; / the one that stays at anchor is believed to be going past. / And hills and plains seem to run away astern / as we drive our ship past them and fly on under sail.

The stars all seem to be at rest, fixed to the vaults of heaven, / and yet they are all in constant motion, / since they rise and then return to their distant settings / when they have measured out the sky with their bright bodies. / And by the same reasoning the sun and moon seem / to stay at rest—things that the facts themselves show to be moving.

And mountains rising far off from the middle of the sea, / between which a vast passage lies open, free for fleets, / nevertheless look like a single island joined from them. / Halls seem to spin and columns to run around / to children, so much so, when they themselves / have stopped whirling, that they can scarcely believe / the whole roof is not threatening to crash down on them.

And when nature begins to raise the red radiance on high / with its trembling fires and lift it above the mountains, / those mountains above which the sun then seems to you to be, / touching them close at hand with its own blazing fire, / are scarcely two thousand arrow-shots away from us, / often scarcely five hundred casts of a javelin; / yet between them and the sun lie the enormous / plains of the sea, spread out beneath the vast shores of the sky, / and many thousands of lands lie in between, / held by various peoples and generations of beasts.

But a pool of water no deeper than a single finger, / collected between the stones of paved streets, / offers a view down beneath the earth of as vast a depth / as the high chasm of the sky gapes open above the earth, / so that you seem to look down on clouds and see the sky, / and bodies marvelously hidden in a sky beneath the earth.

Lastly, when our spirited horse has come to a halt in the middle / of a river, and we look down into the stream’s rushing waves, / the force of the current seems to carry the standing horse’s body / sideways and to thrust it swiftly upstream, / and wherever we cast our eyes, everything seems to be carried / and to flow along in the same way as we are.

Lastly, though a colonnade runs evenly throughout / and stands forever propped on equal columns, / yet when its whole length is seen from the top end, / it gradually draws in to the point of a narrow cone, / joining roof to floor and all the right side to the left, / until it has drawn them together into the cone’s faint tip.

At sea, to sailors, the sun seems to rise from the waves / and in the waves to set and hide its light— / naturally, since they see nothing else but water and sky; / so do not lightly believe that the senses are shaken on every side. / But to those who do not know the sea, ships in harbor / seem to be straining lamely against the waves with broken sterns. / For whatever part of the oars is raised above the salt spray / is straight, and the rudders are straight above; / but the parts that go down beneath the water all seem refracted, / bent round, turning back and sloping upward, / and bent back so as almost to float on the water’s surface.

And when the winds carry scattered clouds across the sky / at night, then the bright constellations seem / to glide against the clouds and travel above them / in quite another direction from their true course. / But if by chance a hand placed beneath one eye / presses it, by a certain sensation it comes about that / everything we look at seems to become double as we look: / double the lamplights, blooming with their flames, / double the furniture throughout the whole house, / and men’s faces twofold, and their bodies two.

Lastly, when sleep has bound our limbs in sweet slumber / and the whole body lies in deepest rest, / even then we seem to ourselves to be awake and to move / our limbs, and in the blind darkness of night / we think we see the sun and the light of day, / and, shut in a closed room, we seem to pass to sky and sea, to rivers and mountains, / and to cross the plains on foot, / and to hear sounds, when the stern silence of night / reigns on every side, and to reply, though we say nothing.

We see many other marvels of this kind, / which all seek, as it were, to break down our trust in the senses— / in vain, since most of them deceive us / because of the mind’s opinions, which we add ourselves, / so that things not seen by the senses are taken as seen; / for nothing is harder than to separate plain things / from doubtful ones, which the mind adds straight away of its own accord.

Lastly, if anyone thinks that nothing can be known, he also does not know / whether it can be known, since he admits he knows nothing. / Against this man, then, I will not trouble to argue my case, / a man who has stood himself on his own head. / And yet, granting that he knows even this, still I would / ask him this: since he has never before seen anything true in things, / how does he know what knowing and not knowing are, / what produced the concept of the true and the false, / and what proved that the doubtful differs from the certain? / You will find that the concept of the true was created first / by the senses, and that the senses cannot be refuted. / For something must be found of greater credit, / which can of its own accord overcome the false with the true. / Then what ought to be held of greater credit / than the senses?

Can the ears find fault with the eyes, or touch / with the ears? Or will the mouth’s taste convict this touch, / or will the nostrils refute it, or the eyes disprove it? / Not so, I think. For to each a separate power / is assigned, each has its own force; and so it must be that / what is soft, or cold, or hot is perceived / by one sense, and by another the various colors of things / are sensed, and whatever is joined to the colors. / Separately, too, the mouth’s taste has its power; separately smells / arise, separately sounds. And so it must be / that one sense cannot convict another. / Nor again can they find fault with themselves, / since equal trust must always be placed in them. / Therefore, whatever has appeared to them at any time is true.

And even if reasoning cannot unravel the cause / why things that were square close up are seen / as round from far off, still it is better, lacking a reason, / to give a faulty account of the causes of each shape / than to let things plainly grasped slip from our hands / and to violate our first trust and tear up all / the foundations on which life and well-being rest. / For not only would all reasoning collapse; life itself too / would fall at once, unless you dared to trust the senses / and to avoid steep places and all the other things / of this kind that are to be shunned, and to pursue their opposites. / So all that store of words is empty for you, / which has been drawn up and prepared against the senses.

Lastly, as in a building, if the first rule is crooked, / and if the square is false and departs from straight lines, / and if the level is the least bit off at any point, / everything must be done faulty and askew, / the building warped, leaning, tilting forward, tilting back, all out of true, / so that some parts seem about to collapse already, and do collapse, / all betrayed by those first false judgments— / so, then, your reasoning about things must be crooked / and false, whatever reasoning has arisen from false senses.

Now how each of the other senses perceives its own / object—the account that remains is by no means a stony path.

First, every sound and voice is heard when it has worked its way / into the ears and struck the sense with its body. / For we must admit that voice too, and sound, / are bodily, since they can strike the senses.

Besides, the voice often scrapes the throat, and a shout / makes the windpipe rougher as it goes out, / since the first beginnings of voices, rising in a greater crowd / through a narrow passage, have begun to go outside. / Clearly, the doorway of the mouth, too, is scraped when they fill it. / There is no doubt, then, that voices and words consist / of bodily first beginnings, so that they can do harm. / Nor do you fail to see, likewise, how much body is taken away, / how much is drained from men’s very sinews and strength / by unbroken talk carried on to the shadow of black night / from the first bright gleam of dawn, / especially if it is poured out at the top of one’s voice. / So the voice must be bodily, / since one who talks a lot loses part of his body.

Roughness of voice, moreover, comes from roughness / of the first beginnings, and smoothness likewise is created from smoothness; / nor do first beginnings of the same shape pierce the ears / when the trumpet bellows with a low, deep rumble / and the lyre, swept into motion, booms back its hoarse drone, / and when now the Daulian birds from Helicon’s gardens / raise their liquid lament in a mournful voice.note

So when we press out these voices from deep within our body / and send them out straight through the mouth, / the nimble tongue, deft worker of the sinews, articulates them, / and the shaping of the lips in its turn gives them form. / When the distance is not long from which each voice sets out / to arrive, the words themselves too must / be heard clearly and distinguished syllable by syllable; / for the voice keeps its shaping, keeps its form. / But if the space between is longer than it should be, / the words must be jumbled through so much air / and the voice thrown into confusion as it flies through the breezes. / So it happens that you can hear the sound but cannot / make out what the meaning of the words is; / so confused and obstructed does the voice arrive.

Besides, a single word, sent out from a herald’s mouth, / often rouses the ears of everyone in a crowd. / So one voice suddenly scatters / into many voices, since it divides itself among individual ears, / stamping its form and clear sound on the words. / But the part of the voices that does not fall on ears / is carried past and perishes, scattered in vain through the air. / Part, dashed against solid places, is thrown back and returns / a sound, and sometimes mocks us with the image of a word.

When you see this well, you could give an account / to yourself and others of how, in lonely places, / rocks give back like shapes of words in their order, / when among the shadowy mountains we look for straying companions / and call aloud to them, scattered as they are. / I have even seen places give back six or seven voices / when you uttered only one: so did the hills themselves, / beating words back to hills, repeat what was said.

For the rest, there is no reason to wonder how it is / that through places where the eyes cannot see things plainly, / through these places voices come and strike the ears. / We often observe a conversation carried on through closed doors, too— / of course, because a voice can pass unharmed through the winding passages / of things, while images refuse; / for they are torn apart unless they swim through straight passages, / like those of glass, through which every sight flies. / Besides, a voice divides itself in all directions, / since voices are born one from another, once a single voice / has burst out and split into many, as a spark of fire / often scatters itself into fires of its own. / So places hidden far back are filled with voices, / all seething around and astir with sound.

The tongue and palate, by which we perceive flavor, / involve a little more reasoning, more work. / First, we perceive flavor in the mouth when we press out / food by chewing, as if someone happened to begin / to squeeze a sponge full of water in his hand and dry it. / Then all that we press out is spread through the pores of the palate / and through the winding passages of the porous tongue. / When the bodies of the oozing flavor are smooth, / they touch pleasantly and pleasantly handle / all the moist, sweating regions around the tongue; / but on the other hand they prick the sense and tear it as they rise, / the more so, the more each is filled with roughness.

Now, so that we may see how different creatures have different foods, / I will explain, and why what is harsh and bitter to some / can nevertheless seem very sweet to others, / and why the distance and difference in these things is so great / that what is food to some is sharp poison to others; / there is even a snake which, touched by human spittle, / perishes and destroys itself by biting itself. / Besides, hellebore is a sharp poison to us, / but it fattens goats and quails. / To understand by what means this comes about, / you must first remember what we said before, / that seeds are held mixed in things in many ways. / Moreover, all living creatures that take food, / just as they are unlike outwardly and, kind by kind, / the outer contour of their limbs confines them, / so too they consist of seeds that vary in shape.

Now come, I will explain how the impact of smell / touches the nostrils. First, there must be many things / from which a varied stream of smells rolls out, / and we must suppose they flow and are sent and scattered everywhere; / but different smells suit different creatures better, / because of their unlike shapes. And so through the air / bees are drawn by the scent of honey, however far away, / and vultures by corpses; then, where the cloven hoof of wild beasts / has carried their steps, the power of hounds, let loose, / leads on, and the scent of man is sensed far off / by the savior of the citadel of Romulus’s sons, the white goose. / So different scents, given to different creatures, lead each / to its own food and force it to recoil from foul poison, / and in this way the generations of beasts are preserved.note

This smell, then, whatever it is that strikes the nostrils, / one kind can be sent farther than another; / but none of them travels as far / as sound, as voice—not to mention the things / that strike the eyes’ sight and stir our vision. / For it comes slowly, wandering, and perishes first, / gradually and easily dispersed into the breezes of the air; / first, because it is scarcely released from deep within the thing; / for that smells flow out and depart from deep within things / is shown by the fact that everything seems to smell stronger / when broken, when crushed, when broken down by fire. / Next, you can see that it is made of larger / first beginnings than voice, since through stone walls / it does not pass, where voice and sound commonly travel.

Yet this is not so only with smells and with the class / of flavors; likewise the appearances and colors of things / do not suit all the senses of all creatures equally, / but some are harsher to the sight of some. / Indeed, the rooster, who is used to clapping night away with his wings / and summoning dawn with his clear voice— / ravening lions cannot stand and face him / or look at him: so quickly do they think of flight. / Of course, this is because there are certain seeds in the bodies / of roosters which, when they are shot into the eyes of lions, / pierce the pupils and cause sharp pain, / so that, fierce as they are, they cannot hold out against it, / though these seeds cannot hurt our sight at all, / either because they do not penetrate, or because, when they do, / a free exit from the eyes is given them, so that by lingering / they cannot hurt the eyes in any part.

Now come, learn what things move the mind, and hear in a few words / where the things that come into the mind come from. / First, I say this: many images of things wander / in many ways, in all directions everywhere, / thin images, which easily join with one another in the air / when they meet, like spider’s web or gold leaf. / For these are indeed much thinner in texture / than those that take hold of the eyes and stir our sight, / since they penetrate through the body’s pores and stir / the thin nature of the mind within and arouse its sense.

Now, since I have shown that I see lions, let us say, / by means of images, whatever ones strike the eyes, / you may know that the mind is moved in a similar way / by images of lions and of the other things it sees, equally / and no less than the eyes, except that it perceives thinner ones. / And for no other reason, when sleep has sprawled the limbs, / is the mind awake, except that the same images stir / our minds as when we are awake, / so much so that we seem surely to see one / whom, life left behind, death and earth have already taken. / Nature compels this to happen because all / the senses of the body are blocked and at rest throughout the limbs / and cannot refute the false with the true.

Many questions are asked about these things, and much / must be made clear by us, if we want to explain the matter plainly. / First of all it is asked why, whatever each person / has had a sudden fancy for, the mind thinks of that very thing at once. / Do the images watch for our will, / and does an image come to us as soon as we wish, / if our heart is set on sea, on land, or on the sky? / Gatherings of people, a procession, banquets, battles— / does nature create and provide them all at a word? / Especially when, in the same region and place, / other minds are thinking of things all utterly different. / And what of this: when we see images in sleep / move in rhythm and sway their supple limbs, / when they nimbly thrust out their supple arms in turn / and repeat the gesture for our eyes with matching feet?

It also happens at times that the image supplied is not / of the same kind, but what was a woman before / seems to be there in our arms, turned into a man, / or one face and age follows after another. / Sleep and forgetfulness see to it that we do not wonder at this.

In these matters there is one fault that you should strongly / shun, one error to avoid with foresight: / do not think that the bright lights of the eyes were created / so that we could see ahead, or that, so that we could take / long strides, the tapering ends of shins / and thighs, set on the feet, are able to bend for that purpose, / or again that the forearms, fitted to strong upper arms, / and the hands, servants on either side, were given us / so that we could do what was needed for life. / All the other explanations of this kind that people give / are backward and preposterous in their reasoning, / since nothing has been born in the body so that we might / use it, but what has been born creates the use.

Nor is it any wonder, likewise, that the very nature / of every living creature’s body seeks food. / For I have shown that many bodies flow and depart from things / in many ways, but the most must depart / from living creatures; these, because they are exercised by motion, / many are breathed out through the mouth when they pant with weariness, / and many are forced up from deep within and carried off through sweat. / Through these things, then, the body grows porous and its whole / nature is undermined, and pain follows on this. / That is why food is taken: to prop up the limbs / and restore strength when given within, and to stop up / the gaping desire for eating throughout the limbs and veins.

Now how it happens that we can step forward / when we wish, and why we are able to move our limbs, / and what has been accustomed to push forward this great weight / of our body, I will tell: take in my words. / I say that first, images of walking / strike our mind and beat upon it, as I said before. / Then comes the will; for no one begins to do any / thing until the mind has first foreseen what it wishes. / And what it foresees consists of an image of that thing. / So when the mind stirs itself so that it wishes to go / and step forward, at once it strikes the force of the spirit / that is scattered through the whole body, through limbs and frame; / and that is easy to do, since the two are held joined together. / Then the spirit in turn strikes the body, and so the whole / mass is gradually pushed forward and moved.

Now by what means sleep floods the limbs with rest / and frees the heart from the cares of the mind, / I shall tell in verses sweet rather than many, / as the swan’s brief song is better than the cry of cranes / scattered among the lofty clouds of the south wind. / Give me fine ears and a shrewd mind, / so that you do not deny that what I say can happen / and go away with a heart that thrusts back / true words, when you are yourself at fault and cannot see it.

First, sleep comes when the force of the spirit is scattered / through the limbs, and part of it has been driven out and gone away, / and part, crowded together, has withdrawn deeper inside; / for then at last the limbs are loosened and grow slack. / For there is no doubt that it is through the spirit’s work / that this sense exists in us; and when slumber prevents it from existing, / then we must suppose that our spirit is thrown into disorder / and driven out—not all of it; for then the body would lie / steeped in the everlasting chill of death. / For if no part of the spirit remained hidden / in the limbs, as fire lies buried beneath much ash, / from what could sense be suddenly rekindled through the limbs, / as flame springs up from hidden fire?

But by what means this new state comes about, and how / the spirit can be thrown into disorder and the body grow slack, / I will explain: see that I do not pour out my words to the winds.

First, the body must on its outer side, / since it is touched by the neighboring breezes of the air, / be pounded and beaten by their frequent blows, / and that is why nearly all things are covered / with hide, or else with shells, or with callus, or with bark. / And in those that breathe, this same air also / lashes the inner part as it is drawn in and breathed out. / So since the body is beaten on both sides, and since / the blows make their way through the tiny pores / to the primary parts and first elements of our body, / there comes about, as it were, a gradual collapse throughout our limbs. / For the arrangements of the first beginnings of body / and mind are thrown into disorder.

Then too, sleep follows food, because the same effects the air produces, / food, while it is being spread through all the veins, / produces too. And that slumber is by far the heaviest / which you fall into when full or tired, because then the greatest number / of bodies are thrown into disorder, bruised by much labor. / By the same reasoning, the spirit is in part packed / deeper, and more of it is driven out, / and it is more divided and scattered within.

And whatever pursuit each of us is bound to and clings to, / or whatever things we have spent much time on before, / so that the mind has been more strained in that task, / in sleep we generally seem to go about those same things: / lawyers plead cases and draft laws, / generals fight and go into battle, / sailors wage their grappling war with the winds, / and I pursue this task: to seek out the nature of things / always, and set it forth, once found, in my country’s language. / So other pursuits and arts are generally seen / to hold men’s minds in sleep with their illusions.

That seed in us is stirred, as I said before, / when ripening age first strengthens the limbs. / For different things move and stir different things; / only the influence of a human being calls forth human seed from a human. / As soon as it has been driven out of its seats and goes forth, / it withdraws from the whole body through limbs and frame, / gathering in certain regions of the sinews, and at once / rouses the very genital parts of the body. / Those parts, stimulated, swell with seed, and there arises the will / to discharge it toward that which fierce desire strains toward, / [it rouses, exciting the places swollen with much seed] / and it seeks the body from which the mind is wounded by love; / for all, as a rule, fall toward their wound, and the blood / spurts out in the direction from which we are struck by the blow, / and if the enemy is close at hand, the red stream covers him.

This is Venus for us; this is where the name of Love comes from; / this is where that drop of Venus’s sweetness first / trickled into the heart, and chilling care followed. / For if what you love is absent, still its images / are at hand, and its sweet name hovers about your ears. / But it is right to flee those images and frighten away / what feeds love, and to turn the mind elsewhere, / and to cast the gathered fluid into any bodies, / and not to hold it back, once turned by love of one alone, / and so store up care and certain pain for oneself; / for the sore quickens and becomes chronic by feeding, / and day by day the frenzy grows and the misery gets heavier, / unless you disrupt the first wounds with new blows / and heal them while still fresh, roaming with roaming Venus, / or can divert the motions of the mind elsewhere.

Nor does the man who avoids love go without the fruits of Venus; / rather, he takes the benefits that come without the penalty; / for surely the pleasure from it is purer for the healthy-minded / than for the lovesick; for at the very moment of possession / the lovers’ passion wavers, drifting uncertainly, / and they cannot settle what to enjoy first with eyes and hands. / What they have sought they squeeze tight and hurt / the body, and often dash their teeth against the lips / and fasten their kisses hard, because the pleasure is not pure / and there are goads beneath that spur them to hurt the very thing, / whatever it is, from which those seeds of madness spring. / But Venus lightly breaks the penalties in the midst of love, / and the coaxing pleasure mixed in reins in the bites. / For in this lies the hope that from the same body that is the source / of their burning, the flame can also be quenched.

Add that they use up their strength and are ruined by the toil; / add that life is lived at another’s beck and call. / Duties are neglected, and reputation totters and sickens. / Meanwhile wealth slips away and turns into Babylonian / perfumes, and lovely Sicyonian shoes smile on her feet, / and of course huge emeralds with green light / are set in gold, and the sea-colored gown is worn out / constantly and, hard used, drinks in the sweat of Venus. / And the fathers’ well-earned wealth becomes headbands and turbans, / and at times is turned into a robe, or gowns from Alinda and Ceos.note

These evils are found in love that is secure and at its most prosperous; / but in love that is thwarted and hopeless there are evils / you could grasp with your eyes shut— / countless ones; so it is better to be on guard beforehand, / in the way I have taught, and take care not to be lured in. / For to avoid being thrown into the nets of love / is not as difficult as, once caught, to get out / of the very meshes and break the strong knots of Venus. / And yet even entangled and hampered, you could / escape the danger, unless you stand in your own way / and overlook, first, all the faults of mind / or of body in her whom you seek and want. / For men mostly do this, blinded by desire, / and grant them merits they do not truly have. / So we see women faulty and ill-favored in many ways / being treated as darlings and flourishing in the highest esteem.

Nor does a woman always sigh with feigned love / when she embraces a man’s body and joins body to body / and holds him, moistening kisses with lips pressed to his; / for she often does it from the heart, and seeking shared / joys, she urges him to run the course of love. / Nor in any other way could birds, cattle, and wild beasts, / sheep, and mares submit to males, / if their own nature were not in heat, burning abundantly, / and did not gladly respond to the Venus of those who mount them. / Do you not see, too, how those whom mutual pleasure has often / bound are tormented in their shared bonds, / when dogs at the crossroads, longing to part, / often pull eagerly in opposite directions with all their strength, / while they are held fast in the strong couplings of Venus? / They would never do this unless they knew mutual joys, / which could lure them into the trap and hold them bound.

And when, in the mingling of seed, the woman happens to overcome / the man’s force with a sudden force of her own and seize it, / then children are born like their mothers from the mother’s seed, / as they are like their fathers from the father’s. But those you see / with the features of both, blending side by side the faces of their parents, / grow from the father’s body and the mother’s blood, / when the seeds, stirred through the limbs by the goads of Venus, / have been dashed together by a mutual passion breathing as one, / and neither of them has conquered nor been conquered. / It also happens at times that children can turn out like / their grandparents and often recall the features of great-grandparents, / because parents often conceal in their bodies many / first beginnings mixed in many ways, / which fathers hand down to fathers, passed down from the stock.

Nor is it the divine powers that bar anyone from procreative sowing, / so that he is never called father by sweet children / and must live out his life in barren love, / as people mostly believe; and in their sorrow they sprinkle / the altars with much blood and make them smoke with offerings, / to make their wives pregnant with abundant seed. / In vain they weary the power of the gods and the oracles; / for some are sterile because their seed is too thick, / and others, in turn, because it is more fluid and thin than is right. / The thin, since it cannot cling fast in those places, / flows away at once and, drawn back, fails in miscarriage. / The thicker, next, since it is discharged more clotted than it should be, / either does not fly forward with so far-reaching a thrust, / or cannot penetrate the places equally, or, having penetrated, / mixes only with difficulty, seed with the woman’s seed. / For the harmonies of love seem to vary widely.

Nor is it by divine will or the arrows of Venus / that sometimes a woman of plainer looks is loved; / for sometimes the woman herself, by her own actions, / her obliging ways, and the neat care of her person, / makes it easy for you to grow used to living your life with her. / Besides, habit is what builds love; / for whatever is struck by blows, however light, but often repeated, / is still overcome in the long run and gives way. / Do you not see that even drops of water falling on rocks / in the long run bore through the rocks?

While I, following in his footsteps, pursue his reasonings / and teach in my verses by what law all things were created, / and how they must abide by it / and cannot break the mighty laws of time— / and here, first of all, the nature of the mind was shown / to be made up of a body that had a birth, / and unable to last unharmed through long ages, / and that it is images that in sleep deceive the mind / when we seem to see someone whom life has left— / now, to go on, the order of my reasoning has brought me to this point, / where I must show by reasoning that the world consists / of a mortal body and was also born; / and in what ways that coming together of matter / established earth, sky, sea, stars, sun, / and the moon’s globe; then what living creatures / arose from the earth, and which were never born at any time; / and in what way the human race, with varied speech, / began to converse with one another through the names of things; / and in what ways that fear of the gods crept into / human hearts which, throughout the world, keeps sacred / shrines, lakes, groves, altars, and images of the gods.

For the rest, not to keep you longer with promises, / first of all, look at the seas, the lands, and the sky; / their threefold nature, their three bodies, Memmius, / three forms so unlike, three such fabrics— / a single day will give them over to destruction, and, held up through many years, / the great mass and machinery of the world will crash down. / Nor am I unaware how new and strange it falls upon the mind, / this destruction of heaven and earth to come, / and how hard it is for me to prove it with words; / as happens when you bring to the ears a thing unheard of before, / yet cannot place it under the sight of the eyes / or lay it in the hands, the paved road of belief / that leads most directly into the human heart and the precincts of the mind. / But still I will speak out.

But before I set about declaring the decrees of fate on this matter, / more holy and far more certain in reasoning than / the Pythia pronounces from Phoebus’ tripod and laurel, / I will set out for you many consolations in learned words; / so that you may not, held back by religion, perhaps think / that the lands and the sun and the sky, the sea, stars, and moon, / being of divine body, must remain forever, / and so suppose it right that, like the Giants, / all should pay the penalty for a monstrous crime / who by their reasoning shake the walls of the world / and would put out the brilliant sun in the sky, / branding immortal things with mortal speech; / whereas these are so far removed from divine power / and so unworthy to be counted among the gods / that they may rather be thought to give us a notion / of what is without vital motion and sensation.note

Nor, likewise, can you believe that the holy dwellings / of the gods are in any parts of the world. / For the nature of the gods is fine and far removed / from our senses, and is scarcely seen even by the mind’s understanding; / and since it escapes the touch and impact of hands, / it must touch nothing that is tangible for us; / for what cannot itself be touched cannot touch. / Therefore their dwellings too must be / unlike our dwellings, fine, like their bodies; / which I will prove to you later at length.

Further, to say that for the sake of mankind they chose to prepare / the glorious nature of the world, and that therefore / it is fitting to praise this praiseworthy work of the gods / and to think it eternal and destined to be immortal, / and that it is wrong for what was founded by the gods’ ancient plan / to last for the races of men for all time / ever to be disturbed from its foundations by any force, / or assailed with words and overturned from top to bottom, / and to invent and add other notions of this kind, Memmius, / is folly. For on immortal and blessed beings / what profit could our gratitude bestow, / that they should undertake to do anything for our sake? / Or what new thing could, so long after, tempt beings at peace before / to wish to change their former life?

Even if I did not know what the first beginnings of things are, / I would dare to affirm this from the very workings of the sky, / and to show it from many other things: / that the nature of things was by no means made ready / for us by divine power, so great are the flaws with which it stands endowed. / First, of all that the vast sweep of the sky covers, / a greedy share is held by mountains and by forests full of wild beasts; / crags and vast marshes take up part, / and the sea, which holds the shores of the lands far apart. / Next, nearly two parts are taken from mortals by scorching heat / and the constant fall of frost. / What is left of the land, nature by her own force would still / cover over with thorns, unless human effort resisted, / used, for the sake of life, to groan over the stout mattock / and to cut through the earth by pressing down on the plow. / If we did not, turning the fertile clods with the plowshare / and working the soil of the earth, call forth to birth,

First, since the body of earth and water, / the light breaths of the breezes and hot vapors, / of which this sum of things seems to be composed, / all consist of a body that is born and mortal, / the whole nature of the world must be thought to be of the same kind. / For indeed, things whose parts and members we see / to be of a body that is born and of mortal shapes— / these same things we generally see to be mortal / and born as well. So, since I see the greatest members / and parts of the world consumed and born again, / we may know that for heaven and earth too there was / some time of beginning, and there will be destruction.

In this matter, do not think that I have taken it for granted / on my own authority when I assumed that earth and fire are mortal, / and did not doubt that water and air perish, / and said that these same things are born and grow again. / First, no small part of the earth, scorched through / by unceasing suns and pounded by the force of many feet, / breathes out a mist of dust and flying clouds, / which strong winds scatter through the whole air. / Part of the soil, too, is summoned back into flood / by rains, and rivers scrape and gnaw away their banks. / Besides, whatever feeds and increases other things is, for its share, / paid back; and since, beyond doubt, it is clear / that the mother of all is likewise the common tomb of things, / the earth, you see, is worn away and, increased, grows back.

Next, that sea, rivers, and springs always overflow / with new water, and that streams well up unceasingly, / there is no need of words: the great downrush of waters / on every side declares it. But the first of the water, whatever it be, / is taken off, and so it happens that on the whole there is no excess of water, / partly because strong winds sweeping the seas / diminish it, and so does the sun in the sky, unraveling it with its rays, / partly because it is spread about beneath, through all the lands; / for the brine is strained out, and the matter of the moisture / seeps back and all gathers at the rivers’ source, / and from there flows over the lands in a fresh column / wherever a channel, once cut, has carried down the waves on liquid foot.

Now, then, I will speak of air, which in its whole body / is changed in countless ways every hour. / For always, whatever flows off from things, all of it / is carried into the great sea of air; and unless air in turn / gave back bodies to things and restored them as they flowed away, / all things would by now have been dissolved and turned into air. / So air never ceases to be born from things and to fall back / into things, since it is certain that all things are constantly flowing.

Likewise that generous fountain of clear light, the sun in the sky, / constantly floods the heavens with fresh brightness / and at once supplies light with new light. / For the first of its brightness, whatever it be, is lost to it, / wherever it falls. You can learn this from the fact / that as soon as clouds begin to pass beneath the sun / and, as it were, to break the rays of light between, / at once the lower part of them is all lost / and the earth is shadowed wherever the storm clouds are borne; / so you may know that things always need new brilliance, / that each first cast of brightness perishes, / and that things could not be seen in the sunlight in any other way / unless the very source of light kept up a constant supply.

Again, do you not see that even stones are conquered by time, / that tall towers fall and rocks crumble, / that shrines and images of the gods grow weary and crack, / and that holy divinity cannot extend the bounds of fate / or struggle against the laws of nature? / Again, do we not see the monuments of men fallen to ruin, / [to ask further, whether you believe they grow old for themselves,] / and flints torn from high mountains come crashing down, / unable to bear and endure the mighty forces of a time / that is finite? For they would not suddenly fall, torn away, / if from infinite time they had endured / all the tortures of age without breaking.

Again, now look at this, which all around and above / holds the whole earth in its embrace: if it begets from itself / all things, as some say, and takes them back when destroyed, / the whole of it is made of a body that is born and mortal. / For whatever increases and feeds other things from itself / must be diminished, and restored when it takes things back.

Besides, if there was no creative origin / of earth and sky, and they have always been eternal, / why, before the Theban war and the fall of Troy, / did other poets not also sing of other things? / Where have so many deeds of men so often vanished, and why do they nowhere / flourish, grafted onto eternal monuments of fame? / But, I think, the whole is new, and the nature of the world / is recent, and it took its beginning not long ago. / That is why even now some arts are being refined, / even now are growing; now much has been added to ships, / only lately have musicians given birth to melodious sounds; / lastly, this nature of things, this account of it, was discovered / lately, and I myself am found first among the first / who can now render it into the words of our fathers.

But if perhaps you believe that all these things existed before, / but that the generations of men perished in scorching heat, / or that cities fell in some great upheaval of the world, / or that after incessant rains ravening rivers came forth / across the lands and buried the towns, / all the more must you be defeated and admit / that there will be a destruction of earth and sky too; / for when things were assailed by such great diseases and such great dangers, / if a grimmer cause had then pressed upon them, / they would have spread destruction far and wide, and great ruin. / And by no other reasoning do we see that we are mortal / than that we fall sick among ourselves with the same diseases / as those whom nature has removed from life.

Besides, whatever things endure forever must either, / being of solid body, repel blows / and let nothing pierce them that could / unfasten their close-packed parts within, like the bodies / of matter, whose nature we have shown before; / or be able to last through all time / because they are free from blows, as the void is, / which remains untouched and is not affected a whit by any blow; / or else because there is no store of space around them / into which things might, as it were, part and be dissolved— / as the sum of all sums is eternal, and outside it / there is no place into which things may scatter, nor bodies / that could fall on it and dissolve it with a heavy blow.

Again, since the greatest members of the world / fight so fiercely among themselves, stirred up in a war that is anything but righteous, / do you not see that some end to their long contest / may be granted them—when, for instance, the sun and every heat / have drunk up all the waters and prevailed? / This they are striving to do, but so far their attempts are unfulfilled; / so much do the rivers supply, and they threaten besides / to flood everything from the deep gulf of the sea: / in vain, since the winds sweeping the seas / diminish it, and so does the sun in the sky, unraveling it with its rays, / and they are confident they can dry everything up / before the water can reach the end of its undertaking. / So fiercely do they breathe war in an evenly matched contest, / striving among themselves to decide the issue over mighty things; / though in the meantime fire has once had the upper hand, / and once, as the story goes, water reigned over the fields.

But in what ways that throwing-together of matter / established earth and sky and the depths of the sea, / and the courses of sun and moon, I will set out in order. / For certainly the first beginnings of things did not by design / place themselves each in its order with a shrewd mind, / nor, surely, did they bargain over what motions each should make; / but because many first beginnings of things, in many ways, / driven on by blows from infinite time past / and set moving by their own weights, have been accustomed to travel / and to come together in every way and try out everything / that they could create by meeting with one another, / so it comes about that, spread abroad through a vast age, / by trying unions and motions of every kind, / at last those come together which, suddenly thrown together, / often become the beginnings of great things, / of earth and sea and sky and the race of living creatures.

At that point the sun’s wheel could not be seen, soaring on high / with its abundant light, nor the stars of the great world, / nor sea nor sky, nor, lastly, earth or air, / nor anything at all like the things we know, / but only a strange kind of storm, a mass that had risen up. / Then parts began to fly apart, and like things / to join with like, and to mark out the world, / to divide its members and arrange its great parts / out of first beginnings of every kind, whose discord / threw into confusion their intervals, paths, connections, weights, blows, / collisions, motions, stirring up battles among them / because of their unlike forms and varied shapes, / since not all of them could stay joined in that way / nor produce motions fitting to one another— / that is, to separate the lofty sky from the lands, / and the sea apart, so that it might spread out with its water set apart, / and likewise apart the fires of the pure and separate upper air.

For first of all the bodies of earth, each one, / because they were heavy and entangled, came together / in the middle and all took up the lowest seats; / and the more tightly they came together, entangled with each other, / the more they squeezed out the stuff that would make sea, stars, sun, / and moon, and the walls of the great world; / for all of these consist of smoother and rounder / seeds, and of elements much smaller, / than earth does.

So, then, the weight of earth settled, its body / condensed, and all the world’s sludge, as it were, flowed / heavily to the bottom and sank to the depths like dregs; / then sea, then air, then the fire-bearing ether itself / were all left pure, with liquid bodies, / some lighter than others; and ether, most liquid / and lightest of all, flows above the breezes of air / and does not mix its liquid body with the air’s / turbulent breezes; it lets all these be whirled by violent / tornadoes, lets them churn in fitful storms, / while it glides on, carrying its fires in a steady sweep. / For that the ether can flow evenly and with a single thrust / is shown by the Pontus, a sea that flows with a steady current, / keeping always to a single course as it glides.note

Now let us sing what causes the motions of the stars. / First, if the great sphere of the sky revolves, / we must say that air presses on the pole at either end / and holds it from outside and closes it in on both sides; / and then that another air flows above and strains in the same direction / in which the stars of the eternal world roll glittering; / or else another below, to drive the sphere up the other way, / as we see rivers turn wheels and their scoops.

For the earth to rest in the middle region of the world, / its weight must gradually fade and lessen, / and it must have another nature underneath, / joined to it from the beginning of time and fitted into one / with the airy parts of the world in which it lives, embedded. / That is why it is no burden and does not press down on the air, / just as a person’s own limbs have no weight for him, / nor is the head a burden to the neck, nor, in short, do we feel / the whole weight of the body resting on the feet; / but whatever weights come from outside and are laid on us / hurt us, though often much smaller. / So much does it matter what each thing can do. / So the earth is not some alien thing suddenly / brought in and thrust from elsewhere into alien air, / but was conceived together with it at the world’s first origin, / a fixed part of it, as our limbs are seen to be of us.

Besides, when shaken suddenly by a great thunderclap, / the earth shakes everything above it with its motion; / which it could in no way do unless it were / bound fast to the airy parts of the world and to the sky; / for they cling together by common roots, / joined from the beginning of time and grown into one.

Don’t you see, too, how great a weight of body / the spirit’s most slender power sustains for us, / because it is so closely joined and fitted into one with it?

Then again, what can lift the body in a nimble leap / but the power of the spirit, which steers the limbs? / Now do you see how much a slender nature / can do when it is joined to a heavy body, / as air is joined to the earth, and the power of the mind to us?

Nor can the sun’s wheel be much larger, nor its blaze much smaller, / than it appears to our senses. / For from whatever distances fires can cast / their light and breathe warm heat upon our limbs, / the great intervals subtract nothing from the body / of the flames, and the fire looks not a bit shrunken. / So, since the sun’s heat and the light it pours out / reach our senses and make places shine, / the sun’s shape and size too must be seen from here as they are, / so that you can truly make it neither bigger nor smaller. / [reach our senses and make places shine] / And the moon, whether she moves lighting places with borrowed light / or throws out her own light from her own body, / whatever the case, moves with a shape no larger / than the one she appears to have as we see her with our eyes.

Nor is this to be wondered at: how / so small a sun can send out so much light / as to fill seas and all lands and sky, watering them, / and drench all things with warm heat. / [as large as it really is, so large it must look to us from here on high] / For it may be that here a single, wide-open fountain / of the whole world’s light, pouring freely, gushes and bursts forth, / because the elements of heat from all the world / gather from every side in such a way, and their mass so / flows together, that this blaze streams out from a single source. / Don’t you see, too, how widely a small spring of water / sometimes waters the meadows and floods the fields?

Nor is there a simple and straightforward account of the sun: / how, from its summer regions, it approaches Capricorn’s / wintry turning, and then, coming back from there, / turns at the solstice goalposts of Cancer; / and how the moon is seen to cover in a month the stretch / on which the sun spends a year’s time in its course. / No single cause, I say, is given for these things. / For first and foremost it seems it can happen / as the venerable doctrine of Democritus lays down: / the nearer each star is to the earth, / the less it can be carried along with the sky’s whirl; / for its swift and fierce force fades / and weakens below, and so the sun is left / gradually behind with the rear constellations, / because it is far lower than the blazing constellations.

But night covers the earth in vast darkness / either when, after its long course, the sun has struck the farthest parts / of the sky and, weary, breathed out its fires, / shaken by the journey and weakened by much air, / or because it is compelled to turn its course beneath the earth / by the same force that carried its sphere above the earth.

Likewise at a fixed time Matuta spreads rosy dawn / along the shores of the ether and opens out the light, / either because the same sun, returning beneath the earth, / seizes the sky ahead of time, trying to kindle it with its rays, / or because fires gather, and many seeds / of heat are accustomed to flow together at a fixed time, / which cause the sun’s light to be born ever new; / just as, they say, from the high mountains of Ida / scattered fires are seen at the rising of the light, / which then come together as if into a single globe and form a sphere. / Nor in these matters should it seem / a wonder that these seeds of fire can flow together / at so fixed a time and restore the sun’s brightness. / For we see many things that happen at a fixed time / in all things. At a fixed time the trees / flower, and at a fixed time they shed their flowers.note

Likewise, days can lengthen and nights waste away, / and daylight shrink when nights take on increase, / either because the same sun, running beneath the earth and above / in unequal arcs, parts the regions of the ether / and divides its orbit into unequal parts, / and what it has taken from one part, it restores, / carried round, by just so much more in the opposite part, / until it reaches that sign of the sky where the year’s / node makes the shadows of night equal to the daylight; / for, midway in its course between the blasts of the north wind and the south, / the sky holds its turning points apart at an equal distance / because of the position of the whole zodiac’s circle, / in which the sun, winding along, completes the year’s span, / lighting earth and sky with slanting light, / as the reasoning of those makes plain who have mapped all / the regions of the sky, adorned with their constellations set in order.

The moon may shine because it is struck by the sun’s rays, / and day by day turn more of that light toward us, / into view, the farther it moves away from the sun’s sphere, / until, opposite the sun, it has shone with a full light / and, rising high, has watched it set; / then little by little it must likewise hide its light / backward, as it were, the nearer it now glides to the sun’s fire / from the other side through the circle of the constellations; / as those suppose who picture the moon as like / a ball, and hold that its course runs below the sun. / There is also reason why it might roll along with a light of its own / and still show varying shapes of brightness; / for there may be another body, carried and gliding along / with it, getting in its way and blocking it in every manner, / which cannot be seen because it moves bereft of light.

Likewise you must suppose that eclipses of the sun and the moon’s hidings / can happen from several causes. / For why should the moon be able to shut the earth off from the sun’s / light and block its high head from the earth, / setting its dark sphere in the way of the burning rays, / and yet at the same time another body not be thought able to do this, / one that glides along always bereft of light? / And why could the sun not also, growing faint, let its fires fail / at a fixed time and renew its light, / once it has passed through places in the air hostile to its flames, / which make its fires be quenched and perish?

For the rest, since I have explained by what means everything could happen / throughout the blue expanses of the great world, / so that we could know what force and cause drive / the sun’s varied courses and the moon’s journeys, / and how, their light blocked, they could vanish / and cover the unsuspecting earth in darkness, / when they, as it were, shut their eyes and then, with light reopened, / look out again on all places bright with shining radiance— / now I return to the world’s infancy and the soft / fields of earth, to what, with new offspring, they first resolved / to raise into the shores of light and entrust to the uncertain winds.

First, the earth brought forth the kinds of grasses and their green / sheen around the hills and over all the plains; / flowering meadows gleamed with verdant color; / and then to the various trees was given a great contest / of growing up into the air, with reins let loose. / Just as feathers and hair and bristles are first created / on the limbs of four-footed beasts and the bodies of the strong-winged, / so the new earth then first put forth grasses and shrubs, / and next created the mortal generations, / many, arising in many ways by varied means. / For living creatures cannot have fallen from the sky, / nor can land creatures have come out of salt pools. / It remains that the earth has rightly won the name / of mother, since from the earth all things were created.

So again and again the earth has won and rightly holds / the name of mother, since she herself created the human / race, and at about a fixed time poured forth every animal / that runs wild everywhere on the great mountains, / and with them the birds of the air in their varied forms. / But since she must have some limit to bearing, / she stopped, like a woman worn out by long age. / For time changes the nature of the whole world, / and one state must follow another in all things, / and nothing stays like itself: all things move on, / nature transforms all things and compels them to change. / For one thing rots and languishes, feeble with age, / and then another grows up and comes forth from contempt. / So, then, time changes the nature of the whole / world, and one state of the earth gives way to another, / so that it cannot bear what it could, and can bear what it did not before.

At that time the earth also tried to create many monsters, / arising with strange faces and limbs: / the androgyne, between the two sexes, neither one, apart from both; / some deprived of feet, others in turn bereft of hands, / some found mute without a mouth, or blind without a face, / or bound fast by their limbs clinging together all over the body, / so that they could do nothing and go nowhere, / neither avoid harm nor take what need required. / Other monsters and prodigies of this kind she created, / in vain, since nature barred their growth, / and they could not reach the longed-for flower of youth, / nor find food, nor be joined in the acts of Venus.

Many races of living things must then have perished / and been unable to forge on their offspring by breeding. / For whatever creatures you see feeding on the breath of life, / it is either cunning or courage or, lastly, speed / that has kept that kind safe from the beginning of time. / And there are many that, commended to us by their usefulness, / survive, entrusted to our protection. / First, the fierce race of lions and savage breeds / courage has protected, cunning the foxes, and flight the deer. / But the light-sleeping minds of dogs, with their loyal hearts, / and every kind born of the seed of beasts of burden, / and with them the wool-bearing flocks and the horned herds, / have all been entrusted to human protection, Memmius; / for they eagerly fled wild beasts and sought peace / and plentiful fodder won without their own labor, / which we give as a reward for their usefulness.

But there never were Centaurs, nor at any time / can there be creatures of twofold nature and double body / put together from limbs of alien kinds, such that the powers / of the parts on this side and that could be fairly matched. / And this anyone, however dull his wits, can grasp from what follows. / First, when some three years have run their course, a horse / is in the vigor of its prime, a boy by no means; for often even then / he will still seek in his sleep the milk-giving breasts.

And the human race that lived then in the fields was far / hardier, as was fitting, since the hard earth had made it; / it was built within on larger and more solid bones, / knit together through its flesh with strong sinews, / not easily overcome by heat or cold, / by strange food, or by any flaw of the body. / Through many cycles of the sun rolling across the sky / they led their lives in the roaming way of wild beasts. / No one was a sturdy guide of the curved plow, / no one knew how to work the fields with iron, / or bury young shoots in the ground, or from tall / trees cut the old branches with pruning hooks. / What the sun and rains had given, what the earth had produced / of her own accord—that gift was enough to content their hearts.

Nor then did mortal tribes, much more than now, / leave the sweet light of life with lamentation. / For then it was more often that one of them, caught alone, / would offer living food to the beasts, gulped down by their teeth, / and fill the groves and mountains and forests with groans, / seeing his living flesh buried in a living tomb. / And those whom flight had saved with their bodies half-eaten / would afterwards, holding trembling hands over their foul sores, / call on Orcus with hideous cries, / until cruel gripings robbed them of life, / helpless, not knowing what their wounds required. / But no single day then sent many thousands of men / led beneath the standards to their death, nor did the stormy / waters of the sea dash ships and men upon the rocks.

Then, after they got themselves huts and skins and fire, / and woman, joined to man, withdrew with him into one place, / … / were known, and they saw offspring born from themselves, / then first the human race began to soften. / For fire saw to it that their shivering bodies / could no longer bear the cold so well under the canopy of sky, / and Venus sapped their strength, and children, with their coaxing, / easily broke the proud spirit of their parents. / Then too neighbors began to join in friendship, eager / neither to harm nor to be harmed, / and commended to one another their children and womenfolk, / signifying, stammeringly, with cries and gestures, / that it was right for everyone to pity the weak.

But nature drove them to utter the various sounds of the tongue, / and need squeezed out the names of things, / in much the same way as the very speechlessness of the tongue / seems to lead children on to gesture, / when it makes them point with a finger at things that are present. / For every creature senses what it can use its own powers for. / A calf, before its horns have sprouted and stand out from its brow, / already butts with them in anger and presses hard on the attack. / And panther cubs and lion whelps / fight back with claws and feet and bites already, / when their teeth and claws have barely even formed. / Again, we see the whole race of birds / trust in their wings and seek a fluttering aid from their feathers. / So to think that someone back then handed out names / to things, and that from him people learned their first words, / is folly.

In case you silently ask yourself about this matter, / it was lightning that first brought fire down to earth for mortals, / and from it all the heat of flames is spread abroad; / for we see many things, kindled by heavenly flames, / blaze up, when a stroke from the sky has endowed them with its heat. / And yet, when a branching tree, beaten by the winds and swaying, / tosses and leans its boughs against the boughs of another tree, / fire is squeezed out, struck forth by the powerful force, / and sometimes the fiery heat of flame flashes out, / while branches and trunks rub against each other. / Either of these may have given fire to mortals. / Next, to cook food and soften it in the heat of flame / the sun taught them, since they saw many things ripen, / subdued by the lashing of its rays and its heat across the fields.

And day by day, more and more, men showed others how to change / their former diet and life for new ways and for fire— / men who excelled in talent and were strong in mind. / Kings began to found cities and to set up a citadel / as a stronghold and refuge for themselves, / and they divided flocks and fields and gave them out / according to each man’s looks and strength and talent; / for looks counted for much, and strength was in force. / Later, property was invented and gold discovered, / which easily robbed both the strong and the handsome of their honor; / for, as a rule, men follow the party of the richer, / however strong or handsome in body they are born. / But if one were to steer life by true reasoning, / great riches for a man are to live sparingly / with a calm mind; for there is never any lack of a little.

So the kings were slain, and overthrown lay / the ancient majesty of thrones and the proud scepters, / and the glorious emblem of the highest head, bloodied, / beneath the feet of the mob, mourned its great honor; / for what was once too much feared is eagerly trampled. / So things sank back to the lowest dregs and to turmoil, / as each man sought power and supremacy for himself. / Then some of them taught the people to create magistrates / and to set up rules of justice, so that they would be willing to use laws. / For the human race, worn out with living by violence, / was languishing from its feuds; so all the more readily / it fell of its own accord under laws and strict justice. / For since each man in anger was ready to avenge himself / more harshly than is now allowed under fair laws, / for this reason men grew weary of living by violence. / From then on, fear of punishment taints the prizes of life.

Now, what cause spread the divine power of the gods among great nations, / and filled cities with altars, / and saw to the undertaking of solemn rites, / rites which now flourish in great states and places, / from which even now there is implanted in mortals the dread / that raises new shrines of the gods over the whole world / and drives them to throng them on festal days— / it is not so hard to give an account of this in words. / For even then the tribes of mortals would see / splendid forms of the gods with waking mind, / and still more in sleep, of wondrous bodily size. / To these, then, they attributed sensation, because / they seemed to move their limbs and utter proud words / befitting their splendid looks and ample strength.

O unhappy race of men, to ascribe such deeds to the gods / and add bitter anger to them! / What groans they bred then for themselves, what wounds / for us, what tears for our descendants! / It is no piety to be seen often, with covered head, / turning toward a stone and approaching every altar, / nor to fall prostrate on the ground and spread out your palms / before the shrines of the gods, nor to drench the altars with much blood / of four-footed beasts, nor to string vow upon vow, / but rather to be able to look on all things with a mind at peace.

To continue: copper and gold and iron were discovered, / and with them heavy silver and potent lead, / when fire with its heat had burned up huge forests / on great mountains, whether from lightning hurled from the sky, / or because men, waging a woodland war with one another, / had carried fire against their enemies to terrify them, / or because, lured by the richness of the soil, they wanted / to clear fat fields and turn the countryside into pasture, / or to kill wild beasts and grow rich on the spoils; / for hunting with pit and fire arose earlier / than fencing a glade with nets and rousing it with dogs. / Whatever it was, from whatever cause the flaming heat / had devoured the forests with a terrible roar from their deep / roots and baked the earth through with fire, / there would trickle from the boiling veins into hollow places / in the earth, and gather there, a stream of silver and gold, / of copper too, and lead.

Now, how the nature of iron was discovered / you can easily learn for yourself, Memmius. / The earliest weapons were hands, nails and teeth, / and stones, and branches broken from the forests, / and flame and fires, once they first became known. / Later the power of iron and bronze was discovered. / And the use of bronze was known before that of iron, / since its nature is easier to work and its supply more plentiful. / With bronze they tilled the soil, with bronze they stirred / the waves of war and sowed gaping wounds / and seized flocks and fields; for easily to them, / armed as they were, all things gave way, naked and defenseless. / Then little by little the iron sword came forward, / and the form of the bronze sickle came to be scorned, / and they began to break the soil of the earth with iron, / and the struggles of uncertain war were made equal.

They tried bulls too in the service of war, / and made trial of sending savage boars against the enemy. / And some sent mighty lions before them / with armed trainers and harsh masters / who could control them and hold them in chains— / in vain, since, hot with the indiscriminate slaughter, / the savage beasts threw the squadrons into disorder, making no distinction, / shaking their terrifying manes all around, / nor could the riders soothe the hearts of their horses, / terrified by the roaring, and turn them with the reins against the enemy. / The lionesses, enraged, flung their bodies in leaps / on every side, and went for the faces of those coming at them, / and dragged others down from behind, unawares, / and clasping them, brought them to the ground, overcome by wounds, / clinging with powerful bites and hooked claws. / And the bulls tossed their own side and trampled them underfoot, / and gored the flanks and bellies of the horses from beneath / with their horns, and tore up the ground with menacing intent.

But they wanted to do this not so much in hope of victory / as to give the enemy cause to groan, even if they themselves perished— / those who distrusted their numbers and lacked weapons— / if indeed they did it at all. But I can hardly be brought to believe / that they could not foresee in their minds and see / before it happened that this would become a shared and hideous evil. / And you could more readily maintain that this happened in the universe at large, / in the various worlds created in various ways, / than on any one particular earth.

Plaited clothing came before woven garments. / Weaving came after iron, since a loom is made with iron, / and in no other way can such smooth things be made / as treadles and spindles, shuttles and clattering loom-rods. / And nature compelled men to work wool before / womankind; for the whole male sex is far superior in skill / and much more ingenious; / until the stern farmers made it a reproach, / so that men were willing to leave it to women’s hands / and themselves share in enduring hard labor, / and in hard work hardened their limbs and hands.

But the model for sowing and the origin of grafting / was first nature herself, creator of things, / since berries and acorns falling from the trees / put forth in due season swarms of shoots beneath them; / from which men also took the fancy to graft slips onto branches / and to plant new saplings in the ground across the fields. / Then they tried one way after another of tilling their sweet little plot, / and saw wild fruits grow tame in the soil / through their indulgence and gentle tending. / And day by day they made the forests climb higher up the mountains / and yield the ground below to cultivation, / so that they might have meadows, pools, streams, crops and flourishing vineyards / on hills and plains, and a gray-green belt of olives / might run between, marking the boundaries, / spread over hillocks and valleys and plains; / as now you see it all, marked out with varied charm— / all that they adorn, setting sweet fruit trees among it, / and keep hedged round with fruitful trees and shrubs.

But imitating the liquid notes of birds with the mouth / came long before men could join in singing smooth songs / and give pleasure to the ear. / And the whistling of the west wind through hollow reeds first / taught country folk to blow into hollow hemlock stalks. / Then little by little they learned the sweet laments / which the pipe pours out when played by the musicians’ fingers, / the pipe discovered in pathless groves and woods and glades, / in the lonely haunts of shepherds and their divine leisure. / [So time, little by little, brings each single thing] / [into view, and reason raises it into the shores of light.] / These things soothed and delighted their minds / when they had had their fill of food; for then all things are welcome. / So often, lying together on the soft grass / by a stream of water under the branches of a tall tree,

So the human race toils in vain, to no purpose, / forever, and wastes its life in empty cares, / no doubt because it has not learned where possession / ends, and how far true pleasure can grow at all; / and this, little by little, has carried life out into deep water / and stirred up from the depths the great tides of war. / But the world’s watchmen, circling the great revolving vault of heaven, / the sun and moon, sweeping round it with their light, / taught people thoroughly that the seasons of the year come round / and that all is carried on by a fixed plan and in fixed order.

By now people lived their lives fenced in by strong towers, / and the land was parceled out and marked off for tilling; / the sea now bloomed with ships flying under sail; / they had allies and helpers, bound by treaty, / when poets began to hand down in song / the deeds of the past; and letters were found not long before. / So what was done before that, our age / cannot look back upon, except where reasoning points out the traces.

Ships and the tilling of fields, city walls, laws, / arms, roads, clothing, and all the rest of this kind, / rewards, and every one of life’s luxuries as well, / poems, paintings, and cunningly wrought, polished statues— / these were taught by practice and the trials of the tireless mind, / little by little, to people advancing step by step. / So time, little by little, brings each single thing / into view, and reason raises it into the shores of light; / for they saw one thing after another grow clear in their minds, / until by their arts they reached the highest peak.

First, long ago, to suffering mortals, the grain-bearing crops / were given out by Athens of glorious name; / she renewed their life and passed laws, / and she first gave sweet comforts for life / when she bore a man found to have such a mind / that he poured out all things from truth-telling lips; / and now that he is dead, for his godlike discoveries / his glory, spread abroad from of old, is carried up to the sky.

And since I have taught that the realms of the world are mortal / and that the sky is made of a body that was born, / and that most of what happens in it, and must happen, / is dissolved, now learn what remains, / since once I am to mount the splendid chariot / … / You, as I race toward the chalk line at the end of the course, / show me the track ahead, O skillful Muse, / Calliope, rest of men and delight of gods, / so that with you as guide I may win the crown with signal praise. / … / of the winds arise, so that all is calmed again, / … / what had been, is turned about once the fury is calmed.note

First, the blue of the sky is shaken with thunder / because, flying aloft high in the ether, / clouds collide as the winds battle against each other. / For no sound comes from a clear part of the sky; / but the more densely the clouds are massed anywhere, / the more there often comes from there a roar with a great rumble. / Besides, clouds cannot be of a body as dense / as stones and timber are, nor again / as thin as mists and drifting smoke; / for either they would have to fall, pressed down by their dead weight, / like stones, or, like smoke, they could not hold together / or hold in the icy snow and the showers of hail.

They also make a sound above the plains of the wide heavens, / as at times an awning stretched over great theaters / cracks as it tosses among the poles and beams, / and at times, torn through, rages in the wanton breezes / and imitates the crackling sound of paper; / for you can recognize that kind of sound too in thunder, / or when hanging clothes and flying sheets of paper / are whirled and slapped through the air by the lashes of the wind. / It also happens at times that clouds cannot so much meet / head-on as pass along each other’s flanks, / moving in opposite directions, slowly grazing their bodies, / and from this comes that dry sound that grates on the ears and is long / drawn out, until they have come out of their narrow straits.

In this way too, shaken by thunder, all things / often seem to tremble heavily, and, torn apart suddenly, / the mightiest walls of the capacious world seem to have burst asunder, / when a gathered storm of mighty wind has suddenly / twisted itself into the clouds and, shut up there, / with its whirling eddy, more and more on every side, forces the cloud / to become hollow, with a dense body all around; / then, when its force and fierce onset have weakened the cloud, / it is torn open and bursts with a terrifying crash. / No wonder, since a little bladder full of air / often makes no little noise when suddenly burst.

There is also a way, when winds blow through the clouds, / for them to make sounds; for we see that clouds, branching / and rough, are often borne along in many ways; / just as, when the blasts of the northwest wind / blow through a thick forest, the leaves rustle and the branches crash.

It also happens at times that the roused force of a strong wind / tears through a cloud, breaking it with a straight charge; / for what a blast can do up there, plain fact shows us / here on earth, where it is gentler, when all the same it tumbles / tall trees and wrenches them out from their deepest roots. / There are waves, too, among the clouds, which give a kind of / heavy roar as they break; the same happens in deep / rivers and on the great sea, when the surf breaks.

There is thunder, too, when the burning force of a thunderbolt / falls from cloud to cloud; if the second cloud happens to take in the fire / with much moisture, at once it kills it with a great outcry; / as white-hot iron from a hot furnace at times / hisses when we plunge it quickly into icy water.

Again, if a drier cloud takes in the fire, / it is suddenly set alight and burns with a huge noise, / as if a flame were to roam over laurel-crowned mountains / in a whirlwind, burning them up with a great rush; / and nothing burns like the Delphic laurel of Phoebus, / with such a terrible noise, in the crackling of the flame.

Lastly, a great crash of ice and a downfall / of hail often make a sound high in great clouds; / for when the wind crams them together, there break, squeezed tight, / mountains of storm cloud, frozen and mixed with hail.

There is lightning, too, when clouds by their collision have struck out / many seeds of fire, as if a stone / were struck by stone or iron; for then too light / leaps out and fire scatters bright sparks. / But it happens that we take in the thunder with our ears after / the eyes see the flash, because what reaches the ears / always arrives more slowly than the things that move the sight. / You can learn this from the following too: if you see someone / far off chopping a tall tree with a double-edged axe, / you see the stroke before the blow / sounds in your ears; so too we see the lightning before / we hear the thunder, which is sent out along with the fire / from a like cause, born of the same collision.

In this way too clouds tinge places with flying light, / and the storm flashes with a flickering rush. / When wind has invaded a cloud and, whirling there, / has made the cloud grow thick and hollow, as I showed before, / it grows hot by its own speed; just as you see all things / heated through by motion catch fire, and even a leaden / sling bullet, spinning in a long flight, melts. / So when this hot wind has torn through the black cloud, / it scatters, suddenly squeezed out as if by force, the seeds / of heat, which make the flickering flashes of flame; / then follows the sound, which reaches our ears more slowly / than what arrives at the light of our eyes. / This, of course, happens when clouds are dense and at the same time / piled high, one upon another, with wondrous force. / Do not be deceived because we, from below, see / how broad they are rather than how high they are piled.

For this reason too it happens that that swift / golden color of liquid fire flies down to earth: / because the clouds themselves must hold very many / seeds of fire; for when they are without any moisture, / their color is mostly flame-red and bright. / Indeed they must take in many from the light / of the sun, so that naturally they glow red and pour out fire. / So when the wind, driving, has crammed these into one / place and squeezed them hard, they pour out, pressed forth, / the seeds that make the colors of flame flash out.

There is lightning, too, when the clouds of the sky thin out; / for when the wind gently pulls them apart as they move / and dissolves them, there must fall out, against their will, / the seeds that make the flash. Then it flashes without hideous / terror and sound, and with no uproar.

As for the rest, the kind of nature with which / thunderbolts are endowed is shown by their strokes and the branded marks / of heat, and the scars exhaling heavy fumes of sulfur; / for these are signs of fire, not of wind or rain. / Besides, they often set fire to the roofs of houses too / and hold sway with swift flame within the buildings themselves. / This fire, you see, subtlest of all fires, / nature has made out of tiny and swift-moving / bodies, such that nothing at all can stand against it. / For the mighty thunderbolt passes through the walls of houses / like shouts and voices, passes through stones, through bronze, / and in an instant makes bronze and gold run liquid.

Now how these are born, and how they come to have such force / that with a stroke they can split towers apart, / overturn houses, wrench away timbers and beams, / shake and dislodge the monuments of men, / strike people dead, lay cattle low on every side— / by what force they can do all the rest of this kind— / I will explain, and not keep you any longer with promises.

We must suppose that thunderbolts are born from thick clouds / piled up high; for none are ever sent from a clear sky / or from clouds of slight density. / Plain fact shows beyond doubt that this is so; / for then the clouds thicken throughout the whole air, / so that we might think all the darkness had deserted Acheron / on every side and filled the great caverns of the sky / —so thoroughly, when the foul night of storm clouds has risen, / do the faces of black Terror hang over us from above— / when the storm begins to set its thunderbolts in motion. / Besides, very often a black storm cloud over the sea too, / like a river of pitch let down from the sky, falls / upon the waves, crammed with darkness, far off, and drags a black / storm heavy with thunderbolts and gales, / itself filled above all with fires and winds, / so that even on land people shudder and seek shelter.

Sometimes, too, the roused force of wind from outside / falls on a strong cloud whose summit is ripe; / when it has torn through it, at once there falls that fiery / whirlwind which in our fathers’ tongue we call the thunderbolt. / The same happens in other directions, wherever the force has carried it.

It also happens at times that the force of wind, sent out without fire, / catches fire nonetheless over the distance of its long journey, / while it comes, shedding on its way certain bodies / that are large and cannot pierce the air as easily, / and scraping together others from the air itself, it carries / tiny ones, which make fire when mixed together in flight; / much in the same way as a leaden sling bullet often / grows hot in flight, when, shedding many bodies / of cold, it catches fire in the air.

It also happens that the force of the blow itself strikes up fire, / when the cold force of the wind, sent without fire, has struck, / no doubt because, when it has struck with a violent stroke, / elements of heat can flow together out of the wind itself / and also from the thing that then takes the stroke; / as when we strike a stone with iron, fire flies out, / and though the force of iron is cold, none the less / the seeds of hot flashing rush together at the stroke. / So, too, a thing must be set on fire by a thunderbolt / if it happens to be ready and suited to flame. / Nor can the force of the wind really be wholly / cold, when it is sent from above with such power, / but that, if it is not kindled with fire earlier in its course, / it still arrives warmed and mixed with heat.

The thunderbolt’s speed and heavy stroke come about, / and thunderbolts generally race along in a swift glide, / because the force itself, roused, first gathers itself entirely / in the clouds and builds up a great effort to go; / then, when the cloud can no longer hold the growth of its onset, / the force is squeezed out and so flies with wondrous speed, / like missiles hurled from powerful catapults.

Add that it is made of small and light elements, / and it is not easy for anything to stand in the way of such a nature; / for it slips between and pierces through the open passages, / so it is not held back by many collisions / and delayed; for this reason it glides and flies with a swift rush.

Then, since by nature all weights press / downward, when a blow is added as well, / the speed is doubled and the onset grows heavier, / so that it more violently and swiftly scatters with its blows / whatever stands in its path to delay it, and follows its route.

Lastly, since it comes with a long rush, it must gain / speed again and again, which grows as it goes / and increases its mighty strength and toughens its stroke; / for it makes all its seeds, whatever they are, / move straight ahead, all as it were toward a single place, / throwing them all, as they roll, into that one course.

Perhaps, too, as it comes, it draws from the air itself certain / bodies which kindle its speed with their blows. / And it passes through things unharmed, and goes through many, leaving them / whole, because the flowing fire slips through their pores. / And it shatters many, when the very bodies of the thunderbolt / have struck the bodies of things where their fabric holds together. / Again, it easily melts bronze and in a moment makes gold / boil, because its force is finely made of small / bodies and of light elements, / which easily slip in, and, once slipped in, suddenly / untie all the knots and loosen the bonds.

In autumn above all the lofty house of heaven, bright with stars, / is shaken on every side, and the whole earth too, / and when the flowering season of spring unfolds. / For in the cold there is a lack of fires, and in the heat the winds / fail, and the clouds are not of so dense a body. / So when the seasons of the sky stand between the two, / then all the various causes of the thunderbolt converge. / For the year’s very strait mingles cold with heat, / and a cloud needs both to forge thunderbolts, / so that there may be discord in things, and with great uproar / the air may surge in fury with fires and winds. / For the first part of heat is the last of the cold: / that is the time of spring; and so it must be that / unlike things fight among themselves and, mixed, make turmoil.

This is how to see into the very nature of the fiery thunderbolt / and perceive by what force it does each thing— / not by unrolling Etruscan scrolls of verse, searching / in vain for signs of the gods’ hidden will: / where the flying fire has come from, or to which side / it has turned from there, how through enclosed places / it has wormed its way, and how, having lorded it there, it has got out again, / or what harm the stroke of a thunderbolt from heaven can do.

For the rest, it is easy to understand from these facts / how what the Greeks, from their nature, named presteres (“fiery blasts”) / come down into the sea, sent from above. / For it happens that at times something like a column let down / from the sky descends into the sea, and around it the waters / seethe, stirred up by violently blowing gusts, / and whatever ships are caught in that turmoil at the time / are tossed about and come into the gravest danger.note

It also happens that the wind’s very whirl wraps itself in clouds, / scraping together seeds of cloud from the air, / and imitates, as it were, a prester let down from the sky; / when this has let itself down onto the land and broken up, / it spews out a monstrous force of whirlwind and storm. / But because this happens rarely at all, and mountains are bound / to get in its way on land, the same thing is seen more often / over the wide prospect of the sea and under the open sky.

Clouds form when many bodies, flying / in this space of sky above us, have suddenly come together— / rougher ones, which, though entangled / only slightly, can still be held pressed together. / These first make small clouds take shape; / then these grip one another and flock together / and grow by joining, and are carried by the winds / until at last a savage storm has risen.

It happens too that mountain peaks, the nearer they neighbor the sky, / the more they smoke, towering, / continually with the thick murk of tawny cloud, / because, when clouds first form, / before the eyes can see them, thin as they are, the winds / carry them and drive them together to the mountain’s highest peaks; / only there does it happen that, once a greater throng has gathered, / they can be seen condensed, and seem at the same time to rise / from the very summit of the mountain into the upper air. / For that high places lie open to the winds is made plain / by the fact itself and by our senses, when we climb high mountains.

Besides, that nature lifts very many bodies from the whole sea too / is shown by clothes hung up on the shore, / when they take in a clinging moisture. / So it seems all the more that many bodies, to swell the clouds, / can also rise from the salt surge of the sea; / for all moistures are akin in their nature.

Besides, from all the rivers, and at the same time from the earth / itself, we see mists and steam rise up, / which, like breath, are pressed out from there and carried upward / and overspread the sky with their murk and, little by little, / by coming together, furnish the high clouds; / for the heat of the star-signed ether above bears down on them too / and, as if by thickening them, weaves a veil of rain-clouds under the blue.

It happens too that into this sky of ours, from outside, come those / bodies that make clouds and flying storm-clouds; / for I have taught that their number is countless, and the sum of the deep / infinite, and I have shown with what great speed / bodies fly, and how in an instant / they commonly travel through untold space. / So it is no wonder if often in a short time / storm and darkness, with winds so great, / cover seas and lands, looming overhead, / since on all sides, through all the pores of the ether / and, as it were, through the breathing-holes of the great world around, / a way out and a way in stands open to the elements.

Now come, how the rain-water condenses in the high / clouds, and how, let down on the earth as a shower, / it falls, I will explain. First, then, I will prove that many seeds / of water rise together with the clouds themselves / from all things, and that both grow alike in this way— / the clouds and the water, whatever there is in the clouds— / just as our body grows together with the blood, / and so does sweat, and in short whatever moisture there is in the limbs. / They also often take in a great deal of sea / moisture, like hanging fleeces of wool, / when the winds carry clouds over the great sea. / In the same way moisture is raised from all the rivers / into the clouds.

All the other things that grow up above and are created above, / and that form in the clouds—all of them, absolutely / all: snow, winds, hail and chill hoarfrost, / and the great force of ice, the great hardening of waters, / the check that everywhere reins in eager rivers— / it is still very easy to find these out and to see with the mind / how they all come about and why they are created, / once you have well understood what properties belong to the elements.

Now come, learn the explanation for the movements / of the earth. And first of all be sure to think of the earth / as being, below as above, full on every side of windy / caverns, and as carrying many lakes and many pools / in its bosom, and crags and sheer rocks; / and we must suppose that many rivers, covered beneath the earth’s back, / roll, blind, their sunken waves with force; / for the thing itself demands that it be like itself throughout. / With these things, then, joined beneath it and set under it, / the earth trembles above, shaken by great collapses, / when age has undermined huge caverns below; / for whole mountains fall, and from the great, sudden / shock tremors creep out far and wide. / And no wonder, since, shaken by wagons, whole houses / beside the road tremble, from no great weight, / and they jump no less if any bump in the road / jolts the iron-rimmed circles of the wheels on either side.

It happens too, when into great, vast pools of water / a huge clod, loosened by age, rolls down from the land, / that the earth too is tossed and sways with the water’s wave, / just as a vessel cannot stand steady in water unless the liquid / within has stopped being tossed in an unsteady swell.

Besides, when wind through hollow places of the earth / has gathered and leans forward from one side and presses, / straining with great force, against the deep caverns, / the earth leans over where the wind’s force bears down headlong. / Then the buildings raised up on the earth, / and the more so the higher each one towers toward the sky, / lean over and threaten, pitched forward to the same side, / and the beams, thrust out, hang ready to go. / And yet people are afraid to believe that for the nature of the great world / some deadly time of ruin and disaster lies in wait, / even when they see so vast a mass of earth leaning over!

This is also the cause of that same great trembling: / when wind and some sudden, very great force of air, / arising either from outside or from the earth itself, / has hurled itself into the hollow places of the earth, and there / first roars in uproar among the huge caverns / and is carried whirling along, then, when its force, roused / and driven wild, bursts outward and at the same time, splitting / the deep earth, forms a great chasm. / This is what happened at Sidon in Syria, and it happened at Aegium / in the Peloponnese—cities that such an outbreak of air / and the earthquake that arose overthrew. / And many other walls have fallen in great / quakes on land, and many cities have sunk down through the sea / to the bottom together with their citizens.note

Besides, the sun draws off a great part with its heat. / For we see clothes dripping with moisture / dried out by the sun with its burning rays; / and we see many seas spread out far and wide beneath. / So though from each single place the sun / may sip only a small part of moisture from the sea’s surface, / over so vast a space it will still take away much from the waves.

Then again, winds too can lift off a great part / of the moisture as they sweep the seas, since very often / we see roads dried by the winds in a single night / and crusts of soft mud harden.

Besides, I have taught that clouds too lift up much / moisture, taken up from the great surface of the sea, / and scatter it everywhere over the whole round of the earth, / when it rains on land and the winds carry the clouds.

Lastly, since the earth is loose in body / and is joined to the sea, girding its shores on every side, / then, just as the water’s moisture comes from the land into the sea, / it must likewise seep into the land from the salt sea; / for the brine is strained out, and the matter of the moisture / seeps back and all flows together at the rivers’ source, / and from there returns over the lands in a fresh column / wherever a channel, once cut, has carried down the waves on liquid foot.

Now what the reason is that, through the jaws of Mount Etna, / fires sometimes breathe out in so great a whirlwind, / I will explain; for it was with no ordinary destruction that the storm / of flame arose and held sway over the fields of the Sicilians / and turned the eyes of neighboring peoples toward itself, / when, seeing all the regions of the sky smoking and sparkling, / they filled their hearts with anxious fear / of what new upheaval nature was contriving.

In these matters you must look widely and deeply / and gaze far out in every direction, / so as to recall that the sum of things is bottomless, / and to see how tiny a part of the whole sum one heaven / is, and how minute a fraction it makes up— / not even so much as one man is of the whole earth. / If you set this well before you and gaze on it plainly / and see it plainly, you would give up wondering at many things. / For does any of us wonder if someone has caught in his limbs / a fever that has sprung up with burning heat, / or any other pain of disease throughout his body?

Now, though, the ways in which that flame, suddenly roused, / blasts out from the vast furnaces of Etna / I will explain. First, the whole mountain is hollow beneath / in its nature, propped up for the most part on caverns of flint. / Moreover, in all its caves there is wind and air. / For wind arises when air is stirred and set in motion. / When this has grown thoroughly hot and in its fury has heated all the surrounding / rocks where it touches them, and the earth, and has struck from them / a fire hot with swift flames, / it rises and so hurls itself high out through the straight jaws. / So it carries its heat far, and far and wide scatters / the ash, and rolls up smoke in thick murk, / and at the same time thrusts out rocks of astonishing weight; / so you need not doubt that this is the turbulent force of air. / Besides, along a great part of the mountain the sea breaks its waves / at its roots and draws back its surge.

There are also some things for which to state one cause / is not enough—rather several, one of which, however, is the true one; / just as, if you yourself should see the lifeless body / of a man lying some way off, it would be fitting to name all the causes / of death, so that the one cause of his death may be named; / for you could not prove that he died either by the sword / or by cold, or from disease, or perhaps by poison, / but we know that what befell him is something / of this kind. In the same way we have to say this in many cases.

The Nile rises toward summer and overflows the plains, / unique on earth, the river of all Egypt. / It waters Egypt, often in the midst of the heat, / either because in summer the north winds blow against its mouths / at that time of year when they are said to be the Etesians, / and, blowing against the stream, hold it back, and, forcing / the waters upstream, fill it and make it stand still. / For beyond doubt these blasts are borne against the current / of the river, driven as they are from the chill stars of the pole; / that river comes from the heat-bearing quarter, from the south, / among races of men whose skin the sun has baked dark, / rising deep within the region of midday.

Now come, as for any places and lakes that are Avernian, / I will explain to you with what nature they are endowed. / First, the name by which they are called, Avernian, was given / from the thing itself, because they are hostile to all birds, / since, when they have come flying over those regions, / they forget the oarage of their wings, let their sails go slack, / and fall headlong, their necks limp and drooping, / to the ground, if the nature of the place so happens to have it, / or into the water, if a lake of Avernus lies spread beneath. / Such a place is near Cumae, where mountains, filled with acrid sulfur, / smoke, enriched with hot springs.note

First I say this, as I have often said before: / there are in the earth shapes of things of every kind; / many, which serve as food, are life-giving, and many can / bring on diseases and hasten death. / And that different things are better suited to different creatures / for the business of life we have shown before, / because of their unlike nature and unlike / textures and first shapes, differing from one another. / Many hostile things travel through the ears, many / make their way in through the nostrils themselves, harmful and harsh to the touch, / and not a few must be shunned by touch, or else / fled from by sight, or are bitter in taste.

Next, you can see how many things there are that to humans / are sharply hostile to the senses, foul and oppressive. / First, certain trees have been given a shade so oppressive / that they often bring on headaches / if someone has lain stretched out on the grass beneath them. / There is even a tree on the great mountains of Helicon / that is known to kill a man with the foul smell of its flower. / Clearly, all these things rise from the ground for this reason: / the earth holds many seeds of many things, in many ways / mixed together, and hands them out separately. / And a night-lamp just put out, when with its sharp / reek it strikes the nostrils, puts to sleep there and then / anyone prone to fall down and foam at the mouth from illness. / And a woman sinks back, put to sleep by heavy castoreum, / and the fine work slips from her delicate hands, / if she has smelled it at the time of her monthly period.

So too the places of Avernus must send up for birds / a deadly force that rises from the earth into the air, / so as to poison the space of the sky in some quarter; / and as soon as a bird has been carried there on its wings, / it is hampered there, seized by the unseen poison, / so that it falls straight down at the spot where the exhalation directs it. / When it has crashed down there, the same force of that exhalation / takes the remnants of life from all its limbs. / For at first it stirs up a kind of giddy seething; / afterward it happens that, once they have fallen into the very / sources of the poison, there they must also spew out their life, / because there is a great store of evil all around.

It also happens at times that this force and exhalation of Avernus / scatters the air that lies between the birds and the earth, / so that the place there is left almost empty. / When they come flying straight over this spot, / at once the effort of their feathers limps, useless, / and all the striving of their wings on either side is betrayed. / Here, when they cannot lean their weight or rest upon their wings, / nature, of course, forces them by their weight to sink down to earth, / and lying now in what is nearly empty void, / they scatter their spirits through all the pores of the body. / … / Then again, water in wells grows colder in summer, / because the earth is parched by heat, and any seeds / of heat it happens to have of its own, it lets go into the air. / So the more the ground is exhausted by heat, / the colder too becomes the water hidden in the earth.

There is said to be a spring at the shrine of Ammon that is cold / in the light of day and warm in the nighttime. / People marvel greatly at this spring, and some think / it boils from the fierce sun beneath the earth / when night has covered the lands in fearful darkness. / But this is very far removed from true reasoning. / For if the sun, touching the bare body of the water, / could not make it warm on its upper surface, / though its light above enjoys such great heat, / how could it, here beneath earth so dense in body, / cook the water through and nurse it with warm heat? / Especially since it can scarcely, through the walls of houses, / work its heat inside with its burning rays. / What is the reason, then? No doubt it is that the earth / around the spring is looser than the rest of the ground, / and there are many seeds of fire near the body of the water.note

There is also a cold spring such that tow placed above it / often throws out flame, catching fire at once, / and a torch in the same way is kindled and shines / across the waves, wherever it floats, driven by the breezes. / No doubt this is because there are very many seeds of heat in the water, / and from the earth itself, from its very depths, / bodies of fire must rise up through the whole spring / and at the same time breathe out and go forth into the air— / not so many, however, that the spring could become warm. / Besides, a force compels them, scattered, to burst out / suddenly through the water and to combine above. / Of this kind is the spring in the sea at Aradus, which gushes up / with fresh water and pushes back the salt waves around it; / and in many other regions the sea offers / timely help to thirsty sailors, / because it spews up fresh water amid the salt waves.note

As for what remains, I will begin to explain by what law / of nature it comes about that this stone can draw iron— / the stone the Greeks call magnet, from its native name, / because it has its origin within the native borders of the Magnesians. / People marvel at this stone; for it often forms / a chain of rings hanging from it. / Indeed you can sometimes see five or more / in a hanging line, swaying in the light breezes, / where one hangs from another, clinging underneath, / and each learns from the next the stone’s power and bonds; / so pervasively does its power prevail.note

In matters of this kind, many points must be established before / you can give an account of the thing itself, / and it must be approached by very long, winding paths; / so all the more I ask for attentive ears and mind.

First, from all the things we see / there must constantly flow, be sent out and scattered / bodies that 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, which eats away walls along the shores, / and various sounds never cease to flow through the air. / Then, a moist salty taste often comes into the mouth / when we walk beside the sea; and when we watch, close by, / wormwood being diluted and mixed, its bitterness touches us. / So true is it that from all things each thing is carried off / in a flow and sent out in all directions everywhere, / and no delay or rest from flowing is granted, / since we feel constantly, and can always / see and smell all things, and hear them sound.

Now I will go back to recall how porous in body / all things are—a point made clear in my first book as well. / For although knowing this bears on many matters, / first of all, for this very subject / that I am setting out to discuss, it must be established / that nothing we can see is anything but body mixed with void. / First, it happens that in caves the rocks overhead / sweat with moisture and drip with trickling drops. / Likewise sweat flows out from our whole body, / the beard grows, and hair over all our limbs and joints. / Food is spread into all the veins, and it increases and nourishes / even the farthest parts of the body, down to the nails. / Likewise we feel cold and warm heat pass through bronze; / we feel them likewise pass through gold / and through silver, when we hold full cups.

Add to this that not all the bodies / thrown off from things are endowed with the same effect on the senses / or suited in the same way to all things. / First, the sun bakes the earth and makes it dry, / but it melts ice, and on high mountains it forces the snows, high / and heaped up, to waste away under its rays; / lastly, wax set in its heat turns liquid. / Fire likewise makes bronze liquid and melts gold, / but hides and flesh it shrivels and draws together. / Then again, water hardens iron fresh from the fire, / but softens hides and flesh hardened by heat. / The wild olive delights the bearded goats so much / that it might truly be dripping with ambrosia and steeped in nectar; / yet nothing exists that is more bitter to man than its sour leaves.

This too remains, before I set out to speak of the matter itself— / a point that it seems must be made first. / Since many pores have been given to various things, / they must be endowed with natures unlike one another, / and each must have its own nature and passages. / For indeed living creatures have various senses, / each of which takes in its own proper object; / for we see that sound penetrates by one way, and by another the taste / from juices, by another the smell of scents. / [The nature of the passages, of course, makes this happen,] / [varying in many ways, as I showed a little before.] / Besides, one thing seems to seep through rocks, / another through wood, another to pass through gold, / and another to make its way out through silver and glass; / for images seem to flow by one path, heat to go by another, / and some things to pass through the same openings faster than others.

Therefore, once all these things have been well established and set in place / and stand firm, laid out and ready for us beforehand, / from here on the account of what remains will be easily given, and the whole / cause will be laid open that entices the force of iron.

First, there must flow from this stone a great many / seeds, or a current, that scatters with blows the air / that lies between the stone and the iron. / When this space is emptied and much room becomes vacant / in between, at once the first beginnings of the iron / slip forward and fall, joined together, into the void, and it happens / that the ring itself follows and so moves with its whole body. / For no thing, entangled by its own first / elements, coheres more tightly bound together / than the nature of strong iron, that cold, bristling stuff. / So it is less surprising—a thing said to be strange— / if many bodies rising from the iron cannot / move into the void without the ring itself following; / and this it does, following until it reaches / the stone itself and clings to it with unseen fastenings.

It also happens that the nature of iron sometimes draws back / from this stone, being accustomed to flee and follow by turns. / I have even seen Samothracian iron rings leap up, / and at the same time iron filings rage inside bronze / bowls, when this Magnesian stone was placed beneath; / so eagerly does the iron seem to want to flee the stone. / When bronze is placed between, such great discord arises / because, no doubt, when the current from the bronze has come / first and taken possession of the iron’s open passages, / the stone’s current comes after and finds everything full / in the iron, and has no way to swim through as before; / so it is forced to strike and beat with its flood / against the iron’s texture; in this way it spits it away / and drives it through the bronze—the very thing it often sucks back without it.note

In these matters, stop wondering at this: that the current / from this stone cannot drive other things in the same way. / For some stand firm, relying on their weight, like gold; / others, because they are so porous in body that the current / flies through untouched, cannot be driven anywhere— / and wood seems to be of this kind. / The nature of iron, then, placed between the two, / when it has taken in certain small bodies of bronze, then it happens / that the Magnesian stones drive it with their stream. / Yet these things are not so foreign to other things / that I lack a good supply of many of this kind / that I could mention, uniquely suited to each other. / You see, first, that stones bond together with lime alone. / Timber is joined into one by bull’s glue, / so that the grain of the planks will more often split from a flaw / than the joints can slacken their bonds of bull’s glue.

Now what the cause of diseases is, and from where, suddenly / arising, the force of disease can blow up a deadly disaster / for the race of men and the herds of cattle, / I will explain. First, I have taught above that there are seeds / of many things that are life-giving for us, / and, on the other hand, many that bring disease and death / must fly about; when these by chance have happened to arise / and have disordered the sky, the air becomes diseased. / And all that force of diseases, that pestilence, / either comes from outside, like clouds and mists, from above / through the sky, or often gathers / and rises from the earth itself, when the damp ground has taken on rot, / struck by unseasonable rains and suns. / Do you not see, too, that by strange climate and water / all are afflicted who, far from their homeland and home, / arrive, because conditions differ widely?

In these matters one thing above all was pitiful / and distressing: whenever anyone saw himself / caught in the disease, as though condemned to death, / his courage failing, he lay there with a grieving heart, / and, looking only to his funeral, gave up his life on the spot. / For at no time did they cease to catch, / one from another, the contagion of the greedy disease, / like woolly flocks and horned herds, / and this above all heaped death upon death. / For all those who shunned visiting their own sick, / too greedy for life and afraid of death— / these, soon after, neglect punished with a shameful, evil death, / slaughtering them, abandoned and bereft of help. / But those who had stood by went to their death by contagion / and by the toil that shame then compelled them to undertake, / and the coaxing voice of the weary, mixed with the voice of complaint. / So all the best people met this kind of death.

Besides, every shepherd and herdsman, / and likewise the sturdy guider of the curved plow, / languished, and bodies lay crammed deep inside huts, / given over to death by poverty and disease. / Over lifeless children you might sometimes see the lifeless / bodies of parents, and, the other way round, see / children breathing out their life upon mothers and fathers. / And not the least part of this grief flowed from the fields / into the city, brought there by the languishing crowd / of farmers, gathering sick from every quarter. / They filled all places and buildings; so all the more, in the heat, / death piled them up in heaps, crowded together.