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

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