No More Learning

There you see
the herd.
-
Hera- - But not the herdsman.
Hermes-What? Look along my finger, so.
Don't you see
the cows coming from among the rocks, and a man with a crook
running down the bluff to hem them in and keep them from
scattering further?
Hera- I see now, if that is he.
Hermes-That's he. When we are close at hand we will take
to the ground, if you please, and come up to him walking, so as
not to frighten him by dropping in from the unseen.
Hera-Very good, we will do so. [They alight. ] Now that
we are on earth, Aphrodite, you had better go ahead and lead
the way.
You are probably familiar with the spot. The story
goes that you have visited Anchises here more than once.
Aphrodite - Those jokes don't bother me very much, Hera.
Hermes-I will lead the way myself. Here is the umpire
close by: let us address him. [To Paris. ] Good morning, cow-
herd!
Paris - Good morning, my lad. Who are you? And who are
these women whom you are escorting? —not mountain-bred: they
are too pretty.


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LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA
9294
Hermes-And not women. Paris, you see before you Hera
and Athena and Aphrodite; and I am Hermes, bearing a mes-
sage from Zeus. Why do you tremble and lose color? Don't be
frightened; it's nothing bad. He bids you judge which of them
is fairest; "for," says Zeus, "you are fair yourself and wise in
lover's lore, so I turn over the case to you. You will know what
the prize is when you read the legend on the apple. " [Hands
him the apple. ]
Paris-Let me see what it all means. FOR THE FAIREST, the
apple says. How in the world, Lord Hermes, can I, a mortal
man and a rustic, be judge of this marvelous spectacle, which is
beyond a cowherd's powers? Judgment in such matters belongs
rather to the dainty folk in towns. As for me, I have the art to
judge between goat and goat, as between heifer and heifer, in
point of beauty. But these ladies are beautiful alike. I do not
know how a man could drag his sight from one to rest it on an-
other. Wherever my eye falls first, there it clings and approves
what it finds. I am fairly bathed in their beauty. It surrounds
me altogether. I wish I were all eyes, like Argus. I think I
should judge wisely if I gave the apple to all. And here is
something to consider too: one of them is sister and wife of
Zeus, while the others are his daughters. Doesn't this make the
decision hard?
Hermes-I can't say. I only know that you can't shirk what
Zeus commands.
Paris-Make them promise one thing, Hermes: that the losers
will not be angry with me, but only consider my sight defective.
Hermes-They say they will do so; but it is time you made
your decision.
Good heavens,
Paris-I will try; for what else can I do?
what a sight! What beauty! What delight! How fair the maiden
goddess is! and how queenly, glorious, and worthy of her station
is the wife of Zeus! And how sweet is Aphrodite's glance, with
her soft, winning smile! - Bah! I can hold no more pleasure. If
you please, I should like to study each separately; as it is, I look
two ways at once.
Aphrodite - Yes, let us do it that way.
Paris-Go off, then, two of you. Hera, do you stay.
Hera-I will; and when you have considered me carefully
you had better consider something else,-whether you like the


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LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA
9295
results of a verdict in my favor. For if you decide, Paris, that
I am the fairest, you shall be lord of all Asia.
Go now,
Paris-My justice is not for sale.
I am satisfied.
Come next, Athena.
Athena - Here I am, Paris; and if you decide that I am
fairest, you shall never be beaten in battle. I will make you a
victorious warrior.
Paris I have no use for war and battle, Athena. Peace
reigns, as you see, in Phrygia and Lydia, and my father's realm
is undisturbed. But cheer up: you shall not suffer for it, even
if my justice is not for sale. I have finished with you; it is
Aphrodite's turn.
Aphrodite - At your service, Paris, and I shall bear careful
inspection. And if you like, my dear lad, listen to me too. I
have had an eye on you for some time; and seeing you so young
and handsome-does Phrygia hold such another? -I congratu-
late you on your looks, but I blame you for not leaving these
rocks and living in the city. Why do you waste your beauty in
the desert? What good do you get of the mountains? How are
your cattle the better because you are handsome? You ought
to have had a wife before this; not a wild country girl like the
women of Ida, but a queen from Argos or Corinth, or a Spartan
woman like Helen, for instance. She is young and lovely, in no
way inferior to me, and what is most important, made for love.
If that woman should but see you, I know she would surrender
herself, and leave everything to follow you and be your wife;
but of course you have heard about her yourself.
Paris-Not a word. But I should love to listen if you will
tell me the whole story.
Aphrodite - She is the daughter of that fair Leda whom Zeus
loved.
Paris And what does she look like?
Aphrodite - She is blonde, soft, and delicate, yet strong with
athletic sports. She is so sought after that men fought for her
sake when Theseus stole her, yet a little girl. And when she
was grown up, all the noblest of the Greeks came courting her;
and Menelaus was chosen, of the family of Pelops. But if you
like, I will make her your wife.
-
Paris-What do you mean? She is married already.
Aphrodite - You are a young provincial, to be sure. But I
know how to manage an affair like that.


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9296
LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA
Paris-How? I should like to know myself.
Aphrodite-You will set out on your travels, ostensibly to see
Greece; and when you come to Lacedæmon, Helen will see you.
The rest shall be my affair, to arrange that she shall fall in love
with you and follow you.
Paris Ah, that is what seems impossible to me,-that a
woman should be willing to leave her husband and sail away
with a stranger to a strange land.
Aphrodite - Don't worry about that. I have two fair children,
Longing and Love, whom I shall give you as guides on your
journey. And Love shall enter into the woman and compel her
to love, while Longing shall invest you with charm in her eyes.
I will be there myself, and I will ask the Graces to come too, so
that we may make a joint attack upon her.
Paris-How all this is to come about remains to be seen; but
I am already in love with Helen. Somehow or other I see her
with my mind's eye, and my voyage to Greece and my visit to
Sparta and my return with her. It oppresses me that I am not
carrying it out this minute.
Aphrodite - Don't fall in love, Paris, until you have given me
the matchmaker's fee in the shape of a verdict. It would be nice
if we could have a joint festival in honor of your marriage and
my victory. It all rests with you. You can buy love, beauty, a
wife, with that apple.
Paris-I am afraid you will forget me after the award is
made.
Aphrodite - Do you want my oath?
Paris By no means; only your promise.
Aphrodite I promise that I will give you Helen to be your
wife, that she shall follow you to Troy, and that I will attend in
person and help you in every way.
Paris-And you will bring Love and Longing and the Graces?
Aphrodite - Trust me, and I will have Desire and Hymen
there into the bargain.
Paris-On these conditions I award the apple to you. Take it!
Translated by Emily James Smith.


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LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA
9297
THE AMATEUR OF LYING
Persons: Tychiades, Philocles
YCHIADES-
Τ
I have just come from a visit to Eucrates- -every-
body knows Eucrates-and at his house I heard a lot of
incredible fables. Indeed, I came away in the middle be-
cause I could not stand the extravagance of what I heard. I fled
from the tale of portents and wonders as though the Furies were
at my heels.
-
Philocles-What were they, in Heaven's name? I should like
to know what form of folly Eucrates devises behind that impress-
ive beard of his.
Tychiades-I found at his house a goodly company, includ-
ing Cleodomus the Peripatetic, and Deinomachus the Stoic, and
Ion; - you know Ion, who thinks himself an authority on the
writings of Plato, believing himself the only man who has ex-
actly understood the master's meaning so as to interpret him to
the world. You see what sort of m en were there, of wisdom
and virtue all compact. Antigonus the doctor was there too;
called in professionally, I suppose. Eucrates seemed to be eased
already; his difficulty was a chronic one, and the humors had
subsided to his feet. He motioned me to sit down beside him
on the couch, sinking his voice to invalid's pitch when he saw
me, though I had heard him shouting as I came in. So I sat
down beside him, taking great care not to touch his feet, and
explaining, as one does, that I hadn't heard of his illness before,
and came on a run as soon as the news reached me.
They happened to be still carrying on a discussion of his ail-
ment which had already occupied them some time; and each man
was suggesting a method of treatment.
XVI-582
"Now, if you kill a field-mouse in the way I described," said
Cleodomus, "and pick up one of its teeth from the ground with
your left hand, and wrap it in the skin of a lion newly flayed,
and then tie it round your legs, the pain will cease at once. "
"Why, do you think," I asked, "that any charm can work the
cure, or that what you clap on outside affects a disease lodged
within ? "
"Don't mind him," said Ion. "I will tell you a queer story.
When I was a boy about fourteen years old, a messenger came to
tell my father that Midas, one of his vine-dressers,-a robust,
active fellow,-had been bitten by a snake about noonday, and


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9298
LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA
•
#
was then lying with a mortifying leg. As he was tying up the
tendrils and fastening them to the poles, the creature had crept
up and bitten his great toe, disappearing at once into its hole,
while Midas bawled in mortal agony. Such was the message,
and we saw Midas himself borne on a cot by his fellow slaves;
swollen, livid, clammy, and evidently with but a short time to
live. Seeing my father's distress, a friend who stood by said
to him, 'Cheer up: I will bring you a man a Chaldæan from
Babylon, they say who will cure the fellow. ' And to make a
long story short, the Babylonian came and put Midas on his feet,
driving the poison out of his body by an incantation and the
application to his foot of a chip from a maiden's tombstone. And
perhaps this is not very remarkable; though Midas picked up his
own bed and went back to the farm, showing the force that was
in the charm and the stone. But the Babylonian did some other
things that were really remarkable. Early in the morning he
went to the farm, pronounced seven sacred names from an ancient
book, walked round the place three times purifying it with torch
and sulphur, and drove out every creeping thing within the bor-
ders. They came out in numbers as though drawn to the charm:
snakes, asps, adders, horned snakes and darting snakes, toads and
newts. But one old serpent was left behind; detained by age, I
suppose. The magician declared he had not got them all, and
chose one of the snakes, the youngest, to send as an ambassador
to the old one, who very shortly made his appearance also. When
they were all assembled, the Babylonian blew upon them, and
they were forthwith burnt up by his breath, to our astonish-
ment. "
―――
-
"Tell me, Ion," said I, "did the young snake-the ambassa-
dor- give his hand to the old one, or had the old one a crutch
to lean on? "
"You are flippant," said Cleodomus.
While we were talking thus, Eucrates's two sons came in from
the gymnasium,-one of them already a young man, the other
about fifteen; and after greeting us they sat down on the couch.
by their father. A chair was brought for me, and Eucrates
addressed me as though reminded of something by the sight of
the lads. "Tychiades," said he, "may I have no comfort in
these," and he laid a hand on the head of each, "if I am not
telling you the truth. You all know my attachment to my wife,
the mother of these boys. I showed it by my care of her, not


## p. 9299 (#315) ###########################################

LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA
9299
only while she lived, but after her death by burning with her all
the ornaments and clothing that she had pleasure in. On the
seventh day after she died, I was lying here on the couch as I
am at this moment, and trying to beguile my grief by quietly
reading Plato's book on the soul. In the midst of my reading
there enters to me Demineate herself and takes a seat near me,
where Eucratides is now. " He pointed to his younger son, who
forthwith shivered with childish terror. He had already grown
quite pale at the narrative.
"When I saw her," Eucrates went on, "I threw my arms
about her and burst into tears and cries. She however would
not suffer it; but chid me because when I burned all her other
things for her good pleasure, I failed to burn one of her sandals,
her golden sandals. It had fallen under the chest, she said, and
so not finding it we had burnt its fellow alone. While we were
still talking together, a little devil of a Melitæan dog that was
under the couch fell to barking, and at the sound she disap-
peared. The sandal, however, was found under the chest and
burned later. "
On the top of this recital there entered Arignotus the Pytha-
gorean, long of hair and reverend of face. You know the man,
famous for his wisdom and surnamed "the holy. " Well, when
I saw him I breathed again, thinking that here was an axe at
the root of error. Cleodomus rose to give him a seat. He first
asked about the invalid's condition; but when he heard from Eu-
crates that he was eased already, he asked, "What are you phi-
losophizing about? I listened as I was coming in, and it seemed
to me that the talk had taken a very delightful turn. ”
"We were only trying," said Eucrates, pointing to me, "to
convince this adamantine mind that there are such things as
dæmons, and that ghosts and souls of the dead wander on earth
and appear to whom they will. ”
I grew red at this, and hung my head in respect for Arignotus.
"Perhaps," said he, "Tychiades holds that only the souls of
those that have died by violence walk,- if a man be hanged or
beheaded or impaled or something of that sort, but that after a
natural death the soul does not return. If that is his view, it
can by no means be rejected. "
"No, by heaven," said Deinomachus; "but he does not believe
that such things exist at all, or have a substance that can be
seen. "
――――


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9300
LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA
"What do you mean? " asked Arignotus, looking at me
grimly. "Do you think none of these things occur, although
every one, I may say, has seen them? "
"You have made my defense," I said, "if the ground of
my disbelief is that I alone of all men do not even see these
things. If I had seen them, of course I should believe them as
you do. "
་
"Well," he said, "if you ever go to Corinth, ask where Eu-
batides's house is; and when it is pointed out to you beside the
Craneum, go in and tell Tibias the porter that you want to
see the spot from which Arignotus the Pythagorean dug up the
dæmon and drove him out, making the house habitable forever
after. "
"What was that? " asked Eucrates.
"The house had been vacant a long time," said he, "because
people were afraid of it. If any one tried to live in it, he
straightway fled in a panic, chased out by some terrible and dis-
tressing apparition. So it was falling to ruin, and the roof had
sunk, and there was absolutely no one who dared enter it. When
I heard of this I took my books,-I have a large collection of
Egyptian works on these subjects,- and went to the house in
the early evening; although the man with whom I was staying,
when he learned where I was going, tried to restrain me almost
by force from what he regarded as certain destruction. I took
a lamp and went in alone. In the largest room I set down my
light, seated myself on the floor, and quietly read my book. Up
comes the dæmon, thinking he had an ordinary man to deal with,
and hoping to frighten me as he had done the others, in the guise
of a squalid fellow, long-haired and blacker than night. Approach-
ing, he tried to get the better of me by onsets from every
quarter, now in the shape of a dog, now of a bull or a lion.
But I, having at hand the most blood-curdling conjuration, and
delivering it in the Egyptian tongue, drove him into the corner
of a dark room. Noting the spot at which he sank into the
ground, I desisted for the night. But at daybreak, when every
one had given me up, and expected to find me a corpse like the
others, I emerged, to the surprise of all, and proceeded to Euba-
tides, informing him that for the future his house would be inno-
cent and free from horrors.
Conducting him and a crowd who
followed out of curiosity, I brought them to the spot where the
dæmon had disappeared, and bade them dig with mattock and
――――


## p. 9301 (#317) ###########################################

LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA
9301
spade. When they had done so, we found at the depth of about
six feet a moldering corpse, only held together by the frame of
bones. We dug it up and buried it, and from that day forth the
house was no longer disturbed by apparitions. "
When this tale was told by Arignotus, a person of exceptional
learning and universally respected, there was not a man present
who did not upbraid me as a fool for disbelieving these things
even when they came from Arignotus. But I said, nothing
daunted either by his long hair or his reputation, "What is this?
You-truth's only hope-are you one of the same sort, with a
head full of smoke and spectres? "
"Why, man," said Arignotus, "if you won't believe me or
Deinomachus or Cleodomus or Eucrates himself, come, tell us
what opposing authority you have which you think more trust-
worthy? "
"Why, good heavens," I replied, "it is the mighty man of
Abdera, Democritus. I will show you how confident he was that
this sort of thing cannot have a concrete existence. When he
was living in a tomb outside the city gates, where he had locked
himself up and spent day and night in writing, some of the
boys in joke wanted to frighten him, and dressed up in black
shrouds like corpses with death's-head masks. In this guise they
surrounded him and danced about him, leaping and shuffling with
their feet. But far from being frightened by their make-believe,
he did not even glance at them, but went on with his writing,
saying, 'Stop your nonsense. ' That shows how sure he was that
souls cease to exist when they pass from the body. "
"You only prove," said Eucrates, "that Democritus was a fool
too, if that was his opinion. I will tell you another story, not
on hearsay but an experience of my own.
When I was a young
man my father sent me to Egypt,- to have me educated, as he
said; and while I was there I conceived the wish to sail up to
Coptus, and thence to visit the statue of Memnon and hear the
famous notes it utters at the rising of the sun.
On the voyage
back it chanced that a man from Memphis was among the pass-
engers, one of the sacred scribes, a man of wonderful wisdom
and conversant with all the learning of the Egyptians.
It was
said that he had lived twenty-three years underground in the
precincts, learning magic under the tutorship of Isis. "
"You mean Pancrates, my teacher! " cried Arignotus. "A
holy man with a shaven head and clad in linen; he was of a
―


## p. 9302 (#318) ###########################################

9302
LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA
thoughtful turn, spoke Greek imperfectly, was tall and slight,
had a snub nose and projecting lips, and his legs were a trifle
thin. "
"The very man," said Eucrates. "At first I did not know
who he was; but whenever we put in anywhere I used to see
him doing various wonderful things, among others, riding a
crocodile and swimming with the creatures, who cowered before
him and fawningly wagged their tails. Then I perceived that he
was a holy person; and little by little, through kindly feeling, I
became before I knew it his intimate friend and the partner of
his secrets. And finally he persuaded me to go off alone with
him, leaving all my servants at Memphis; for,' said he, 'we shall
have no lack of attendants. ' Our mode of life after that was
this: whenever we entered a lodging the man would take the
bolt from the door, or the broom, or even the pestle, dress it in
clothes, and then by pronouncing some charm set it walking, so
that to every one else it seemed to be a man. It would go and
fetch water, buy food and cook it, and in all respects act as
a clever servant. And when he had enough of its service, he
would say another charm and make the broom a broom again,
or the pestle a pestle. This charm I could not learn from him,
anxious as I was to know it; he kept it jealously, though he
was most communicative in every other respect. One day I
overheard it without his knowledge, standing almost in the dark.
It was of three syllables. He then went off to the market after
giving his orders to the pestle. The next day, while he had
business in the market, I took the pestle, dressed it up, uttered
the three syllables just as he did, and bade it bring water.
When it had filled the jar and brought it to me, I said, 'That
will do: don't fetch any more water; be a pestle again. ' But it
would not obey me; it kept on bringing water until the whole
house was flooded. I was at my wits' end, for fear Pancrates
should come back and be angry,-just what happened,—so I
seized an axe and chopped the pestle in two. No use! Each
piece took a jar and fell to drawing water, so that I had two of
them at it instead of one. At this point, too, Pancrates arrived.
When he realized what was going on, he reduced the water-
carriers to wood again, and himself deserted me on the sly, dis-
appearing heaven knows whither. »*
* Barham has used this story in the Ingoldsby Legends,' — 'The Lay of
St. Dunstan. '


## p. 9303 (#319) ###########################################

LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA
9303
"At any rate," said Deinomachus, "you know so much,- how
to make a man out of a pestle. "
"Will you never stop spinning your marvelous yarns? " I said.
"You are old enough to know better. But at least respect these
boys, and postpone your terrific stories to some other time. Be-
fore you know it they will be full of nervous terrors. You ought
to consider them, and not accustom them to hear things that will
haunt them all their lives, and make them afraid of a noise
because they are full of superstition. "
"I am glad you used that word," said Eucrates. "It reminds
me to ask you what you think about another class of phenomena,
I mean oracles and prophecies. Probably you have no faith
in them either? "
"I am off," said I. "You are not satisfied with the field of
human experience, but must needs call in the gods themselves
to take a hand in your myth-making. "
And so saying I took my leave; but they, I daresay, freed
of my presence, drew in their chairs to the banquet and supped
full with lies.
Translated by Emily James Smith.


## p. 9304 (#320) ###########################################

9304
LUCRETIUS
TITUS LUCRETIUS CARUS
(98? -55? B. C. )
BY PAUL SHOREY
ITUS LUCRETIUS CARUS, the most vigorous and original, though
not the most beautiful and artistic of Latin poets, was a
contemporary of the youth and middle age of Cæsar and
Cicero. Of his brief life virtually nothing is known. He belonged to
a noble family, but seems to have held aloof from the political con-
flicts which during that Inferno of a half-century made a steaming
slaughter-house of Rome. Yet he writes of the great world, and of
the vanity of its ambitions, its loves, and its insensate luxury, with
a poignant intensity which suggests experi-
ence or intimate observation. The legend
that his premature death was caused by the
administration of a maddening love-philtre
by a jealous wife, is familiar to English
readers in Tennyson's exquisite and schol-
arly poem. His life work, the 'De Rerum
Natura' (On the Nature of Things), is a
didactic exposition, in six books and some
7415 hexameter lines, of the doctrines of
Epicurus, at that time the most widely
diffused among the Roman nobility, of the
systems which their ingenious Greek lect-
urers and literary companions were import-
ing into Italy.
That philosophy, a product of the frivolous and disillusionized
Athens of the third century B. C. , taught in physics that all phenom-
ena are explicable, without the intervention of gods, by the fortuitous
concurrence of material atoms and the "various entanglements,
weights, blows, clashings, motions, by which things severally go on ";
and in morals that man's true happiness consists in freedom from
superstitious terror, in renunciation of the sterile agitations of ambi-
tion and the pursuit of wealth, and in tranquil enjoyment of the sim-
pler and soberer forms of pleasure. Not a very noble or elevating
doctrine for a poet, it would seem; yet perhaps hardly more repug-
nant to the Muse than the Puritan theology of Paradise Lost,' or the
scholasticism, fantastic allegory, and petty municipal politics of the



## p. 9305 (#321) ###########################################

TITUS LUCRETIUS CARUS
9305
'Divine Comedy. ' Genius and passion will pour the molten ore of life
into any mold; and the genius of Lucretius passionately embraced
the cold mechanism and the unheroic quietism of the Epicurean phi-
losophy, as a protest against the degrading superstitions of Rome and
as a refuge from her tumultuous politics.
The first book opens with a magnificent invocation of Venus, and
a dedication of the work to the poet's patron, or rather friend, the
great Roman noble Memmius. This is followed by a thrilling picture
of the sacrifice of Iphigenia, -a typical crime of superstition, and a
brief résumé of the chief topics to be treated, into which is deftly
intercalated an enthusiastic panegyric upon Ennius, the father of
Roman song.
Then comes an exposition of the fundamental princi-
ples of the atomic philosophy, accompanied by a refutation of those
who deny a vacuum or the indivisibility of the atoms; as well as of
those who assume other elements,-earth, water, air, fire. Two elo-
quent digressions chant the praise of the Sicilian pre-Socratic poet-
philosopher Empedocles and the delights of poesy. The last two
hundred lines demonstrate, by arguments which Bruno, Locke, Vol-
taire, Pasteur, and Renan have copied, the infinity of the universe
in space and time, and the infinity of matter.
The exordium of the second book contrasts the Epicurean tran-
quillity of students in their pensive citadels with the vain agitations
of men. Then follows a more technical exposition of the nature and
movements of the atoms. The sensible qualities of things are due
only to the shapes and combinations of these colorless material par-
ticles. They do not reside in the things nor in the atoms themselves.
Life and sensation also are transient phenomena,- bubbles on the
ocean of being, froth on the surface,- and not ultimate realities.
And being atomic, all things are dissoluble. The earth itself grows
old, and no longer bears the teeming harvests of her lusty youth.
The third book opens with the praise of Epicurus and a descrip-
tion of the peace of mind which philosophy brings. To attain this
peace we must eradicate the fear of death and hell. In seven hun-
dred lines of close reasoning, some twenty-seven formal arguments
are adduced to prove the mortality of the soul and its entire depend-
ence on bodily conditions. This long arid tract is followed by two
hundred and sixty lines of the most glorious poetry in the Latin
language: an impassioned expostulation with the puny souls who
rebel against nature's beneficent law of change, who are fain to tarry
past their hour at the banquet of existence, and idly repine that
they, whose very life is a sleep and a folding of the hands for slum-
ber, must lie down to their everlasting rest with Homer and Scipio,
Democritus and Epicurus, and all the wise and brave who have gone
before.


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TITUS LUCRETIUS CARUS
The fourth book is mainly occupied by an account of the pro-
cesses of perception, which are explained by the hypothesis that
delicate films and emanations, thrown off from bodies, penetrate the
channels of sensation. A digression vigorously argues against the
skeptical doctrine of the untrustworthiness of the senses. In optical
and other illusions, it is not the senses but the hasty inferences of
the mind that are at fault.
The poet's polemic against the argument from design in the struct-
ure of the body is famous. As Prior in his 'Alma' puts it:-
"Note here Lucretius dares to teach,
As all our youth may learn from Creech,
That eyes were made but could not view,
Nor hands embrace, nor feet pursue;
But heedless Nature did produce
The members first and then the use. "
The book closes with a realistic treatment of sleep, dreams, and
the sexual life.
The fifth book deals with astronomy, the history of the globe,
and the origins of life and civilization. The poet undertakes to prove
that the triple frame of the world had a beginning and will some
day be dissolved,— a doctrine that strongly impressed the imagina-
tions of his successors.
"Then shall Lucretius's lofty numbers die,
When earth and sea in fire and flames shall fry,"
says Ovid-in Ben Jonson's free imitation.
There is no impiety in this teaching, says Lucretius; for the world
is not a perfect divine creation, as the Stoic optimists affirm, but it is
a flawed and faulty product of accidental adaptations. The puerile
astronomical hypotheses that follow are in startling contrast with the
brilliant, vividly imaginative, and essentially correct sketch of prehis-
toric anthropology and the evolution of civilization that occupies the
last six hundred lines.
The sixth book is a sort of appendix, devoted to the explanation
of alarming or mysterious phenomena which might prove a last
refuge of superstition. The most noted passage is the description of
the plague at Athens, after Thucydides (1137–1286).
Lucretius by the very didactic severity of his theme is shut out
from the wide-spread popularity of the great dramatists and epic
poets. But in every age a select company of readers is found to
respond to at least one of the three mighty chords with which his
lyre is strung; and to cherish him either as the poet of the eman-
cipating power of human science, as the poet of nature, or as the


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TITUS LUCRETIUS CARUS
9307
sublime and melancholy satirist of naked and essential man. He is
the poet of the pride of science, as it appeals to youthful souls in
their first intoxication with the idea of infinite impersonal nature lib-
erated from her anthropomorphic lords, and in their first passionate
revolt against the infamies of popular superstition and the smug de-
cencies of its official interpreters. This influence no erudite exposure
of his errors in detail can destroy, no progress of modern knowledge
supersede. It is true that he has no conception of strict scientific
method, or of the progressive conquest of nature by man. He affirms
that the real and apparent magnitudes of the sun are nearly the
same. He denies the possibility of the antipodes, suggests that the
stars may move in quest of fresh pastures in the flowerless fields
of heaven, believes in the spontaneous generation of worms from
manure, and has a theory to account for the fact that the lion can-
not abide the crowing of the cock. But he maintains in sonorous and
vigorously argumentative verse the infinity of the universe in space
and time, the indestructibility of matter, the plurality of worlds, the
reign of law, the possibility of a mechanical explanation of all phe-
nomena, and the ceaseless operation of the silent invisible processes
whereby the transformations of nature are wrought. He has the
fundamental conception of evolution as the "rational sequence of
the unintended," and he approaches very closely the formula of the
"survival of the fittest. " He has the rudiments of the most modern
psychological notions as to the threshold of sensation and the meas-
urement of local discrimination. He illustrates the origin of lan-
guage from the barking of dogs almost in the words of Darwin, and
describes the stages of the prehistoric life of man in phrases which
Tylor quotes with approval. Above all, he attacks with eloquent scorn
the "carpenter theory of creation," and the insipidities of optimistic.
teleologies and theodicies; and he magnificently celebrates as the
chief heroes of humanity the scientific thinkers who have revealed
the eternal laws of nature, and have liberated the human spirit from
the bondage of superstition and the chimæras of metaphysics. These
things, if they do not justify Huxley's statement that "Lucretius has
drunk deeper of the scientific spirit than any other poet of ancient
or modern times except Goethe," do at least explain why he has
always been honored as the poetic incarnation of that spirit by the
church militant of science.
But he is more than the rhetorician of science. He has all Dry-
den's skill in marshaling arguments in verse; and he manifests in
addition a peculiar blending of the poetical and scientific imagination,
which causes the vivid felicity of his illustrations of the unfamiliar
by the familiar, the unseen by the seen, to be felt by the reader as
proofs rather than as mere decorative imagery. And whether in
argument or description, his language throughout conveys a more


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9308
TITUS LUCRETIUS CARUS
vivid reflection of the ceaseless life and movement of nature than
anything in the beautiful symbolism of Greek mythology or in the
more precise formulas of modern science. Like Shelley, he renews
the work of the mythopoeic imagination in the very act of repudiat-
ing its creations. In the magnificent opening hymn to Venus, with-
out lapsing for a line from his large, stately Roman manner, he
blends the Greek poets' allegorizing conception of love as
an all-
pervading cosmic power with an incomparably warm sensuous picture
of the breathing human passion of the amorous deity.
His repudia-
tion of the superstitious worship of the great mother of the gods, in
the second book, combines all the pomp of Milton's enumerations of
the false deities of the heathen with a deeper Wordsworthian vein of
reflection on the
"springs
Of that licentious craving in the mind
To act the God among external things. ”
-
«<
The ten lines in which he recalls and rejects the myth of Phaethon
outweigh all the labored ingenuities of the three hundred and twenty-
five lines which Ovid has devoted to the theme. When, digressing
from the phenomena of echo, he explains away the Italian peasant's
naïve faith in the fauns and goat-footed satyrs with which his fancy
peoples the shepherd's lonely walks and solitude divine," the exqui-
site verses are touched by a wistful sympathy which we associate
rather with modern and romantic than with classical poetry. And
few passages in profane literature will so nearly sustain the compari-
son with the words of the Lord answering Job out of the whirlwind
as the lines where, in the name of the grandeur of the infinite world,
Lucretius scornfully challenges the petty faith in an anthropomor-
phic God-
"Who rolls the heavens, and lifts and lays the deep,
Yet loves and hates with mortal hates and loves. "
This quickening spirit of imagination constrains him, despite his
theories, to animate Nature too in all her parts and processes. He
makes us aware of life, motion, growth everywhere. In the atoms that
weave their everlasting dance like motes in the summer sun; in the
shining Ether that clips the world in his greedy embrace; in the war
of the elements, - the winds eagerly striving to dry up all the waters,
while the waters are confident that they will sooner drown the world;
in the brook plashing down the mountain-side and summoning from
afar by its clear murmurings the thirsty tribes of brutes, or delivering
the filtered tribute of the woodland to the ocean, there to be sucked
up by the sun and so precipitated again by Father Ether into the
lap of Mother Earth, who thence bears on her bounteous breast the
smiling harvests and the frisking flocks; in the life of man climbing


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TITUS LUCRETIUS CARUS
9309
ever to maturity, only to decline from life's topmost stair as the vital
forces fail under the ceaseless rain of hostile atoms impingent from
without. By virtue of this imaginative vision, and this sense of
Nature's omnipresent life, she becomes for him a personal, guiding,
artistic power,- Nature that sits at the helm, Nature manifold in
works, a being far more nearly akin to the immanent Platonic world-
soul than to the mathematical sum of colorless Democritean atoms
which his theory would make her. "As a poet," said Goethe, "I am
a Pantheist;" and despite his nominal allegiance to atomism, the po-
etry of Lucretius is in spirit pantheistic. It is the "lower pantheism »
half spiritualized by an intense feeling for the vital unity of nature,
rather than the "higher pantheism" which sees in nature only the
symbol and garment of God. But in imaginative effect it is the poetic
pantheism of Bruno, Shelley, Swinburne,-nay, of Wordsworth him-
self in Tintern Abbey. ' And to this is due much of his attraction
for many of the finest minds of the Renaissance and of our own time.
But Lucretius is the poet of nature in a still more special sense.
Lowell truly observes that "there is obscurely in him an almost
Wordsworthian" quality. Like Wordsworth, he complains of the "film
of familiarity" in consequence of which we have eyes and see not;
and he marvels that we can be so deadened by custom to the beauty
of the starry heavens, that from satiety of the sight no man deigns to
look up to the lucid quarters of the sky. And he himself notes not
only the grander phenomena of nature, but her subtler aspects and
minor solicitations of our senses, on which modern poetry is wont to
dwell. He has marked with Coleridge—
"Those thin clouds above in flakes and bars
That give away their motion to the stars. "
He has observed with Bryant and Wordsworth how distance turns the
foaming flood or the grazing flock to a motionless patch of white
upon the landscape. He has seen all heaven in a globe of dew, with
Shelley. Many of his lines, like those of Tennyson, come back to the
lover of nature on his walks, as the inevitable and only expression of
what the eye beholds. "When Tennyson went with me to Harwich,"
says Fitzgerald, "I was pointing out an old collier rolling to the tune
of Trudit agens magnam magno molimine navem >» (With mighty
endeavor the wind drives onward the mighty vessel). And the same
critic characterizes as a noble Poussin landscape the picture of sum-
mer belts of vine and olive (v. 1370-8), which Wordsworth quotes in
his description of the scenery of the English lakes.
To other readers Lucretius will appeal rather as the poet of man.
"Satire is wholly ours," said the Roman critic. And Lucretius is a
true Roman in that he is a superb rhetorical satirist—a satirist not
of men but of essential man. The vanity of our luxury, the tedium


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9310
TITUS LUCRETIUS CARUS
of fantastic idleness, the doubtful benefits of our over-refined and
sophisticated civilization, the futility of the Sisyphean labors of ambi-
tion, our idle terrors of death, the grotesque and horrible absurdity of
the superstitions we dignify by the name of religion, the disenchant-
ment that lurks behind the stage illusions of passion, the insatiate
thirst for change and happiness inseparable from our very being,-
what license of realistic satire could impress these things upon us as
we feel them under the spell of that severe and melancholy elo-
quence, which reveals our puny life stripped of its conventional dis-
guises and shivering on the shores of infinite existence, the sport of
the elemental forces of the world?
"Poor little life-
Crowned with a flower or two, and there an end. ”
But his is not the soul-blighting satire that has no pity in it. "Poor
hapless mortals" is his standing Homeric phrase for mankind, wan-
dering blindly in the mazes of ignorance, and ridden by superstition,
ennui, ambition, and false ideals of happiness. But he does not
therefore preach mere cynicism and despair. "The sober majesties
of settled sweet Epicurean life" are accessible to all; some few may
attain the passionless calm of "students in their pensive citadels";
and the supreme spirits who pass the flaming bounds of space and
time and bring back to mankind the tablets of nature's everlasting
laws, lift humanity to the level of the gods. And the dignity with
which his majestic melancholy invests suffering and death, by view-
ing them sub specie æternitatis as manifestations of the eternal laws of
life, does more to rob them of their sting for some minds than the
affected cheerfulness of formal optimism protesting overmuch. Fred-
erick the Great is not the only strenuous spirit that has turned to
the third book of the 'De Rerum Natura' for solace and calm.
A poet's style must be studied in the original. Lucretius's models
were, among the Latins, Ennius; among the Greeks, the older poets,
Homer, Empedocles, Euripides, rather than the artificial Alexandrians
who were in favor among his contemporaries. His sincerity, earnest-
ness, and strength, his enthusiastic faith in his teachings, and his
keen delight in the labor of "shutting reasons up in rhythm and
Heliconian honey in living words," enlists the reader's attention from
the start. And the poet retains it with imperious grasp as he urges
on the serried files of his verse over the vast barren spaces of his
theme, like Roman soldiers marching on the great white imperial
roads that disdain to deviate for mountain or morass.
"Some find him tedious, others think him lame;
But if he lags, his subject is to blame.
Rough weary roads through barren wilds he tried,
Yet still he marches with true Roman pride. "— ARMSTrong.


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TITUS LUCRETIUS CARUS
9311
He is not yet master of the intricate harmony and the dying fall
of the Virgilian poetic period, nor of the limpid felicity of Ovid; but
his single mighty lines, weighted with sonorous archaic diction, and
pointed with alliteration, assonance, and antithesis, possess an incom-
parable energy. They strike upon the sense like huge lances hurled
quivering to the mark. The effect can hardly be reproduced in our
monosyllabic English.
"When death immortal stays the mortal pulse. "
"Great Scipio's son,
Terror of Carthage, thunderbolt of war. »
"He passed beyond
The unsurmounted fires that wall the world. "
"The parched earth rocks beneath the thunder-stroke,
And threatening peals run rattling o'er the sky. "
"Hand on the torch of life in fiery race. »
"Awe from above to tame the thankless hearts
And graceless spirits of the godless mob. "
"When Rome and Carthage clashed in shock of war. "
"The lion's wrath that bursts his mighty heart. "
"Black shapes of Terror lowering from the clouds. »
"All beasts that range on all the hills o' the world. "
"Here waste Charybdis yawns, and rumbling Ætna
Threatens to re-collect her wrathful fires. "
His influence is to be measured by the quality rather than by the
number of his readers.
He «
was a poet's poet among the ancients,
and is a scholar's poet among the moderns. " Virgil, Horace, and
Manilius were his pupils in the art of writing Latin verse. Ovid, Pro-
pertius, Martial, Statius allude to him with respectful awe.
He was a
chief source of inspiration to Bruno, and many of the rationalizing
pantheists of the Renaissance. Montaigne quotes him on almost every
page, and criticizes his fine passages with discriminating enthusiasm.
Spenser and Milton know him well and often imitate him. Through
Gassendi and Molière he became the standard-bearer of rationalism in
the conservative and formal seventeenth century; meriting the honor
of refutation by a cardinal, and the coupling of his name with that
of Hobbes in denunciation by Nahum Tate. This naturally insured
him the enthusiastic admiration of Voltaire and of the great Encyclo-
pedists. The famous prosopopoeia of Nature in the 'Système de la
Nature' was suggested by a passage in the third book. Dryden
translated the proem of the first book; and Creech's translation made


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TITUS LUCRETIUS CARUS
9312
him familiar to the minor writers of the eighteenth century, as fre-
quent allusions prove. And the nineteenth century, which cares noth-
ing for his polemical significance, is recalled to an appreciation of his
higher poetic qualities by the admiration of André Chénier, Goethe,
Sully Prud'homme, Sainte-Beuve, Schérer, Shelley, Wordsworth, Tenny-
son, Swinburne, George Eliot, Fitzgerald, Symonds, and a host of
minor essayists.
Munro's masterly edition and translation meets all the needs of
the scholar. Kelsey's convenient school edition is much used in
American colleges. Mallock's volume in Blackwood's Ancient Clas-
sics' offers a useful but unsympathetic summary, with specimens of
a translation in Spenserian verse.