Read On the Nature of the Universe (Oxford World’s Classics) Online
Authors: Ronald Melville,Don,Peta Fowler
And some without their hands or feet yet still | 1210 |
Clung on to life, and others lost their eyes, | |
So strongly had the fear of death assailed them. | |
And some oblivion of everything | |
Took hold of, that they knew not who they were. | |
And although bodies piled on bodies lay | 1215 |
In multitudes unburied, birds and beasts | |
Avoided them, warned by the piercing stench, | |
Or, having tasted, died a speedy death. | |
In truth in those dark days scarce any bird | |
Was to be seen, nor from the forests came | 1220 |
Wild beasts in search of prey; for nearly all | |
Were sickening with the deadly plague and dying. | |
Among the first, man’s faithful friends the dogs | |
Lay stretched in every street, fighting in vain | |
For life the pestilence wrenched out of them. | |
The lonely funerals, one racing with another, | 1225 |
Were rushed without a mourner to the grave. | |
There was no sure and general remedy. | |
For what had given to one the power to draw | |
The breath of life into his lips, and see | |
The realms of heaven, this to another was | |
Destruction and a minister of death. | |
One thing most woeful and most pitiful | 1230 |
Was this: that when a man saw himself | |
Caught by the plague, as if condemned to death | |
Losing all heart he lay in misery, | |
And so expecting death died where he lay. | |
Unceasing the contagion of the plague | 1235 |
Seized in its grasp first one man then another, | |
Like flocks of fleecy sheep or horned cattle. | |
This was the chief cause of death piled on death. | |
And if from greed for life and fear of death | |
Men shunned the sick-beds of those dear to them, | |
In no long time avenging negligence | 1240 |
Brought punishment, a foul and evil death, | |
Bereft of help, deserted, all alone. | |
But those that stood to help the plague destroyed, | |
And toil, which honour drove them to endure, | |
Hearing the pleading voices of the weary, | |
Listening to the sad voice of complaint. | 1245 |
In this way all the noblest met their death. | |
[ | |
… one upon another, fighting | |
To bury the vast numbers of their dead. | |
Wearied with tears and sorrow they returned; | |
And many then took to their beds in grief. | |
Nor could a man be found at such a time | 1250 |
Whom neither plague nor death nor grief had touched. | |
Moreover now the shepherd and the herdsman | |
And the strong steersman of the curving plough, | |
All, all were fainting. Deep within their huts | |
Their bodies huddled lay, consigned to death | |
By poverty and by the foul disease. | 1255 |
And sometimes you might see the lifeless bodies | |
Of parents lying upon their lifeless children, | |
Or see in turn the children breathe their last | |
Upon the bodies of their mothers and fathers. | |
And this affliction to no small extent | |
Flowed to the city from the countryside; | |
For crowds of country-folk struck by the plague | 1260 |
Thronging every quarter brought it in. | |
They filled the lanes and lodgings everywhere, | |
And crammed together within stifling walls | |
Death the destroyer piled them up in heaps. | |
And overcome by thirst bodies lay strewn | |
Along the roadsides by the drinking fountains | 1265 |
Of multitudes from whom the breath of life | |
Had been cut off by water all too welcome. | |
And everywhere in streets and public places | |
You could see half-dead bodies, fainting limbs | |
Covered with rags and caked with filth and squalor, | |
Dying, with naught but skin upon their bones, | 1270 |
Skin almost buried in foul sores and dirt. | |
And all the holy temples of the gods | |
Death filled with lifeless bodies, and everywhere | |
The shrines of the celestials, which the priests | |
Had filled with guests, stood loaded high with corpses. | 1275 |
For reverence now and worship of the gods | |
Counted for little, present grief was all. | |
No longer too the ancient customs stood | |
Of burial, which the city was wont to use. | |
Confusion and fear were everywhere, and in sorrow | 1280 |
Each buried his own as circumstance allowed. | |
And sudden need and poverty inspired them | |
To many actions horrible and shameful. | |
They placed their own kin on the funeral pyres | |
Of others, and with frenzied cries set light to them, | |
And often in the fighting that ensued | 1285 |
They shed much blood rather than leave the bodies. | |
1
mother of the Roman race
: in mythology, Venus was the mother of Aeneas, the traditional ancestor of the Romans: the story of her encounter with his father Anchises on Mt Ida is told in the
Hymn to Aphrodite
ascribed to Homer, and the introduction to that hymn is recalled in the prologue at several points.
delight
: pleasure was the central good of the Epicurean system: see Introduction.
2
Venus
: the Roman equivalent of the Greek Aphrodite, goddess of love and sex. Her name in Latin means something like ‘attractiveness’, and her principal festival was on 1 April, the beginning of spring (cf. the opening of Chaucer’s
Canterbury Tales
). The poem begins at dawn on the first day of spring (10 ff.), when navigation resumes again after the winter (3 ff.).
26
Memmius
: C. Memmius, praetor in 58
BC
and consular candidate in 54: see Introduction. Venus was used as an emblem on the coinage of the family of the
Memmii
.
33
Mars’ dominion
: Venus restraining the warlike impulse of her husband Mars was a frequent subject of ancient as of modern painting (see especially Botticelli’s
Venus and Mars
). Their union was sometimes allegorized as bringing about harmony: they also look back to the two cosmic principles of ‘Love’ and ‘Strife’ of the fifth-century
BC
Greek poet Empedocles, who was one of Lucretius’ major models (see Introduction).
44–8
for perfect peace…
: these lines translate the first of Epicurus’ ‘Master Sayings’: ‘The blessed and deathless [i.e. the divine] is neither itself troubled nor provides trouble to others, and so it is not compassed either by gratitude or by anger; for all such is weakness.’ Some scholars excise these lines (which are repeated at 2. 646 ff.) as at odds with the terms of the invocation to Venus and the run of thought: the lines are certainly shockingly abrupt about the real nature of divinity, but this is not necessarily without point.
56
Nature creates, increases, nourishes
: Nature begins to take over the functions of ‘Venus most bountiful’ (2 ff.).
66
a man of Greece
: Epicurus. The oblique reference is in oracular style: Empedocles so refers to Pythagoras (fr. B 129), and later Virgil will refer to Lucretius with similar anonymity (
Georgics knows the causes of things… ’). Epicurus is depicted as a giant in revolt against heaven (cf. 5. 117 ff.), a hero defeating the monster religion as Apollo defeated Python. This passage was widely imitated in later poetry: see the introduction for Abraham Cowley’s celebration of Francis Bacon’s victory over ‘Authority’ in his Ode ‘To the Royal Society’.
77
deep-set boundary stone
: 76–7 are repeated at 1. 595–6, 5. 89–90, and 6. 65–6. It was a sacrilege to move a boundary stone (Latin
terminus
): there was even a deity ‘Terminus’ who oversaw them (cf. Livy 1. 55. 3). Epicurus’ journey through the infinite universe ends in an expression of human finitude (for the image cf. also 2. 1087, 3. 1020).
84–101
as once at Aulis…
: Iphigenia (here called Iphianassa as in Homer, though the latter does not have the story of her sacrifice) was sacrificed by her father Agamemnon at the instigation of the priest Calchas in order to appease Diana (Artemis) and provide a following wind for the expedition against Troy. There were several versions of the story: Lucretius uses those details which reflect worse on religion, especially those found in Aeschylus’ play
Agamemnon
(228 ff.) and Euripides,
Iphigenia in Aulis
.
117
Our own Ennius
: Q. Ennius (239–169
BC
), the ‘father’ of Roman poetry. In the opening of his great historical epic the
Annales
he described a meeting with the shade of Homer in Pythagorean terms (frr. 3–11): the work survives only in fragments, but was clearly extensively used in the prologue to
On the Nature of the Universe
.
141
sweet friendship
: friendship played an important role in Epicurean communities, but the term was also used for the relationship between clients and patrons in Rome.
148
the face of nature and her laws
: lines 146–8 also conclude the opening sections of
Books 2
,
3
, and
6
. The dual reference to the outward appearance of the world and its inner workings reflects the Epicurean insistence on empiricism and reason (
physiologia
: see Introduction).
159
if things came out of nothing
: see Epicurus’
Letter to Herodotus
38, ‘nothing comes to be out of what is not, for everything would then come to be out of everything, without needing a seed’, a view described by Aristotle (
Metaphysics
1. 983
b
) as the common belief of ancient natural philosophers. On the argument form used here, see Introduction.
174
why do roses flourish in the spring
: the opening address to Venus is recalled, but now science replaces myth. The ‘argument from design’ based on the orderly procession of the seasons is here turned against belief in providence: similarly in 208–14 myths of a Golden Age when human beings did not need to work are debunked.
215
The next great principle
: cf. Epicurus,
Letter to Herodotus
38, ‘and if what disappears was destroyed into what does not exist, all things would have perished, since that into which they were dissolved would not exist’.
250–61
father ether…
: the ‘hieros gamos’ or wedding of earth and sky was a common literary and religious motif from the time of Homer’s account of the union of Zeus and Hera (
Iliad
14. 346–51): Lucretius’ account here is close to that in Aeschylus’
Danaids
(fr. 44), just as his later version in
Book 2
(991 ff.) is based on Euripides’
Chrysippus
(fr. 839). Lucretius sails close to the wind in perverting the commonplace to his own ends, and this is one of the passages that have led critics to see an underlying religious feeling belying Epicurean orthodoxy; the concluding lines, however, remind us that these are all natural processes.