Book I

Mother of Rome, delight of Gods and men,Dear Venus that beneath the gliding starsMakest to teem the many-voyaged mainAnd fruitful lands--for all of living thingsThrough thee alone are evermore conceived,Through thee are risen to visit the great sun--Before thee, Goddess, and thy coming on,Flee stormy wind and massy cloud away,For thee the daedal Earth bears scented flowers,For thee waters of the unvexed deepSmile, and the hollows of the serene skyGlow with diffused radiance for thee!For soon as comes the springtime face of day,And procreant gales blow from the West unbarred,First fowls of air, smit to the heart by thee,Foretoken thy approach, O thou Divine,And leap the wild herds round the happy fieldsOr swim the bounding torrents. Thus amain,Seized with the spell, all creatures follow theeWhithersoever thou walkest forth to lead,And thence through seas and mountains and swift streams,Through leafy homes of birds and greening plains,Kindling the lure of love in every breast,Thou bringest the eternal generations forth,Kind after kind. And since 'tis thou aloneGuidest the Cosmos, and without thee naughtIs risen to reach the shining shores of light,Nor aught of joyful or of lovely born,Thee do I crave co-partner in that verseWhich I presume on Nature to composeFor Memmius mine, whom thou hast willed to bePeerless in every grace at every hour--Wherefore indeed, Divine one, give my wordsImmortal charm. Lull to a timely restO'er sea and land the savage works of war,For thou alone hast power with public peaceTo aid mortality; since he who rulesThe savage works of battle, puissant Mars,How often to thy bosom flings his strengthO'ermastered by the eternal wound of love--And there, with eyes and full throat backward thrown,Gazing, my Goddess, open-mouthed at thee,Pastures on love his greedy sight, his breathHanging upon thy lips. Him thus reclinedFill with thy holy body, round, above!Pour from those lips soft syllables to winPeace for the Romans, glorious Lady, peace!For in a season troublous to the stateNeither may I attend this task of mineWith thought untroubled, nor mid such eventsThe illustrious scion of the Memmian houseNeglect the civic cause.

Whilst human kindThroughout the lands lay miserably crushedBefore all eyes beneath Religion--whoWould show her head along the region skies,Glowering on mortals with her hideous face--A Greek it was who first opposing daredRaise mortal eyes that terror to withstand,Whom nor the fame of Gods nor lightning's strokeNor threatening thunder of the ominous skyAbashed; but rather chafed to angry zestHis dauntless heart to be the first to rendThe crossbars at the gates of Nature old.And thus his will and hardy wisdom won;And forward thus he fared afar, beyondThe flaming ramparts of the world, untilHe wandered the unmeasurable All.Whence he to us, a conqueror, reportsWhat things can rise to being, what cannot,And by what law to each its scope prescribed,Its boundary stone that clings so deep in Time.Wherefore Religion now is under foot,And us his victory now exalts to heaven.

I know how hard it is in Latian verseTo tell the dark discoveries of the Greeks,Chiefly because our pauper-speech must findStrange terms to fit the strangeness of the thing;Yet worth of thine and the expected joyOf thy sweet friendship do persuade me onTo bear all toil and wake the clear nights through,Seeking with what of words and what of songI may at last most gloriously uncloudFor thee the light beyond, wherewith to viewThe core of being at the centre hid.And for the rest, summon to judgments true,Unbusied ears and singleness of mindWithdrawn from cares; lest these my gifts, arrangedFor thee with eager service, thou disdainBefore thou comprehendest: since for theeI prove the supreme law of Gods and sky,And the primordial germs of things unfold,Whence Nature all creates, and multipliesAnd fosters all, and whither she resolvesEach in the end when each is overthrown.This ultimate stock we have devised to nameProcreant atoms, matter, seeds of things,Or primal bodies, as primal to the world.

I fear perhaps thou deemest that we fareAn impious road to realms of thought profane;But 'tis that same religion oftener farHath 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 locksAnd 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 kneeShe 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 girlOn to the altar--hither led not nowWith solemn rites and hymeneal choir,But sinless woman, sinfully foredone,A parent felled her on her bridal day,Making his child a sacrificial beastTo 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 seekTo break from us. Ah, many a dream even nowCan they concoct to rout thy plans of life,And trouble all thy fortunes with base fears.I own with reason: for, if men but knewSome fixed end to ills, they would be strongBy some device unconquered to withstandReligions 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 cavesOf Orcus, or by some divine decreeEnter the brute herds, as our Ennius sang,Who first from lovely Helicon brought downA laurel wreath of bright perennial leaves,Renowned forever among the Italian clans.Yet Ennius too in everlasting verseProclaims 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 roseOld Homer's ghost to him and shed salt tearsAnd with his words unfolded Nature's source.Then be it ours with steady mind to claspThe purport of the skies--the law behindThe wandering courses of the sun and moon;To scan the powers that speed all life below;But most to see with reasonable eyesOf what the mind, of what the soul is made,And what it is so terrible that breaksOn us asleep, or waking in disease,Until we seem to mark and hear at handDead men whose bones earth bosomed long ago.

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 mortalityOnly because, seeing in land and skySo much the cause whereof no wise they know,Men think Divinities are working there.Meantime, when once we know from nothing stillNothing can be create, we shall divineMore clearly what we seek: those elementsFrom which alone all things created are,And how accomplished by no tool of Gods.Suppose all sprang from all things: any kindMight take its origin from any thing,No fixed seed required. Men from the seaMight 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 wildWould haunt with varying offspring tilth and waste;Nor would the same fruits keep their olden trees,But each might grow from any stock or limbBy chance and change. Indeed, and were there notFor each its procreant atoms, could things haveEach its unalterable mother old?But, since produced from fixed seeds are all,Each birth goes forth upon the shores of lightFrom its own stuff, from its own primal bodies.And all from all cannot become, becauseIn each resides a secret power its own.Again, why see we lavished o'er the landsAt spring the rose, at summer heat the corn,The vines that mellow when the autumn lures,If not because the fixed seeds of thingsAt their own season must together stream,And new creations only be revealedWhen the due times arrive and pregnant earthSafely may give unto the shores of lightHer tender progenies? But if from naughtWere their becoming, they would spring abroadSuddenly, unforeseen, in alien months,With no primordial germs, to be preservedFrom procreant unions at an adverse hour.Nor on the mingling of the living seedsWould space be needed for the growth of thingsWere life an increment of nothing: thenThe tiny babe forthwith would walk a man,And from the turf would leap a branching tree--Wonders unheard of; for, by Nature, eachSlowly increases from its lawful seed,And through that increase shall conserve its kind.Whence take the proof that things enlarge and feedFrom out their proper matter. Thus it comesThat 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 thingsHave primal bodies in common (as we seeThe single letters common to many words)Than aught exists without its origins.Moreover, why should Nature not prepareMen of a bulk to ford the seas afoot,Or rend the mighty mountains with their hands,Or conquer Time with length of days, if notBecause for all begotten things abidesThe changeless stuff, and what from that may springIs fixed forevermore? Lastly we seeHow far the tilled surpass the fields untilledAnd to the labour of our hands returnTheir more abounding crops; there are indeedWithin the earth primordial germs of things,Which, as the ploughshare turns the fruitful clodsAnd kneads the mould, we quicken into birth.Else would ye mark, without all toil of ours,Spontaneous generations, fairer forms.Confess then, naught from nothing can become,Since all must have their seeds, wherefrom to grow,Wherefrom to reach the gentle fields of air.Hence too it comes that Nature all dissolvesInto their primal bodies again, and naughtPerishes ever to annihilation.For, were aught mortal in its every part,Before our eyes it might be snatched awayUnto destruction; since no force were neededTo sunder its members and undo its bands.Whereas, of truth, because all things exist,With seed imperishable, Nature allowsDestruction nor collapse of aught, untilSome outward force may shatter by a blow,Or inward craft, entering its hollow cells,Dissolve it down. And more than this, if Time,That wastes with eld the works along the world,Destroy entire, consuming matter all,Whence then may Venus back to light of lifeRestore the generations kind by kind?Or how, when thus restored, may daedal EarthFoster and plenish with her ancient food,Which, kind by kind, she offers unto each?Whence may the water-springs, beneath the sea,Or inland rivers, far and wide away,Keep the unfathomable ocean full?And out of what does Ether feed the stars?For lapsed years and infinite age must elseHave eat all shapes of mortal stock away:But be it the Long Ago contained those germs,By which this sum of things recruited lives,Those same infallibly can never die,Nor nothing to nothing evermore return.And, too, the selfsame power might end alikeAll things, were they not still together heldBy matter eternal, shackled through its parts,Now more, now less. A touch might be enoughTo cause destruction. For the slightest forceWould loose the weft of things wherein no partWere of imperishable stock. But nowBecause the fastenings of primordial partsAre put together diversely and stuffIs everlasting, things abide the sameUnhurt and sure, until some power comes onStrong to destroy the warp and woof of each:Nothing returns to naught; but all returnAt their collapse to primal forms of stuff.Lo, the rains perish which Ether-father throwsDown to the bosom of Earth-mother; but thenUpsprings the shining grain, and boughs are greenAmid the trees, and trees themselves wax bigAnd lade themselves with fruits; and hence in turnThe race of man and all the wild are fed;Hence joyful cities thrive with boys and girls;And leafy woodlands echo with new birds;Hence cattle, fat and drowsy, lay their bulkAlong the joyous pastures whilst the dropsOf white ooze trickle from distended bags;Hence the young scamper on their weakling jointsAlong the tender herbs, fresh hearts afriskWith warm new milk. Thus naught of what so seemsPerishes utterly, since Nature everUpbuilds one thing from other, suffering naughtTo come to birth but through some other's death.

And now, since I have taught that things cannotBe born from nothing, nor the same, when born,To nothing be recalled, doubt not my words,Because our eyes no primal germs perceive;For mark those bodies which, though known to beIn this our world, are yet invisible:The winds infuriate lash our face and frame,Unseen, and swamp huge ships and rend the clouds,Or, eddying wildly down, bestrew the plainsWith mighty trees, or scour the mountain topsWith forest-crackling blasts. Thus on they raveWith uproar shrill and ominous moan. The winds,'Tis clear, are sightless bodies sweeping throughThe sea, the lands, the clouds along the sky,Vexing and whirling and seizing all amain;And forth they flow and pile destruction round,Even as the water's soft and supple bulkBecoming a river of abounding floods,Which a wide downpour from the lofty hillsSwells with big showers, dashes headlong downFragments of woodland and whole branching trees;Nor can the solid bridges bide the shockAs on the waters whelm: the turbulent stream,Strong with a hundred rains, beats round the piers,Crashes with havoc, and rolls beneath its wavesDown-toppled masonry and ponderous stone,Hurling away whatever would oppose.Even so must move the blasts of all the winds,Which, when they spread, like to a mighty flood,Hither or thither, drive things on beforeAnd hurl to ground with still renewed assault,Or sometimes in their circling vortex seizeAnd bear in cones of whirlwind down the world:The winds are sightless bodies and naught else--Since both in works and ways they rival wellThe mighty rivers, the visible in form.Then too we know the varied smells of thingsYet never to our nostrils see them come;With eyes we view not burning heats, nor cold,Nor are we wont men's voices to behold.Yet these must be corporeal at the base,Since thus they smite the senses: naught there isSave body, having property of touch.And raiment, hung by surf-beat shore, grows moist,The same, spread out before the sun, will dry;Yet no one saw how sank the moisture in,Nor how by heat off-driven. Thus we know,That moisture is dispersed about in bitsToo small for eyes to see. Another case:A ring upon the finger thins awayAlong the under side, with years and suns;The drippings from the eaves will scoop the stone;The hooked ploughshare, though of iron, wastesAmid the fields insidiously. We viewThe rock-paved highways worn by many feet;And at the gates the brazen statues showTheir right hands leaner from the frequent touchOf wayfarers innumerable who greet.We see how wearing-down hath minished these,But just what motes depart at any time,The envious nature of vision bars our sight.Lastly whatever days and nature addLittle by little, constraining things to growIn due proportion, no gaze however keenOf these our eyes hath watched and known. No moreCan we observe what's lost at any time,When things wax old with eld and foul decay,Or when salt seas eat under beetling crags.Thus Nature ever by unseen bodies works.

But yet creation's neither crammed nor blockedAbout by body: there's in things a void--Which to have known will serve thee many a turn,Nor will not leave thee wandering in doubt,Forever searching in the sum of all,And losing faith in these pronouncements mine.There's place intangible, a void and room.For were it not, things could in nowise move;Since body's property to block and checkWould work on all and at an times the same.Thus naught could evermore push forth and go,Since naught elsewhere would yield a starting place.But now through oceans, lands, and heights of heaven,By divers causes and in divers modes,Before our eyes we mark how much may move,Which, finding not a void, would fail deprivedOf stir and motion; nay, would then have beenNowise begot at all, since matter, then,Had staid at rest, its parts together crammed.Then too, however solid objects seem,They yet are formed of matter mixed with void:In rocks and caves the watery moisture seeps,And beady drops stand out like plenteous tears;And food finds way through every frame that lives;The trees increase and yield the season's fruitBecause their food throughout the whole is poured,Even from the deepest roots, through trunks and boughs;And voices pass the solid walls and flyReverberant through shut doorways of a house;And stiffening frost seeps inward to our bones.Which but for voids for bodies to go through'Tis clear could happen in nowise at all.Again, why see we among objects someOf heavier weight, but of no bulkier size?Indeed, if in a ball of wool there beAs much of body as in lump of lead,The two should weigh alike, since body tendsTo load things downward, while the void abides,By contrary nature, the imponderable.Therefore, an object just as large but lighterDeclares infallibly its more of void;Even as the heavier more of matter shows,And how much less of vacant room inside.That which we're seeking with sagacious questExists, infallibly, commixed with things--The void, the invisible inane.

Right hereI am compelled a question to expound,Forestalling something certain folk suppose,Lest it avail to lead thee off from truth:Waters (they say) before the shining breedOf the swift scaly creatures somehow give,And straightway open sudden liquid paths,Because the fishes leave behind them roomTo which at once the yielding billows stream.Thus things among themselves can yet be moved,And change their place, however full the Sum--Received opinion, wholly false forsooth.For where can scaly creatures forward dart,Save where the waters give them room? Again,Where can the billows yield a way, so longAs ever the fish are powerless to go?Thus either all bodies of motion are deprived,Or things contain admixture of a voidWhere each thing gets its start in moving on.

Lastly, where after impact two broad bodiesSuddenly spring apart, the air must crowdThe whole new void between those bodies formed;But air, however it stream with hastening gusts,Can yet not fill the gap at once--for firstIt makes for one place, ere diffused through all.And then, if haply any think this comes,When bodies spring apart, because the airSomehow condenses, wander they from truth:For then a void is formed, where none before;And, too, a void is filled which was before.Nor can air be condensed in such a wise;Nor, granting it could, without a void, I hold,It still could not contract upon itselfAnd draw its parts together into one.Wherefore, despite demur and counter-speech,Confess thou must there is a void in things.

And still I might by many an argumentHere scrape together credence for my words.But for the keen eye these mere footprints serve,Whereby thou mayest know the rest thyself.As dogs full oft with noses on the ground,Find out the silent lairs, though hid in brush,Of beasts, the mountain-rangers, when but onceThey scent the certain footsteps of the way,Thus thou thyself in themes like these aloneCan hunt from thought to thought, and keenly windAlong even onward to the secret placesAnd drag out truth. But, if thou loiter lothOr veer, however little, from the point,This I can promise, Memmius, for a fact:Such copious drafts my singing tongue shall pourFrom the large well-springs of my plenished breastThat much I dread slow age will steal and coilAlong our members, and unloose the gatesOf life within us, ere for thee my verseHath put within thine ears the stores of proofsAt hand for one soever question broached.

But, now again to weave the tale begun,All nature, then, as self-sustained, consistsOf twain of things: of bodies and of voidIn which they're set, and where they're moved around.For common instinct of our race declaresThat body of itself exists: unlessThis primal faith, deep-founded, fail us not,Naught will there be whereunto to appealOn things occult when seeking aught to proveBy reasonings of mind. Again, withoutThat place and room, which we do call the inane,Nowhere could bodies then be set, nor goHither or thither at all--as shown before.Besides, there's naught of which thou canst declareIt lives disjoined from body, shut from void--A kind of third in nature. For whateverExists must be a somewhat; and the same,If tangible, however fight and slight,Will yet increase the count of body's sum,With its own augmentation big or small;But, if intangible and powerless everTo keep a thing from passing through itselfOn any side, 'twill be naught else but thatWhich we do call the empty, the inane.Again, whate'er exists, as of itself,Must either act or suffer action on it,Or else be that wherein things move and be:Naught, saving body, acts, is acted on;Naught but the inane can furnish room. And thus,Beside the inane and bodies, is no thirdNature amid the number of all things--Remainder none to fall at any timeUnder our senses, nor be seized and seenBy any man through reasonings of mind.Name o'er creation with what names thou wilt,Thou'lt find but properties of those first twain,Or see but accidents those twain produce.

A property is that which not at allCan be disjoined and severed from a thingWithout a fatal dissolution: such,Weight to the rocks, heat to the fire, and flowTo the wide waters, touch to corporal things,Intangibility to the viewless void.But state of slavery, pauperhood, and wealth,Freedom, and war, and concord, and all elseWhich come and go whilst nature stands the same,We're wont, and rightly, to call accidents.Even time exists not of itself; but senseReads out of things what happened long ago,What presses now, and what shall follow after:No man, we must admit, feels time itself,Disjoined from motion and repose of things.Thus, when they say there "is" the ravishmentOf Princess Helen, "is" the siege and sackOf Trojan Town, look out, they force us notTo admit these acts existent by themselves,Merely because those races of mankind(Of whom these acts were accidents) long sinceIrrevocable age has borne away:For all past actions may be said to beBut accidents, in one way, of mankind,--In other, of some region of the world.Add, too, had been no matter, and no roomWherein all things go on, the fire of loveUpblown by that fair form, the glowing coalUnder the Phrygian Alexander's breast,Had ne'er enkindled that renowned strifeOf savage war, nor had the wooden horseInvolved in flames old Pergama, by a birthAt midnight of a brood of the Hellenes.And thus thou canst remark that every actAt bottom exists not of itself, nor isAs body is, nor has like name with void;But rather of sort more fitly to be calledAn accident of body, and of placeWherein all things go on.

Bodies, again,Are partly primal germs of things, and partlyUnions deriving from the primal germs.And those which are the primal germs of thingsNo power can quench; for in the end they conquerBy their own solidness; though hard it beTo think that aught in things has solid frame;For lightnings pass, no less than voice and shout,Through hedging walls of houses, and the ironWhite-dazzles in the fire, and rocks will burnWith exhalations fierce and burst asunder.Totters the rigid gold dissolved in heat;The ice of bronze melts conquered in the flame;Warmth and the piercing cold through silver seep,Since, with the cups held rightly in the hand,We oft feel both, as from above is pouredThe dew of waters between their shining sides:So true it is no solid form is found.But yet because true reason and nature of thingsConstrain us, come, whilst in few verses nowI disentangle how there still existBodies of solid, everlasting frame--The seeds of things, the primal germs we teach,Whence all creation around us came to be.First since we know a twofold nature exists,Of things, both twain and utterly unlike--Body, and place in which an things go on--Then each must be both for and through itself,And all unmixed: where'er be empty space,There body's not; and so where body bides,There not at all exists the void inane.Thus primal bodies are solid, without a void.But since there's void in all begotten things,All solid matter must be round the same;Nor, by true reason canst thou prove aught hidesAnd holds a void within its body, unlessThou grant what holds it be a solid. Know,That which can hold a void of things withinCan be naught else than matter in union knit.Thus matter, consisting of a solid frame,Hath power to be eternal, though all else,Though all creation, be dissolved away.Again, were naught of empty and inane,The world were then a solid; as, withoutSome certain bodies to fill the places held,The world that is were but a vacant void.And so, infallibly, alternate-wiseBody and void are still distinguished,Since nature knows no wholly full nor void.There are, then, certain bodies, possessed of powerTo vary forever the empty and the full;And these can nor be sundered from withoutBy beats and blows, nor from within be tornBy penetration, nor be overthrownBy any assault soever through the world--For without void, naught can be crushed, it seems,Nor broken, nor severed by a cut in twain,Nor can it take the damp, or seeping coldOr piercing fire, those old destroyers three;But the more void within a thing, the moreEntirely it totters at their sure assault.Thus if first bodies be, as I have taught,Solid, without a void, they must be thenEternal; and, if matter ne'er had beenEternal, long ere now had all things goneBack into nothing utterly, and allWe see around from nothing had been born--But since I taught above that naught can beFrom naught created, nor the once begottenTo naught be summoned back, these primal germsMust have an immortality of frame.And into these must each thing be resolved,When comes its supreme hour, that thus there beAt hand the stuff for plenishing the world.

So primal germs have solid singlenessNor otherwise could they have been conservedThrough aeons and infinity of timeFor the replenishment of wasted worlds.Once more, if nature had given a scope for thingsTo be forever broken more and more,By now the bodies of matter would have beenSo far reduced by breakings in old daysThat from them nothing could, at season fixed,Be born, and arrive its prime and top of life.For, lo, each thing is quicker marred than made;And so whate'er the long infinitudeOf days and all fore-passed time would nowBy this have broken and ruined and dissolved,That same could ne'er in all remaining timeBe builded up for plenishing the world.But mark: infallibly a fixed boundRemaineth stablished 'gainst their breaking down;Since we behold each thing soever renewed,And unto all, their seasons, after their kind,Wherein they arrive the flower of their age.

Again, if bounds have not been set againstThe breaking down of this corporeal world,Yet must all bodies of whatever thingsHave still endured from everlasting timeUnto this present, as not yet assailedBy shocks of peril. But because the sameAre, to thy thinking, of a nature frail,It ill accords that thus they could remain(As thus they do) through everlasting time,Vexed through the ages (as indeed they are)By the innumerable blows of chance.

So in our programme of creation, markHow 'tis that, though the bodies of all stuffAre solid to the core, we yet explainThe ways whereby some things are fashioned soft--Air, water, earth, and fiery exhalations--And by what force they function and go on:The fact is founded in the void of things.But if the primal germs themselves be soft,Reason cannot be brought to bear to showThe ways whereby may be created theseGreat crags of basalt and the during iron;For their whole nature will profoundly lackThe first foundations of a solid frame.But powerful in old simplicity,Abide the solid, the primeval germs;And by their combinations more condensed,All objects can be tightly knit and boundAnd made to show unconquerable strength.Again, since all things kind by kind obtainFixed bounds of growing and conserving life;Since Nature hath inviolably decreedWhat each can do, what each can never do;Since naught is changed, but all things so abideThat ever the variegated birds revealThe spots or stripes peculiar to their kind,Spring after spring: thus surely all that isMust be composed of matter immutable.For if the primal germs in any wiseWere open to conquest and to change, 'twould beUncertain also what could come to birthAnd what could not, and by what law to eachIts scope prescribed, its boundary stone that clingsSo deep in Time. Nor could the generationsKind after kind so often reproduceThe nature, habits, motions, ways of life,Of their progenitors.

And then again,Since there is ever an extreme bounding point

Of that first body which our senses nowCannot perceive: That bounding point indeedExists without all parts, a minimumOf nature, nor was e'er a thing apart,As of itself,--nor shall hereafter be,Since 'tis itself still parcel of another,A first and single part, whence other partsAnd others similar in order lieIn a packed phalanx, filling to the fullThe nature of first body: being thusNot self-existent, they must cleave to thatFrom which in nowise they can sundered be.So primal germs have solid singleness,Which tightly packed and closely joined cohereBy virtue of their minim particles--No compound by mere union of the same;But strong in their eternal singleness,Nature, reserving them as seeds for things,Permitteth naught of rupture or decrease.

Moreover, were there not a minimum,The smallest bodies would have infinites,Since then a half-of-half could still be halved,With limitless division less and less.Then what the difference 'twixt the sum and least?None: for however infinite the sum,Yet even the smallest would consist the sameOf infinite parts. But since true reason hereProtests, denying that the mind can think it,Convinced thou must confess such things there areAs have no parts, the minimums of nature.And since these are, likewise confess thou mustThat primal bodies are solid and eterne.Again, if Nature, creatress of all things,Were wont to force all things to be resolvedUnto least parts, then would she not availTo reproduce from out them anything;Because whate'er is not endowed with partsCannot possess those properties requiredOf generative stuff--divers connections,Weights, blows, encounters, motions, whereby thingsForevermore have being and go on.

And on such grounds it is that those who heldThe stuff of things is fire, and out of fireAlone the cosmic sum is formed, are seenMightily from true reason to have lapsed.Of whom, chief leader to do battle, comesThat Heraclitus, famous for dark speechAmong the silly, not the serious GreeksWho search for truth. For dolts are ever proneThat to bewonder and adore which hidesBeneath distorted words, holding that trueWhich sweetly tickles in their stupid ears,Or which is rouged in finely finished phrase.For how, I ask, can things so varied be,If formed of fire, single and pure? No whit'Twould help for fire to be condensed or thinned,If all the parts of fire did still preserveBut fire's own nature, seen before in gross.The heat were keener with the parts compressed,Milder, again, when severed or dispersed--And more than this thou canst conceive of naughtThat from such causes could become; much lessMight earth's variety of things be bornFrom any fires soever, dense or rare.This too: if they suppose a void in things,Then fires can be condensed and still left rare;But since they see such opposites of thoughtRising against them, and are loath to leaveAn unmixed void in things, they fear the steepAnd lose the road of truth. Nor do they see,That, if from things we take away the void,All things are then condensed, and out of allOne body made, which has no power to dartSwiftly from out itself not anything--As throws the fire its light and warmth around,Giving thee proof its parts are not compact.But if perhaps they think, in other wise,Fires through their combinations can be quenchedAnd change their substance, very well: behold,If fire shall spare to do so in no part,Then heat will perish utterly and all,And out of nothing would the world be formed.For change in anything from out its boundsMeans instant death of that which was before;And thus a somewhat must persist unharmedAmid the world, lest all return to naught,And, born from naught, abundance thrive anew.Now since indeed there are those surest bodiesWhich keep their nature evermore the same,Upon whose going out and coming inAnd changed order things their nature change,And all corporeal substances transformed,'Tis thine to know those primal bodies, then,Are not of fire. For 'twere of no availShould some depart and go away, and someBe added new, and some be changed in order,If still all kept their nature of old heat:For whatsoever they created thenWould still in any case be only fire.The truth, I fancy, this: bodies there areWhose clashings, motions, order, posture, shapesProduce the fire and which, by order changed,Do change the nature of the thing produced,And are thereafter nothing like to fireNor whatso else has power to send its bodiesWith impact touching on the senses' touch.

Again, to say that all things are but fireAnd no true thing in number of all thingsExists but fire, as this same fellow says,Seems crazed folly. For the man himselfAgainst the senses by the senses fights,And hews at that through which is all belief,Through which indeed unto himself is knownThe thing he calls the fire. For, though he thinksThe senses truly can perceive the fire,He thinks they cannot as regards all else,Which still are palpably as clear to sense--To me a thought inept and crazy too.For whither shall we make appeal? for whatMore certain than our senses can there beWhereby to mark asunder error and truth?Besides, why rather do away with all,And wish to allow heat only, then denyThe fire and still allow all else to be?--Alike the madness either way it seems.Thus whosoe'er have held the stuff of thingsTo be but fire, and out of fire the sum,And whosoever have constituted airAs first beginning of begotten things,And all whoever have held that of itselfWater alone contrives things, or that earthCreateth all and changes things anewTo divers natures, mightily they seemA long way to have wandered from the truth.

Add, too, whoever make the primal stuffTwofold, by joining air to fire, and earthTo water; add who deem that things can growOut of the four--fire, earth, and breath, and rain;As first Empedocles of Acragas,Whom that three-cornered isle of all the landsBore on her coasts, around which flows and flowsIn mighty bend and bay the Ionic seas,Splashing the brine from off their gray-green waves.Here, billowing onward through the narrow straits,Swift ocean cuts her boundaries from the shoresOf the Italic mainland. Here the wasteCharybdis; and here Aetna rumbles threatsTo gather anew such furies of its flamesAs with its force anew to vomit fires,Belched from its throat, and skyward bear anewIts lightnings' flash. And though for much she seemThe mighty and the wondrous isle to men,Most rich in all good things, and fortifiedWith generous strength of heroes, she hath ne'erPossessed within her aught of more renown,Nor aught more holy, wonderful, and dearThan this true man. Nay, ever so far and pureThe lofty music of his breast divineLifts up its voice and tells of glories found,That scarce he seems of human stock create.

Yet he and those forementioned (known to beSo far beneath him, less than he in all),Though, as discoverers of much goodly truth,They gave, as 'twere from out of the heart's own shrine,Responses holier and soundlier basedThan ever the Pythia pronounced for menFrom out the tripod and the Delphian laurel,Have still in matter of first-elementsMade ruin of themselves, and, great men, greatIndeed and heavy there for them the fall:First, because, banishing the void from things,They yet assign them motion, and allowThings soft and loosely textured to exist,As air, dew, fire, earth, animals, and grains,Without admixture of void amid their frame.Next, because, thinking there can be no endIn cutting bodies down to less and lessNor pause established to their breaking up,They hold there is no minimum in things;Albeit we see the boundary point of aughtIs that which to our senses seems its least,Whereby thou mayst conjecture, that, becauseThe things thou canst not mark have boundary points,They surely have their minimums. Then, too,Since these philosophers ascribe to thingsSoft primal germs, which we behold to beOf birth and body mortal, thus, throughout,The sum of things must be returned to naught,And, born from naught, abundance thrive anew--Thou seest how far each doctrine stands from truth.And, next, these bodies are among themselvesIn many ways poisons and foes to each,Wherefore their congress will destroy them quiteOr drive asunder as we see in stormsRains, winds, and lightnings all asunder fly.

Thus too, if all things are create of four,And all again dissolved into the four,How can the four be called the primal germsOf things, more than all things themselves be thought,By retroversion, primal germs of them?For ever alternately are both begot,With interchange of nature and aspectFrom immemorial time. But if percaseThou think'st the frame of fire and earth, the air,The dew of water can in such wise meetAs not by mingling to resign their nature,From them for thee no world can be create--No thing of breath, no stock or stalk of tree:In the wild congress of this varied heapEach thing its proper nature will display,And air will palpably be seen mixed upWith earth together, unquenched heat with water.But primal germs in bringing things to birthMust have a latent, unseen quality,Lest some outstanding alien elementConfuse and minish in the thing createIts proper being.

But these men beginFrom heaven, and from its fires; and first they feignThat fire will turn into the winds of air,Next, that from air the rain begotten is,And earth created out of rain, and thenThat all, reversely, are returned from earth--The moisture first, then air thereafter heat--And that these same ne'er cease in interchange,To go their ways from heaven to earth, from earthUnto the stars of the aethereal world--Which in no wise at all the germs can do.Since an immutable somewhat still must be,Lest all things utterly be sped to naught;For change in anything from out its boundsMeans instant death of that which was before.Wherefore, since those things, mentioned heretofore,Suffer a changed state, they must deriveFrom others ever unconvertible,Lest an things utterly return to naught.Then why not rather presuppose there beBodies with such a nature furnished forthThat, if perchance they have created fire,Can still (by virtue of a few withdrawn,Or added few, and motion and order changed)Fashion the winds of air, and thus all thingsForevermore be interchanged with all?

"But facts in proof are manifest," thou sayest,"That all things grow into the winds of airAnd forth from earth are nourished, and unlessThe season favour at propitious hourWith rains enough to set the trees a-reelUnder the soak of bulking thunderheads,And sun, for its share, foster and give heat,No grains, nor trees, nor breathing things can grow."True--and unless hard food and moisture softRecruited man, his frame would waste away,And life dissolve from out his thews and bones;For out of doubt recruited and fed are weBy certain things, as other things by others.Because in many ways the many germsCommon to many things are mixed in things,No wonder 'tis that therefore divers thingsBy divers things are nourished. And, again,Often it matters vastly with what others,In what positions the primordial germsAre bound together, and what motions, too,They give and get among themselves; for theseSame germs do put together sky, sea, lands,Rivers, and sun, grains, trees, and breathing things,But yet commixed they are in divers modesWith divers things, forever as they move.Nay, thou beholdest in our verses hereElements many, common to many worlds,Albeit thou must confess each verse, each wordFrom one another differs both in senseAnd ring of sound--so much the elementsCan bring about by change of order alone.But those which are the primal germs of thingsHave power to work more combinations still,Whence divers things can be produced in turn.

Now let us also take for scrutinyThe homeomeria of Anaxagoras,So called by Greeks, for which our pauper-speechYieldeth no name in the Italian tongue,Although the thing itself is not o'erhardFor explanation. First, then, when he speaksOf this homeomeria of things, he thinksBones to be sprung from littlest bones minute,And from minute and littlest flesh all flesh,And blood created out of drops of blood,Conceiving gold compact of grains of gold,And earth concreted out of bits of earth,Fire made of fires, and water out of waters,Feigning the like with all the rest of stuff.Yet he concedes not any void in things,Nor any limit to cutting bodies down.Wherefore to me he seems on both accountsTo err no less than those we named before.Add too: these germs he feigns are far too frail--If they be germs primordial furnished forthWith but same nature as the things themselves,And travail and perish equally with those,And no rein curbs them from annihilation.For which will last against the grip and crushUnder the teeth of death? the fire? the moist?Or else the air? which then? the blood? the bones?No one, methinks, when every thing will beAt bottom as mortal as whate'er we markTo perish by force before our gazing eyes.But my appeal is to the proofs aboveThat things cannot fall back to naught, nor yetFrom naught increase. And now again, since foodAugments and nourishes the human frame,'Tis thine to know our veins and blood and bonesAnd thews are formed of particles unlikeTo them in kind; or if they say all foodsAre of mixed substance having in themselvesSmall bodies of thews, and bones, and also veinsAnd particles of blood, then every food,Solid or liquid, must itself be thoughtAs made and mixed of things unlike in kind--Of bones, of thews, of ichor and of blood.Again, if all the bodies which upgrowFrom earth, are first within the earth, then earthMust be compound of alien substances.Which spring and bloom abroad from out the earth.Transfer the argument, and thou may'st useThe selfsame words: if flame and smoke and ashStill lurk unseen within the wood, the woodMust be compound of alien substancesWhich spring from out the wood.

Right here remainsA certain slender means to skulk from truth,Which Anaxagoras takes unto himself,Who holds that all things lurk commixed with allWhile that one only comes to view, of whichThe bodies exceed in number all the rest,And lie more close to hand and at the fore--A notion banished from true reason far.For then 'twere meet that kernels of the grainsShould oft, when crunched between the might of stones,Give forth a sign of blood, or of aught elseWhich in our human frame is fed; and thatRock rubbed on rock should yield a gory ooze.Likewise the herbs ought oft to give forth dropsOf sweet milk, flavoured like the uddered sheep's;Indeed we ought to find, when crumbling upThe earthy clods, there herbs, and grains, and leaves,All sorts dispersed minutely in the soil;Lastly we ought to find in cloven woodAshes and smoke and bits of fire there hid.But since fact teaches this is not the case,'Tis thine to know things are not mixed with thingsThuswise; but seeds, common to many things,Commixed in many ways, must lurk in things.

"But often it happens on skiey hills" thou sayest,"That neighbouring tops of lofty trees are rubbedOne against other, smote by the blustering south,Till all ablaze with bursting flower of flame."Good sooth--yet fire is not ingraft in wood,But many are the seeds of heat, and whenRubbing together they together flow,They start the conflagrations in the forests.Whereas if flame, already fashioned, layStored up within the forests, then the firesCould not for any time be kept unseen,But would be laying all the wildwood wasteAnd burning all the boscage. Now dost see(Even as we said a little space above)How mightily it matters with what others,In what positions these same primal germsAre bound together? And what motions, too,They give and get among themselves? how, hence,The same, if altered 'mongst themselves, can bodyBoth igneous and ligneous objects forth--Precisely as these words themselves are madeBy somewhat altering their elements,Although we mark with name indeed distinctThe igneous from the ligneous. Once again,If thou suppose whatever thou beholdest,Among all visible objects, cannot be,Unless thou feign bodies of matter endowedWith a like nature,--by thy vain deviceFor thee will perish all the germs of things:'Twill come to pass they'll laugh aloud, like men,Shaken asunder by a spasm of mirth,Or moisten with salty tear-drops cheeks and chins.

Now learn of what remains! More keenly hear!And for myself, my mind is not deceivedHow dark it is: But the large hope of praiseHath strook with pointed thyrsus through my heart;On the same hour hath strook into my breastSweet love of the Muses, wherewith now instinct,I wander afield, thriving in sturdy thought,Through unpathed haunts of the Pierides,Trodden by step of none before. I joyTo come on undefiled fountains there,To drain them deep; I joy to pluck new flowers,To seek for this my head a signal crownFrom regions where the Muses never yetHave garlanded the temples of a man:First, since I teach concerning mighty things,And go right on to loose from round the mindThe tightened coils of dread religion;Next, since, concerning themes so dark, I frameSongs so pellucid, touching all throughoutEven with the Muses' charm--which, as 'twould seem,Is not without a reasonable ground:But as physicians, when they seek to giveYoung boys the nauseous wormwood, first do touchThe brim around the cup with the sweet juiceAnd yellow of the honey, in order thatThe thoughtless age of boyhood be cajoledAs far as the lips, and meanwhile swallow downThe wormwood's bitter draught, and, though befooled,Be yet not merely duped, but rather thusGrow strong again with recreated health:So now I too (since this my doctrine seemsIn general somewhat woeful unto thoseWho've had it not in hand, and since the crowdStarts back from it in horror) have desiredTo expound our doctrine unto thee in songSoft-speaking and Pierian, and, as 'twere,To touch it with sweet honey of the Muse--If by such method haply I might holdThe mind of thee upon these lines of ours,Till thou see through the nature of all things,And how exists the interwoven frame.

But since I've taught that bodies of matter, madeCompletely solid, hither and thither flyForevermore unconquered through all time,Now come, and whether to the sum of themThere be a limit or be none, for theeLet us unfold; likewise what has been foundTo be the wide inane, or room, or spaceWherein all things soever do go on,Let us examine if it finite beAll and entire, or reach unmeasured roundAnd downward an illimitable profound.

Thus, then, the All that is is limitedIn no one region of its onward paths,For then 'tmust have forever its beyond.And a beyond 'tis seen can never beFor aught, unless still further on there beA somewhat somewhere that may bound the same--So that the thing be seen still on to whereThe nature of sensation of that thingCan follow it no longer. Now becauseConfess we must there's naught beside the sum,There's no beyond, and so it lacks all end.It matters nothing where thou post thyself,In whatsoever regions of the same;Even any place a man has set him downStill leaves about him the unbounded allOutward in all directions; or, supposingA moment the all of space finite to be,If some one farthest traveller runs forthUnto the extreme coasts and throws aheadA flying spear, is't then thy wish to thinkIt goes, hurled off amain, to where 'twas sentAnd shoots afar, or that some object thereCan thwart and stop it? For the one or otherThou must admit and take. Either of whichShuts off escape for thee, and does compelThat thou concede the all spreads everywhere,Owning no confines. Since whether there beAught that may block and check it so it comesNot where 'twas sent, nor lodges in its goal,Or whether borne along, in either view'Thas started not from any end. And soI'll follow on, and whereso'er thou setThe extreme coasts, I'll query, "what becomesThereafter of thy spear?" 'Twill come to passThat nowhere can a world's-end be, and thatThe chance for further flight prolongs foreverThe flight itself. Besides, were all the spaceOf the totality and sum shut inWith fixed coasts, and bounded everywhere,Then would the abundance of world's matter flowTogether by solid weight from everywhereStill downward to the bottom of the world,Nor aught could happen under cope of sky,Nor could there be a sky at all or sun--Indeed, where matter all one heap would lie,By having settled during infinite time.But in reality, repose is givenUnto no bodies 'mongst the elements,Because there is no bottom whereuntoThey might, as 'twere, together flow, and whereThey might take up their undisturbed abodes.In endless motion everything goes onForevermore; out of all regions, evenOut of the pit below, from forth the vast,Are hurtled bodies evermore supplied.The nature of room, the space of the abyssIs such that even the flashing thunderboltsCan neither speed upon their courses through,Gliding across eternal tracts of time,Nor, further, bring to pass, as on they run,That they may bate their journeying one whit:Such huge abundance spreads for things around--Room off to every quarter, without end.Lastly, before our very eyes is seenThing to bound thing: air hedges hill from hill,And mountain walls hedge air; land ends the sea,And sea in turn all lands; but for the AllTruly is nothing which outside may bound.That, too, the sum of things itself may notHave power to fix a measure of its own,Great nature guards, she who compels the voidTo bound all body, as body all the void,Thus rendering by these alternates the wholeAn infinite; or else the one or other,Being unbounded by the other, spreads,Even by its single nature, ne'erthelessImmeasurably forth....Nor sea, nor earth, nor shining vaults of sky,Nor breed of mortals, nor holy limbs of godsCould keep their place least portion of an hour:For, driven apart from out its meetings fit,The stock of stuff, dissolved, would be borneAlong the illimitable inane afar,Or rather, in fact, would ne'er have once combinedAnd given a birth to aught, since, scattered wide,It could not be united. For of truthNeither by counsel did the primal germs'Stablish themselves, as by keen act of mind,Each in its proper place; nor did they make,Forsooth, a compact how each germ should move;But since, being many and changed in many modesAlong the All, they're driven abroad and vexedBy blow on blow, even from all time of old,They thus at last, after attempting allThe kinds of motion and conjoining, comeInto those great arrangements out of whichThis sum of things established is create,By which, moreover, through the mighty years,It is preserved, when once it has been thrownInto the proper motions, bringing to passThat ever the streams refresh the greedy mainWith river-waves abounding, and that earth,Lapped in warm exhalations of the sun,Renews her broods, and that the lusty raceOf breathing creatures bears and blooms, and thatThe gliding fires of ether are alive--What still the primal germs nowise could do,Unless from out the infinite of spaceCould come supply of matter, whence in seasonThey're wont whatever losses to repair.For as the nature of breathing creatures wastes,Losing its body, when deprived of food:So all things have to be dissolved as soonAs matter, diverted by what means soeverFrom off its course, shall fail to be on hand.Nor can the blows from outward still conserve,On every side, whatever sum of a worldHas been united in a whole. They canIndeed, by frequent beating, check a part,Till others arriving may fulfil the sum;But meanwhile often are they forced to springRebounding back, and, as they spring, to yield,Unto those elements whence a world derives,Room and a time for flight, permitting themTo be from off the massy union borneFree and afar. Wherefore, again, again:Needs must there come a many for supply;And also, that the blows themselves shall beUnfailing ever, must there ever beAn infinite force of matter all sides round.

And in these problems, shrink, my Memmius, farFrom yielding faith to that notorious talk:That all things inward to the centre press;And thus the nature of the world stands firmWith never blows from outward, nor can beNowhere disparted--since all height and depthHave always inward to the centre pressed(If thou art ready to believe that aughtItself can rest upon itself ); or thatThe ponderous bodies which be under earthDo all press upwards and do come to restUpon the earth, in some way upside down,Like to those images of things we seeAt present through the waters. They contend,With like procedure, that all breathing thingsHead downward roam about, and yet cannotTumble from earth to realms of sky below,No more than these our bodies wing awaySpontaneously to vaults of sky above;That, when those creatures look upon the sun,We view the constellations of the night;And that with us the seasons of the skyThey thus alternately divide, and thusDo pass the night coequal to our days,But a vain error has given these dreams to fools,Which they've embraced with reasoning perverseFor centre none can be where world is stillBoundless, nor yet, if now a centre were,Could aught take there a fixed position moreThan for some other cause 'tmight be dislodged.For all of room and space we call the voidMust both through centre and non-centre yieldAlike to weights where'er their motions tend.Nor is there any place, where, when they've come,Bodies can be at standstill in the void,Deprived of force of weight; nor yet may voidFurnish support to any,--nay, it must,True to its bent of nature, still give way.Thus in such manner not at all can thingsBe held in union, as if overcomeBy craving for a centre.

But besides,Seeing they feign that not all bodies pressTo centre inward, rather only thoseOf earth and water (liquid of the sea,And the big billows from the mountain slopes,And whatsoever are encased, as 'twere,In earthen body), contrariwise, they teachHow the thin air, and with it the hot fire,Is borne asunder from the centre, and how,For this all ether quivers with bright stars,And the sun's flame along the blue is fed(Because the heat, from out the centre flying,All gathers there), and how, again, the boughsUpon the tree-tops could not sprout their leaves,Unless, little by little, from out the earthFor each were nutriment...

Lest, after the manner of the winged flames,The ramparts of the world should flee away,Dissolved amain throughout the mighty void,And lest all else should likewise follow after,Aye, lest the thundering vaults of heaven should burstAnd splinter upward, and the earth forthwithWithdraw from under our feet, and all its bulk,Among its mingled wrecks and those of heaven,With slipping asunder of the primal seeds,Should pass, along the immeasurable inane,Away forever, and, that instant, naughtOf wrack and remnant would be left, besideThe desolate space, and germs invisible.For on whatever side thou deemest firstThe primal bodies lacking, lo, that sideWill be for things the very door of death:Wherethrough the throng of matter all will dash,Out and abroad.

These points, if thou wilt ponder,Then, with but paltry trouble led along...

For one thing after other will grow clear,Nor shall the blind night rob thee of the road,To hinder thy gaze on nature's Farthest-forth.Thus things for things shall kindle torches new.