Lucretius
On the Nature of Things
(ca. 50 BCE)
Excerpts from the Original Electronic Text at the web site of the Internet Classics Archive.

Book I - Proem

I fear perhaps thou deemest that we fare 
An impious road to realms of thought profane; 
But 'tis that same religion oftener far 
Hath bred the foul impieties of men: 
As once at Aulis, the elected chiefs, 
Foremost of heroes, Danaan counsellors, 
Defiled Diana's altar, virgin queen, 
With Agamemnon's daughter, foully slain. 
She felt the chaplet round her maiden locks 
And fillets, fluttering down on either cheek, 
And at the altar marked her grieving sire, 
The priests beside him who concealed the knife, 
And all the folk in tears at sight of her. 
With a dumb terror and a sinking knee 
She dropped; nor might avail her now that first 
'Twas she who gave the king a father's name. 
They raised her up, they bore the trembling girl 
On to the altar- hither led not now 
With solemn rites and hymeneal choir, 
But sinless woman, sinfully foredone, 
A parent felled her on her bridal day, 
Making his child a sacrificial beast 
To give the ships auspicious winds for Troy: 
Such are the crimes to which Religion leads. 

And there shall come the time when even thou, 
Forced by the soothsayer's terror-tales, shalt seek 
To break from us. Ah, many a dream even now 
Can they concoct to rout thy plans of life, 
And trouble all thy fortunes with base fears. 
I own with reason: for, if men but knew 
Some fixed end to ills, they would be strong 
By some device unconquered to withstand 
Religions and the menacings of seers. 
But now nor skill nor instrument is theirs, 
Since men must dread eternal pains in death. 
For what the soul may be they do not know, 
Whether 'tis born, or enter in at birth, 
And whether, snatched by death, it die with us, 
Or visit the shadows and the vasty caves 
Of Orcus, or by some divine decree 
Enter the brute herds, as our Ennius sang, 
Who first from lovely Helicon brought down 
A laurel wreath of bright perennial leaves, 
Renowned forever among the Italian clans. 
Yet Ennius too in everlasting verse 
Proclaims those vaults of Acheron to be, 
Though thence, he said, nor souls nor bodies fare, 
But only phantom figures, strangely wan, 
And tells how once from out those regions rose 
Old Homer's ghost to him and shed salt tears 
And with his words unfolded Nature's source. 
Then be it ours with steady mind to clasp 
The purport of the skies- the law behind 
The wandering courses of the sun and moon; 
To scan the powers that speed all life below; 
But most to see with reasonable eyes 
Of what the mind, of what the soul is made, 
And what it is so terrible that breaks 
On us asleep, or waking in disease, 
Until we seem to mark and hear at hand 
Dead men whose bones earth bosomed long ago. . . .

Book I - Substance Is Eternal

This terror, then, this darkness of the mind, 
Not sunrise with its flaring spokes of light, 
Nor glittering arrows of morning can disperse, 
But only Nature's aspect and her law, 
Which, teaching us, hath this exordium: 
Nothing from nothing ever yet was born. 
Fear holds dominion over mortality 
Only because, seeing in land and sky 
So much the cause whereof no wise they know, 
Men think Divinities are working there. 
Meantime, when once we know from nothing still 
Nothing can be create, we shall divine 
More clearly what we seek: those elements 
From which alone all things created are, 
And how accomplished by no tool of Gods.
 
Suppose all sprang from all things: any kind 
Might take its origin from any thing, 
No fixed seed required. Men from the sea 
Might rise, and from the land the scaly breed, 
And, fowl full fledged come bursting from the sky; 
The horned cattle, the herds and all the wild 
Would haunt with varying offspring tilth and waste; 
Nor would the same fruits keep their olden trees, 
But each might grow from any stock or limb 
By chance and change. Indeed, and were there not 
For each its procreant atoms, could things have 
Each its unalterable mother old? 
But, since produced from fixed seeds are all, 
Each birth goes forth upon the shores of light 
From its own stuff, from its own primal bodies. 
And all from all cannot become, because 
In each resides a secret power its own.
 
Again, why see we lavished o'er the lands 
At spring the rose, at summer heat the corn, 
The vines that mellow when the autumn lures, 
If not because the fixed seeds of things 
At their own season must together stream, 
And new creations only be revealed 
When the due times arrive and pregnant earth 
Safely may give unto the shores of light 
Her tender progenies? But if from naught 
Were their becoming, they would spring abroad 
Suddenly, unforeseen, in alien months, 
With no primordial germs, to be preserved 
From procreant unions at an adverse hour. 
Nor on the mingling of the living seeds 
Would space be needed for the growth of things 
Were life an increment of nothing: then 
The tiny babe forthwith would walk a man, 
And from the turf would leap a branching tree- 
Wonders unheard of; for, by Nature, each 
Slowly increases from its lawful seed, 
And through that increase shall conserve its kind. 
Whence take the proof that things enlarge and feed 
From out their proper matter. Thus it comes 
That earth, without her seasons of fixed rains, 
Could bear no produce such as makes us glad, 
And whatsoever lives, if shut from food, 
Prolongs its kind and guards its life no more. 
Thus easier 'tis to hold that many things 
Have primal bodies in common (as we see 
The single letters common to many words) 
Than aught exists without its origins. . . .

Book III - Nature And Composition Of The Mind

Mind and soul, 
I say, are held conjoined one with other, 
And form one single nature of themselves; 
But chief and regnant through the frame entire 
Is still that counsel which we call the mind, 
And that cleaves seated in the midmost breast. 
Here leap dismay and terror; round these haunts 
Be blandishments of joys; and therefore here 
The intellect, the mind. The rest of soul, 
Throughout the body scattered, but obeys- 
Moved by the nod and motion of the mind. 
This, for itself, sole through itself, hath thought; 
This for itself hath mirth, even when the thing 
That moves it, moves nor soul nor body at all. 
And as, when head or eye in us is smit 
By assailing pain, we are not tortured then 
Through all the body, so the mind alone 
Is sometimes smitten, or livens with a joy, 
Whilst yet the soul's remainder through the limbs 
And through the frame is stirred by nothing new. 
But when the mind is moved by shock more fierce, 
We mark the whole soul suffering all at once 
Along man's members: sweats and pallors spread 
Over the body, and the tongue is broken, 
And fails the voice away, and ring the ears, 
Mists blind the eyeballs, and the joints collapse,- 
Aye, men drop dead from terror of the mind. 
Hence, whoso will can readily remark 
That soul conjoined is with mind, and, when 
'Tis strook by influence of the mind, forthwith 
In turn it hits and drives the body too. 

And this same argument establisheth 
That nature of mind and soul corporeal is: 
For when 'tis seen to drive the members on, 
To snatch from sleep the body, and to change 
The countenance, and the whole state of man 
To rule and turn,- what yet could never be 
Sans contact, and sans body contact fails- 
Must we not grant that mind and soul consist 
Of a corporeal nature?- And besides 
Thou markst that likewise with this body of ours 
Suffers the mind and with our body feels. 
If the dire speed of spear that cleaves the bones 
And bares the inner thews hits not the life, 
Yet follows a fainting and a foul collapse, 
And, on the ground, dazed tumult in the mind, 
And whiles a wavering will to rise afoot. 
So nature of mind must be corporeal, since 
From stroke and spear corporeal 'tis in throes. 

Now, of what body, what components formed 
Is this same mind I will go on to tell. 
First, I aver, 'tis superfine, composed 
Of tiniest particles- that such the fact 
Thou canst perceive, if thou attend, from this: 
Nothing is seen to happen with such speed 
As what the mind proposes and begins; 
Therefore the same bestirs itself more swiftly 
Than aught whose nature's palpable to eyes. 
But what's so agile must of seeds consist 
Most round, most tiny, that they may be moved, 
When hit by impulse slight. So water moves, 
In waves along, at impulse just the least- 
Being create of little shapes that roll; 
But, contrariwise, the quality of honey 
More stable is, its liquids more inert, 
More tardy its flow; for all its stock of matter 
Cleaves more together, since, indeed, 'tis made 
Of atoms not so smooth, so fine, and round. 
For the light breeze that hovers yet can blow 
High heaps of poppy-seed away for thee 
Downward from off the top; but, contrariwise, 
A pile of stones or spiny ears of wheat 
It can't at all. Thus, in so far as bodies 
Are small and smooth, is their mobility; 
But, contrariwise, the heavier and more rough, 
The more immovable they prove. Now, then, 
Since nature of mind is movable so much, 
Consist it must of seeds exceeding small 
And smooth and round. Which fact once known to thee, 
Good friend, will serve thee opportune in else. 
This also shows the nature of the same, 
How nice its texture, in how small a space 
'Twould go, if once compacted as a pellet: 
When death's unvexed repose gets hold on man 
And mind and soul retire, thou markest there 
From the whole body nothing ta'en in form, 
Nothing in weight. Death grants ye everything, 
But vital sense and exhalation hot. 
Thus soul entire must be of smallmost seeds, 
Twined through the veins, the vitals, and the thews, 
Seeing that, when 'tis from whole body gone, 
The outward figuration of the limbs 
Is unimpaired and weight fails not a whit. 
Just so, when vanished the bouquet of wine, 
Or when an unguent's perfume delicate 
Into the winds away departs, or when 
From any body savour's gone, yet still 
The thing itself seems minished naught to eyes, 
Thereby, nor aught abstracted from its weight- 
No marvel, because seeds many and minute 
Produce the savours and the redolence 
In the whole body of the things. And so, 
Again, again, nature of mind and soul 
'Tis thine to know created is of seeds 
The tiniest ever, since at flying-forth 
It beareth nothing of the weight away. . . .

Book III - Folly Of The Fear Of Death

Therefore death to us 
Is nothing, nor concerns us in the least, 
Since nature of mind is mortal evermore. 
And just as in the ages gone before 
We felt no touch of ill, when all sides round 
To battle came the Carthaginian host, 
And the times, shaken by tumultuous war, 
Under the aery coasts of arching heaven 
Shuddered and trembled, and all humankind 
Doubted to which the empery should fall 
By land and sea, thus when we are no more, 
When comes that sundering of our body and soul 
Through which we're fashioned to a single state, 
Verily naught to us, us then no more, 
Can come to pass, naught move our senses then- 
No, not if earth confounded were with sea, 
And sea with heaven. But if indeed do feel 
The nature of mind and energy of soul, 
After their severance from this body of ours, 
Yet nothing 'tis to us who in the bonds 
And wedlock of the soul and body live, 
Through which we're fashioned to a single state. 
And, even if time collected after death 
The matter of our frames and set it all 
Again in place as now, and if again 
To us the light of life were given, O yet 
That process too would not concern us aught, 
When once the self-succession of our sense 
Has been asunder broken. And now and here, 
Little enough we're busied with the selves 
We were aforetime, nor, concerning them, 
Suffer a sore distress. For shouldst thou gaze 
Backwards across all yesterdays of time 
The immeasurable, thinking how manifold 
The motions of matter are, then couldst thou well 
Credit this too: often these very seeds 
(From which we are to-day) of old were set 
In the same order as they are to-day- 
Yet this we can't to consciousness recall 
Through the remembering mind. For there hath been 
An interposed pause of life, and wide 
Have all the motions wandered everywhere 
From these our senses. For if woe and ail 
Perchance are toward, then the man to whom 
The bane can happen must himself be there 
At that same time. But death precludeth this, 
Forbidding life to him on whom might crowd 
Such irk and care; and granted 'tis to know: 
Nothing for us there is to dread in death, 
No wretchedness for him who is no more, 
The same estate as if ne'er born before, 
When death immortal hath ta'en the mortal life. 

Hence, where thou seest a man to grieve because 
When dead he rots with body laid away, 
Or perishes in flames or jaws of beasts, 
Know well: he rings not true, and that beneath 
Still works an unseen sting upon his heart, 
However he deny that he believes. 
His shall be aught of feeling after death. 
For he, I fancy, grants not what he says, 
Nor what that presupposes, and he fails 
To pluck himself with all his roots from life 
And cast that self away, quite unawares 
Feigning that some remainder's left behind. 
For when in life one pictures to oneself 
His body dead by beasts and vultures torn, 
He pities his state, dividing not himself 
Therefrom, removing not the self enough 
From the body flung away, imagining 
Himself that body, and projecting there 
His own sense, as he stands beside it: hence 
He grieves that he is mortal born, nor marks 
That in true death there is no second self 
Alive and able to sorrow for self destroyed, 
Or stand lamenting that the self lies there 
Mangled or burning. For if it an evil is 
Dead to be jerked about by jaw and fang 
Of the wild brutes, I see not why 'twere not 
Bitter to lie on fires and roast in flames, 
Or suffocate in honey, and, reclined 
On the smooth oblong of an icy slab, 
Grow stiff in cold, or sink with load of earth 
Down-crushing from above. . . .

Look back: 
Nothing to us was all fore-passed eld 
Of time the eternal, ere we had a birth. 
And Nature holds this like a mirror up 
Of time-to-be when we are dead and gone. 
And what is there so horrible appears? 
Now what is there so sad about it all? 
Is't not serener far than any sleep? 
And, verily, those tortures said to be 
In Acheron, the deep, they all are ours 
Here in this life. No Tantalus, benumbed 
With baseless terror, as the fables tell, 
Fears the huge boulder hanging in the air: 
But, rather, in life an empty dread of gods 
Urges mortality, and each one fears 
Such fall of fortune as may chance to him. 
Nor eat the vultures into Tityus 
Prostrate in Acheron, nor can they find, 
Forsooth, throughout eternal ages, aught 
To pry around for in that mighty breast. 
However hugely he extend his bulk- 
Who hath for outspread limbs not acres nine, 
But the whole earth- he shall not able be 
To bear eternal pain nor furnish food 
From his own frame forever. But for us 
A Tityus is he whom vultures rend 
Prostrate in love, whom anxious anguish eats, 
Whom troubles of any unappeased desires 
Asunder rip. We have before our eyes 
Here in this life also a Sisyphus 
In him who seeketh of the populace 
The rods, the axes fell, and evermore 
Retires a beaten and a gloomy man. 
For to seek after power- an empty name, 
Nor given at all- and ever in the search 
To endure a world of toil, O this it is 
To shove with shoulder up the hill a stone 
Which yet comes rolling back from off the top, 
And headlong makes for levels of the plain. 
Then to be always feeding an ingrate mind, 
Filling with good things, satisfying never- 
As do the seasons of the year for us, 
When they return and bring their progenies 
And varied charms, and we are never filled 
With the fruits of life- O this, I fancy, 'tis 
To pour, like those young virgins in the tale, 
Waters into a sieve, unfilled forever. 
Cerberus and Furies, and that Lack of Light 
Tartarus, out-belching from his mouth the surge 
Of horrible heat- the which are nowhere, nor 
Indeed can be: but in this life is fear 
Of retributions just and expiations 
For evil acts: the dungeon and the leap 
From that dread rock of infamy, the stripes, 
The executioners, the oaken rack, 
The iron plates, bitumen, and the torch. 
And even though these are absent, yet the mind, 
With a fore-fearing conscience, plies its goads 
And burns beneath the lash, nor sees meanwhile 
What terminus of ills, what end of pine 
Can ever be, and feareth lest the same 
But grow more heavy after death. Of truth, 
The life of fools is Acheron on earth. 
This also to thy very self sometimes 
Repeat thou mayst: "Lo, even good Ancus left 
The sunshine with his eyes, in divers things 
A better man than thou, O worthless hind; 
And many other kings and lords of rule 
Thereafter have gone under, once who swayed 
O'er mighty peoples. And he also, he- 
Who whilom paved a highway down the sea, 
And gave his legionaries thoroughfare 
Along the deep, and taught them how to cross 
The pools of brine afoot, and did contemn, 
Trampling upon it with his cavalry, 
The bellowings of ocean- poured his soul 
From dying body, as his light was ta'en. 
And Scipio's son, the thunderbolt of war, 
Horror of Carthage, gave his bones to earth, 
Like to the lowliest villein in the house. 
Add finders-out of sciences and arts; 
Add comrades of the Heliconian dames, 
Among whom Homer, sceptered o'er them all 
Now lies in slumber sunken with the rest. 
Then, too, Democritus, when ripened eld 
Admonished him his memory waned away, 
Of own accord offered his head to death. 
Even Epicurus went, his light of life 
Run out, the man in genius who o'er-topped 
The human race, extinguishing all others, 
As sun, in ether arisen, all the stars. 
Wilt thou, then, dally, thou complain to go?- 
For whom already life's as good as dead, 
Whilst yet thou livest and lookest?- who in sleep 
Wastest thy life- time's major part, and snorest 
Even when awake, and ceasest not to see 
The stuff of dreams, and bearest a mind beset 
By baseless terror, nor discoverest oft 
What's wrong with thee, when, like a sotted wretch, 
Thou'rt jostled along by many crowding cares, 
And wanderest reeling round, with mind aswim." 
If men, in that same way as on the mind 
They feel the load that wearies with its weight, 
Could also know the causes whence it comes, 
And why so great the heap of ill on heart, 
O not in this sort would they live their life, 
As now so much we see them, knowing not 
What 'tis they want, and seeking ever and ever 
A change of place, as if to drop the burden. 
The man who sickens of his home goes out, 
Forth from his splendid halls, and straight- returns, 
Feeling i'faith no better off abroad. 
He races, driving his Gallic ponies along, 
Down to his villa, madly,- as in haste 
To hurry help to a house afire.- At once 
He yawns, as soon as foot has touched the threshold, 
Or drowsily goes off in sleep and seeks 
Forgetfulness, or maybe bustles about 
And makes for town again. In such a way 
Each human flees himself- a self in sooth, 
As happens, he by no means can escape; 
And willy-nilly he cleaves to it and loathes, 
Sick, sick, and guessing not the cause of ail. 
Yet should he see but that, O chiefly then, 
Leaving all else, he'd study to divine 
The nature of things, since here is in debate 
Eternal time and not the single hour, 
Mortal's estate in whatsoever remains 
After great death. 
And too, when all is said, 
What evil lust of life is this so great 
Subdues us to live, so dreadfully distraught 
In perils and alarms? one fixed end 
Of life abideth for mortality; 
Death's not to shun, and we must go to meet. 
Besides we're busied with the same devices, 
Ever and ever, and we are at them ever, 
And there's no new delight that may be forged 
By living on. But whilst the thing we long for 
Is lacking, that seems good above all else; 
Thereafter, when we've touched it, something else 
We long for; ever one equal thirst of life 
Grips us agape. And doubtful 'tis what fortune 
The future times may carry, or what be 
That chance may bring, or what the issue next 
Awaiting us. Nor by prolonging life 
Take we the least away from death's own time, 
Nor can we pluck one moment off, whereby 
To minish the aeons of our state of death. 
Therefore, O man, by living on, fulfil 
As many generations as thou may: 
Eternal death shall there be waiting still; 
And he who died with light of yesterday 
Shall be no briefer time in death's No-more 
Than he who perished months or years before.


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