Delphi Complete Works of Lucretius

by Titus Lucretius Carus

  Are bold to mix, though not the heavy pitch

  With the light oil-of-olive. And purple dye

  Of shell-fish so uniteth with the wool’s

  Body alone that it cannot be ta’en

  Away forever — nay, though thou gavest toil

  To restore the same with the Neptunian flood,

  Nay, though all ocean willed to wash it out

  With all its waves. Again, gold unto gold

  Doth not one substance bind, and only one?

  And is not brass by tin joined unto brass?

  And other ensamples how many might one find!

  What then? Nor is there unto thee a need

  Of such long ways and roundabout, nor boots it

  For me much toil on this to spend. More fit

  It is in few words briefly to embrace

  Things many: things whose textures fall together

  So mutually adapt, that cavities

  To solids correspond, these cavities

  Of this thing to the solid parts of that,

  And those of that to solid parts of this —

  Such joinings are the best. Again, some things

  Can be the one with other coupled and held,

  Linked by hooks and eyes, as ‘twere; and this

  Seems more the fact with iron and this stone.

  Now, of diseases what the law, and whence

  The Influence of bane upgathering can

  Upon the race of man and herds of cattle

  Kindle a devastation fraught with death,

  I will unfold. And, first, I’ve taught above

  That seeds there be of many things to us

  Life-giving, and that, contrariwise, there must

  Fly many round bringing disease and death.

  When these have, haply, chanced to collect

  And to derange the atmosphere of earth,

  The air becometh baneful. And, lo, all

  That Influence of bane, that pestilence,

  Or from Beyond down through our atmosphere,

  Like clouds and mists, descends, or else collects

  From earth herself and rises, when, a-soak

  And beat by rains unseasonable and suns,

  Our earth hath then contracted stench and rot.

  Seest thou not, also, that whoso arrive

  In region far from fatherland and home

  Are by the strangeness of the clime and waters

  Distempered? — since conditions vary much.

  For in what else may we suppose the clime

  Among the Britons to differ from Aegypt’s own

  (Where totters awry the axis of the world),

  Or in what else to differ Pontic clime

  From Gades’ and from climes adown the south,

  On to black generations of strong men

  With sun-baked skins? Even as we thus do see

  Four climes diverse under the four main-winds

  And under the four main-regions of the sky,

  So, too, are seen the colour and face of men

  Vastly to disagree, and fixed diseases

  To seize the generations, kind by kind:

  There is the elephant-disease which down

  In midmost Aegypt, hard by streams of Nile,

  Engendered is — and never otherwhere.

  In Attica the feet are oft attacked,

  And in Achaean lands the eyes. And so

  The divers spots to divers parts and limbs

  Are noxious; ’tis a variable air

  That causes this. Thus when an atmosphere,

  Alien by chance to us, begins to heave,

  And noxious airs begin to crawl along,

  They creep and wind like unto mist and cloud,

  Slowly, and everything upon their way

  They disarrange and force to change its state.

  It happens, too, that when they’ve come at last

  Into this atmosphere of ours, they taint

  And make it like themselves and alien.

  Therefore, asudden this devastation strange,

  This pestilence, upon the waters falls,

  Or settles on the very crops of grain

  Or other meat of men and feed of flocks.

  Or it remains a subtle force, suspense

  In the atmosphere itself; and when therefrom

  We draw our inhalations of mixed air,

  Into our body equally its bane

  Also we must suck in. In manner like,

  Oft comes the pestilence upon the kine,

  And sickness, too, upon the sluggish sheep.

  Nor aught it matters whether journey we

  To regions adverse to ourselves and change

  The atmospheric cloak, or whether nature

  Herself import a tainted atmosphere

  To us or something strange to our own use

  Which can attack us soon as ever it come.

  THE PLAGUE ATHENS

  ’Twas such a manner of disease, ’twas such

  Mortal miasma in Cecropian lands

  Whilom reduced the plains to dead men’s bones,

  Unpeopled the highways, drained of citizens

  The Athenian town. For coming from afar,

  Rising in lands of Aegypt, traversing

  Reaches of air and floating fields of foam,

  At last on all Pandion’s folk it swooped;

  Whereat by troops unto disease and death

  Were they o’er-given. At first, they’d bear about

  A skull on fire with heat, and eyeballs twain

  Red with suffusion of blank glare. Their throats,

  Black on the inside, sweated oozy blood;

  And the walled pathway of the voice of man

  Was clogged with ulcers; and the very tongue,

  The mind’s interpreter, would trickle gore,

  Weakened by torments, tardy, rough to touch.

  Next when that Influence of bane had chocked,

  Down through the throat, the breast, and streamed had

  E’en into sullen heart of those sick folk,

  Then, verily, all the fences of man’s life

  Began to topple. From the mouth the breath

  Would roll a noisome stink, as stink to heaven

  Rotting cadavers flung unburied out.

  And, lo, thereafter, all the body’s strength

  And every power of mind would languish, now

  In very doorway of destruction.

  And anxious anguish and ululation (mixed

  With many a groan) companioned alway

  The intolerable torments. Night and day,

  Recurrent spasms of vomiting would rack

  Alway their thews and members, breaking down

  With sheer exhaustion men already spent.

  And yet on no one’s body couldst thou mark

  The skin with o’er-much heat to burn aglow,

  But rather the body unto touch of hands

  Would offer a warmish feeling, and thereby

  Show red all over, with ulcers, so to say,

  Inbranded, like the “sacred fires” o’erspread

  Along the members. The inward parts of men,

  In truth, would blaze unto the very bones;

  A flame, like flame in furnaces, would blaze

  Within the stomach. Nor couldst aught apply

  Unto their members light enough and thin

  For shift of aid — but coolness and a breeze

  Ever and ever. Some would plunge those limbs

  On fire with bane into the icy streams,

  Hurling the body naked into the waves;

  Many would headlong fling them deeply down

  The water-pits, tumbling with eager mouth

  Already agape. The insatiable thirst

  That whelmed their parched bodies, lo, would make

  A goodly shower seem like to scanty drops.

  Respite of torment was there none. Their frames

  Forspent lay prone. With silent lips of fear
<
br />   Would Medicine mumble low, the while she saw

  So many a time men roll their eyeballs round,

  Staring wide-open, unvisited of sleep,

  The heralds of old death. And in those months

  Was given many another sign of death:

  The intellect of mind by sorrow and dread

  Deranged, the sad brow, the countenance

  Fierce and delirious, the tormented ears

  Beset with ringings, the breath quick and short

  Or huge and intermittent, soaking sweat

  A-glisten on neck, the spittle in fine gouts

  Tainted with colour of crocus and so salt,

  The cough scarce wheezing through the rattling throat.

  Aye, and the sinews in the fingered hands

  Were sure to contract, and sure the jointed frame

  To shiver, and up from feet the cold to mount

  Inch after inch: and toward the supreme hour

  At last the pinched nostrils, nose’s tip

  A very point, eyes sunken, temples hollow,

  Skin cold and hard, the shuddering grimace,

  The pulled and puffy flesh above the brows! —

  O not long after would their frames lie prone

  In rigid death. And by about the eighth

  Resplendent light of sun, or at the most

  On the ninth flaming of his flambeau, they

  Would render up the life. If any then

  Had ‘scaped the doom of that destruction, yet

  Him there awaited in the after days

  A wasting and a death from ulcers vile

  And black discharges of the belly, or else

  Through the clogged nostrils would there ooze along

  Much fouled blood, oft with an aching head:

  Hither would stream a man’s whole strength and flesh.

  And whoso had survived that virulent flow

  Of the vile blood, yet into thews of him

  And into his joints and very genitals

  Would pass the old disease. And some there were,

  Dreading the doorways of destruction

  So much, lived on, deprived by the knife

  Of the male member; not a few, though lopped

  Of hands and feet, would yet persist in life,

  And some there were who lost their eyeballs: O

  So fierce a fear of death had fallen on them!

  And some, besides, were by oblivion

  Of all things seized, that even themselves they knew

  No longer. And though corpse on corpse lay piled

  Unburied on ground, the race of birds and beasts

  Would or spring back, scurrying to escape

  The virulent stench, or, if they’d tasted there,

  Would languish in approaching death. But yet

  Hardly at all during those many suns

  Appeared a fowl, nor from the woods went forth

  The sullen generations of wild beasts —

  They languished with disease and died and died.

  In chief, the faithful dogs, in all the streets

  Outstretched, would yield their breath distressfully

  For so that Influence of bane would twist

  Life from their members. Nor was found one sure

  And universal principle of cure:

  For what to one had given the power to take

  The vital winds of air into his mouth,

  And to gaze upward at the vaults of sky,

  The same to others was their death and doom.

  In those affairs, O awfullest of all,

  O pitiable most was this, was this:

  Whoso once saw himself in that disease

  Entangled, ay, as damned unto death,

  Would lie in wanhope, with a sullen heart,

  Would, in fore-vision of his funeral,

  Give up the ghost, O then and there. For, lo,

  At no time did they cease one from another

  To catch contagion of the greedy plague, —

  As though but woolly flocks and horned herds;

  And this in chief would heap the dead on dead:

  For who forbore to look to their own sick,

  O these (too eager of life, of death afeard)

  Would then, soon after, slaughtering Neglect

  Visit with vengeance of evil death and base —

  Themselves deserted and forlorn of help.

  But who had stayed at hand would perish there

  By that contagion and the toil which then

  A sense of honour and the pleading voice

  Of weary watchers, mixed with voice of wail

  Of dying folk, forced them to undergo.

  This kind of death each nobler soul would meet.

  The funerals, uncompanioned, forsaken,

  Like rivals contended to be hurried through.

  And men contending to ensepulchre

  Pile upon pile the throng of their own dead:

  And weary with woe and weeping wandered home;

  And then the most would take to bed from grief.

  Nor could be found not one, whom nor disease

  Nor death, nor woe had not in those dread times

  Attacked.

  By now the shepherds and neatherds all,

  Yea, even the sturdy guiders of curved ploughs,

  Began to sicken, and their bodies would lie

  Huddled within back-corners of their huts,

  Delivered by squalor and disease to death.

  O often and often couldst thou then have seen

  On lifeless children lifeless parents prone,

  Or offspring on their fathers’, mothers’ corpse

  Yielding the life. And into the city poured

  O not in least part from the countryside

  That tribulation, which the peasantry

  Sick, sick, brought thither, thronging from every quarter,

  Plague-stricken mob. All places would they crowd,

  All buildings too; whereby the more would death

  Up-pile a-heap the folk so crammed in town.

  Ah, many a body thirst had dragged and rolled

  Along the highways there was lying strewn

  Besides Silenus-headed water-fountains, —

  The life-breath choked from that too dear desire

  Of pleasant waters. Ah, everywhere along

  The open places of the populace,

  And along the highways, O thou mightest see

  Of many a half-dead body the sagged limbs,

  Rough with squalor, wrapped around with rags,

  Perish from very nastiness, with naught

  But skin upon the bones, well-nigh already

  Buried — in ulcers vile and obscene filth.

  All holy temples, too, of deities

  Had Death becrammed with the carcasses;

  And stood each fane of the Celestial Ones

  Laden with stark cadavers everywhere —

  Places which warders of the shrines had crowded

  With many a guest. For now no longer men

  Did mightily esteem the old Divine,

  The worship of the gods: the woe at hand

  Did over-master. Nor in the city then

  Remained those rites of sepulture, with which

  That pious folk had evermore been wont

  To buried be. For it was wildered all

  In wild alarms, and each and every one

  With sullen sorrow would bury his own dead,

  As present shift allowed. And sudden stress

  And poverty to many an awful act

  Impelled; and with a monstrous screaming they

  Would, on the frames of alien funeral pyres,

  Place their own kin, and thrust the torch beneath

  Oft brawling with much bloodshed round about

  Rather than quit dead bodies loved in life.

  The Latin Text

  Samos, Greece — the birthplace of Epicurus in 99 BC

  CONTENTS OF THE LATIN TEXTr />
  In this section of the eBook, readers can view the original Latin text of Lucretius’ De rerum natura. You may wish to Bookmark this page for future reference.

  CONTENTS

  Liber Primus

  Liber Secundus

  Liber Tertius

  Liber Quartus

  Liber Quintus

  Liber Sextus

  Liber Primus

  Aeneadum genetrix, hominum divomque voluptas,

  alma Venus, caeli subter labentia signa

  quae mare navigerum, quae terras frugiferentis

  concelebras, per te quoniam genus omne animantum

  5 concipitur visitque exortum lumina solis:

  te, dea, te fugiunt venti, te nubila caeli

  adventumque tuum, tibi suavis daedala tellus

  summittit flores, tibi rident aequora ponti

  placatumque nitet diffuso lumine caelum.

  10 nam simul ac species patefactast verna diei

  et reserata viget genitabilis aura favoni,

  aeriae primum volucris te, diva, tuumque

  significant initum perculsae corda tua vi.

  inde ferae pecudes persultant pabula laeta

  15 et rapidos tranant amnis: ita capta lepore

  te sequitur cupide quo quamque inducere pergis.

  denique per maria ac montis fluviosque rapacis

  frondiferasque domos avium camposque virentis

  omnibus incutiens blandum per pectora amorem

  20 efficis ut cupide generatim saecla propagent.

  quae quoniam rerum naturam sola gubernas

  nec sine te quicquam dias in luminis oras

  exoritur neque fit laetum neque amabile quicquam,

  te sociam studeo scribendis versibus esse,

  25 quos ego de rerum natura pangere conor

  Memmiadae nostro, quem tu, dea, tempore in omni

  omnibus ornatum voluisti excellere rebus.

  quo magis aeternum da dictis, diva, leporem.

  effice ut interea fera moenera militiai

  30 per maria ac terras omnis sopita quiescant;

  nam tu sola potes tranquilla pace iuvare

  mortalis, quoniam belli fera moenera Mavors

  armipotens regit, in gremium qui saepe tuum se

  reiicit aeterno devictus vulnere amoris,

  35 atque ita suspiciens tereti cervice reposta

  pascit amore avidos inhians in te, dea, visus

  eque tuo pendet resupini spiritus ore.

  hunc tu, diva, tuo recubantem corpore sancto

  circum fusa super, suavis ex ore loquellas

  40 funde petens placidam Romanis, incluta, pacem;

  nam neque nos agere hoc patriai tempore iniquo