On the Nature of Things · Lucretius

Book V: Proem

21 of 31 · 3 min of reading

O WHO can build with puissant breast a song

Worthy the majesty of these great finds?

Or who in words so strong that he can frame

The fit laudations for deserts of him

Who left us heritors of such vast prizes,

By his own breast discovered and sought out?--

There shall be none, methinks, of mortal stock.

For if must needs be named for him the name

Demanded by the now known majesty

Of these high matters, then a god was he,--

Hear me, illustrious Memmius--a god;

Who first and chief found out that plan of life

Which now is called philosophy, and who

By cunning craft, out of such mighty waves,

Out of such mighty darkness, moored life

In havens so serene, in light so clear.

Compare those old discoveries divine

Of others: lo, according to the tale,

Ceres established for mortality

The grain, and Bacchus juice of vine-born grape,

Though life might yet without these things abide,

Even as report saith now some peoples live.

But man's well-being was impossible

Without a breast all free. Wherefore the more

That man doth justly seem to us a god,

From whom sweet solaces of life, afar

Distributed o'er populous domains,

Now soothe the minds of men. But if thou thinkest

Labours of Hercules excel the same,

Much farther from true reasoning thou farest.

For what could hurt us now that mighty maw

Of Nemeaean Lion, or what the Boar

Who bristled in Arcadia? Or, again,

O what could Cretan Bull, or Hydra, pest

Of Lerna, fenced with vipers venomous?

Or what the triple-breasted power of her

The three-fold Geryon...

The sojourners in the Stymphalian fens

So dreadfully offend us, or the Steeds

Of Thracian Diomedes breathing fire

From out their nostrils off along the zones

Bistonian and Ismarian? And the Snake,

The dread fierce gazer, guardian of the golden

And gleaming apples of the Hesperides,

Coiled round the tree-trunk with tremendous bulk,

O what, again, could he inflict on us

Along the Atlantic shore and wastes of sea?--

Where neither one of us approacheth nigh

Nor no barbarian ventures. And the rest

Of all those monsters slain, even if alive,

Unconquered still, what injury could they do?

None, as I guess. For so the glutted earth

Swarms even now with savage beasts, even now

Is filled with anxious terrors through the woods

And mighty mountains and the forest deeps--

Quarters 'tis ours in general to avoid.

But lest the breast be purged, what conflicts then,

What perils, must bosom, in our own despite!

O then how great and keen the cares of lust

That split the man distraught! How great the fears!

And lo, the pride, grim greed, and wantonness--

How great the slaughters in their train! and lo,

Debaucheries and every breed of sloth!

Therefore that man who subjugated these,

And from the mind expelled, by words indeed,

Not arms, O shall it not be seemly him

To dignify by ranking with the gods?--

And all the more since he was wont to give,

Concerning the immortal gods themselves,

Many pronouncements with a tongue divine,

And to unfold by his pronouncements all

The nature of the world.

· · ·

End of part 21 of 31