Читать книгу The Greatest Works of Roman Classical Literature - Луций Анней Сенека - Страница 150

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Now come, and next hereafter apprehend

What sorts, how vastly different in form,

How varied in multitudinous shapes they are—

These old beginnings of the universe;

Not in the sense that only few are furnished

With one like form, but rather not at all

In general have they likeness each with each,

No marvel: since the stock of them's so great

That there's no end (as I have taught) nor sum,

They must indeed not one and all be marked

By equal outline and by shape the same.

Moreover, humankind, and the mute flocks

Of scaly creatures swimming in the streams,

And joyous herds around, and all the wild,

And all the breeds of birds—both those that teem

In gladsome regions of the water-haunts,

About the river-banks and springs and pools,

And those that throng, flitting from tree to tree,

Through trackless woods—Go, take which one thou wilt,

In any kind: thou wilt discover still

Each from the other still unlike in shape.

Nor in no other wise could offspring know

Mother, nor mother offspring—which we see

They yet can do, distinguished one from other,

No less than human beings, by clear signs.

Thus oft before fair temples of the gods,

Beside the incense-burning altars slain,

Drops down the yearling calf, from out its breast

Breathing warm streams of blood; the orphaned mother,

Ranging meanwhile green woodland pastures round,

Knows well the footprints, pressed by cloven hoofs,

With eyes regarding every spot about,

For sight somewhere of youngling gone from her;

And, stopping short, filleth the leafy lanes

With her complaints; and oft she seeks again

Within the stall, pierced by her yearning still.

Nor tender willows, nor dew-quickened grass,

Nor the loved streams that glide along low banks,

Can lure her mind and turn the sudden pain;

Nor other shapes of calves that graze thereby

Distract her mind or lighten pain the least—

So keen her search for something known and hers.

Moreover, tender kids with bleating throats

Do know their horned dams, and butting lambs

The flocks of sheep, and thus they patter on,

Unfailingly each to its proper teat,

As nature intends. Lastly, with any grain,

Thou'lt see that no one kernel in one kind

Is so far like another, that there still

Is not in shapes some difference running through.

By a like law we see how earth is pied

With shells and conchs, where, with soft waves, the sea

Beats on the thirsty sands of curving shores.

Wherefore again, again, since seeds of things

Exist by nature, nor were wrought with hands

After a fixed pattern of one other,

They needs must flitter to and fro with shapes

In types dissimilar to one another.

Easy enough by thought of mind to solve

Why fires of lightning more can penetrate

Than these of ours from pitch-pine born on earth.

For thou canst say lightning's celestial fire,

So subtle, is formed of figures finer far,

And passes thus through holes which this our fire,

Born from the wood, created from the pine,

Cannot. Again, light passes through the horn

On the lantern's side, while rain is dashed away.

And why?—unless those bodies of light should be

Finer than those of water's genial showers.

We see how quickly through a colander

The wines will flow; how, on the other hand,

The sluggish olive-oil delays: no doubt,

Because 'tis wrought of elements more large,

Or else more crook'd and intertangled. Thus

It comes that the primordials cannot be

So suddenly sundered one from other, and seep,

One through each several hole of anything.

And note, besides, that liquor of honey or milk

Yields in the mouth agreeable taste to tongue,

Whilst nauseous wormwood, pungent centaury,

With their foul flavour set the lips awry;

Thus simple 'tis to see that whatsoever

Can touch the senses pleasingly are made

Of smooth and rounded elements, whilst those

Which seem the bitter and the sharp, are held

Entwined by elements more crook'd, and so

Are wont to tear their ways into our senses,

And rend our body as they enter in.

In short all good to sense, all bad to touch,

Being up-built of figures so unlike,

Are mutually at strife—lest thou suppose

That the shrill rasping of a squeaking saw

Consists of elements as smooth as song

Which, waked by nimble fingers, on the strings

The sweet musicians fashion; or suppose

That same-shaped atoms through men's nostrils pierce

When foul cadavers burn, as when the stage

Is with Cilician saffron sprinkled fresh,

And the altar near exhales Panchaean scent;

Or hold as of like seed the goodly hues

Of things which feast our eyes, as those which sting

Against the smarting pupil and draw tears,

Or show, with gruesome aspect, grim and vile.

For never a shape which charms our sense was made

Without some elemental smoothness; whilst

Whate'er is harsh and irksome has been framed

Still with some roughness in its elements.

Some, too, there are which justly are supposed

To be nor smooth nor altogether hooked,

With bended barbs, but slightly angled-out,

To tickle rather than to wound the sense—

And of which sort is the salt tartar of wine

And flavours of the gummed elecampane.

Again, that glowing fire and icy rime

Are fanged with teeth unlike whereby to sting

Our body's sense, the touch of each gives proof.

For touch—by sacred majesties of Gods!—

Touch is indeed the body's only sense—

Be't that something in-from-outward works,

Be't that something in the body born

Wounds, or delighteth as it passes out

Along the procreant paths of Aphrodite;

Or be't the seeds by some collision whirl

Disordered in the body and confound

By tumult and confusion all the sense—

As thou mayst find, if haply with the hand

Thyself thou strike thy body's any part.

On which account, the elemental forms

Must differ widely, as enabled thus

To cause diverse sensations.

And, again,

What seems to us the hardened and condensed

Must be of atoms among themselves more hooked,

Be held compacted deep within, as 'twere

By branch-like atoms—of which sort the chief

Are diamond stones, despisers of all blows,

And stalwart flint and strength of solid iron,

And brazen bars, which, budging hard in locks,

Do grate and scream. But what are liquid, formed

Of fluid body, they indeed must be

Of elements more smooth and round—because

Their globules severally will not cohere:

To suck the poppy-seeds from palm of hand

Is quite as easy as drinking water down,

And they, once struck, roll like unto the same.

But that thou seest among the things that flow

Some bitter, as the brine of ocean is,

Is not the least a marvel...

For since 'tis fluid, smooth its atoms are

And round, with painful rough ones mixed therein;

Yet need not these be held together hooked:

In fact, though rough, they're globular besides,

Able at once to roll, and rasp the sense.

And that the more thou mayst believe me here,

That with smooth elements are mixed the rough

(Whence Neptune's salt astringent body comes),

There is a means to separate the twain,

And thereupon dividedly to see

How the sweet water, after filtering through

So often underground, flows freshened forth

Into some hollow; for it leaves above

The primal germs of nauseating brine,

Since cling the rough more readily in earth.

Lastly, whatso thou markest to disperse

Upon the instant—smoke, and cloud, and flame—

Must not (even though not all of smooth and round)

Be yet co-linked with atoms intertwined,

That thus they can, without together cleaving,

So pierce our body and so bore the rocks.

Whatever we see...

Given to senses, that thou must perceive

They're not from linked but pointed elements.

The which now having taught, I will go on

To bind thereto a fact to this allied

And drawing from this its proof: these primal germs

Vary, yet only with finite tale of shapes.

For were these shapes quite infinite, some seeds

Would have a body of infinite increase.

For in one seed, in one small frame of any,

The shapes can't vary from one another much.

Assume, we'll say, that of three minim parts

Consist the primal bodies, or add a few:

When, now, by placing all these parts of one

At top and bottom, changing lefts and rights,

Thou hast with every kind of shift found out

What the aspect of shape of its whole body

Each new arrangement gives, for what remains,

If thou percase wouldst vary its old shapes,

New parts must then be added; follows next,

If thou percase wouldst vary still its shapes,

That by like logic each arrangement still

Requires its increment of other parts.

Ergo, an augmentation of its frame

Follows upon each novelty of forms.

Wherefore, it cannot be thou'lt undertake

That seeds have infinite differences in form,

Lest thus thou forcest some indeed to be

Of an immeasurable immensity—

Which I have taught above cannot be proved.

And now for thee barbaric robes, and gleam

Of Meliboean purple, touched with dye

Of the Thessalian shell...

The peacock's golden generations, stained

With spotted gaieties, would lie o'erthrown

By some new colour of new things more bright;

The odour of myrrh and savours of honey despised;

The swan's old lyric, and Apollo's hymns,

Once modulated on the many chords,

Would likewise sink o'ermastered and be mute:

For, lo, a somewhat, finer than the rest,

Would be arising evermore. So, too,

Into some baser part might all retire,

Even as we said to better might they come:

For, lo, a somewhat, loathlier than the rest

To nostrils, ears, and eyes, and taste of tongue,

Would then, by reasoning reversed, be there.

Since 'tis not so, but unto things are given

Their fixed limitations which do bound

Their sum on either side, 'tmust be confessed

That matter, too, by finite tale of shapes

Does differ. Again, from earth's midsummer heats

Unto the icy hoar-frosts of the year

The forward path is fixed, and by like law

O'ertravelled backwards at the dawn of spring.

For each degree of hot, and each of cold,

And the half-warm, all filling up the sum

In due progression, lie, my Memmius, there

Betwixt the two extremes: the things create

Must differ, therefore, by a finite change,

Since at each end marked off they ever are

By fixed point—on one side plagued by flames

And on the other by congealing frosts.

The which now having taught, I will go on

To bind thereto a fact to this allied

And drawing from this its proof: those primal germs

Which have been fashioned all of one like shape

Are infinite in tale; for, since the forms

Themselves are finite in divergences,

Then those which are alike will have to be

Infinite, else the sum of stuff remains

A finite—what I've proved is not the fact,

Showing in verse how corpuscles of stuff,

From everlasting and to-day the same,

Uphold the sum of things, all sides around

By old succession of unending blows.

For though thou view'st some beasts to be more rare,

And mark'st in them a less prolific stock,

Yet in another region, in lands remote,

That kind abounding may make up the count;

Even as we mark among the four-foot kind

Snake-handed elephants, whose thousands wall

With ivory ramparts India about,

That her interiors cannot entered be—

So big her count of brutes of which we see

Such few examples. Or suppose, besides,

We feign some thing, one of its kind and sole

With body born, to which is nothing like

In all the lands: yet now unless shall be

An infinite count of matter out of which

Thus to conceive and bring it forth to life,

It cannot be created and—what's more—

It cannot take its food and get increase.

Yea, if through all the world in finite tale

Be tossed the procreant bodies of one thing,

Whence, then, and where in what mode, by what power,

Shall they to meeting come together there,

In such vast ocean of matter and tumult strange?—

No means they have of joining into one.

But, just as, after mighty ship-wrecks piled,

The mighty main is wont to scatter wide

The rowers' banks, the ribs, the yards, the prow,

The masts and swimming oars, so that afar

Along all shores of lands are seen afloat

The carven fragments of the rended poop,

Giving a lesson to mortality

To shun the ambush of the faithless main,

The violence and the guile, and trust it not

At any hour, however much may smile

The crafty enticements of the placid deep:

Exactly thus, if once thou holdest true

That certain seeds are finite in their tale,

The various tides of matter, then, must needs

Scatter them flung throughout the ages all,

So that not ever can they join, as driven

Together into union, nor remain

In union, nor with increment can grow—

But facts in proof are manifest for each:

Things can be both begotten and increase.

'Tis therefore manifest that primal germs,

Are infinite in any class thou wilt—

From whence is furnished matter for all things.

Nor can those motions that bring death prevail

Forever, nor eternally entomb

The welfare of the world; nor, further, can

Those motions that give birth to things and growth

Keep them forever when created there.

Thus the long war, from everlasting waged,

With equal strife among the elements

Goes on and on. Now here, now there, prevail

The vital forces of the world—or fall.

Mixed with the funeral is the wildered wail

Of infants coming to the shores of light:

No night a day, no dawn a night hath followed

That heard not, mingling with the small birth-cries,

The wild laments, companions old of death

And the black rites.

This, too, in these affairs

'Tis fit thou hold well sealed, and keep consigned

With no forgetting brain: nothing there is

Whose nature is apparent out of hand

That of one kind of elements consists—

Nothing there is that's not of mixed seed.

And whatsoe'er possesses in itself

More largely many powers and properties

Shows thus that here within itself there are

The largest number of kinds and differing shapes

Of elements. And, chief of all, the earth

Hath in herself first bodies whence the springs,

Rolling chill waters, renew forevermore

The unmeasured main; hath whence the fires arise—

For burns in many a spot her flamed crust,

Whilst the impetuous Aetna raves indeed

From more profounder fires—and she, again,

Hath in herself the seed whence she can raise

The shining grains and gladsome trees for men;

Whence, also, rivers, fronds, and gladsome pastures

Can she supply for mountain-roaming beasts.

Wherefore great mother of gods, and mother of beasts,

And parent of man hath she alone been named.

Her hymned the old and learned bards of Greece

Seated in chariot o'er the realms of air

To drive her team of lions, teaching thus

That the great earth hangs poised and cannot lie

Resting on other earth. Unto her car

They've yoked the wild beasts, since a progeny,

However savage, must be tamed and chid

By care of parents. They have girt about

With turret-crown the summit of her head,

Since, fortressed in her goodly strongholds high,

'Tis she sustains the cities; now, adorned

With that same token, to-day is carried forth,

With solemn awe through many a mighty land,

The image of that mother, the divine.

Her the wide nations, after antique rite,

Do name Idaean Mother, giving her

Escort of Phrygian bands, since first, they say,

From out those regions 'twas that grain began

Through all the world. To her do they assign

The Galli, the emasculate, since thus

They wish to show that men who violate

The majesty of the mother and have proved

Ingrate to parents are to be adjudged

Unfit to give unto the shores of light

A living progeny. The Galli come:

And hollow cymbals, tight-skinned tambourines

Resound around to bangings of their hands;

The fierce horns threaten with a raucous bray;

The tubed pipe excites their maddened minds

In Phrygian measures; they bear before them knives,

Wild emblems of their frenzy, which have power

The rabble's ingrate heads and impious hearts

To panic with terror of the goddess' might.

And so, when through the mighty cities borne,

She blesses man with salutations mute,

They strew the highway of her journeyings

With coin of brass and silver, gifting her

With alms and largesse, and shower her and shade

With flowers of roses falling like the snow

Upon the Mother and her companion-bands.

Here is an armed troop, the which by Greeks

Are called the Phrygian Curetes. Since

Haply among themselves they use to play

In games of arms and leap in measure round

With bloody mirth and by their nodding shake

The terrorizing crests upon their heads,

This is the armed troop that represents

The arm'd Dictaean Curetes, who, in Crete,

As runs the story, whilom did out-drown

That infant cry of Zeus, what time their band,

Young boys, in a swift dance around the boy,

To measured step beat with the brass on brass,

That Saturn might not get him for his jaws,

And give its mother an eternal wound

Along her heart. And 'tis on this account

That armed they escort the mighty Mother,

Or else because they signify by this

That she, the goddess, teaches men to be

Eager with armed valour to defend

Their motherland, and ready to stand forth,

The guard and glory of their parents' years.

A tale, however beautifully wrought,

That's wide of reason by a long remove:

For all the gods must of themselves enjoy

Immortal aeons and supreme repose,

Withdrawn from our affairs, detached, afar:

Immune from peril and immune from pain,

Themselves abounding in riches of their own,

Needing not us, they are not touched by wrath

They are not taken by service or by gift.

Truly is earth insensate for all time;

But, by obtaining germs of many things,

In many a way she brings the many forth

Into the light of sun. And here, whoso

Decides to call the ocean Neptune, or

The grain-crop Ceres, and prefers to abuse

The name of Bacchus rather than pronounce

The liquor's proper designation, him

Let us permit to go on calling earth

Mother of Gods, if only he will spare

To taint his soul with foul religion.

So, too, the wooly flocks, and horned kine,

And brood of battle-eager horses, grazing

Often together along one grassy plain,

Under the cope of one blue sky, and slaking

From out one stream of water each its thirst,

All live their lives with face and form unlike,

Keeping the parents' nature, parents' habits,

Which, kind by kind, through ages they repeat.

So great in any sort of herb thou wilt,

So great again in any river of earth

Are the distinct diversities of matter.

Hence, further, every creature—any one

From out them all—compounded is the same

Of bones, blood, veins, heat, moisture, flesh, and thews—

All differing vastly in their forms, and built

Of elements dissimilar in shape.

Again, all things by fire consumed ablaze,

Within their frame lay up, if naught besides,

At least those atoms whence derives their power

To throw forth fire and send out light from under,

To shoot the sparks and scatter embers wide.

If, with like reasoning of mind, all else

Thou traverse through, thou wilt discover thus

That in their frame the seeds of many things

They hide, and divers shapes of seeds contain.

Further, thou markest much, to which are given

Along together colour and flavour and smell,

Among which, chief, are most burnt offerings.

Thus must they be of divers shapes composed.

A smell of scorching enters in our frame

Where the bright colour from the dye goes not;

And colour in one way, flavour in quite another

Works inward to our senses—so mayst see

They differ too in elemental shapes.

Thus unlike forms into one mass combine,

And things exist by intermixed seed.

But still 'tmust not be thought that in all ways

All things can be conjoined; for then wouldst view

Portents begot about thee every side:

Hulks of mankind half brute astarting up,

At times big branches sprouting from man's trunk,

Limbs of a sea-beast to a land-beast knit,

And nature along the all-producing earth

Feeding those dire Chimaeras breathing flame

From hideous jaws—Of which 'tis simple fact

That none have been begot; because we see

All are from fixed seed and fixed dam

Engendered and so function as to keep

Throughout their growth their own ancestral type.

This happens surely by a fixed law:

For from all food-stuff, when once eaten down,

Go sundered atoms, suited to each creature,

Throughout their bodies, and, conjoining there,

Produce the proper motions; but we see

How, contrariwise, nature upon the ground

Throws off those foreign to their frame; and many

With viewless bodies from their bodies fly,

By blows impelled—those impotent to join

To any part, or, when inside, to accord

And to take on the vital motions there.

But think not, haply, living forms alone

Are bound by these laws: they distinguished all.

For just as all things of creation are,

In their whole nature, each to each unlike,

So must their atoms be in shape unlike—

Not since few only are fashioned of like form,

But since they all, as general rule, are not

The same as all. Nay, here in these our verses,

Elements many, common to many words,

Thou seest, though yet 'tis needful to confess

The words and verses differ, each from each,

Compounded out of different elements—

Not since few only, as common letters, run

Through all the words, or no two words are made,

One and the other, from all like elements,

But since they all, as general rule, are not

The same as all. Thus, too, in other things,

Whilst many germs common to many things

There are, yet they, combined among themselves,

Can form new wholes to others quite unlike.

Thus fairly one may say that humankind,

The grains, the gladsome trees, are all made up

Of different atoms. Further, since the seeds

Are different, difference must there also be

In intervening spaces, thoroughfares,

Connections, weights, blows, clashings, motions, all

Which not alone distinguish living forms,

But sunder earth's whole ocean from the lands,

And hold all heaven from the lands away.