Lucius Seneca - Yale Required Reading - Collected Works (Vol. 2)

Will melt the copper and will fuse the gold,

But hides and flesh it shrivels up and shrinks.

The water hardens the iron just off the fire,

But hides and flesh (made hard by heat) it softens.

The oleaster-tree as much delights

The bearded she-goats, verily as though

'Twere nectar-steeped and shed ambrosia;

Than which is naught that burgeons into leaf

More bitter food for man. A hog draws back

For marjoram oil, and every unguent fears

Fierce poison these unto the bristled hogs,

Yet unto us from time to time they seem,

As 'twere, to give new life. But, contrariwise,

Though unto us the mire be filth most foul,

To hogs that mire doth so delightsome seem

That they with wallowing from belly to back

Are never cloyed.

A point remains, besides,

Which best it seems to tell of, ere I go

To telling of the fact at hand itself.

Since to the varied things assigned be

The many pores, those pores must be diverse

In nature one from other, and each have

Its very shape, its own direction fixed.

And so, indeed, in breathing creatures be

The several senses, of which each takes in

Unto itself, in its own fashion ever,

Its own peculiar object. For we mark

How sounds do into one place penetrate,

Into another flavours of all juice,

And savour of smell into a third. Moreover,

One sort through rocks we see to seep, and, lo,

One sort to pass through wood, another still

Through gold, and others to go out and off

Through silver and through glass. For we do see

Through some pores form-and-look of things to flow,

Through others heat to go, and some things still

To speedier pass than others through same pores.

Of verity, the nature of these same paths,

Varying in many modes (as aforesaid)

Because of unlike nature and warp and woof

Of cosmic things, constrains it so to be.

Wherefore, since all these matters now have been

Established and settled well for us

As premises prepared, for what remains

'Twill not be hard to render clear account

By means of these, and the whole cause reveal

Whereby the magnet lures the strength of iron.

First, stream there must from off the lode-stone seeds

Innumerable, a very tide, which smites

By blows that air asunder lying betwixt

The stone and iron. And when is emptied out

This space, and a large place between the two

Is made a void, forthwith the primal germs

Of iron, headlong slipping, fall conjoined

Into the vacuum, and the ring itself

By reason thereof doth follow after and go

Thuswise with all its body. And naught there is

That of its own primordial elements

More thoroughly knit or tighter linked coheres

Than nature and cold roughness of stout iron.

Wherefore, 'tis less a marvel what I said,

That from such elements no bodies can

From out the iron collect in larger throng

And be into the vacuum borne along,

Without the ring itself do follow after.

And this it does, and followeth on until

'Thath reached the stone itself and cleaved to it

By links invisible. Moreover, likewise,

The motion's assisted by a thing of aid

(Whereby the process easier becomes),—

Namely, by this: as soon as rarer grows

That air in front of the ring, and space between

Is emptied more and made a void, forthwith

It happens all the air that lies behind

Conveys it onward, pushing from the rear.

For ever doth the circumambient air

Drub things unmoved, but here it pushes forth

The iron, because upon one side the space

Lies void and thus receives the iron in.

This air, whereof I am reminding thee,

Winding athrough the iron's abundant pores

So subtly into the tiny parts thereof,

Shoves it and pushes, as wind the ship and sails.

The same doth happen in all directions forth:

From whatso side a space is made a void,

Whether from crosswise or above, forthwith

The neighbour particles are borne along

Into the vacuum; for of verity,

They're set a-going by poundings from elsewhere,

Nor by themselves of own accord can they

Rise upwards into the air. Again, all things

Must in their framework hold some air, because

They are of framework porous, and the air

Encompasses and borders on all things.

Thus, then, this air in iron so deeply stored

Is tossed evermore in vexed motion,

And therefore drubs upon the ring sans doubt

And shakes it up inside....

In sooth, that ring is thither borne along

To where 'thas once plunged headlong—thither, lo,

Unto the void whereto it took its start.

It happens, too, at times that nature of iron

Shrinks from this stone away, accustomed

By turns to flee and follow. Yea, I've seen

Those Samothracian iron rings leap up,

And iron filings in the brazen bowls

Seethe furiously, when underneath was set

The magnet stone. So strongly iron seems

To crave to flee that rock. Such discord great

Is gendered by the interposed brass,

Because, forsooth, when first the tide of brass

Hath seized upon and held possession of

The iron's open passage-ways, thereafter

Cometh the tide of the stone, and in that iron

Findeth all spaces full, nor now hath holes

To swim through, as before. 'Tis thus constrained

With its own current 'gainst the iron's fabric

To dash and beat; by means whereof it spues

Forth from itself—and through the brass stirs up—

The things which otherwise without the brass

It sucks into itself. In these affairs

Marvel thou not that from this stone the tide

Prevails not likewise other things to move

With its own blows: for some stand firm by weight,

As gold; and some cannot be moved forever,

Because so porous in their framework they

That there the tide streams through without a break,

Of which sort stuff of wood is seen to be.

Therefore, when iron (which lies between the two)

Hath taken in some atoms of the brass,

Then do the streams of that Magnesian rock

Move iron by their smitings.

Yet these things

Are not so alien from others, that I

Of this same sort am ill prepared to name

Ensamples still of things exclusively

To one another adapt. Thou seest, first,

How lime alone cementeth stones: how wood

Only by glue-of-bull with wood is joined—

So firmly too that oftener the boards

Crack open along the weakness of the grain

Ere ever those taurine bonds will lax their hold.

The vine-born juices with the water-springs

Are bold to mix, though not the heavy pitch

With the light oil-of-olive. And purple dye

Of shell-fish so uniteth with the wool's

Body alone that it cannot be ta'en

Away forever—nay, though thou gavest toil

To restore the same with the Neptunian flood,

Nay, though all ocean willed to wash it out

With all its waves. Again, gold unto gold

Doth not one substance bind, and only one?

And is not brass by tin joined unto brass?

And other ensamples how many might one find!

What then? Nor is there unto thee a need

Of such long ways and roundabout, nor boots it

For me much toil on this to spend. More fit

It is in few words briefly to embrace

Things many: things whose textures fall together

So mutually adapt, that cavities

To solids correspond, these cavities

Of this thing to the solid parts of that,

And those of that to solid parts of this—

Such joinings are the best. Again, some things

Can be the one with other coupled and held,