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

Unless thou feign bodies of matter endowed

With a like nature,—by thy vain device

For thee will perish all the germs of things:

'Twill come to pass they'll laugh aloud, like men,

Shaken asunder by a spasm of mirth,

Or moisten with salty tear-drops cheeks and chins.

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Now learn of what remains! More keenly hear!

And for myself, my mind is not deceived

How dark it is: But the large hope of praise

Hath strook with pointed thyrsus through my heart;

On the same hour hath strook into my breast

Sweet love of the Muses, wherewith now instinct,

I wander afield, thriving in sturdy thought,

Through unpathed haunts of the Pierides,

Trodden by step of none before. I joy

To come on undefiled fountains there,

To drain them deep; I joy to pluck new flowers,

To seek for this my head a signal crown

From regions where the Muses never yet

Have garlanded the temples of a man:

First, since I teach concerning mighty things,

And go right on to loose from round the mind

The tightened coils of dread religion;

Next, since, concerning themes so dark, I frame

Songs so pellucid, touching all throughout

Even with the Muses' charm—which, as 'twould seem,

Is not without a reasonable ground:

But as physicians, when they seek to give

Young boys the nauseous wormwood, first do touch

The brim around the cup with the sweet juice

And yellow of the honey, in order that

The thoughtless age of boyhood be cajoled

As far as the lips, and meanwhile swallow down

The wormwood's bitter draught, and, though befooled,

Be yet not merely duped, but rather thus

Grow strong again with recreated health:

So now I too (since this my doctrine seems

In general somewhat woeful unto those

Who've had it not in hand, and since the crowd

Starts back from it in horror) have desired

To expound our doctrine unto thee in song

Soft-speaking and Pierian, and, as 'twere,

To touch it with sweet honey of the Muse—

If by such method haply I might hold

The mind of thee upon these lines of ours,

Till thou see through the nature of all things,

And how exists the interwoven frame.

But since I've taught that bodies of matter, made

Completely solid, hither and thither fly

Forevermore unconquered through all time,

Now come, and whether to the sum of them

There be a limit or be none, for thee

Let us unfold; likewise what has been found

To be the wide inane, or room, or space

Wherein all things soever do go on,

Let us examine if it finite be

All and entire, or reach unmeasured round

And downward an illimitable profound.

Thus, then, the All that is is limited

In no one region of its onward paths,

For then 'tmust have forever its beyond.

And a beyond 'tis seen can never be

For aught, unless still further on there be

A somewhat somewhere that may bound the same—

So that the thing be seen still on to where

The nature of sensation of that thing

Can follow it no longer. Now because

Confess we must there's naught beside the sum,

There's no beyond, and so it lacks all end.

It matters nothing where thou post thyself,

In whatsoever regions of the same;

Even any place a man has set him down

Still leaves about him the unbounded all

Outward in all directions; or, supposing

A moment the all of space finite to be,

If some one farthest traveller runs forth

Unto the extreme coasts and throws ahead

A flying spear, is't then thy wish to think

It goes, hurled off amain, to where 'twas sent

And shoots afar, or that some object there

Can thwart and stop it? For the one or other

Thou must admit and take. Either of which

Shuts off escape for thee, and does compel

That thou concede the all spreads everywhere,

Owning no confines. Since whether there be

Aught that may block and check it so it comes

Not where 'twas sent, nor lodges in its goal,

Or whether borne along, in either view

'Thas started not from any end. And so

I'll follow on, and whereso'er thou set

The extreme coasts, I'll query, "what becomes

Thereafter of thy spear?" 'Twill come to pass

That nowhere can a world's-end be, and that

The chance for further flight prolongs forever

The flight itself. Besides, were all the space

Of the totality and sum shut in

With fixed coasts, and bounded everywhere,

Then would the abundance of world's matter flow

Together by solid weight from everywhere

Still downward to the bottom of the world,

Nor aught could happen under cope of sky,

Nor could there be a sky at all or sun—

Indeed, where matter all one heap would lie,

By having settled during infinite time.

But in reality, repose is given

Unto no bodies 'mongst the elements,

Because there is no bottom whereunto

They might, as 'twere, together flow, and where

They might take up their undisturbed abodes.

In endless motion everything goes on

Forevermore; out of all regions, even

Out of the pit below, from forth the vast,

Are hurtled bodies evermore supplied.

The nature of room, the space of the abyss

Is such that even the flashing thunderbolts

Can neither speed upon their courses through,

Gliding across eternal tracts of time,

Nor, further, bring to pass, as on they run,

That they may bate their journeying one whit:

Such huge abundance spreads for things around—

Room off to every quarter, without end.

Lastly, before our very eyes is seen

Thing to bound thing: air hedges hill from hill,

And mountain walls hedge air; land ends the sea,

And sea in turn all lands; but for the All

Truly is nothing which outside may bound.

That, too, the sum of things itself may not

Have power to fix a measure of its own,

Great nature guards, she who compels the void

To bound all body, as body all the void,

Thus rendering by these alternates the whole

An infinite; or else the one or other,

Being unbounded by the other, spreads,

Even by its single nature, ne'ertheless

Immeasurably forth....

Nor sea, nor earth, nor shining vaults of sky,

Nor breed of mortals, nor holy limbs of gods

Could keep their place least portion of an hour:

For, driven apart from out its meetings fit,

The stock of stuff, dissolved, would be borne

Along the illimitable inane afar,

Or rather, in fact, would ne'er have once combined

And given a birth to aught, since, scattered wide,

It could not be united. For of truth

Neither by counsel did the primal germs

'Stablish themselves, as by keen act of mind,

Each in its proper place; nor did they make,

Forsooth, a compact how each germ should move;

But since, being many and changed in many modes

Along the All, they're driven abroad and vexed

By blow on blow, even from all time of old,

They thus at last, after attempting all

The kinds of motion and conjoining, come

Into those great arrangements out of which

This sum of things established is create,

By which, moreover, through the mighty years,

It is preserved, when once it has been thrown

Into the proper motions, bringing to pass

That ever the streams refresh the greedy main

With river-waves abounding, and that earth,

Lapped in warm exhalations of the sun,

Renews her broods, and that the lusty race

Of breathing creatures bears and blooms, and that