LUCRETIUS

 From De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)

Translated by W. Hannaford Brown

LUCRETIUS

In January 1821, Thomas Jefferson wrote John Adams to “encourage a hope that the human mind will some day get back to the freedom it enjoyed 2000 years ago.” This wish for a return to the era of philosophy would put Jefferson in the same period as Titus Lucretius Carus, thanks to whose six-volume poem De Rerum Naturum (On the Nature of Things) we have a distillation of the work of the first true materialists: Leucippus, Democritus, and Epicurus. These men concluded that the world was composed of atoms in perpetual motion, and Epicurus, in particular, went on to argue that the gods, if they existed, played no part in human affairs. It followed that events like thunderstorms were natural and not supernatural, that ceremonies of worship and propitiation were a waste of time, and that there was nothing to be feared in death.

Lucretius, addressing his friend Memmius and acting as his Virgil through this labyrinth of radical ideas, revived the “atomist” theory at a time of brute religious revival in Rome. He argued that religion was immoral as well as untrue: his reference to Iphianassa here is the Latin version of the Greek and Trojan story of Iphigenia, sacrificial victim to her own father in the House of Atreus.

Atomism was viciously persecuted as heresy throughout the early Christian era, and only one printed manuscript of De Rerum Naturum survived the flames. There are several translations; I have chosen the one translated by my fellow Devonian and Oxonian, W. Hannaford Brown. Brown’s own manuscript was almost destroyed during the Nazi bombardment of England in 1943: if a religious book had survived so many vicissitudes we can easily imagine what the faithful would say. But Lucretius teaches us to live without such piffle.

From Book I

2

Now, for the rest, lend ears unstopped, and the intellect’s keen edge;

Severed from cares, attend to a true philosophical system;

Lest it should hap that my gifts which I zealously set forth before you,

Scorned, you abandon untouched before they can be comprehended.

For ’tis high lore of heaven and of gods that I shall endeavour

Clearly to speak as I tell of the primary atoms of matter

Out of which Nature forms things: ’tis “things” she increases and fosters;

Then back to atoms again she resolves them and makes them to vanish.

“Things,” for argument’s sake, my wont is to speak of as “matter”;

Also the “seeds” of those things to name the small parts which beget them:

Further, those infinitesimal parts, (an alternative figure)

Primary “atoms” to call, whereof matter was all first created.

3

When in full view on the earth man’s life lay rotting and loathsome,

Crushed ’neath the ponderous load of Religion’s cruel burdensome shackles,

Who out of heaven displayed her forehead of withering aspect,

Lowering over the heads of mortals with hideous menace,

Upraising mortal eyes ’twas a Greek who first, daring, defied her;

’Gainst man’s relentless foe ’twas Man first framed to do battle.

Him could nor tales of the gods nor heaven’s fierce thunderbolts’ crashes

Curb; nay rather they inflamed his spirit’s keen courage to covet.

His it should first be to shiver the close-bolted portals of Nature.

Therefore his soul’s live energy triumphed, and far and wide compassed

World’s walls’ blazing lights, and the boundless Universe traversed

Thought-winged; from realms of space he comes back victorious and tells us

What we may, what we must not perceive; what law universal

Limits the ken of each, what deep-set boundary landmark:

Then how in turn underfoot Religion is hurled down and trampled,

Then how that victory lifts mankind to high level of heaven.

4

One apprehension assails me here, that haply you reckon

Godless the pathway you tread which leads to the Science of Nature

As to the highroad of sin. But rather how much more often

Has that same vaunted Religion brought forth deeds sinful and godless.

Thus the chosen Greek chiefs, the first of their heroes, at Aulis,

Trivia’s altar befouled with the blood of Iphianassa.

For when the equal-trimmed ribbons, her virgin tresses encircling,

Unfurled from each fair cheek so bravely, so gallantly fluttered;

Soon as she saw her sorrowing sire in front of the altar

Standing, with serving-men near, their gleaming knives vainly concealing,

And, at the sight of her plight, her countrymen bitter tears shedding;

Dumb with fear, her knees giving way, to earth she fell sinking.

Nor in her woe could it be of avail to the hapless maiden

That it was she first gave to the king the title of father.

For, by men’s hands upborne, she was, quivering, led to the altar;

Not, forsooth, to the end that, sacred rites duly completed,

With ringing clarion song of marriage she might be escorted;

But, pure maid foully slain in wedlock’s appropriate season,

That she a victim might fall ’neath the slaughter stroke of her father,

So that a happy and lucky dispatch to the fleet might be granted!

Such are the darksome deeds brought to pass by Religion’s fell promptings!

6

Now this terror and darkness of mind must surely be scattered,

Not by rays of the sun, nor by gleaming arrows of daylight,

But by the outward display and unseen workings of Nature.

And her first rule for us from this premiss shall take its beginning;

“Never did will of gods bring anything forth out of nothing.”

For, in good sooth, it is thus that fear restraineth all mortals,

Since both in earth and sky they see that many things happen

Whereof they cannot by any known law determine the causes;

So their occurrence they ascribe to supernatural power.

Therefore when we have seen that naught can be made out of nothing,

Afterwards we shall more rightly discern the thing which we search for:—

Both out of what it is that everything can be created,

And in what way all came, without help of gods, into being.

7

If out of nothing things sprang into life, then every species

From all alike could be born, and none would need any seed-germ.

First, mature men might rise from the sea, and scale-bearing fishes

Out of the earth; or again, fledged birds burst full-grown from heaven.

Cattle and other beasts, and the whole tribe of wild herds, ungoverned

By any fixed law of birth, would of desert and tilth take possession.

Nor would each fruit be wont to remain to its own tree peculiar,

But all would change about, so that all could bear all kinds of produce.

How, if for each distinct kind there were no producing corpuscles,

Could any matrix for matter exist that is fixed and unchanging?

But, as it is, since all from definite seeds are created,

Therefore each is born and comes into regions of daylight

From out the place where dwells its substance, the primary atoms.

Thus each cannot spring from all in promiscuous fashion,

Since a peculiar power indwells each fixed kind of matter.

Secondly, why do we see spring flowers, see golden grain waving

Ripe in the sun, see grape clusters swell at the urge of the autumn,

If not because when, in their own time, the fixed seeds of matter

Have coalesced, then each creation comes forth into full view

When the recurrent seasons for each are propitious, and safely

Quickening Earth brings forth to the light her delicate offspring?

But if from nothing they came, then each would spring up unexpected

At undetermined times and in unfavouring seasons,

Seeing that there would then not be any primary atoms

Which from untimely creative conjunction could be kept asunder.

Nor, again, thirdly, would time be needed for growing of matter

When the seeds unite, if things can grow out of nothing;

For in a trice little children would reach the fulness of manhood:

Trees, again, would spring up by surprise, from earth sheer outleaping.

But ’tis apparent that none of this happens, since all things grow slowly,

As is but normal when each from a fixed seed in a fixed season

Grows, and growing, preserves its kind: thus telling us clearly

That from appropriate atoms each creature grows great and is nourished.

From Book II

5

But do not think that the gods condescend to consider such matters,

Or that they mark the careers of individual atoms

So as to study the laws of Nature whereunto they conform.

Nevertheless there are some, unaware of the fixed laws of matter,

Who think that Nature cannot, without supernatural power,

Thus nicely fit to manners of men the sequence of seasons,

Bringing forth corn, yea, all earth’s fruits, which heavenly Pleasure,

Pilot of life, prompts men to approach, herself them escorting,

As by Venus’ wiles she beguiles them their race to continue

So that humanity may not fail. When therefore they settle

That for the sake of man the gods designed all things, most widely

In all respects do they seem to have strayed from the path of true reason.

For even if I knew nothing concerning the nature of atoms,

Yet from heaven’s very lore and legend’s diversified story

I would make bold to aver and maintain that the order of Nature

Never by will of the gods for us mortals was ever created…

From Book III

15

Now then, in order that you may learn that the minds of live creatures

And their imponderable souls are to birth and death alike subject,

I will proceed to compose such verse as shall earn your attention,

By long study amassed, and devised by delightful endeavour.

Please comprise these natures twain ’neath one appellation:

When I pass on, for example, to speak of the soul, how ’tis mortal,

Know that I speak of the mind as well, inasmuch as together

Both one single entity form, one composite substance.

Firstly, then, since I have shewn that ’tis rare, and composed of small bodies;

Shaped from much smaller atoms than fashion a liquid like water,

Atoms far smaller than those which constitute mizzling and smoke-clouds—

For it is nimbler by far, and a far feebler blow sets it moving,

Stirred as it is by the films which mist and smoke shed around them,

As for example when steeped in sleep we seem to see altars

Breathing forth flames of fire, and exalting their smoke to the heavens;

Doubtless from objects like these such films as I speak of are gendered.

Since too, when vessels are shattered, you see how in every direction

Gushes the liquid flood, and the contents utterly vanish;

Since once again the mists and the smoke are dispersed by the breezes;

Know that the soul, too, is scattered abroad, and dies much more quickly,

And is the sooner resolved back into its primary atoms,

Once it has quitted the limbs of a man and abandoned his body.

For when the body, which forms its receptacle, cannot contain it,

Being from any cause crushed, or by issue of life-blood enfeebled,

How can you think that the soul can by fluid air be encompassed?

How can the air, than our body more rare, be able to hold it?

From Book V

39

Next, having gotten them huts and skins and fire; and when woman

Mated with man shared a man’s abode; and when family duties

Therein were learnt; and as soon as they saw their own offspring arising;

Then ’twas that mankind first began to lose power of endurance.

Fire made their gelid frames less able to bear the cold weather

Out ’neath the open sky; their virility Venus exhausted:

Childrens’ caresses too easily sapped the proud spirit of parents.

Neighbours in those days, too, began to form friendly agreements

Neither to inflict nor receive any hurt, and asked for indulgence

Towards their women and bairns, as with cries and gesticulations

And in their stammering speech they tried to explain to each other

That it is meet and right that all should pity the helpless.

And although harmony could not be won in every instance,

Yet did the greater part observe the conventions uprightly;

Else long since would the human race have been wholly abolished,

Nor could their seed till this present day have continued the species.