He’s pitying himself. For he doesn’t separate
Himself from the body lying there, he thinks
It is still himself, and standing by it gives
Some part of his own feeling to it.
Hence he resents that he was born mortal,
He does not see that in real death there’ll be
885
No other self that living could bewail
His perished self, or stand by to feel pain
In body torn or burnt. For if in death
It is painful to be mangled by wild beasts,
I do not see how it is not also painful
Laid on a pyre to shrivel in hot flames
890
Or to be packed in honey and stifled, or
To lie stiff with cold upon a marble slab,
Or to be crushed under a weight of earth.
893
Men lie at table, goblets in their hands
912
And garlands on their brows; and in their hearts
They say ‘Short is the joy of men,
Too soon it is gone and none can e’er recall it.’
915
As if in death their chief trouble will be
A parching thirst or burning drought, or a desire
For something that they crave and cannot get.
918
‘No longer now a happy home will greet you
894
Nor loving wife, nor your sweet children run
To snatch your kisses and to touch your heart
With silent sweet content. Nor shall you prosper
In your life’s work, a bulwark to your people.
Unhappy wretch,’ they cry, ‘one fatal day
Has taken all those sweets of life away.’
But this they do not add, that the desire
900
Of things like these hangs over you no more.
Which if their minds could truly see and words
Follow, why, then from great distress and fear
They’ld free themselves. ‘You in the sleep of death
Lie now and will forever lie, removed
905
Far from all pain and grief. But we, who saw
You turned to ashes on a dreadful pyre,
Mourned you in tears insatiable. For ever
No day will lift that sorrow from our hearts.’
Then we must ask, what bitterness is this,
If all things end in sleep and quiet, that
910
A man can waste away in ceaseless grief.
911
For no one feels the want of himself and his life
919
When mind and body alike are quiet in sleep.
920
For all we care, that sleep might have no end.
Free from all yearning for ourselves we lie.
And yet, when a man springs up, startled from sleep
And pulls himself together, through our limbs
Those first beginnings are never far away
From the sense-giving motions of the body.
925
Therefore much less to us must death be thought
To be, if anything can be less than what
We see to be nothing. For matter is thrown apart
More widely after death, and no one wakes
When once death’s chilling pause has halted him.
930
Again, suppose that nature suddenly
Finding a voice upbraided one of us
In words like these: ‘What ails you, mortal man,
And makes you wallow in unhealthy grief?
Why do you moan and groan and weep at death?
For if your former life now past has pleased you
935
And if your blessings through a broken jar
Have not run out, all wasted, unenjoyed,
Why don’t you, like a man that’s wined and dined
Full well on life, bow out, content, and so
Your exit make and rest in peace, you fool?
But if the things you’ve liked and loved are spent
940
And life’s a grievance to you, why then seek
To add more? They will go just like the others,
No joy at all, and all will end in dust.
Better to make an end of life and trouble.
For there is nothing else I can devise
To please you. Always everything’s the same.
945
And if your body not yet by the years
Is worn and fails, yet everything remains
The same. There is no change, even if you live
Longer than anyone on earth, and even more
If it should be your fate never to die.’
What answer can we give to this, except
950
That nature’s charge is just and that this speech
Makes a good case, from which we’re not acquitted?
Consider now an old man who complains
Excessively about his death to come.
Nature would justly cry out louder still
And say in bitter words, ‘Away, you rogue,
With all these tears and stop this snivelling.
All life’s rewards you have reaped and now you’re withered,
955
But since you always want what you have not got
And never are content with that you have,
Your life has been unfulfilled, ungratifying,
And death stands by you unexpectedly
Before the feast is finished and you are full.
960
Come now, remember you’re no longer young
And be content to go; thus it must be.’
She would be right, I think, to act like this,
Right to rebuke him and find fault with him.
For the old order always by the new
Thrust out gives way; and one thing must from another
965
Be made afresh; and no one ever falls
Into the deep pit and black Tartarus.
Matter is needed for the seeds to grow
Of future generations. Yes, but all
When life is done will follow you, and all
Before your time have fallen, and will fall.
So one thing from another will always come.
970
And life none have in freehold, all as tenants.
Look back upon the ages of time past
Eternal, before we were born, and see
That they have been nothing to us, nothing at all.
This is the mirror nature holds for us
To show the face of time to come, when we
At last are dead. Is there in this for us
975
Anything horrible? Is there anything sad?
Is it not more free from care than any sleep?
And all those things, for sure, which fables tell
Exist deep down in Acheron, exist
For us in this our life. No Tantalus
980
Unhappy wretch fears the great rock that hangs
In the air above him, frozen with vain terror.
No. It is in this life that the fear of gods
Oppresses mortals without cause: the fall
They fear is that which chance may bring to them.
No Tityos lying in Acheron is torn
By vultures, nor through all eternity
Dig though they may can they find anything
985
In that vast breast; and though his frame be spread
Immense to cover not nine acres only
But the whole globe of earth with limbs outstretched,
Yet not forever will he suffer pain
990
Nor from his body furnish food always.
Our Tityos is here, lying in love,
And torn by winged cares (anxiety
Consumes him) or tortured by some other cravin
g.
Sisyphus also in this life appears
995
Before our eyes. He seeks the people’s votes
Athirst to get the Lictor’s rods and axes,
And always loses and retires defeated.
For to seek power that’s empty and never got
And always vainly toil and sweat for it
This is to strain to push up the steep hill
The rock that always from the very top
1000
Rolls headlong down again to the plain below.
Another simile! The Danaids.
To be always feeding an ungrateful mind
And fill it with good things, and yet never
To satisfy it (as the seasons do
1005
When they come round bringing their fruits and all
Their manifold delights, and yet we are never
Filled full with all the varied fruits of life),
This I believe is what the story means
Of young and lovely girls that must pour water
Into a leaking urn, and all their pains
Can never fill it. Cerberus and the Furies
1010
Dwell in that land where daylight never comes,
They say, and Tartarus flames belching out;
And none of these exist, nor ever can.
But in this life there is fear of punishment
For evil deeds, fear no less terrible
Than the deeds themselves, and expiation of crime,
1015
Prison, and the dread hurling from the rock,
Stripes, torturers, dungeons, red-hot plates,
Firebrands, and even if all of these be spared
The guilty conscience filled with wild foreboding
Applies the goad and scorches itself with whips,
Seeing no end to all these miseries,
1020
No final limit to its punishment,
And fears that after death there’s worse to come.
So fools make for themselves a Hell on earth.
Now here is something you might say to yourself:
‘Even good Ancus lost the sight of day,
1025
A better man than you, you rogue, by far.
And many kings and powers after him
Have fallen, rulers of great states and nations.
And he who laid a highway through the sea
And o’er the deep a road for armies made,
1030
Taught them to walk across the briny lake
And spurned the roaring waves with his cavalry,
He also lost the glorious light of day
And dying poured his spirit from his body.
Great Scipio, the thunderbolt of war,
Terror of Carthage, gave to earth his bones
As though he had been the humblest of his slaves.
1035
Add men that found out things of science and beauty
Add all the brotherhood of Helicon,
Whose one and only king throughout the ages
Homer lies now in sleep with all the rest.
Democritus, when a mature old age
Warned him his mind and memory were fading,
1040
Offered his head right willingly to death.
Epicurus himself died when the light of life
Had run its course, he who in genius
Surpassed the race of men, outshone them all
As the sun risen in heaven outshines the stars.
And you, will you doubt and feel aggrieved to die?
1045
Already, while you live and see, your life
Is all but dead. You waste most of your time
In sleep. You snore while wide awake; and dream
Incessantly; and always in your mind
You’re plagued with fear that’s meaningless, and often
You can’t make out what is wrong with you, oppressed,
1050
You drunken wretch, by cares on every side,
And drift on shifting tides of fantasy.’
If they could see, those men who know they feel
A burden on their minds that wearies them,
If they could also know the causes of it
1055
And whence so great a pile of woe lies on them,
They’ld never live as most of them do now
Each ignorant of what he wants and seeking always
By change of place to lay his burden down.
A man leaves his great house because he’s bored
1060
With life at home, and suddenly returns,
Finding himself no happier abroad.
He rushes off to his villa driving like mad,
You’ld think he’s going to a house on fire,
And yawns before he’s put his foot inside,
1065
Or falls asleep and seeks oblivion,
Or even rushes back to town again.
So each man flies from himself (vain hope, because
It clings to him the more closely against his will)
And hates himself because he is sick in mind
And does not know the cause of his disease.
1070
Which if he clearly saw, at once he would
Leave everything, and study first to know
The nature of the world. For what is in question
Is not of one hour but of eternity,
The state in which all mortals after death
Must needs remain for all remaining time.
1075
And what is this great and evil lust of life
That drives and tosses us in doubt and peril?
A certain end of life is fixed for men.
There is no escape from death and we must die.
Again, we live and move and have our being
In the same place always, and no new pleasure
1080
By living longer can be hammered out.
But while we can’t get what we want, that seems
Of all things most desirable. Once got,
We must have something else. One constant thirst
Of life besets us ever open-mouthed.
And there is doubt what fortunes later years
And chance may bring us and what end awaits.
1085
Nor by prolonging life, one single second
Do we deduct from the long years of death.
Nor have we strength to make in any way
Our time less long once death has come to us.
Live though you may through all ages that you wish,
1090
No less that eternal death will still await,
And no less long a time will be no more
He who today from light his exit made
Than he who perished months and years ago.
BOOK FOUR
A pathless country of the Pierides
I traverse, where no foot has ever trod.
A joy it is to come to virgin springs
And drink, a joy it is to pluck new flowers,
To make a glorious garland for my head
From fields whose blooms the Muses never picked
5
To crown the brows of any man before.
First, since of matters high I make my theme,
Proceeding to set free the minds of men
Bound by the tight knots of religion.
Next, since of things so dark in verse so clear
I write, and touch all things with the Muses’ charm.
In this no lack of purpose may be seen.
10
For as with children, when the doctors try
To give them loathsome wormwood, first they smear
Sweet yellow honey on the goblet’s rim,
That childhood all unheeding may be deceived
At the lip’s edge, and so drink up the juice
15
Of bi
tter medicine, tricked but not betrayed,
And by such means gain health and strength again,
So now do I: for oft my doctrine seems
Distasteful to those that have not sampled it
And most shrink back from it. My purpose is
With the sweet voices of Pierian song
20
To expound my doctrine, and as it were to touch it
With the delicious honey of the Muses;
So in this way perchance my poetry
Can hold your mind, while you attempt to grasp
The nature of the world, and understand
Its value and its usefulness to men.
25
And since I have shown the nature of the mind,
What it consists of, and how combined with body
It flourishes, and how when torn away
From the body it returns to its first elements,
Now I address a matter of great import
For our enquiries, and I show that there
Exist what we call images of things;
30
Which as it were peeled off from the surfaces
Of objects, fly this way and that through the air;
These same, encountering us in wakeful hours,
Terrify our minds, and also in sleep, as when
We see strange shapes and phantoms of the dead
35
Which often as in slumber sunk we lay
Have roused us in horror; lest perchance we think
That spirits escape from Acheron, or ghosts
Flit among the living, or that after death
Something of us remains when once the body
And mind alike together have been destroyed,
40
And each to its primal atoms has dissolved.
I say therefore that likenesses or thin shapes
41
Are sent out from the surfaces of things
42
Which we must call as it were their films or bark
43
Because the image bears the look and shape
51
Of the body from which it came, as it floats in the air.
52
And this the dullest brain can recognize:
53
In the first place, since within the range of vision
44
Many things throw off bodies, some rarefied
55
As bonfires throw off smoke or fires heat,
And others denser and more closely knit
Like the thin coats cicadas often drop
In summer, and when calves in birth throw off
The caul from the body’s surface, or when snakes
60
Slough off their skins on thorns, and so we see
Brambles bedizened with their fluttering spoils.
Since these things happen, thin images also
Must be thrown off from the surface of things;
For if those other things fall, there is no reason,
65
No whisper of one, why these thinnest films
On the Nature of the Universe (Oxford World’s Classics) Page 16
