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Afterwards,

When huts they had procured and pelts and fire,

And when the woman, joined unto the man,

Withdrew with him into one dwelling place,

Were known; and when they saw an offspring born

From out themselves, then first the human race

Began to soften. For 'twas now that fire

Rendered their shivering frames less staunch to bear,

Under the canopy of the sky, the cold;

And Love reduced their shaggy hardiness;

And children, with the prattle and the kiss,

Soon broke the parents' haughty temper down.

Then, too, did neighbours 'gin to league as friends,

Eager to wrong no more or suffer wrong,

And urged for children and the womankind

Mercy, of fathers, whilst with cries and gestures

They stammered hints how meet it was that all

Should have compassion on the weak. And still,

Though concord not in every wise could then

Begotten be, a good, a goodly part

Kept faith inviolate—or else mankind

Long since had been unutterably cut off,

And propagation never could have brought

The species down the ages.

Lest, perchance,

Concerning these affairs thou ponderest

In silent meditation, let me say

'Twas lightning brought primevally to earth

The fire for mortals, and from thence hath spread

O'er all the lands the flames of heat. For thus

Even now we see so many objects, touched

By the celestial flames, to flash aglow,

When thunderbolt has dowered them with heat.

Yet also when a many-branched tree,

Beaten by winds, writhes swaying to and fro,

Pressing 'gainst branches of a neighbour tree,

There by the power of mighty rub and rub

Is fire engendered; and at times out-flares

The scorching heat of flame, when boughs do chafe

Against the trunks. And of these causes, either

May well have given to mortal men the fire.

Next, food to cook and soften in the flame

The sun instructed, since so oft they saw

How objects mellowed, when subdued by warmth

And by the raining blows of fiery beams,

Through all the fields.

And more and more each day

Would men more strong in sense, more wise in heart,

Teach them to change their earlier mode and life

By fire and new devices. Kings began

Cities to found and citadels to set,

As strongholds and asylums for themselves,

And flocks and fields to portion for each man

After the beauty, strength, and sense of each—

For beauty then imported much, and strength

Had its own rights supreme. Thereafter, wealth

Discovered was, and gold was brought to light,

Which soon of honour stripped both strong and fair;

For men, however beautiful in form

Or valorous, will follow in the main

The rich man's party. Yet were man to steer

His life by sounder reasoning, he'd own

Abounding riches, if with mind content

He lived by thrift; for never, as I guess,

Is there a lack of little in the world.

But men wished glory for themselves and power

Even that their fortunes on foundations firm

Might rest forever, and that they themselves,

The opulent, might pass a quiet life—

In vain, in vain; since, in the strife to climb

On to the heights of honour, men do make

Their pathway terrible; and even when once

They reach them, envy like the thunderbolt

At times will smite, O hurling headlong down

To murkiest Tartarus, in scorn; for, lo,

All summits, all regions loftier than the rest,

Smoke, blasted as by envy's thunderbolts;

So better far in quiet to obey,

Than to desire chief mastery of affairs

And ownership of empires. Be it so;

And let the weary sweat their life-blood out

All to no end, battling in hate along

The narrow path of man's ambition;

Since all their wisdom is from others' lips,

And all they seek is known from what they've heard

And less from what they've thought. Nor is this folly

Greater to-day, nor greater soon to be,

Than' twas of old.

And therefore kings were slain,

And pristine majesty of golden thrones

And haughty sceptres lay o'erturned in dust;

And crowns, so splendid on the sovereign heads,

Soon bloody under the proletarian feet,

Groaned for their glories gone—for erst o'er-much

Dreaded, thereafter with more greedy zest

Trampled beneath the rabble heel. Thus things

Down to the vilest lees of brawling mobs

Succumbed, whilst each man sought unto himself

Dominion and supremacy. So next

Some wiser heads instructed men to found

The magisterial office, and did frame

Codes that they might consent to follow laws.

For humankind, o'er wearied with a life

Fostered by force, was ailing from its feuds;

And so the sooner of its own free will

Yielded to laws and strictest codes. For since

Each hand made ready in its wrath to take

A vengeance fiercer than by man's fair laws

Is now conceded, men on this account

Loathed the old life fostered by force. 'Tis thence

That fear of punishments defiles each prize

Of wicked days; for force and fraud ensnare

Each man around, and in the main recoil

On him from whence they sprung. Not easy 'tis

For one who violates by ugly deeds

The bonds of common peace to pass a life

Composed and tranquil. For albeit he 'scape

The race of gods and men, he yet must dread

'Twill not be hid forever—since, indeed,

So many, oft babbling on amid their dreams

Or raving in sickness, have betrayed themselves

(As stories tell) and published at last

Old secrets and the sins.

But nature 'twas

Urged men to utter various sounds of tongue

And need and use did mould the names of things,

About in same wise as the lack-speech years

Compel young children unto gesturings,

Making them point with finger here and there

At what's before them. For each creature feels

By instinct to what use to put his powers.

Ere yet the bull-calf's scarce begotten horns

Project above his brows, with them he 'gins

Enraged to butt and savagely to thrust.

But whelps of panthers and the lion's cubs

With claws and paws and bites are at the fray

Already, when their teeth and claws be scarce

As yet engendered. So again, we see

All breeds of winged creatures trust to wings

And from their fledgling pinions seek to get

A fluttering assistance. Thus, to think

That in those days some man apportioned round

To things their names, and that from him men learned

Their first nomenclature, is foolery.

For why could he mark everything by words

And utter the various sounds of tongue, what time

The rest may be supposed powerless

To do the same? And, if the rest had not

Already one with other used words,

Whence was implanted in the teacher, then,

Fore-knowledge of their use, and whence was given

To him alone primordial faculty

To know and see in mind what 'twas he willed?

Besides, one only man could scarce subdue

An overmastered multitude to choose

To get by heart his names of things. A task

Not easy 'tis in any wise to teach

And to persuade the deaf concerning what

'Tis needful for to do. For ne'er would they

Allow, nor ne'er in anywise endure

Perpetual vain dingdong in their ears

Of spoken sounds unheard before. And what,

At last, in this affair so wondrous is,

That human race (in whom a voice and tongue

Were now in vigour) should by divers words

Denote its objects, as each divers sense

Might prompt?—since even the speechless herds, aye, since

The very generations of wild beasts

Are wont dissimilar and divers sounds

To rouse from in them, when there's fear or pain,

And when they burst with joys. And this, forsooth,

'Tis thine to know from plainest facts: when first

Huge flabby jowls of mad Molossian hounds,

Baring their hard white teeth, begin to snarl,

They threaten, with infuriate lips peeled back,

In sounds far other than with which they bark

And fill with voices all the regions round.

And when with fondling tongue they start to lick

Their puppies, or do toss them round with paws,

Feigning with gentle bites to gape and snap,

They fawn with yelps of voice far other then

Than when, alone within the house, they bay,

Or whimpering slink with cringing sides from blows.

Again the neighing of the horse, is that

Not seen to differ likewise, when the stud

In buoyant flower of his young years raves,

Goaded by winged Love, amongst the mares,

And when with widening nostrils out he snorts

The call to battle, and when haply he

Whinnies at times with terror-quaking limbs?

Lastly, the flying race, the dappled birds,

Hawks, ospreys, sea-gulls, searching food and life

Amid the ocean billows in the brine,

Utter at other times far other cries

Than when they fight for food, or with their prey

Struggle and strain. And birds there are which change

With changing weather their own raucous songs—

As long-lived generations of the crows

Or flocks of rooks, when they be said to cry

For rain and water and to call at times

For winds and gales. Ergo, if divers moods

Compel the brutes, though speechless evermore,

To send forth divers sounds, O truly then

How much more likely 'twere that mortal men

In those days could with many a different sound

Denote each separate thing.

And now what cause

Hath spread divinities of gods abroad

Through mighty nations, and filled the cities full

Of the high altars, and led to practices

Of solemn rites in season—rites which still

Flourish in midst of great affairs of state

And midst great centres of man's civic life,

The rites whence still a poor mortality

Is grafted that quaking awe which rears aloft

Still the new temples of gods from land to land

And drives mankind to visit them in throngs

On holy days—'tis not so hard to give

Reason thereof in speech. Because, in sooth,

Even in those days would the race of man

Be seeing excelling visages of gods

With mind awake; and in his sleeps, yet more—

Bodies of wondrous growth. And, thus, to these

Would men attribute sense, because they seemed

To move their limbs and speak pronouncements high,

Befitting glorious visage and vast powers.

And men would give them an eternal life,

Because their visages forevermore

Were there before them, and their shapes remained,

And chiefly, however, because men would not think

Beings augmented with such mighty powers

Could well by any force o'ermastered be.

And men would think them in their happiness

Excelling far, because the fear of death

Vexed no one of them at all, and since

At same time in men's sleeps men saw them do

So many wonders, and yet feel therefrom

Themselves no weariness. Besides, men marked

How in a fixed order rolled around

The systems of the sky, and changed times

Of annual seasons, nor were able then

To know thereof the causes. Therefore 'twas

Men would take refuge in consigning all

Unto divinities, and in feigning all

Was guided by their nod. And in the sky

They set the seats and vaults of gods, because

Across the sky night and the moon are seen

To roll along—moon, day, and night, and night's

Old awesome constellations evermore,

And the night-wandering fireballs of the sky,

And flying flames, clouds, and the sun, the rains,

Snow and the winds, the lightnings, and the hail,

And the swift rumblings, and the hollow roar

Of mighty menacings forevermore.

O humankind unhappy!—when it ascribed

Unto divinities such awesome deeds,

And coupled thereto rigours of fierce wrath!

What groans did men on that sad day beget

Even for themselves, and O what wounds for us,

What tears for our children's children! Nor, O man,

Is thy true piety in this: with head

Under the veil, still to be seen to turn

Fronting a stone, and ever to approach

Unto all altars; nor so prone on earth

Forward to fall, to spread upturned palms

Before the shrines of gods, nor yet to dew

Altars with profuse blood of four-foot beasts,

Nor vows with vows to link. But rather this:

To look on all things with a master eye

And mind at peace. For when we gaze aloft

Upon the skiey vaults of yon great world

And ether, fixed high o'er twinkling stars,

And into our thought there come the journeyings

Of sun and moon, O then into our breasts,

O'erburdened already with their other ills,

Begins forthwith to rear its sudden head

One more misgiving: lest o'er us, percase,

It be the gods' immeasurable power

That rolls, with varied motion, round and round

The far white constellations. For the lack

Of aught of reasons tries the puzzled mind:

Whether was ever a birth-time of the world,

And whether, likewise, any end shall be

How far the ramparts of the world can still

Outstand this strain of ever-roused motion,

Or whether, divinely with eternal weal

Endowed, they can through endless tracts of age

Glide on, defying the o'er-mighty powers

Of the immeasurable ages. Lo,

What man is there whose mind with dread of gods

Cringes not close, whose limbs with terror-spell

Crouch not together, when the parched earth

Quakes with the horrible thunderbolt amain,

And across the mighty sky the rumblings run?

Do not the peoples and the nations shake,

And haughty kings do they not hug their limbs,

Strook through with fear of the divinities,

Lest for aught foully done or madly said

The heavy time be now at hand to pay?

When, too, fierce force of fury-winds at sea

Sweepeth a navy's admiral down the main

With his stout legions and his elephants,

Doth he not seek the peace of gods with vows,

And beg in prayer, a-tremble, lulled winds

And friendly gales?—in vain, since, often up-caught

In fury-cyclones, is he borne along,

For all his mouthings, to the shoals of doom.

Ah, so irrevocably some hidden power

Betramples forevermore affairs of men,

And visibly grindeth with its heel in mire

The lictors' glorious rods and axes dire,

Having them in derision! Again, when earth

From end to end is rocking under foot,

And shaken cities ruin down, or threaten

Upon the verge, what wonder is it then

That mortal generations abase themselves,

And unto gods in all affairs of earth

Assign as last resort almighty powers

And wondrous energies to govern all?

Now for the rest: copper and gold and iron

Discovered were, and with them silver's weight

And power of lead, when with prodigious heat

The conflagrations burned the forest trees

Among the mighty mountains, by a bolt

Of lightning from the sky, or else because

Men, warring in the woodlands, on their foes

Had hurled fire to frighten and dismay,

Or yet because, by goodness of the soil

Invited, men desired to clear rich fields

And turn the countryside to pasture-lands,

Or slay the wild and thrive upon the spoils.

(For hunting by pit-fall and by fire arose

Before the art of hedging the covert round

With net or stirring it with dogs of chase.)

Howso the fact, and from what cause soever

The flamy heat with awful crack and roar

Had there devoured to their deepest roots

The forest trees and baked the earth with fire,

Then from the boiling veins began to ooze

O rivulets of silver and of gold,

Of lead and copper too, collecting soon

Into the hollow places of the ground.

And when men saw the cooled lumps anon

To shine with splendour-sheen upon the ground,

Much taken with that lustrous smooth delight,

They 'gan to pry them out, and saw how each

Had got a shape like to its earthy mould.

Then would it enter their heads how these same lumps,

If melted by heat, could into any form

Or figure of things be run, and how, again,

If hammered out, they could be nicely drawn

To sharpest points or finest edge, and thus

Yield to the forgers tools and give them power

To chop the forest down, to hew the logs,

To shave the beams and planks, besides to bore

And punch and drill. And men began such work

At first as much with tools of silver and gold

As with the impetuous strength of the stout copper;

But vainly—since their over-mastered power

Would soon give way, unable to endure,

Like copper, such hard labour. In those days

Copper it was that was the thing of price;

And gold lay useless, blunted with dull edge.

Now lies the copper low, and gold hath come

Unto the loftiest honours. Thus it is

That rolling ages change the times of things:

What erst was of a price, becomes at last

A discard of no honour; whilst another

Succeeds to glory, issuing from contempt,

And day by day is sought for more and more,

And, when 'tis found, doth flower in men's praise,

Objects of wondrous honour.

Now, Memmius,

How nature of iron discovered was, thou mayst

Of thine own self divine. Man's ancient arms

Were hands, and nails and teeth, stones too and boughs—

Breakage of forest trees—and flame and fire,

As soon as known. Thereafter force of iron

And copper discovered was; and copper's use

Was known ere iron's, since more tractable

Its nature is and its abundance more.

With copper men to work the soil began,

With copper to rouse the hurly waves of war,

To straw the monstrous wounds, and seize away

Another's flocks and fields. For unto them,

Thus armed, all things naked of defence

Readily yielded. Then by slow degrees

The sword of iron succeeded, and the shape

Of brazen sickle into scorn was turned:

With iron to cleave the soil of earth they 'gan,

And the contentions of uncertain war

Were rendered equal.

And, lo, man was wont

Armed to mount upon the ribs of horse

And guide him with the rein, and play about

With right hand free, oft times before he tried

Perils of war in yoked chariot;

And yoked pairs abreast came earlier

Than yokes of four, or scythed chariots

Whereinto clomb the men-at-arms. And next

The Punic folk did train the elephants—

Those curst Lucanian oxen, hideous,

The serpent-handed, with turrets on their bulks—

To dure the wounds of war and panic-strike

The mighty troops of Mars. Thus Discord sad

Begat the one Thing after other, to be

The terror of the nations under arms,

And day by day to horrors of old war

She added an increase.

Bulls, too, they tried

In war's grim business; and essayed to send

Outrageous boars against the foes. And some

Sent on before their ranks puissant lions

With armed trainers and with masters fierce

To guide and hold in chains—and yet in vain,

Since fleshed with pell-mell slaughter, fierce they flew,

And blindly through the squadrons havoc wrought,

Shaking the frightful crests upon their heads,

Now here, now there. Nor could the horsemen calm

Their horses, panic-breasted at the roar,

And rein them round to front the foe. With spring

The infuriate she-lions would up-leap

Now here, now there; and whoso came apace

Against them, these they'd rend across the face;

And others unwitting from behind they'd tear

Down from their mounts, and twining round them, bring

Tumbling to earth, o'ermastered by the wound,

And with those powerful fangs and hooked claws

Fasten upon them. Bulls would toss their friends,

And trample under foot, and from beneath

Rip flanks and bellies of horses with their horns,

And with a threat'ning forehead jam the sod;

And boars would gore with stout tusks their allies,

Splashing in fury their own blood on spears

Splintered in their own bodies, and would fell

In rout and ruin infantry and horse.

For there the beasts-of-saddle tried to scape

The savage thrusts of tusk by shying off,

Or rearing up with hoofs a-paw in air.

In vain—since there thou mightest see them sink,

Their sinews severed, and with heavy fall

Bestrew the ground. And such of these as men

Supposed well-trained long ago at home,

Were in the thick of action seen to foam

In fury, from the wounds, the shrieks, the flight,

The panic, and the tumult; nor could men

Aught of their numbers rally. For each breed

And various of the wild beasts fled apart

Hither or thither, as often in wars to-day

Flee those Lucanian oxen, by the steel

Grievously mangled, after they have wrought

Upon their friends so many a dreadful doom.

(If 'twas, indeed, that thus they did at all:

But scarcely I'll believe that men could not

With mind foreknow and see, as sure to come,

Such foul and general disaster.—This

We, then, may hold as true in the great All,

In divers worlds on divers plan create,—

Somewhere afar more likely than upon

One certain earth.) But men chose this to do

Less in the hope of conquering than to give

Their enemies a goodly cause of woe,

Even though thereby they perished themselves,

Since weak in numbers and since wanting arms.

Now, clothes of roughly inter-plaited strands

Were earlier than loom-wove coverings;

The loom-wove later than man's iron is,

Since iron is needful in the weaving art,

Nor by no other means can there be wrought

Such polished tools—the treadles, spindles, shuttles,

And sounding yarn-beams. And nature forced the men,

Before the woman kind, to work the wool:

For all the male kind far excels in skill,

And cleverer is by much—until at last

The rugged farmer folk jeered at such tasks,

And so were eager soon to give them o'er

To women's hands, and in more hardy toil

To harden arms and hands.

But nature herself,

Mother of things, was the first seed-sower

And primal grafter; since the berries and acorns,

Dropping from off the trees, would there beneath

Put forth in season swarms of little shoots;

Hence too men's fondness for ingrafting slips

Upon the boughs and setting out in holes

The young shrubs o'er the fields. Then would they try

Ever new modes of tilling their loved crofts,

And mark they would how earth improved the taste

Of the wild fruits by fond and fostering care.

And day by day they'd force the woods to move

Still higher up the mountain, and to yield

The place below for tilth, that there they might,

On plains and uplands, have their meadow-plats,

Cisterns and runnels, crops of standing grain,

And happy vineyards, and that all along

O'er hillocks, intervales, and plains might run

The silvery-green belt of olive-trees,

Marking the plotted landscape; even as now

Thou seest so marked with varied loveliness

All the terrain which men adorn and plant

With rows of goodly fruit-trees and hedge round

With thriving shrubberies sown.

But by the mouth

To imitate the liquid notes of birds

Was earlier far 'mongst men than power to make,

By measured song, melodious verse and give

Delight to ears. And whistlings of the wind

Athrough the hollows of the reeds first taught

The peasantry to blow into the stalks

Of hollow hemlock-herb. Then bit by bit

They learned sweet plainings, such as pipe out-pours,

Beaten by finger-tips of singing men,

When heard through unpathed groves and forest deeps

And woodsy meadows, through the untrod haunts

Of shepherd folk and spots divinely still.

Thus time draws forward each and everything

Little by little unto the midst of men,

And reason uplifts it to the shores of light.

These tunes would soothe and glad the minds of mortals

When sated with food,—for songs are welcome then.

And often, lounging with friends in the soft grass

Beside a river of water, underneath

A big tree's branches, merrily they'd refresh

Their frames, with no vast outlay—most of all

If the weather were smiling and the times of the year

Were painting the green of the grass around with flowers.

Then jokes, then talk, then peals of jollity

Would circle round; for then the rustic muse

Was in her glory; then would antic Mirth

Prompt them to garland head and shoulders about

With chaplets of intertwined flowers and leaves,

And to dance onward, out of tune, with limbs

Clownishly swaying, and with clownish foot

To beat our mother earth—from whence arose

Laughter and peals of jollity, for, lo,

Such frolic acts were in their glory then,

Being more new and strange. And wakeful men

Found solaces for their unsleeping hours

In drawing forth variety of notes,

In modulating melodies, in running

With puckered lips along the tuned reeds,

Whence, even in our day do the watchmen guard

These old traditions, and have learned well

To keep true measure. And yet they no whit

Do get a larger fruit of gladsomeness

Than got the woodland aborigines

In olden times. For what we have at hand—

If theretofore naught sweeter we have known—

That chiefly pleases and seems best of all;

But then some later, likely better, find

Destroys its worth and changes our desires

Regarding good of yesterday.

And thus

Began the loathing of the acorn; thus

Abandoned were those beds with grasses strewn

And with the leaves beladen. Thus, again,

Fell into new contempt the pelts of beasts—

Erstwhile a robe of honour, which, I guess,

Aroused in those days envy so malign

That the first wearer went to woeful death

By ambuscades,—and yet that hairy prize,

Rent into rags by greedy foemen there

And splashed by blood, was ruined utterly

Beyond all use or vantage. Thus of old

'Twas pelts, and of to-day 'tis purple and gold

That cark men's lives with cares and weary with war.

Wherefore, methinks, resides the greater blame

With us vain men to-day: for cold would rack,

Without their pelts, the naked sons of earth;

But us it nothing hurts to do without

The purple vestment, broidered with gold

And with imposing figures, if we still

Make shift with some mean garment of the Plebs.

So man in vain futilities toils on

Forever and wastes in idle cares his years—

Because, of very truth, he hath not learnt

What the true end of getting is, nor yet

At all how far true pleasure may increase.

And 'tis desire for better and for more

Hath carried by degrees mortality

Out onward to the deep, and roused up

From the far bottom mighty waves of war.

But sun and moon, those watchmen of the world,

With their own lanterns traversing around

The mighty, the revolving vault, have taught

Unto mankind that seasons of the years

Return again, and that the Thing takes place

After a fixed plan and order fixed.

Already would they pass their life, hedged round

By the strong towers; and cultivate an earth

All portioned out and boundaried; already

Would the sea flower and sail-winged ships;

Already men had, under treaty pacts,

Confederates and allies, when poets began

To hand heroic actions down in verse;

Nor long ere this had letters been devised—

Hence is our age unable to look back

On what has gone before, except where reason

Shows us a footprint.

Sailings on the seas,

Tillings of fields, walls, laws, and arms, and roads,

Dress and the like, all prizes, all delights

Of finer life, poems, pictures, chiselled shapes

Of polished sculptures—all these arts were learned

By practice and the mind's experience,

As men walked forward step by eager step.

Thus time draws forward each and everything

Little by little into the midst of men,

And reason uplifts it to the shores of light.

For one thing after other did men see

Grow clear by intellect, till with their arts

They've now achieved the supreme pinnacle.