Translations from Lucretius

by Titus Lucretius Carus

Nor always with feigned love does the woman sigh,
When with her own uniting the man’s body
She holds him clasped, with moistened kisses sucking
His lips into her lips. Nay, from the heart
She often does it, and seeking mutual joys
Woos him to run to the utmost goal of love.
And nowise else could birds, cattle, wild beasts,
And sheep and mares submit to males, except
That their exuberant nature is in heat,
And burning draws towards them joyously
The lust of the covering mates. See you not also
That those whom mutual pleasure has enchained
Are often tormented in their common chains?
How often on the highroads dogs desiring
To separate, will strain in opposite ways
Eagerly with all their might, yet the whole time
They are held fast in the strong bonds of Venus!
Thus they would never act, unless they had
Experience of mutual joys, enough
To thrust them into the snare and hold them bound.
Therefore I assert, the pleasure must be common.

Often when, mingling her seed with the man’s,
The woman with sudden force has overwhelmed
And mastered the man’s force, then children are borne
Like to the mother from the mother’s seed,
As from the father’s seed like to the father.
But those whom you see sharing the form of both,
Mingling their parents’ features side by side,
Grow from the father’s body and mother’s blood,
When mutual ardour has conspired to fling
The seeds together, roused by the goads of Venus
Throughout the frame, and neither of the two
Has gained the mastery nor yet been mastered.
Moreover sometimes children may be born
Like their grandparents, and will often recall
The forms of their remoter ancestors,
Because the parents often hold concealed
Within their bodies many primal atoms
Mingled in many ways, which, handed down
From the first stock, father transmits to father.
And out of these Venus produces forms
With ever-varying chances, and recalls
The look and voice and hair of ancestors:
Since truly these things are no more derived
From a determined seed, than are our faces
Bodies and limbs. Also the female sex
May spring from a father’s seed, and males come forth
Formed from a mother’s body: for the birth
Is always fashioned out of the two seeds.
Whichever of the two that which is born
Is most like, of that parent it will have
More than an equal share; as you may observe,
Whether it be a male or female offspring.

Nor do divine powers thwart in any man
A fruitful sowing, so that he may never
Receive from sweet children the name of father,
But in sterile wedlock must live out his days;
As men in general fancy, and so sprinkle
The altars sorrowfully with much blood,
And heap the shrine-tables with offerings,
To make their wives pregnant with copious seed.
But vainly they importune the divinity
And sortilege of the gods. For they are sterile
Sometimes from too great thickness of the seed,
Or else it is unduly thin and fluid.
Because the thin cannot adhere and cleave
To the right spots, it forthwith flows away
Defeated, and departs abortively.
Others again discharge a seed too thick,
More solid than is suitable, which either
Does not shoot forth with so far-flung a stroke,
Or cannot so well penetrate where it should,
Or having penetrated, does not easily
Mix with the woman’s seed. For harmonies
Seem to be most important in love’s rites.
And some men will more readily fertilise
Some women, and other women will conceive
More readily and grow pregnant from other men.
And many women, sterile hitherto
In several marriages, have yet at last
Found mates from whom they could conceive children,
And so become enriched with a sweet offspring.
And even for those to whom their household wives,
However fruitful, had failed so far to bear,
A well-matched nature has been often found
That they might fortify their age with children.
So important is it, if seeds are to agree
And blend with seeds for purposes of birth,
Whether the thick encounters with the fluid,
And the fluid with the thick. Also herein
It is of moment on what diet life
Is nourished; for the seed within the limbs
By some foods is made solid, and by others
Is thinned and dwindled. Also in what modes
Love’s bland delight is dealt with, that likewise
Is of the highest moment. For in general
Women are thought more readily to conceive
After the manner of wild beasts and quadrupeds,
Since so the seeds can find the proper spots,
The breasts being bent downward, the loins raised.
Nor have wives the least need of wanton movements.
For a woman thwarts conception and frustrates it,
If with her loins she joyously lures on
The man’s love, and, with her whole bosom relaxed
And limp, provokes lust’s tide to overflow.
For then she thrusts the furrow from the share’s
Direct path, turning the seed’s stroke aside
From its right goal. And thus for their own ends
Harlots are wont to move, because they wish
Not to conceive nor lie in childbed often,
Likewise that Venus may give men more pleasure.
But of this surely our wives should have no need.

Sometimes, by no divine interposition
Nor through the shafts of Venus, a plain woman,
Though of inferior beauty, may be loved.
For sometimes she herself by her behaviour,
Her gentle ways and personal daintiness
Will easily accustom you to spend
Your whole life with her. And indeed ’tis custom
That harmonises love. For what is struck
However lightly by repeated blows,
Yet after a long lapse of time is conquered
And must dissolve. Do you not likewise see
That drops of water falling upon stones
After long lapse of time will pierce them through?

BOOK V

Who is there that by energy of mind
Could build a poem worthy of our theme’s
Majesty and of these discoveries?
Or who has such a mastery of words
As to devise praises proportionate
To his deserts, who to us has bequeathed
Such prizes, earned by his own intellect?
No man, I think, formed of a mortal body.
For if we are to speak as the acknowledged
Majesty of our theme demands, a god
Was he, most noble Memmius, a god,
Who first found out that discipline of life
Which now is called philosophy, and whose skill
From such great billows and a gloom so dark
Delivered life, and steered it into a calm
So peaceful and beneath so bright a light.
For compare the divine discoveries
Of others in old times. ’Tis told that Ceres
First revealed corn to men, Liber the juice
Of grape-born wine; though life without these things
Might well have been sustained; and even now
’Tis said there are some people that live so.
But to live happily was not possible
Without a serene mind. Therefore more justly
Is this man deemed by us a god, from whom
Came those sweet solaces of life, which now
Already through great nations spread abroad
Have power to soothe men’s minds. Should you suppose
Moreover that the deeds of Hercules
Surpass his, then yet further will you drift
Out of true reason’s course. For what harm now
Would those great gaping jaws of Nemea’s lion
Do to us, and the bristly Arcadian boar?
What could the bull of Crete, or Lerna’s pest
The Hydra fenced around with venomous snakes,
And threefold Gerion’s triple-breasted might,
Or those brazen-plumed birds inhabiting
Stymphalian swamps, what injury so great
Could they inflict upon us, or the steeds
Of Thracian Diomede, with fire-breathing nostrils
Ranging Bistonia’s wilds and Ismarus?
Also the serpent, guardian of the bright
Gold-gleaming apples of the Hesperides,
Fierce and grim-glancing, with huge body coiled
Round the tree’s stem, how were it possible
He could molest us by the Atlantic shore
And those lone seas, where none of us sets foot,
And no barbarian ventures to draw near?
And all those other monsters which likewise
Have been destroyed, if they had not been vanquished,
What harm, pray, could they do, though now alive?
None, I presume: for the earth even now abounds
With wild beasts to repletion, and is filled
With shuddering terror throughout its woods, great mountains
And deep forests, regions which we have power
For the most part to avoid. But if the heart
Has not been purged, what tumults then, what dangers
Must needs invade us in our own despite!
What fierce anxieties, offspring of desire,
Rend the distracted man, what mastering fears!
Pride also, sordid avarice, and violence,
Of what calamities are not they the cause!
Luxury too, and slothfulness! He therefore
Who could subdue all these, and banish them
Out of our minds by force of words, not arms,
Is it not right we should deem such a man
Worthy to be numbered among the gods?
The more that he was wont in beautiful
And godlike speech to utter many truths
About the immortal gods themselves, and set
The whole nature of things in clear words forth.

I, in his footsteps treading, follow out
His reasonings and expound in my discourse
By what law all things are created, how
They are compelled to abide within that law,
Without power to annul the immutable
Decrees of time; and first above all else
The mind’s nature was found to be composed
Of a body that had birth, without the power
To endure through a long period unscathed:
For it was found to be mere images
That are wont to deceive the mind in sleep,
Whenever we appear to behold one
Whom life has abandoned. Now, for what remains,
The order of my argument has brought me
To the point where I must show both how the world
Is composed of a body which must die,
Also that it was born; and in what way
Matter once congregating and uniting
Established earth sky sea, the stars, the sun,
And the moon’s globe: also what living creatures
Rose from the earth, and which were those that never
At any time were born: next in what way
Mankind began to employ varied speech
One with another by giving names to things:
Then for what causes that fear of the gods
Entered their breasts, and now through the whole world
Gives sanctity to shrines, lakes and groves,
Altars and images of gods. Moreover
I will make plain by what force and control
Nature pilots the courses of the sun
And the wanderings of the moon, lest we perchance
Deem that they traverse of their own free will
Their yearly orbits between heaven and earth,
Obsequiously furthering the increase
Of crops and living things, or should suppose
That they roll onwards by the gods’ design.
For those who have learnt rightly that the gods
Lead a life free from care, if yet they wonder
By what means all things can be carried on,
Such above all as are perceived to happen
In the ethereal regions overhead,
They are borne back again into their old
Religious fears, and adopt pitiless lords,
Whom in their misery they believe to be
Almighty; for they are ignorant of what can
And what cannot exist; in fine they know not
Upon what principle each thing has its powers
Limited, and its deep-set boundary stone.

But now, lest I detain you with more promises,
In the first place consider, Memmius,
The seas, the land, the sky, whose threefold nature,
Three bodies, three forms so dissimilar,
And three such wondrous textures, a single day
Shall give to destruction, and the world’s vast mass
And fabric, for so many years upheld,
Shall fall to ruin. Nor am I unaware
How novel and strange, when first it strikes the mind,
Must appear this destruction of earth and heaven
That is to be, and for myself how difficult
It will prove to convince you by mere words,
As happens when one brings to a man’s ears
Some notion unfamiliar hitherto,
If yet one cannot thrust it visibly
Beneath his eyes, or place it in his hands;
For the paved highway of belief through touch
And sight leads straightest into the human heart
And the precincts of the mind. Yet none the less
I will speak out. Reality itself
It may be will bring credence to my words,
And in a little while you will behold
The earth terribly quaking, and all things
Shattered to ruins. But may pilot fortune
Steer far from us such disaster, and may reason
Convince us rather than reality
That the whole universe may well collapse,
Tumbling together with a dread crash and roar.

But before I attempt concerning this
To announce fate’s oracles in more holy wise,
And with assurance far more rational
Than doth the Pythoness, when from the tripod
And laurel wreath of Phoebus her voice sounds,
Many consolatories will I first
Expound to you in learned words, lest haply
Curbed by religion’s bit you should suppose
That earth and sun and sky, sea, stars and moon,
Their substance being divine, must needs abide
Eternally, and should therefore think it just
That all, after the manner of the giants,
Should suffer penance for their monstrous guilt
Who by their reasoning shake the world’s firm walls,
And fain would quench the glorious sun in heaven,
Shaming with mortal speech immortal things;
Though in fact such objects are so far removed
From any share in divine energy,
And so unworthy to be accounted gods,
That they may be considered with more reason
To afford us the conception of what is quite
Devoid of vital motion and of sense.
For truly by no means can we suppose
That the nature and judgment of the mind
Can exist linked with every kind of body,
Even as in the sky trees cannot exist,
Nor clouds in the salt waters, nor can fish
Live in the fields, neither can blood be found
In wood, nor sap in stones: but where each thing
Can dwell and grow, is determined and ordained.
Even so the nature of mind cannot be born
Alone without a body, nor exist
Separated from sinews and from blood.
But if (for this is likelier by far)
The mind’s force might reside within the head
Or shoulders, or be born down in the heels,
Or in any part you will, it would at least
Inhabit the same man and the same vessel.
But since even in our body it is seen
To be determined and ordained where soul
And mind can separately dwell and grow,
All the more must it be denied that mind
Cannot have being quite outside a body
And a living form, in crumbling clods of earth,
In the sun’s fire, or water, or aloft
In the domains of ether. Such things therefore
Are not endowed with divine consciousness,
Because they cannot be quickened into life.

This too you cannot possibly believe,
That there are holy abodes of deities
Anywhere in the world. For so tenuous
Is the nature of gods, and from our senses
So far withdrawn, that hardly can the mind
Imagine it. And seeing that hitherto
It has eluded touch or blow of hands,
It must touch nothing which for us is tangible:
For naught can touch that may not itself be touched.
So even their abodes must be unlike
Our own, tenuous as their bodies are.
All this hereafter I will prove to you
By plentiful argument. Further, to say
That for the sake of mankind the gods willed
To frame the wondrous nature of the world,
And that on this account we ought to extol
Their handiwork as worthy of all praise,
And to believe that it will prove eternal
And indestructible, and to think it sin
Ever by any effort to disturb
What by the ancient wisdom of the gods
Has been established everlastingly
For mankind’s benefit, or by argument
To assail and overthrow it utterly
From top to bottom, and to invent besides
Other such errors—all this, Memmius,
Is folly. For what advantage could our thanks
Bestow upon immortal and blessed beings
That for our sakes they should bestir themselves
To perform any task? Or what new fact
Could have induced them, tranquil hitherto,
After so long to change their former life?
For it seems fitting he should take delight
In a new state of things, to whom the old
Was painful: but for him whom in past times,
While he was living in felicity,
No evil had befallen, for such a one
What could have kindled a desire for change?
Must we imagine that their life lay prostrate
In darkness and in misery, till the birth
And origin of things first dawned upon them?
Besides, what evil had it been to us
Not to have been created? For whoever
Has once been born, must wish to abide in life
So long as luring pleasure bids him stay:
But one who has never tasted the love of life,
Nor even been numbered in life’s ranks, what harm
Were it for him not to have been created?
Again whence first was implanted in the gods
A pattern for begetting things? Whence too
The preconception of what men should be,
So that they knew and imaged in their minds
What they desired to make? And by what means
Could they have ever ascertained the energy
Latent in primal atoms, or what forms
Might be produced by changes in their order,
Unless Nature herself had given them first
A sample of creation? For indeed
These primal atoms in such multitudes
And in so many ways, through infinite time
Impelled by blows and moved by their own weight,
Have been borne onward so incessantly,
Uniting in every way and making trial
Of every shape they could combine to form,
That ’tis not strange if they have also fallen
Into such grouping, and acquired such motions
As those whereby the present sum of things
Is carried on and ceaselessly renewed.