BOOK 2 The serene heights of philosophy; the motions of the first-beginnings in the void, their speed, their fall, and the swerve; the variety and finite range of their shapes; everything is made of mingled seed, and the Great Mother's procession is explained away; the first-beginnings have no color, no other quality and no sense; there are other worlds than ours; and this world, like everything made, grows, decays and will die. TRANSLATOR'S COMMENTARY The text followed is the printed Perseus text, as in Book 1. It prints 6 before 5, and 680 after 659, and the translation keeps the printed order and numbers in both places. Four gaps are marked and left unfilled: after 164, after 465, after 528 and after 903. Line 636 is a copyist's garbling of 635 and 637 that editors delete; it is printed, and the translation renders it as it stands. Lines 43, 105-106, 533, 719 and 911 are uncertain in text or sense, and the English gives the printed text its most natural reading, with a note at each. At 289 ("the thing itself") and 1169 ("the drift of time") the translation keeps the printed word where many editors emend. It leaves the printed word twice: at 829 it reads ostrum, "purple cloth", for the meaningless austrum, and at 1061 coaluerunt, "grew together", for coluerunt, "tilled", with most editors; the notes say so. Three names for the ultimate bodies appear in this book, and the English keeps them apart as Lucretius does: primordia is "first-beginnings", principia "beginnings", and exordia, which first appears at 333, "origins". Concilium and conciliatus, the combination that makes a thing, are "union"; mobilitas, the book's first subject, is "mobility", never "speed", because Lucretius means a power of moving and not a rate. Declinare and clinamen are both "swerve". Simulacra are "images" wherever the word occurs, including the everyday senses it has here (statues at 24, mock battles at 41 and 324, a picture at 112), so that the technical use in Book 4 is seen to grow out of the ordinary one. Animi iniectus at 740 and animi iactus at 1047, the mind's reaching out to what the senses cannot touch, are "casting" and "cast" of the mind. Religiones in the plural (44) stays "religions", the plain word strained as the Latin strains it. The book's refrains are listed in the register. The children in the dark (55-58) and the three lines that follow them (59-61, from 1.146-148) open the argument here and open Books 3 and 6; 646-651 repeat 1.44-49; 753-754 and 756 repeat 1.670-671 and 1.673; 336-337 return at 723-724 and 694; 478-479 at 522-523; the list of 726-727 at 1020-1021. Where the Latin repeats, the English repeats its own earlier line word for word, and the lines first fixed here are taken over verbatim where Books 3, 5 and 6 borrow them (3.87-90, 5.196-197, 5.431, 5.441, 6.35-38). The book begins with the most famous of the poem's openings, the watcher on the shore, and sets out the few things nature needs (1-61). Then come the motions of the first-beginnings: that they never rest (62-141), their speed (142-166), the aside against a world made for man (167-183), the proof that nothing rises by its own force (184-215), and the swerve (216-293), which Lucretius makes the ground of the will. The sum of things is unchanging and seems at rest (294-332). The shapes of the first-beginnings are many and account for what pleases and hurts the senses (333-477), finite in range (478-521), and infinite in number within each shape (522-580). Everything is made of mingled seed (581-729), and in this stretch comes the long description of the Great Mother's procession, set out with care and then dismissed in two lines. The first-beginnings have no color (730-841), no other quality (842-864) and no sense (865-1022). The book ends by widening the view: other worlds beyond this one (1023-1104), and the growth, old age and coming death of this one (1105-1174), with the old farmer who blames the times and does not see that everything is wearing out together. ------------------------------------------------------------ 1 Sweet it is[1], when on the great sea the winds are churning the waters, 2 to watch from land the great toil of another; 3 not because anyone's distress is a delightful pleasure, 4 but because it is sweet to see what evils you yourself are free of. 6 Sweet, too, to look upon the great contests of war[2] 5 drawn up across the plains, with no share of your own in the danger; 7 but nothing is sweeter than to hold the well-fortified 8 serene precincts, set on high by the teaching of the wise, 9 from where you can look down on others and see them everywhere 10 wandering and, straying here and there, seeking the road of life, 11 contending in talent, competing in nobility of birth, 12 striving night and day with surpassing labor 13 to rise to the height of wealth and gain the mastery of things. 14 O miserable minds of men, O blind hearts! 15 In what darkness of life and in how great dangers 16 this span of life, whatever it is, is passed! Do you not see 17 that nature barks[3] for nothing else for herself than this, that 18 pain be parted from the body and be absent, and the mind enjoy 19 a pleasant feeling, set apart from care and fear? 20 Therefore we see that for the body's nature few things 21 are needed at all: such things as take away pain, 22 and such that they can also spread out many delights for us, 23 more welcome now and then; nor does nature herself feel the want, 24 if there are no golden images of youths[4] about the halls 25 holding fire-bearing lamps in their right hands 26 so that light may be supplied for feasts by night, 27 nor the house gleam with silver and shine with gold, 28 nor lyres echo through paneled and gilded rafters[5], 29 when still, lying together on the soft grass 30 beside a stream of water under the boughs of a tall tree, 31 with no great wealth they tend their bodies pleasantly, 32 above all when the weather smiles and the seasons 33 of the year sprinkle the greening grass with flowers. 34 Nor do hot fevers leave the body any faster 35 if you are tossed on woven pictures and blushing purple 36 than if you must lie beneath a common man's coverlet. 37 Therefore, since in our body treasures are of no profit, 38 nor nobility, nor the glory of a kingdom, 39 for the rest, we must think they do the mind no good either; 40 unless perhaps, when you see your legions across the Campus[6] 41 seething as they stir up the images of war, 42 made firm with great reserves and a force of wealth, 43 your ships fitted out with arms, all alike full of spirit, 44 then, before these things, the religions[7] in their terror 45 flee panic-stricken from your mind, and the fears of death 46 then leave your heart empty and loosed from care. 47 But if we see that these things are laughable and a mockery, 48 and in truth the fears of men and the cares that dog them 49 fear neither the clash of arms nor savage weapons, 50 and boldly move among kings and the masters of things, 51 and do not stand in awe of the glitter that comes from gold 52 nor the bright splendor of a purple robe, 53 why do you doubt that this power belongs wholly to reasoning, 54 especially when all life labors in darkness? 55 For just as children tremble and fear everything[8] 56 in blind darkness, so we in the light are afraid 57 at times of things that are no more to be feared than 58 what children in the dark shudder at and imagine will come. 59 This terror of the mind, then, and this darkness 60 must be scattered not by the sun's rays or the bright shafts of day 61 but by the face and reasoning of nature. 62 Come now, by what motion the generative bodies of matter 63 beget the various things and dissolve them once begotten, 64 and by what force they are compelled to do it, and what 65 mobility[9] is given them for travelling through the great void, 66 I shall explain; you, remember to give yourself to my words. 67 For certainly matter does not cling together, packed close 68 in a mass, since we see each thing diminish, 69 and we perceive all things flowing away, as it were, over long age, 70 and age withdrawing them from our eyes, 71 while yet the sum is seen to remain unimpaired, 72 because the bodies that depart from each thing 73 diminish what they leave, and on what they come to bestow increase. 74 They force the one to grow old and the other in turn to flower, 75 and do not linger there. So the sum of things is ever 76 renewed, and mortals live by exchange among themselves. 77 Some races increase, others are diminished, 78 and in a brief space the generations of living things are changed 79 and like runners pass on the torch of life[10]. 80 If you think the first-beginnings of things can stand still 81 and by standing still beget new motions of things, 82 you wander far astray from true reasoning. 83 For since they wander through the void, all the first-beginnings 84 of things must be carried either by their own weight 85 or perhaps by the blow of another. For when, swift, they have often 86 met and clashed, it comes about that suddenly they spring 87 apart in different ways; and no wonder, since they are very hard, 88 solid in their weight, and nothing blocks them from behind. 89 And so that you may see more clearly that all the bodies 90 of matter are tossed about, remember that the whole 91 has no bottom in the sum, and the first bodies have no place 92 to come to rest, since space is without end or limit, 93 and spreads immeasurable in all directions everywhere 94 as I have shown in many words and proved by sure reasoning.[11] 95 And since this is settled, surely no rest 96 is given to the first bodies through the deep void, 97 but rather, driven by unceasing and varied motion, 98 some, when they have collided, leap back over great intervals, 99 and some are harried by the blow within short spaces. 100 And all those that, in a denser union[12], 101 brought together, rebound across small intervals, 102 entangled by their own interlocking shapes, 103 these form the strong roots of rock and the savage bodies 104 of iron, and the other things of this kind. 105 Those few others that wander on through the great void[13] 106 leap far apart and run far back again 107 across great intervals; these furnish us the thin air 108 and the shining light of the sun. 109 And many besides wander through the great void 110 which have been thrown out of the unions of things and nowhere 111 have been able, even when let in, to join their motions together. 112 Of this thing, as I tell, an image and picture 113 is always turning before our eyes and pressing on us. 114 For look closely, whenever the sun's light is poured 115 by rays let in through the darkened places of houses: 116 you will see many minute bodies[14] in many ways, through the void, 117 mingling in the very light of the rays, 118 and as though in everlasting conflict waging wars and battles, 119 fighting troop by troop, and giving no pause, 120 driven on by frequent unions and partings; 121 so that from this you may guess what it is for the first-beginnings 122 of things to be tossed forever in the great void. 123 So far as it goes, a small thing can give 124 a pattern of great things and the tracks of knowledge. 125 For this reason, too, it is more fitting that you attend to these 126 bodies that are seen to be in turmoil in the sun's rays, 127 because such turmoils signify that there are motions 128 of matter, too, hidden and blind, beneath them. 129 For you will see many there, struck by blind blows, 130 change their course and, driven back, return, 131 now this way, now that, in all directions everywhere. 132 This wandering, you may be sure, all comes from the beginnings[15]. 133 For first the first-beginnings of things move of themselves; 134 then those bodies that are formed of a small union 135 and are, as it were, nearest to the strength of the beginnings 136 are set going, struck by their blind blows, 137 and they in turn assail bodies a little larger. 138 So motion rises from the beginnings and comes out 139 little by little to our senses, so that those too 140 are moved which we can make out in the light of the sun, 141 though by what blows they do it does not plainly appear. 142 Now what mobility has been given to the bodies 143 of matter, Memmius, you may learn from this in a few words. 144 First, when dawn sprinkles the lands with new light, 145 and the many-colored birds, flitting through the pathless woods, 146 fill the places through the soft air with liquid voices, 147 how suddenly the sun, once risen, is used at such a time 148 to clothe all things, flooding them with his light, 149 we see to be ready to hand and plain for all. 150 But that heat which the sun sends out, and its calm light, 151 does not travel through empty void[16]; and so it is forced 152 to go more slowly, as it beats its way, as it were, through waves of air; 153 nor do the little bodies of heat travel one by one, 154 but tangled with one another and massed together; 155 and so at once they are dragged back by one another and hindered 156 from outside, so that they are forced to go more slowly. 157 But the first-beginnings that are of solid singleness, 158 when they travel through empty void and nothing delays them 159 from outside, and they themselves, one whole from their own parts, 160 are borne, straining, toward the one place they began to move to, 161 must surely surpass in mobility 162 and be carried far more swiftly than the light of the sun, 163 and run through many times the extent of space in the same 164 time in which the sun's flashes spread through heaven. 164a * * *[17] 165 nor to follow out each single first-beginning, 166 to see by what principle each thing comes about. 167 But some, against this[18], ignorant of matter, 168 hold that nature cannot, without the power of the gods, 169 so closely fitted, in such measure, to human needs, 170 change the seasons of the years and create the crops 171 and all the other things that mortals are urged to approach, 172 and to which divine pleasure herself, the guide of life, leads them, 173 coaxing them through the works of Venus to propagate their generations, 174 so that the human race should not perish. When they imagine 175 the gods have ordered all things for men's sake, in every way 176 they seem to have slipped greatly from true reasoning. 177 For even if I did not know what the first-beginnings of things are, 178 this, still, from the very order of heaven I would dare 179 to affirm, and to show from many other things, 180 that by no means for us, by divine power, was created 181 the nature of the world: so great the flaws it stands endowed with. 182 These things, Memmius, I will make plain to you later; 183 now I will set out what remains concerning motions. 184 Now is the place, I think, in these matters to prove this too 185 to you: that no bodily thing can by its own force 186 be carried upward and travel upward. 187 Do not let the bodies of flames deceive you in this; 188 for they are born upward and take on their increase, 189 and upward the shining crops and the trees grow, 190 though all weights, as far as in them lies, are carried downward. 191 Nor, when fires leap up to the roofs of houses 192 and with swift flame lick the rafters and beams, 193 must we think they do this of themselves, with no force thrust beneath. 194 Just so the blood let out from our body 195 spurts leaping on high and scatters gore. 196 Do you not see, too, with what force the water's moisture 197 spits out rafters and beams? For the more we have pushed them deep, 198 straight down, and many with great force have pressed them, straining, 199 the more eagerly it thrusts them back up and sends them out, 200 so that they rise and leap out by more than half their length. 201 And yet we do not doubt, I think, that these, as far as in them lies, 202 are all carried downward through the empty void. 203 So in the same way flames too must be able, through the breezes 204 of air, squeezed out, to climb upward, although 205 their weights, as far as in them lies, fight to draw them down. 206 And the night torches of heaven[19], flying aloft, 207 do you not see them draw long trails of flame 208 toward whatever quarter nature has given them passage? 209 Do you not see stars and constellations falling to the earth? 210 The sun also from the summit of heaven scatters its heat 211 to every side and sows the fields with light; 212 to the earth, therefore, the sun's heat also tends. 213 And you see thunderbolts fly slantwise through the rains; 214 now from here, now from there, fires broken from the clouds 215 rush together; the flaming force falls everywhere upon the earth. 216 This too, in these matters, we long for you to know: 217 that when bodies are carried straight down through the void 218 by their own weights, at quite uncertain times 219 and uncertain places they push off a little from their course, 220 just so much that you could call it a change of motion. 221 For if they were not used to swerve[20], all things would fall 222 downward like drops of rain through the deep void, 223 and no collision would arise, no blow be created 224 for the beginnings; so nature would never have created anything. 225 But if perhaps someone believes that heavier bodies, 226 because they are carried more swiftly straight through the void, 227 can fall from above upon the lighter, and so beget 228 blows that could give rise to generative motions, 229 he strays far away, off the road, from true reasoning. 230 For whatever falls through water and thin air, 231 these must quicken their fall in proportion to their weights, 232 because the body of water and the thin nature 233 of air cannot delay each thing equally, 234 but give way more quickly, overcome by heavier things; 235 but the empty void, by contrast, cannot on any side or at any 236 time, hold up anything at all, 237 but must go on giving way, as its nature seeks; 238 therefore all things must, through the calm void, 239 be carried at equal speed[21], though driven by unequal weights. 240 Therefore heavier things will never be able to fall 241 from above upon lighter ones, nor of themselves beget the blows 242 that vary the motions by which nature carries on things. 243 Therefore, again and again, bodies must incline 244 a little; but no more than the least, so that we do not seem to invent 245 slanting motions, and the true facts refute it. 246 For this we see to be ready to hand and plain, 247 that weights, as far as in them lies, cannot travel slantwise 248 when they plunge down from above, so far as you can see; 249 but that nothing at all, from the straight line of its path, 250 swerves of itself, who is there that could perceive? 251 Finally, if every motion is always linked, 252 and the new always arises from the old in a fixed order, 253 and the first-beginnings do not by swerving make 254 some beginning of motion to break the covenants of fate[22], 255 so that cause should not follow cause from infinity, 256 from where does it arise, free, for living things throughout the earth, 257 from where, I ask, is this will wrested away from the fates, 258 by which we go forward wherever pleasure leads each one, 259 and likewise swerve our motions, at no fixed time 260 and at no fixed place, but where the mind itself has carried us? 261 For beyond doubt in these things each one's own will 262 gives the beginning, and from it motions flow out through the limbs. 263 Do you not see too that, when in an instant of time the starting-gates[23] 264 are thrown open, the eager strength of the horses still cannot 265 burst forth as suddenly as their mind itself longs to? 266 For all the matter throughout the whole body, its whole 267 store, must be roused, so that, roused through all the limbs, 268 it may strain together and follow the mind's desire; 269 so you may see that the start of motion is created by the heart[24], 270 and that it goes forth first from the will of the mind, 271 and is then passed on through the whole body and limbs. 272 Nor is it the same as when we go forward pushed by a blow, 273 by another's great strength and great compulsion; 274 for then all the matter of the whole body, 275 it is clear, goes and is swept along against our will, 276 until the will reins it back throughout the limbs. 277 Do you see now, then, that although an outside force drives many 278 and often compels them against their will to go forward 279 and be swept headlong, still there is in our breast 280 something that can fight against it and resist? 281 At whose command the store of matter too 282 is forced at times to turn through the limbs and joints, 283 and, thrown forward, is reined back and settles back again. 284 Therefore in the seeds too you must admit the same, 285 that there is besides blows and weights another cause 286 of motions, from which this power is born in us, 287 since we see that nothing can come to be from nothing. 288 For weight prevents all things from coming about by blows, 289 as by a force from outside; but that the thing itself[25] should not 290 hold an inward necessity in doing all things, 291 and be compelled, as if conquered, to bear and suffer, 292 this is brought about by the tiny swerve[26] of the beginnings 293 at no fixed place and at no fixed time. 294 Nor was the store of matter ever more tightly packed 295 than now, nor again spread apart by greater intervals; 296 for nothing is added to it, and nothing perishes from it.[27] 297 Therefore the motion in which the bodies of the beginnings 298 are now is the same motion they were in through ages gone by, 299 and hereafter they will always be carried in like manner, 300 and what has been wont to be born will be born under the same 301 condition, and will be, and grow, and be strong in their strength, 302 as much as is granted to each by nature's covenants. 303 Nor can any force change the sum of things; 304 for there is nothing outside into which any kind of matter 305 could flee out of the whole, nor any source from which, into the whole, 306 a new force could rise and burst in and change the whole 307 nature of things and turn its motions aside. 308 In these matters it is no wonder why, 309 although all the first-beginnings of things are in motion, 310 the sum nonetheless seems to stand in utmost rest[28], 311 except where some thing makes motions with its own body. 312 For the whole nature of the first bodies lies far below 313 our senses, out of reach; therefore, since you cannot see 314 the bodies themselves, their motions too must steal away from sight; 315 the more so since even things that we can see still often hide 316 their motions when withdrawn from us by a distance of place. 317 For often on a hill, cropping the glad pastures,[29] 318 the woolly flocks creep on wherever, calling each one, 319 the grasses invite them, jeweled with fresh dew, 320 and the lambs, filled full, play and gently butt their heads; 321 yet all these, seen from far off, seem to us blurred together, 322 like a whiteness standing still on a green hill. 323 Again, when great legions fill the spaces of the plains 324 with their running, stirring up the images of war, 325 when the glitter lifts itself to the sky and all the earth around 326 shines back with bronze, and beneath, from the force of men, 327 a sound is roused by their feet, and the mountains, struck 328 by the shouting, throw back the voices to the stars of the world, 329 and horsemen wheel around and suddenly cross through 330 the middle of the plains, shaking them with their strong charge; 331 and yet there is some place on the high mountains from which 332 they seem to stand still, a glitter resting on the plains. 333 Come now, next learn of what sort the origins[30] 334 of all things are, and how far they differ in their forms, 335 how varied they are, in shapes of many kinds; 336 not that few are endowed with a like form,[31] 337 but because, as a rule, not all are alike to all. 338 Nor is it a wonder; for since their store is so great 339 that there is neither end, as I have taught, nor any sum to it, 340 it must surely be that not all are in every way 341 alike to all, of the same contour and of similar shape. 342 Further, the human race, and the mute swimming flocks 343 of scaly creatures, and the glad herds, and wild beasts, 344 and the various birds, those that throng the gladdening 345 watering-places around the banks and springs and lakes, 346 and those that flit abroad through the pathless woods: 347 go on and take any one of these you will, kind by kind; 348 you will find that they still differ from one another in shape. 349 Nor in any other way could offspring know its mother, 350 nor mother offspring; yet we see that they can, 351 and that they are known to one another no less than men are. 352 For often before the fair shrines of the gods a calf 353 falls slaughtered beside the incense-burning altars[32], 354 breathing out a warm river of blood from its breast; 355 but the bereaved mother, wandering through the green glades, 356 knows the prints pressed into the ground by cloven hooves, 357 searching every place with her eyes, if she can anywhere 358 catch sight of her lost young, and, stopping, fills 359 the leafy grove with her lament, and often goes back 360 to the stall, pierced through with longing for her calf; 361 nor can tender willows, nor grasses quickened with dew, 362 nor any rivers gliding level with their banks 363 delight her mind and turn aside the sudden care, 364 nor can the sight of other calves in the glad pastures 365 draw her mind away and lighten it of care; 366 so much does she seek something her own and known. 367 Again, the tender kids with trembling voices 368 know their horned mothers, and the butting lambs 369 the bleating flocks; so, as nature demands, 370 each runs, for the most part, to its own udder of milk. 371 Finally, take any grain you will: you will still not see 372 that every grain in its kind is like the others, 373 without some difference of form running between them. 374 And by a like principle we see the race of shells 375 paint the lap of the earth, where with soft waves 376 the sea beats the thirsty sand of the curving shore. 377 Therefore again and again by like reasoning it must be, 378 since they exist by nature and were not made by the hand 379 of one, to a fixed form, the first-beginnings of things, 380 that some of them fly about with shapes unlike each other. 381 It is very easy for us, by the mind's reasoning, to explain 382 why the fire of the thunderbolt flows far more piercing 383 than ours, which is born from torches of the earth; 384 for you could say that the heavenly fire of the thunderbolt 385 is subtler, consisting of small shapes, 386 and so passes through openings that this fire of ours, 387 born from wood and created from the torch, cannot. 388 Again, light passes through horn, but rain 389 is thrown back. Why so, unless those bodies of light 390 are smaller than the ones that make the kindly liquid of the waters? 391 And although we see wine in an instant pass 392 through a strainer, yet on the other hand oil lingers slow, 393 either because, surely, it is made of larger elements, 394 or ones more hooked and tangled with one another, 395 and so it happens that they cannot be so suddenly drawn apart 396 from one another that the first-beginnings, each one, 397 might, one by one, seep through the openings of each thing. 398 Add to this that the liquids of honey and of milk 399 are handled in the mouth with a pleasant feeling on the tongue; 400 but on the other hand the loathsome nature of wormwood and of wild 401 centaury[33] twists the mouth with its foul taste; 402 so that you can easily recognize that of smooth and round bodies 403 are made the things that can touch the senses pleasantly, 404 but on the other hand whatever seems bitter and harsh, 405 these are held bound together by more hooked ones, 406 and for that reason are used to tear their way into our 407 senses, and to burst through the body as they enter. 408 Finally, all things good to the senses and bad to the touch 409 are at war with one another, made of unlike shape; 410 lest you should perhaps think that the harsh shudder 411 of the screeching saw consists of elements as smooth 412 as the Muses' melodies[34], which musicians, along the strings, 413 wake with nimble fingers and give form to; 414 nor should you think that first-beginnings of like form pierce 415 into men's nostrils when foul corpses are burning 416 and when the stage is freshly sprinkled with Cilician saffron[35] 417 and the altar nearby breathes out the perfumes of Panchaea; 418 nor suppose the pleasant colors of things are made of like 419 seed, the colors that can feast the eyes, 420 and those that prick the sight and force it to weep, 421 or look foul and ugly with their foul appearance. 422 For every thing whatsoever that caresses the senses 423 was not created without some smoothness in its beginnings; 424 but on the other hand whatever is troublesome and harsh 425 is not found without some roughness of matter. 426 There are also things that are rightly thought neither to be smooth 427 nor altogether hooked with bent points, 428 but rather made with little angles jutting out a little, such as 429 can tickle the senses rather than hurt them; 430 of which kind are wine-lees and the flavors of elecampane[36]. 431 Finally, that hot fires and icy frost 432 are toothed in unlike ways and so prick the senses 433 of the body, the touch of each gives us proof. 434 For touch, touch[37], by the holy powers of the gods, 435 is the sense of the body, whether when a thing from outside 436 works its way in, or when a thing born in the body hurts it, 437 or gives delight going out through the generative acts of Venus, 438 or when, from a collision, they riot within the body itself, 439 and the seeds, roused, throw the sense into confusion among themselves; 440 as if perhaps with your hand you yourself were to strike 441 any part of your body you please and make the trial. 442 Therefore the forms of the beginnings must differ far, 443 since they can give rise to various sensations. 444 Finally, the things that seem to us hardened and dense, 445 these must consist of elements more hooked together 446 and be held fast, compacted deep, as if by branches. 447 In this class, first of all, stand rocks of adamant[38] 448 in the front line, used to scorning blows, 449 and strong flints, and the strength of hard iron, 450 and bronze that shrieks as it holds out against the bolts. 451 Those indeed must be made rather of smooth and round bodies, 452 the things that stand as liquids, with a fluid body. 453 For a scoop of poppy-seed flows as easily as one of water; 454 for the little globes do not hold to one another, 455 and, once disturbed, it runs as readily down a slope. 456 Finally, all things that you see in a point of time 457 scatter, like smoke and mists and flames, it must be that, 458 if they are not all made of smooth and round bodies, 459 yet they are not hampered by tangled ones, 460 so that they can prick the body and pierce stones 461 and yet not stick together; so that whatever we see 462 to be toothed to the senses, you can easily know 463 is made not of tangled but of sharp elements. 464 But that you see the same things bitter that are fluid, 465 as the sweat of the sea is, ought to be no wonder at all 465a * * *[39] 466 For because it is fluid, it is made of smooth and round bodies, 467 but mixed in with the smooth are hooked 468 bodies of pain. Yet these hooked ones need not be held fast: 469 clearly they are round nonetheless, rough though they are, 470 so that they can at once roll forward and hurt the senses. 471 And that you may believe the more that rough are mixed with smooth 472 beginnings, from which the body of Neptune[40] gets its bitterness, 473 there is a way of separating them and seeing them apart: 474 the moisture grows sweet when, through the earth, the same moisture 475 is filtered through many times, to flow into a pit and grow mild; 476 for it leaves behind, above, the first-beginnings of the foul brine, 477 since, being rough, they can cling the more within the earth. 478 Since I have taught this, I will go on to join to it a fact[41] 479 which, fitted to this, draws its credit: that the first-beginnings of things 480 vary within a finite range of shapes. 481 For if it were not so, then again certain seeds 482 will have to be infinite in the growth of their bodies. 483 For within the one same smallness of any given 484 body, for the shapes to vary much from one another 485 is not possible. For suppose that of least parts[42], three of them, 486 the first bodies are made, or add a few more to these; 487 surely, when all those parts of a single body 488 you have set at top and bottom, and changed the right for the left, 489 and tried in every way what appearance each order gives 490 of form to the whole of that body, 491 for the rest, if you chance to want to vary the shapes, 492 other parts will have to be added. From this it will follow 493 that, on a like principle, the order will call for others, 494 if you chance to want to vary the shapes still further. 495 Therefore growth of body follows upon newness of forms 496 close behind. And so there is no way you can believe 497 that seeds exist distinguished by infinite forms, 498 lest you force certain of them to be of monstrous greatness, 499 which I have already shown above cannot be proved. 500 Then barbarian robes and the gleaming Meliboean purple[43], 501 dipped in the Thessalian color of the shells, 502 the golden race of peacocks, steeped in laughing charm, 503 would lie outdone by some new color in things, 504 and the smell of myrrh would be scorned, and the savors of honey, 505 and the swan's notes and the intricate strains of Phoebus' strings 506 would fall silent, overpowered in like manner; 507 for one thing would always rise more excellent than another. 508 So too all things could fall back toward the worse, 509 just as we have said they could toward the better; 510 for one thing would also be more loathsome than another, in reverse, 511 to nostrils, ears and eyes, and to the taste of the mouth. 512 And since these things are not so, but a fixed limit, assigned 513 to things, holds the sum on either side, you must admit 514 that matter too differs in a finite number of shapes. 515 Finally, from fires to the freezing frosts of winters 516 the way is bounded, and measured back again in equal measure. 517 For all heat and cold and the middle warmths 518 lie between the two, filling out the sum in order. 519 Therefore created things differ within a finite range, 520 since at both ends they are marked by a two-edged point, 521 beset by flames on this side and on that by stiff frosts. 522 Since I have taught this, I will go on to join to it a fact 523 which, fitted to this, draws its credit: that the first-beginnings of things, 524 those that are made of a shape alike among themselves, 525 are infinite in number. For since the difference 526 of forms is finite, it must be that those that are alike 527 are infinite, or else that the sum of matter 528 is finite, which I have proved is not so. 528a * * *[44] 529 I will show in verses that the little bodies of matter 530 from infinity keep the sum of things going 531 on every side, by an unbroken relay of blows[45]. 532 For as to your seeing certain animals to be rarer, 533 and discerning in those others a nature more fruitful,[46] 534 yet in another region and place, in far-off lands, 535 there may be many of that kind, and the number made up; 536 as among four-footed beasts we see, first of all, 537 the kind of snake-handed[47] elephants, by whose many thousands 538 India is fortified with a rampart of ivory, 539 so that it cannot be entered deep: so great is the multitude 540 of these beasts, of which we see very few examples. 541 But still, to concede this too, let there be, as you please, 542 some single thing, alone in the body it was born with, 543 with nothing like it in the whole round of the lands; 544 yet unless the store of matter is infinite, 545 from which it may be conceived and brought forth, it could not 546 be created, nor, for the rest, grow up and be nourished. 547 For indeed, let others assume that a finite number 548 of generative bodies of one thing are tossed through the whole: 549 from where, where, by what force, in what way will they meet and join 550 in so great a sea of matter, in so alien a throng? 551 They have no means, I think, of making a union; 552 but as, when great and many shipwrecks have arisen, 553 the great sea is used to toss about thwarts, hulls, 554 yards, prows, masts and swimming oars, 555 so that along all the lands' shores the floating stern-ornaments 556 are seen, and give mortals a warning 557 to shun the snares of the faithless sea, its strength and guile, 558 and never at any time to trust it, 559 when the sly enticement of the calm sea laughs[48], 560 so, if once you establish certain first-beginnings as finite, 561 they will have to be scattered through all time 562 and tossed apart by the conflicting tides of matter, 563 so that they can never be driven together into union, 564 nor linger in union, nor grow by increase; 565 and that both of these happen, the plain fact openly shows, 566 that things are brought forth and, once born, can grow. 567 Therefore in any kind you please the first-beginnings of things 568 are infinite, that is plain, from which all things are furnished. 569 And so neither can the motions of destruction prevail 570 forever, nor bury safety for eternity, 571 nor again can the motions that beget and increase things 572 keep forever what they have created. 573 So in an equal struggle[49] of the beginnings is waged 574 a war entered on from infinite time. 575 Now here, now there the life-giving powers of things conquer 576 and are conquered in turn. With the funeral is mixed the wail 577 that infants raise as they look on the shores of light; 578 and no night has followed day, no dawn the night, 579 that has not heard, mixed with the sick wailing of infants, 580 the lamentations that attend on death and the black funeral. 581 This too it is fitting, in these matters, to keep sealed up 582 and to hold, entrusted to a mind that remembers: 583 that there is nothing whose nature is seen plainly before us 584 that consists of one kind of beginnings alone, 585 nothing that is not made of mingled seed[50]. 586 And whatever possesses more forces in itself 587 and more powers, the more it shows that it holds the most kinds 588 of beginnings in itself, and the most varied shapes. 589 First of all, the earth holds in itself first bodies 590 from which springs, rolling out their coolness, constantly renew 591 the immeasurable sea; it holds those from which fires rise; 592 for in many places the ground of the earth is kindled and burns, 593 and from its depths the onrush of Etna rages with fire. 594 Then further, shining crops and glad orchards 595 it has the means to raise up for the races of men, 596 and the means to offer rivers, leaves, and glad pastures 597 to the mountain-roaming race of wild beasts. 598 Therefore the great mother of the gods, and mother of wild beasts, 599 and begetter of our body, she alone has been called[51]. 600 Of her the learned poets of the Greeks of old have sung 601 that, seated in a chariot, she drives a yoke of lions[52], 602 teaching by this that the great earth hangs in the space 603 of air, and that earth cannot rest upon earth. 604 They yoked wild beasts to her because offspring, however wild, 605 must be softened, won over by the kindnesses of parents. 606 And they bound the top of her head with a crown of walls, 607 because, fortified in choice places, she bears up cities. 608 Adorned now with this emblem, through the great lands 609 the image of the divine mother is carried, inspiring dread. 610 Her the various peoples, by the ancient custom of their rites, 611 call the Idaean Mother, and give her bands of Phrygians 612 as her companions, because from those regions first, they say, 613 crops began to be created through the circles of the earth. 614 They assign her Galli[53], because, of those who have outraged 615 the Mother's power and been found ungrateful to their parents, 616 they wish to signify that they must be thought unworthy 617 to bring forth living offspring into the shores of light. 618 Taut drums[54] thunder under their palms, and the hollow cymbals 619 all around, and horns threaten with harsh-sounding song, 620 and the hollow pipe goads their minds with Phrygian measure, 621 and they carry weapons before them, signs of violent frenzy, 622 so that the ungrateful minds and impious hearts of the crowd 623 may be terrified with fear by the goddess's power. 624 And so, as soon as she is carried in through great cities 625 and silently enriches mortals with a wordless blessing, 626 they strew the whole road of her way with bronze and silver, 627 enriching it with bountiful alms, and snow down rose 628 blossoms, shading the mother and the band of her companions. 629 Here an armed troop, whom the Greeks speak of by the name 630 of Curetes[55], when they happen to sport among the Phrygian bands 631 and leap in measure, glad of blood, 632 shaking the terrifying crests on their heads with their nodding, 633 recall the Dictaean Curetes, who are said once to have hidden 634 that famous wailing of Jupiter in Crete, 635 when, boys around the boy, in their nimble dance, 636 armed and in measure in their nimble dance[56] 637 armed, in measure, they beat bronze upon bronze, 638 so that Saturn might not catch him and give him to his jaws 639 and deal the Mother an eternal wound beneath her breast. 640 For this reason they attend the great mother armed, 641 or else because they signify that the goddess proclaims that with arms 642 and courage men should be willing to defend their native land 643 and make ready to be a protection and an honor to their parents. 644 These things, however well and excellently they are set out, 645 are nonetheless driven far from true reasoning. 646 For the whole nature of the gods must, of itself, by necessity[57] 647 enjoy immortal life in utmost peace, 648 removed from our affairs and separated far away; 649 for free from every pain, free from dangers, 650 strong in its own resources, needing nothing of ours, 651 it is neither won by services nor touched by anger. 652 The earth, indeed, is at all times without sense, 653 and because it possesses the first-beginnings of many things, 654 it brings forth many in many ways into the light of the sun. 655 Here, if anyone resolves to call the sea Neptune[58], and to call 656 the crops Ceres, and would rather misuse the name of Bacchus 657 than speak the proper word for that liquor, 658 let us grant that he may keep declaring the round of the earth 659 to be the mother of the gods, if only in truth he himself 680 refrains from tainting his mind with foul religion. 660 Thus often, cropping grass from a single field, 661 wool-bearing flocks and the warlike offspring of horses 662 and horned herds, beneath the same covering of sky, 663 quenching their thirst from a single stream of water, 664 live unlike in appearance, and keep their parents' 665 nature, and each, kind by kind, copies their ways. 666 So great in any kind of grass is the unlike order 667 of matter, so great in any river too. 668 Again, any one living creature, whichever of them all, 669 bones, blood, veins, heat, moisture, flesh, and sinews 670 make up, which are again far distant from one another, 671 formed of unlike shapes of beginnings. 672 Then further, all things that are set aflame by fire and burn, 673 if nothing else, still carry these in their body: 674 the means by which they can throw out fire and send up light, 675 and drive off sparks and scatter ash far and wide. 676 Going through the rest by a like reasoning of mind, 677 you will therefore find that they hide the seeds of many things 678 in their body, and contain varied shapes. 679 Finally, you see many things in which color and taste together 681 are given along with smell; first of all, most fruits. 682 These, therefore, must consist of varied shapes; 683 for smell gets into our limbs where color does not go, 684 color, likewise, apart, and taste apart, works its way 685 into our senses; so you may know they differ in their first shapes. 686 Therefore unlike forms come together into one mass, 687 and things are made up out of mingled seed. 688 Indeed, everywhere in these very verses of ours 689 you see many elements[59] common to many words, 690 though you must still admit that verses and words 691 are made, one and another, from different elements; 692 not because few letters run in common among them, 693 or no two are made out of letters entirely the same, 694 but because, as a rule, not all are alike to all. 695 So likewise in other things, since many are common 696 to many things, the first-beginnings of things 697 can nonetheless make up, among themselves, unlike wholes; 698 so that it may rightly be said that the human race 699 and crops and glad orchards are made of different things. 700 Yet we must not think that all things can be joined 701 in every way; for you would see monsters everywhere come to be, 702 forms half beast, half man spring up, and tall 703 branches at times put forth from a living body, 704 and many limbs of land creatures joined to those of the sea, 705 and then Chimaeras[60], breathing flame from their foul mouths, 706 and nature feeding them across the all-mothering lands. 707 It is plain that none of this happens, since all things 708 created from fixed seeds and by a fixed mother, 709 can, we see, preserve their kind as they grow. 710 Clearly this must come about by a fixed principle. 711 For to each, out of all its foods, its own bodies pass 712 within, into the limbs, and, once joined, produce 713 the fitting motions; but against this we see nature 714 cast out onto the earth what is alien, and many things, in unseen 715 bodies, flee out of the body, driven by blows, 716 which could neither be joined anywhere nor, within, 717 feel with the vital motions and imitate them. 718 But lest you think that only living things are held 719 by these laws, a certain principle bounds all things.[61] 720 For just as things begotten are unlike one another 721 in their whole nature, each of them, so each must 722 be made of unlike shapes of beginnings; 723 not that few are endowed with a like form, 724 but because, as a rule, not all are alike to all. 725 Further, since the seeds differ, there must be differences in 726 intervals[62], paths, connections, weights, blows, 727 collisions, motions; which not only divide living bodies 728 from one another, but keep the lands and the whole sea 729 apart, and hold back the whole heaven from the lands. 730 Come now, take in these words, sought out by my sweet labor, 731 so that you do not by chance suppose the white things are from white 732 beginnings, the things you see shining before your eyes, 733 or that the things that are black are born of black seed; 734 or that whatever is steeped in any other color 735 bears it because the bodies of matter 736 are dyed with a color just like its own; 737 for the bodies of matter have no color 738 at all, neither like things nor, finally, unlike them. 739 And if it seems to you perhaps that upon these bodies no casting[63] 740 of the mind can be made, you wander far out of the way. 741 For since the blind from birth, who have never looked upon 742 the light of the sun, still come to know bodies by touch 743 that from the beginning of life were joined with no color, 744 you may know that bodies can also come into the notice 745 of our mind, though smeared about with no dye. 746 Finally, whatever we ourselves touch in blind darkness 747 we do not perceive as dyed with any color. 748 Since I prove that this can be, I shall now show that it is so. 749 For every color changes, all of it, into every other; 750 this the first-beginnings must by no means do; 751 for something unchangeable must survive, 752 so that things are not all brought back utterly to nothing; 753 for whatever is changed and passes out of its own bounds,[64] 754 this at once is the death of what it was before. 755 Therefore take care not to touch the seeds of things with color, 756 so that all things do not return utterly to nothing for you. 757 Further, if no nature of color has been given 758 to the beginnings, and they are endowed with various forms, 759 from which they beget colors of every kind and vary them, 760 therefore, since it matters greatly for each of the seeds 761 with what and in what position they are held together, 762 and what motions they give and receive among themselves, 763 at once you could most easily give the reason 764 why things that were of a black color a little before 765 can suddenly become of a marble whiteness, 766 as the sea, when great winds have stirred its levels, 767 is turned into white waves of shining marble[65]; 768 for you could say that what we often see as black, 769 when its matter has been mixed through, and the order 770 of the beginnings changed, and certain things added and taken away, 771 at once comes to be seen as shining and white. 772 But if the levels of the sea consisted of blue 773 seeds, they could in no way grow white; 774 for however you stir up things that are blue, 775 they can never pass over into the color of marble. 776 But if the seeds are dyed with one color and another 777 that make the sea's one pure brightness, 778 as often from other forms and various shapes 779 something square and of a single shape is made, 780 it would be fitting that, as we see in the square 781 unlike forms, so we should see in the level of the sea, 782 or in any other single and pure brightness, 783 colors widely unlike one another and various. 784 Further, unlike shapes do not hinder or stand in the way 785 of the whole being square on the outside; 786 but the various colors of things hinder and prevent 787 the whole thing from being of a single brightness. 788 Then again the cause that leads and lures us to assign 789 colors at times to the beginnings of things 790 falls dead, since white things are not created from white, 791 nor things called black from black, but from various. 792 For indeed white things will arise much more readily 793 born of no color than of black 794 or of any other that fights against them and stands in the way. 795 Further, since colors cannot be without light, 796 and the first-beginnings of things do not come out into the light, 797 you may know that they are veiled with no color; 798 for what color can there be in blind darkness? 799 Indeed, color is changed by the light itself, according as 800 it shines back, struck by a straight or a slanting light; 801 as the plumage of doves is seen in the sun, 802 the plumage that, set about the nape, crowns the neck; 803 for at times it comes to be red with bright fire-bronze[66], 804 at times, to a certain way of seeing, it comes to seem 805 to mingle green emeralds with the blue. 806 And the peacock's tail, when it is filled with plentiful light, 807 changes its colors by a like principle as it turns; 808 and since these colors are begotten by a certain stroke of light, 809 you may know it must be thought they cannot come to be without it. 810 And since the pupil receives into itself a certain kind of blow 811 when it is said to perceive the color white, 812 and again another when it perceives black and the rest, 813 and it does not matter with what color the things you touch 814 may chance to be endowed, but rather with what shape they are fitted, 815 you may know that the beginnings have no need of color, 816 but give out various touches by their various forms. 817 Further, since no fixed nature of color belongs to fixed 818 shapes, and all the formings of the beginnings 819 can be in any brightness whatever, 820 why are the things composed of them not likewise 821 steeped in colors of every sort, in every kind of thing? 822 For it would be fitting that ravens too, as they fly, should often 823 throw off a white color from white feathers, 824 and that swans should become black from black seed, 825 or of any other color, single or varied. 826 Moreover, the more each thing is pulled apart into tiny parts, 827 the more it is that you can see 828 the color fade little by little and be quenched; 829 as happens when purple cloth[67] is torn into small parts: 830 the purple, and the scarlet, much the brightest of colors, 831 when pulled apart thread by thread, is wholly lost; 832 so that from this you may learn that all their color is breathed out 833 by the small pieces before they part into the seeds of things.[68] 834 Lastly, since you grant that not all bodies send out 835 a voice, nor a smell, it comes about, therefore, 836 that you do not assign sounds and smells to all: 837 so, since we cannot perceive all things with our eyes, 838 you may know that some things are as bereft of color 839 as some are without any smell and removed from sound, 840 and that the keen mind can come to know these no less 841 than it can mark the things deprived of other qualities. 842 But in case you should think that, stripped of color alone, 843 the first bodies remain so, they are also set apart from warmth 844 and from cold entirely, and from burning heat; 845 they go barren of sound and starved of flavor, 846 and give off from their body no odor of their own. 847 Just as, for the soothing liquor of marjoram[69] and of myrrh 848 and the flower of nard, which breathes nectar to the nostrils, 849 when you set about making them, it is right first to seek, 850 as far as you may and can find it, an odorless olive oil, 851 whose nature sends out no breath at all to the nostrils, 852 so that it may least of all spoil the odors mixed in its body 853 and blended there, by touching them with its own rankness, 854 for the same reason the first-beginnings of things must 855 not lend their own odor to the things they beget, 856 nor sound, since they can send out nothing from themselves, 857 nor, on a like principle, finally, any flavor at all, 858 nor cold, nor likewise hot and tepid heat, 859 and all the rest: things which are still such as to be mortal, 860 pliant with soft, brittle with crumbling, hollow with porous body, 861 all these must be kept apart from the beginnings, 862 if we wish to set beneath things foundations immortal, 863 on which the whole of their safety may rest; 864 so that all things do not return utterly to nothing for you. 865 Now all the things we see to have sense, whatever they are, 866 you must confess are, for all that, made up of senseless 867 beginnings. Nor do plain facts refute this 868 or fight against it, the things known and ready to hand; 869 rather they themselves lead us by the hand and compel belief 870 that, as I say, living creatures are born from senseless things. 871 Indeed, you can see living worms[70] come forth 872 out of foul dung, when a rottenness has come over 873 the sodden earth from untimely rains. 874 Further, all things in like manner turn themselves into others. 875 Rivers turn themselves into leaves, and glad pastures 876 into cattle; cattle turn into our bodies 877 their nature, and from our body often the strength of wild beasts 878 grows, and the bodies of the strong-winged birds. 879 Therefore nature turns all foods into living bodies 880 and from them brings forth all the senses of living things, 881 on a principle not far other than that by which 882 it unfolds dry logs into flames and turns them all to fire. 883 Do you see now, therefore, that for the first-beginnings of things 884 it matters greatly in what order each is set 885 and mixed with what, and what motions they give and take? 886 Then further, what is it that strikes the mind itself, 887 that moves it and compels it to give out various senses, 888 so that you do not believe the sentient is born from the senseless? 889 Surely it is that stones and wood and earth, mixed 890 together, still cannot give back the sense of life. 891 In these matters, then, it will be fitting to remember this: 892 not from any and all things whatever that create 893 sentient things do I say that senses are at once begotten, 894 but that it matters greatly, first, how small are the things 895 that make the sentient, and with what shape they are endowed, 896 and finally what they are in motions, orders, positions. 897 Of these things we see none in logs and clods; 898 and yet these, when they are as it were rotted by the rains, 899 give birth to little worms, because the bodies of matter, 900 stirred from their old orders by a new event, 901 are united as they must be for living things to be born. 902 Next, those who would have it that from sentient things the sentient 903 can be created, and these in turn from others used to sensing, 903a * * *[71] 904 when they make them soft; for all sense is bound up 905 with flesh, sinews, veins, all of which we see 906 are soft, fashioned of mortal body. 907 But still, grant now that these can remain eternal: 908 surely, even so, they must either have the sense of a part 909 or be thought to be like whole living creatures. 910 But it must be that parts cannot have sense by themselves; 911 for the mind rejects all the senses of the limbs,[72] 912 nor can a hand cut off from us, nor any 913 part of the body at all, hold sense alone. 914 It remains that they be likened to whole living creatures, 915 so that they can feel in concert, everywhere, with the sense of life. 916 How then can they be called first-beginnings of things 917 and shun the roads of death, since they are living creatures, 918 and living creatures are one and the same as mortal beings? 919 Yet even granting that they could, still by their meeting and union 920 they will make nothing but a crowd and throng of living things, 921 just as, surely, men, herds, and wild beasts cannot 922 beget any other thing among themselves by coming together. 923 In the same way, what we sense must itself sense. 924 But if perhaps they put off their own sense from their body 925 and take on another, what need was there to grant what 926 is taken away? Then further, as we set out before, 927 inasmuch as into living chicks the eggs 928 of birds, we see, are turned, and worms swarm out of the earth 929 when rottenness has seized it after untimely rains, 930 we may know that senses can be born from what is not sense. 931 But if perhaps someone says that sense can only arise 932 from what is not sense by a process of change, 933 or by a kind of birth, by which it is brought forth outward, 934 for him it will be enough to make clear and prove this: 935 that no birth happens unless a union has first been formed, 936 nor does anything change without a uniting. 937 To begin with, there can be no senses of any body 938 before the nature of the living creature itself is born, 939 surely because the matter is held scattered 940 in air, rivers, earth, and the things born of earth, 941 and has not, meeting, brought together in fitting manner 942 the vital motions among themselves, by which the all-watching 943 senses, kindled, watch over each living creature. 944 Further, any living creature a blow too great 945 for its nature to bear strikes down suddenly, and goes on 946 to throw into confusion all the senses of body and mind. 947 For the positions of the beginnings are dissolved, 948 and the vital motions are hindered deep within, 949 until all the matter, shaken through the limbs, 950 loosens the knots of the vital spirit[73] from the body 951 and casts it out, scattered abroad, through all the passages; 952 for what else should we think a blow can do, 953 when it is dealt, but shatter and dissolve each thing? 954 It happens too that, when a blow is dealt less sharply, 955 the vital motions that remain will often win, 956 win and calm the vast tumults of the stroke, 957 and call each part back again into its own paths, 958 and the motion of death, already, as it were, master in the body, 959 shake apart, and kindle the senses almost lost; 960 for by what means could they rather, from death's very threshold, 961 gather their mind and come back to life 962 than go on and depart where their course is almost run? 963 Further, since pain exists when bodies of matter, 964 by some force, through the living flesh, through the limbs, 965 are troubled and tremble within, in their own seats, 966 and when they move back into place a soothing pleasure[74] comes, 967 we may know that the first-beginnings can be assailed 968 by no pain, and take no pleasure from themselves; 969 since they are not made out of any bodies of beginnings, 970 bodies, through the novelty of whose motions they might suffer 971 or reap some fruit of nourishing sweetness. 972 They ought not, therefore, to be endowed with any sense. 973 Finally, so that every living creature can feel, 974 if sense must now be granted to their beginnings, 975 what of those that make up the human race in particular? 976 No doubt they too must shake with trembling laughter and guffaw[75], 977 and sprinkle their faces and cheeks with dewy tears, 978 and be skilled at saying much about the mixture of things, 979 and go on to ask what their own first-beginnings are; 980 since, made in the likeness of whole mortals, 981 they too in their turn must consist of other elements, 982 and those again of others, so that you never dare to stop; 983 for I shall press you: whatever you say can speak and laugh 984 and be wise must be made of others that do these same things. 985 But if we see that this is raving and madness, 986 and a man can laugh though not made of laughing things, 987 and be wise and give an account in learned words 988 though not made of seeds that are wise and eloquent, 989 why should the things we see have sense be any less able 990 to be of seeds mixed together that lack sense in every part? 991 Finally, we are all sprung from heavenly seed[76]; 992 all have that same father, from whom the nourishing mother, 993 earth, when she has received the liquid drops of moisture, 994 teems and bears the shining grain and the glad trees 995 and the human race, bears all the generations of wild beasts, 996 since she provides the pastures on which all feed their bodies 997 and lead a sweet life and propagate their offspring; 998 therefore she has rightly gained the name of mother. 999 Likewise what came from the earth before goes back 1000 into the earth, and what was sent from the shores of the ether 1001 is carried back again and received by the precincts of heaven. 1002 Nor does death so destroy things as to annihilate 1003 the bodies of matter, but it scatters their union; 1004 then it joins one to another and brings it about that all 1005 things change their shapes and alter their colors 1006 and take on sense and in an instant give it up; 1007 so that you may know it matters, for the first-beginnings of things, 1008 with what and in what position they are held together, 1009 and what motions they give and receive among themselves, 1010 and may not think that there can reside in eternal 1011 first bodies what we see floating on the surfaces 1012 of things, and at times being born and suddenly perishing. 1013 Indeed, even in my verses themselves it matters 1014 with what and in what order each is placed; 1015 for the same ones signify heaven, sea, lands, rivers, sun, 1016 the same signify grain, trees, living creatures; 1017 if not all, yet by far the greatest part 1018 are alike; but by their position the things differ. 1019 So too in things themselves, when of matter 1020 the intervals, paths, connections, weights, blows, 1021 collisions[77], motions, order, position, shapes 1022 are changed, the things too must be changed. 1023 Now apply your mind, for me, to true reasoning. 1024 For a thing strikingly new is struggling to reach 1025 your ears, and a new face of things to show itself. 1026 But there is no thing so easy that it does not at first 1027 prove harder to believe, and likewise 1028 nothing so great, nothing so wonderful, 1029 that all do not little by little lessen their wonder at it. 1030 Consider first the clear and pure color of the sky, 1031 and all it holds within it, the stars wandering everywhere, 1032 and the moon, and the sun's brightness with its glorious light; 1033 all of which, if now for the first time to mortals, 1034 if they were suddenly thrown before them unforeseen, 1035 what could be called more wonderful than these things, 1036 or what would the nations less have dared beforehand to believe could be? 1037 Nothing, I think: so wondrous would this appearance have been. 1038 Yet now, wearied with the surfeit of seeing, no one 1039 deigns to look up at the shining precincts of heaven. 1040 Cease, therefore, frightened by mere newness, 1041 to spit reasoning out of your mind, but rather with keen 1042 judgment weigh it, and if it seems true to you, 1043 give in; or, if it is false, gird yourself against it. 1044 For the mind seeks reasoning, since the sum of place 1045 is infinite outside, beyond these walls of the world[78], 1046 of what is there further, where thought longs to look ever onward 1047 and where the free cast of the mind itself flies through. 1048 First of all, for us in every direction all around, 1049 on either side, above and below, through the whole, 1050 there is no limit; as I have taught, and the thing itself 1051 cries aloud, and the nature of the deep shines clear. 1052 In no way, then, must it be thought likely, 1053 since space lies empty, infinite, in every direction, 1054 and seeds in numberless number in the deep sum 1055 fly about in many ways, driven by eternal motion, 1056 that this one orb of lands and this sky alone were created,[79] 1057 and those so many bodies of matter outside do nothing; 1058 especially since this world was made by nature, and the seeds 1059 of things themselves, of their own accord, colliding by chance, 1060 driven together in many ways, at random, vainly, to no purpose, 1061 at last grew together[80] into those which, suddenly thrown together, 1062 might become forever the origins of great things, 1063 of earth and sea and sky and the race of living things. 1064 Therefore again and again you must confess 1065 that there are elsewhere other gatherings of matter 1066 such as this is, which the ether holds in its greedy embrace. 1067 Further, when much matter is made ready, 1068 when place is at hand and no thing and no cause 1069 delays, things must surely be carried on and come to be. 1070 As it is, if there is such a store of seeds as 1071 the whole life of living things could not count out, 1072 and the same nature remains, which can throw the seeds of things 1073 together into every place in the same way 1074 as they have been thrown together here, you must confess 1075 that in other regions there are other orbs of lands 1076 and various races of men and generations of wild beasts. 1077 Add to this that in the sum there is no one thing 1078 that is born unique and grows unique and alone, 1079 but is of some generation, and very many are of the same 1080 kind. First, among living creatures, with your mind as guide, 1081 you will find it so with the mountain-roaming race of wild beasts, 1082 so with the twin offspring of men[81], so finally with the mute 1083 herds of the scaly ones and all the bodies of flying things. 1084 Therefore you must confess, on a like principle, that sky 1085 and earth and sun, moon, sea, and all else that is, 1086 are not unique, but rather of number beyond numbering; 1087 since the boundary-stone[82] of life, set deep, 1088 awaits these as surely, and they are of a body as born 1089 as every kind that abounds here, kind by kind, in such things. 1090 If you know these things well and hold them, nature is seen 1091 to be free at once, stripped of proud masters, 1092 doing all things of herself, by her own accord, without the gods. 1093 For by the holy hearts of the gods[83], which in tranquil peace 1094 pass a placid age and a serene life, 1095 who can rule the sum of the immeasurable, who hold in hand 1096 the strong reins of the deep and guide them, 1097 who can turn all the heavens alike, and warm 1098 all the fruitful lands with fires of the ether, 1099 or be present in all places at all times, 1100 to make darkness with clouds and shake the calm of heaven 1101 with sound, then hurl thunderbolts, and often 1102 throw down his own shrines, and, withdrawing into deserts, 1103 rage there, exercising his bolt, which often passes the guilty 1104 by, and strikes dead the unworthy and the undeserving? 1105 And many bodies, after the birth-time of the world 1106 and the first-born day of sea and earth and the rising of the sun, 1107 were added from outside, and added round about 1108 were seeds, which the great whole brought together by hurling them, 1109 from which the sea and the lands could increase, and from which 1110 heaven's house could show its room, and lift its lofty roof 1111 far from the lands, and the air rise up. 1112 For each to its own, from every place, all bodies by blows 1113 are distributed, and go back to their own kinds: 1114 moisture to moisture; earth grows from earthy body, 1115 and fires forge fire, and ether forges ether, 1116 until to the farthest limit of growth, bringing all to completion, 1117 the creating nature of things[84] has led all things on; 1118 as happens when nothing more is now given within 1119 the vital veins than flows away and withdraws. 1120 Here the age of all things must come to a stand, 1121 here nature reins in growth with her own strength. 1122 For whatever things you see grow big with cheerful increase 1123 and little by little climb the steps of grown age 1124 take more bodies into themselves than they send out from themselves, 1125 while all the food is easily put into their veins, and while 1126 they are not spread so widely that they give back much 1127 and make more waste than their age feeds upon. 1128 For certainly we must grant that many bodies flow 1129 and withdraw from things; but more must come in, 1130 until they have touched the topmost peak of growing. 1131 From then, little by little, age breaks the strength 1132 and grown vigor, and melts away into the worse part. 1133 For indeed, the larger a thing is, once its increase is taken away, 1134 and the wider it is, into all directions on every side 1135 the more bodies it scatters now and sends out from itself, 1136 nor is all the food easily distributed into its veins, 1137 nor is there enough, for the lavish tides it pours out, 1138 from which as much could arise again and be supplied. 1139 Rightly, therefore, they perish, when they have grown rare 1140 by flowing, and all things give way beneath blows from outside, 1141 since in great age food at last runs short, 1142 and the bodies battering from outside never cease 1143 to wear a thing down and subdue it with hostile blows. 1144 So therefore the walls of the great world[85] round about 1145 will also be stormed, and give way to decay and crumbling ruin; 1146 for food must make all things whole by renewing them, 1147 food must prop them up, food must sustain all things, 1148 in vain, since neither do the veins endure to take in 1149 what is enough, nor does nature supply as much as is needed. 1150 And indeed even now the age is broken, and the worn-out earth[86] 1151 scarcely creates small animals, she who created all 1152 kinds, and gave birth to the huge bodies of wild beasts. 1153 For it was not, I think, that the mortal kinds from on high 1154 a golden rope[87] let down from heaven into the fields, 1155 nor did the sea and the waves beating on the rocks create them, 1156 but the earth bore them, the same that now feeds them from herself. 1157 Further, the shining crops and the glad vineyards 1158 she herself, of her own accord, first created for mortals, 1159 she herself gave sweet fruits and glad pastures; 1160 which now scarcely grow great, increased by our labor, 1161 and we wear out the oxen and the strength of the farmers, 1162 we wear down the iron, we whom the fields scarcely supply: 1163 so much do they stint their fruits and increase the labor. 1164 And now the aged plowman shakes his head and sighs 1165 more often that his great labors have come to nothing, 1166 and when he compares the present times with times 1167 gone by, he often praises his father's fortunes. 1168 Gloomily too the planter of the old and shriveled vine 1169 blames the drift of time[88] and wearies the age with complaint, 1170 and grumbles how the race of old, filled with piety, 1171 bore life very easily within narrow bounds, 1172 though the measure of land for each man was far smaller before; 1173 nor does he grasp that all things waste away by degrees and go 1174 to the bier[89], worn out by the ancient span of age. ------------------------------------------------------------ Notes [1] (2.1-4) "Sweet it is" (suave): the most famous of the poem's openings. The pleasure is not in another's distress but in seeing what one is free of; the watcher on the shore is the Epicurean outside the storm, and the "serene precincts set on high" (templa serena, 8) are the school's teaching as a fortress. Templa are marked-off regions, as at 1.120. [2] (2.5-6) The source prints 6 before 5, an editorial transposition; the translation keeps the printed order and the printed numbers. [3] (2.17) "barks" (latrare): Lucretius's own blunt word. Nature is a dog that demands only this, that the body be free of pain and the mind of fear. [4] (2.24-26) The golden youths holding torches come from Homer's palace of Alcinous (Odyssey 7.100-102); Lucretius sets the Homeric luxury in a Roman dining hall. "Images" (simulacra) here are statues, the everyday sense; the word is "images" wherever it occurs, also for the mock battles of 41 and 324 and the "image and picture" of 112, so that the technical use of Book 4 grows out of the ordinary one. [5] (2.28) "paneled and gilded rafters" (laqueata aurataque templa): the coffered ceiling of a rich hall. Templa is the same word as the "precincts" of 8, a framed space, roof or sky; it never means temples in this poem. [6] (2.40-43) "the Campus" is the Campus Martius at Rome, where troops drilled; "the images of war" (belli simulacra) are the exercises. In 43 stlattas, a rare word for a broad-built ship, is the printed text of a line that editors suspect; the translation renders it as printed. [7] (2.44) "the religions" (religiones): the plural is the Latin's, the many terrors religion imposes, and the plain word is kept, as at 1.63 and in "foul religion" at 680. [8] (2.55-61) The children who fear everything in the dark are Lucretius's figure for adult fear; the four lines recur at 3.87-90 and 6.35-38, and 59-61 repeat 1.146-148 (again at 3.91-93 and 6.39-41). The English repeats its own lines at each place. [9] (2.65) "mobility" (mobilitas), never "speed": the power of moving given to the first-beginnings, one of the book's announced subjects (142-166). [10] (2.79) "like runners pass on the torch of life" (quasi cursores vitai lampada tradunt): the Greek torch race, in which a lit torch was handed on from runner to runner. The image was quoted ever after. [11] (2.89-94) "I have shown in many words": the infinity of space and the absence of any bottom were argued at 1.951-1051, and "as I have taught" at 339 looks back to the same place. [12] (2.100) "union" (conciliatus; concilium at 110, "the unions of things") is the fixed word for the combination of first bodies that makes a thing, as at 1.484; "a uniting" (conciliatu, 936) is the same word. [13] (2.105-106) The text and sense of these two lines are uncertain; the translation renders them as printed: the few first-beginnings that wander free make the thin air and sunlight, as the tangled ones make rock and iron. [14] (2.112-124) The motes in a sunbeam are Lucretius's visible likeness of what cannot be seen, "a pattern of great things" (exemplare); he says only that they show what motion in the void is like, not that they are first-beginnings, and 125-141 explains that they move because of unseen blows passed up from the first-beginnings through ever larger bodies. "An image and picture" (simulacrum et imago, 112) is the everyday sense. [15] (2.132) "all comes from the beginnings" (a principiis): principia is "beginnings", as at 1.484, kept apart from "first-beginnings" (primordia, 133); they are the same bodies under Lucretius's second name, here and at 138, 224, 297, 861 and throughout the book. "Wandering" is the literal sense of error. [16] (2.151) "empty void" (inane vacuum): Lucretius doubles his two words for the void, and the English doubles with him (also 158, 202, 236). [17] (2.164a) The source marks a line lost after 164. "Nor to follow out" (165) hangs from a main clause that is gone, apparently about men who will not trace the motions of single first-beginnings; the translation prints the gap and supplies nothing. [18] (2.167-183) "some, against this" (quidam contra) are unnamed: the view that nature works for man's benefit, which the Stoics above all held. "Divine pleasure, the guide of life" (dux vitae dia voluptas) is the Venus of the proem seen as the drive to live and breed. The proof of the world's faults promised at 182 is given at 5.195-234. [19] (2.206-209) "the night torches of heaven" are meteors, and the stars that fall to earth shooting stars; they are brought in as fire going down, as fire does when nothing pushes it up. [20] (2.216-224) The swerve: "swerve" renders the verb declinare here and the noun clinamen at 292. It is Epicurus's addition to the older atomism, and Lucretius is its fullest surviving witness: falling straight through the void at equal speed, the first-beginnings would never meet, so at no fixed time or place they shift "just so much that you could call it a change of motion". A modern reader may hear a forerunner of indeterminacy in physics; that is the reader's association, not the poet's claim. [21] (2.225-239) In the void all bodies fall at equal speed whatever their weight, because the void yields alike to all (Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus 61); so the heavier cannot overtake the lighter and strike it, and the blows that make a world need another cause. [22] (2.251-262) "the covenants of fate" (fati foedera) are the unbroken chain of causes, the Stoic doctrine, set against "nature's covenants" (302 and 1.586). The swerve is made the ground of "this will wrested away from the fates" (fatis avolsa voluntas): the one place where Lucretius connects the physics to the freedom of living things, and he argues it from experience, not from the first-beginnings. [23] (2.263-265) "the starting-gates" (carceribus) are the stalls of the Roman circus, thrown open at the start of a race; the horses' bodies lag an instant behind their wish, which shows the will starting the motion. [24] (2.269-271) "the heart" (corde): Lucretius places the mind in the breast, as Book 3 will argue (3.140); the motion begins there, "from the will of the mind" (animi voluntate), and spreads through the limbs. [25] (2.289) "the thing itself" (res ipsa) is the printed reading; many editors read mens ipsa, "the mind itself", tying the sentence to the will of 261. The translation keeps the printed words, which give a general sense. [26] (2.292-293) "the tiny swerve of the beginnings" (exiguum clinamen principiorum): the poem's only use of the noun. "Tiny" matters, since the swerve is "no more than the least" (244), not a slant that the eye could catch. [27] (2.294-307) Nothing is added to the store of matter and nothing is lost from it, so the motions of the first-beginnings have always been and will always be the same, and no force can change the sum of things. A modern reader will hear the conservation of matter; that is the reader's association, not the poet's claim. [28] (2.310) "the sum ... in utmost rest" (summa ... summa quiete): Lucretius sets the noun "sum" against the adjective "utmost", and the English keeps both words in the line. [29] (2.317-332) The sheep on the hill and the legions on the plain: motion that is real but blurs to stillness at a distance. "Stirring up the images of war" (belli simulacra cientes, 324) is the mock battle of 41. [30] (2.333) "the origins of all things" (exordia rerum): Lucretius's third name for the first-beginnings, after primordia and principia, and "origins" is kept for it wherever it is technical (1062, 3.31, 4.26, 4.114, 5.430). [31] (2.336-337) These two lines recur at 723-724, and the second at 694: "not that few are endowed with a like form" takes multa parum as "few", with Bailey and Munro; the Latin could also mean "not that many lack a like form". The English repeats its own lines at each place. [32] (2.352-366) The calf slaughtered at the altar and the mother searching for it: a Roman sacrifice, and the poem's most famous passage of pathos. The argument it serves is only that each creature is known by its own shape; the grief is Lucretius's gift to the argument, and religion is not the target here. [33] (2.400-401) Wormwood and "wild centaury" (feri centauri) are bitter medicinal herbs; centaury was named for Chiron the centaur, who was said to have used it. [34] (2.410-413) "the Muses' melodies" (musaea mele) is music; the shriek of the saw against the lyre is the test case for sound. "Musicians" (organici) are players of the strings. [35] (2.415-417) Three smells: the funeral pyre, the stage sprinkled with saffron water (the best saffron came from Corycus in Cilicia), and the altar's incense. Panchaea is a fabled incense-bearing land off Arabia, in the far east of the poets. [36] (2.430) "wine-lees and the flavors of elecampane" (fecula ... inulaeque sapores): the sharp sediment of wine and a bitter root, tastes that tickle rather than wound. [37] (2.434-441) "touch, touch, by the holy powers of the gods": the repetition and the oath are unusual in Lucretius, and mark the doctrine that every sense is finally a form of touch by bodies, which is why shape explains sensation. "The generative acts of Venus" (genitalis per Veneris res) is sexual pleasure, named plainly. [38] (2.447-450) "Adamant" is the hardest substance of legend, not the diamond; "in the front line" (prima acie) is a soldier's phrase, and the bronze that shrieks is the bronze of door-bars resisting force. [39] (2.465a) The source marks a line lost after 465, and the sentence begun at 464 has lost its end; 466 begins the explanation. The translation prints the gap and supplies nothing. [40] (2.472-477) "the bitter body of Neptune" is the sea, the metonymy Lucretius allows at 655-659. That sea water filtered through earth becomes sweet was the common ancient belief; here it separates the rough first-beginnings of brine from the smooth ones of water. [41] (2.478-479) These two lines recur word for word at 522-523, and the English repeats them; they mark the two steps of the argument, that the shapes are finite in range and that each shape is infinite in number. [42] (2.483-499) The least parts of 1.599-634: a first body made of few of them admits few arrangements, so more shapes would need more parts and larger bodies, until some were of "monstrous greatness", which Book 1 showed to be impossible. [43] (2.500-506) Meliboea, on the Thessalian coast, was known for its purple dye; the peacock, myrrh, honey, the swan's song and the lyre stand for the best the senses know. "Intricate" renders daedala, the word for cunning workmanship, here an adjective of Apollo's songs; it is "artificer" where Lucretius applies it to the earth or to nature (1.7, 5.234). [44] (2.528a) The source marks a line lost after 528, and the promise of 529, "I will show in verses", begins abruptly; the translation prints the gap and supplies nothing. [45] (2.529-531) "an unbroken relay of blows" (protelo plagarum continuato): protelum is a team of oxen pulling in a line, Lucretius's word for supply that never breaks. [46] (2.532-535) A crux: the printed magis, "more fruitful", sits oddly with "rarer", and some editors read minus, "less". The translation keeps the printed word and takes "those others" of the commoner kinds, which 534-535 then balances: a kind rare here is many elsewhere. [47] (2.536-540) "snake-handed" (anguimanus) is Lucretius's compound for the elephant's trunk (again at 5.1303). Rome had known elephants since the wars with Pyrrhus and Hannibal; India's wall of ivory is hyperbole for their numbers. [48] (2.552-559) Finite first-beginnings of one kind would drift apart like wreckage in a great sea and never reassemble. "The sly enticement of the calm sea laughs" turns the proem's "the levels of the sea laugh" for Venus (1.8) into treachery. [49] (2.569-580) The war between the motions that build things and the motions that destroy them, waged from infinite time and never won: the book's most quoted close, the funeral wail mixed with the newborn's cry. "The shores of light" (577) has no "shining" because the Latin here lacks dias (see 1.22). [50] (2.581-588) The principle for everything down to 729: nothing we see is made of one kind of first-beginning, and the richer a thing's powers, the more kinds it holds. [51] (2.598-599) "the great mother of the gods, and mother of wild beasts, and begetter of our body": the earth, under the titles of the Great Mother, Cybele, whose cult came to Rome from Phrygia in 204 BC. The long account of her procession that follows (600-643) is set out with care in order to be dismissed in two lines (644-645). The Latin plays on mater, "mother", and materies, "matter", which the English cannot keep. [52] (2.600-613) "the learned poets of the Greeks" read the cult as allegory, and Lucretius reports their readings: the chariot in the air is the earth hung in space, the lions are wild offspring tamed by their parents' kindness, the crown of walls is the earth bearing cities. The image carried through the cities is the Roman procession of the Megalensia in April; "the Idaean Mother" (611) is named from Mount Ida in Phrygia, the home of the cult, and the claim that grain began there was one of the old explanations of her Phrygian escort. [53] (2.614-617) The Galli were her eunuch priests. The allegory makes them a warning: those who have outraged the Mother's power, or their parents, are unworthy to beget. "The shores of light" (in oras luminis) has no "shining", as the Latin has no dias. [54] (2.618-623) The drums, cymbals, horns and the Phrygian pipe are the instruments of the cult, and the weapons carried before the goddess are "signs of violent frenzy"; Lucretius describes the terror as a device, meant to frighten the ungrateful. [55] (2.629-639) The Curetes of Crete danced in armor around the infant Jupiter on Mount Dicte ("Dictaean"), clashing bronze to drown his cries, so that his father Saturn, who swallowed his children, would not find him; "the Mother" of 639 is Jupiter's mother. Lucretius identifies the armed dancers of the Phrygian procession with them, as the Romans did. [56] (2.636) This line is a copyist's garbling of the end of 635 and the start of 637, and editors delete it; the source prints it, and the translation renders it as printed, so the repetition is the damage and not the poet's emphasis. [57] (2.646-651) These six lines repeat 1.44-49; here they are in place, the doctrine of the gods' untroubled peace set against the cult just described. The English repeats its own lines. [58] (2.655-659, 680) To call the sea Neptune, grain Ceres and wine Bacchus is allowed as a way of speaking, so long as "foul religion" (religione turpi) does not come in with the names. The source prints 680 after 659, where editors have moved it from its transmitted place; the translation keeps the printed order and the numbers. [59] (2.688-699) The letters of the alphabet again (1.197, 1.823-829): elementa is "elements" for both letters and the elements of things, and the argument needs the one word. Line 694 is the refrain of 337 and 724. [60] (2.700-706) The Chimaera was the fire-breathing monster of Greek myth, part lion, part goat, part serpent. If seeds could join in any way, such things would be common; Book 5 (5.878-924) makes the same argument against centaurs and Scyllas. [61] (2.718-719) "a certain principle bounds all things" (quaedam ratio res terminat omnis): an obscure line, which some editors think corrupt. The translation renders the printed text; the sense wanted is that the law of fixed kinds holds for everything, not only for living things. [62] (2.725-727) "intervals, paths, connections, weights, blows, collisions, motions": the list of the ways first-beginnings differ in relation, which recurs at 1020-1021 with the five words of 1.685 added, and at 5.441. [63] (2.739-740) "casting of the mind" (animi iniectus) is Epicurus's phrase for the mind's direct grasp of what the senses cannot reach, the epibole tes dianoias; "the free cast of the mind" (animi iactus, 1047) is the same act. The English keeps "casting" and "cast" for the two. [64] (2.753-754) These two lines repeat 1.670-671 and 1.792-793, and 756 repeats 1.673; the English repeats its own lines. [65] (2.766-767) "white waves of shining marble" (candenti marmore): marmor is the Latin poets' word for the glittering surface of the sea as well as for the stone, so the simile and the figure are one. [66] (2.801-809) The dove's neck and the peacock's tail change color with the angle of the light, so the color is not in the thing. "Fire-bronze" (pyropus) is a red alloy of bronze and gold, not a gem; "emeralds" (zmaragdos) is any bright green stone. [67] (2.829-831) The source prints austrum, which is no word; the translation reads ostrum, "purple cloth", with most editors, as "thread by thread" (filatim) requires, rather than the conjecture aurum, "gold". "Scarlet" (poeniceus) is the Phoenician red, a cousin of the purple. [68] (2.833) particulae are the small pieces of a compound, which still show color before they come apart into the colorless "seeds of things"; the word is not one of Lucretius's names for the first-beginnings. [69] (2.847-853) The perfumer's rule: marjoram oil (amaracinum), myrrh oil (stacte) and nard were costly scents, and their base had to be an olive oil with no smell of its own, so as not to taint them. Marjoram oil returns at 6.973. [70] (2.871-873) Worms born from dung and rotting earth: the ancient commonplace of life arising from the lifeless, which Lucretius takes as plain fact; the example returns at 898-901 and 926-930. [71] (2.903a) The source marks a line or lines lost after 903. The sentence of 902-903 has lost its verb, and 904 resumes in the middle of a thought; the translation prints the gap and supplies nothing. [72] (2.911) The text is disputed; the translation renders it as printed, with the sense that the mind refuses to grant the limbs senses of their own, since a hand cut off feels nothing. [73] (2.944-951) "the knots of the vital spirit" (vitalis animae nodos): anima is "spirit", and the knots are the bonds that hold it in the body, which Book 3 explains; a blow too great for the creature loosens them and drives the spirit out through the body's passages (caulas). [74] (2.963-972) Pain is the disturbance of bodies from their seats and pleasure their return: the Epicurean definition. The first-beginnings, having no smaller parts to be disturbed, can feel neither. [75] (2.973-990) The laughing and weeping first-beginnings of 1.915-920 again, now pressed to the regress: if what laughs must be made of laughing things, those too must be, without end. [76] (2.991-1001) Sky as father and earth as mother (1.250-251), given a physical sense: rain is the seed, and the earth earns her name by feeding what she bears. That what came from the ether returns to the ether, and earth to earth, was a commonplace of Greek epitaphs; "the precincts of heaven" (caeli templa) are its regions. [77] (2.1013-1022) The letters of the verse once more: the same letters spell sky, sea, lands, rivers, sun. The nine-word list of 1020-1021 joins the seven of 726-727 to the five of 1.685, and 5.440-441 repeats it. [78] (2.1044-1047) "these walls of the world" (moenia mundi) are the walls of 1.73, and the reader is asked to pass them as Epicurus did; "the free cast of the mind" (animi iactus) is the act noted at 740. [79] (2.1052-1066) Other worlds: since space and matter are infinite, and this world was made by chance collisions with no design, the same must have happened elsewhere, and Lucretius concludes to "other gatherings of matter" like ours. A modern reader may hear the plurality of worlds of later cosmology; that is the reader's association, not the poet's claim. [80] (2.1061) The source prints coluerunt, "tilled", which gives no sense; the translation reads coaluerunt, "grew together", with most editors. [81] (2.1082) "the twin offspring of men" (hominum geminam prolem): the human race in its two sexes. [82] (2.1087-1089) "the boundary-stone of life, set deep" (vitae depactus terminus alte) is the figure of 1.77 and 1.596, the fixed limit of each thing's power; here it is mortality, and it binds worlds as it binds the creatures in them. [83] (2.1093-1104) Lucretius swears "by the holy hearts of the gods" and their calm, and the oath is the argument: beings in untroubled peace cannot be running the heavens, warming the earth and hurling thunderbolts. The bolt that passes the guilty and kills the innocent is the stock Epicurean case against divine justice, argued at length at 6.387-422. [84] (2.1117) "the creating nature of things" (rerum natura creatrix): the phrase of 1.629 and 5.1362, nature as maker. [85] (2.1144-1145) The world's walls (1.73) will be stormed like a city's: the mortality of the world, which Book 5 argues at length (5.91-415). [86] (2.1150-1152) "the worn-out earth" (effeta tellus) is a mother past childbearing; she once bore every kind, including the great beasts, and now bears only small ones. Book 5 tells how she bore the first living things (5.780-836). [87] (2.1153-1154) Homer's golden chain (Iliad 8.19), which Zeus boasts he could let down from heaven; Lucretius denies that mortals came down it. [88] (2.1168-1169) "the drift of time" (temporis momen) is the printed reading, momen being movement or tendency; some editors read nomen, "the name of the times". The translation keeps the harder printed word. [89] (2.1173-1174) "the bier" (capulum) is the language of burial: the book ends with the old man who praises his father's times and does not see that he, his vines and the earth itself are going to one funeral.