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

Until the illusion's shaken off and dogs

Come to themselves again. And fawning breed

Of house-bred whelps do feel the sudden urge

To shake their bodies and start from off the ground,

As if beholding stranger-visages.

And ever the fiercer be the stock, the more

In sleep the same is ever bound to rage.

But flee the divers tribes of birds and vex

With sudden wings by night the groves of gods,

When in their gentle slumbers they have dreamed

Of hawks in chase, aswooping on for fight.

Again, the minds of mortals which perform

With mighty motions mighty enterprises,

Often in sleep will do and dare the same

In manner like. Kings take the towns by storm,

Succumb to capture, battle on the field,

Raise a wild cry as if their throats were cut

Even then and there. And many wrestle on

And groan with pains, and fill all regions round

With mighty cries and wild, as if then gnawed

By fangs of panther or of lion fierce.

Many amid their slumbers talk about

Their mighty enterprises, and have often

Enough become the proof of their own crimes.

Many meet death; many, as if headlong

From lofty mountains tumbling down to earth

With all their frame, are frenzied in their fright;

And after sleep, as if still mad in mind,

They scarce come to, confounded as they are

By ferment of their frame. The thirsty man,

Likewise, he sits beside delightful spring

Or river and gulpeth down with gaping throat

Nigh the whole stream. And oft the innocent young,

By sleep o'ermastered, think they lift their dress

By pail or public jordan and then void

The water filtered down their frame entire

And drench the Babylonian coverlets,

Magnificently bright. Again, those males

Into the surging channels of whose years

Now first has passed the seed (engendered

Within their members by the ripened days)

Are in their sleep confronted from without

By idol-images of some fair form—

Tidings of glorious face and lovely bloom,

Which stir and goad the regions turgid now

With seed abundant; so that, as it were

With all the matter acted duly out,

They pour the billows of a potent stream

And stain their garment.

And as said before,

That seed is roused in us when once ripe age

Has made our body strong...

As divers causes give to divers things

Impulse and irritation, so one force

In human kind rouses the human seed

To spurt from man. As soon as ever it issues,

Forced from its first abodes, it passes down

In the whole body through the limbs and frame,

Meeting in certain regions of our thews,

And stirs amain the genitals of man.

The goaded regions swell with seed, and then

Comes the delight to dart the same at what

The mad desire so yearns, and body seeks

That object, whence the mind by love is pierced.

For well-nigh each man falleth toward his wound,

And our blood spurts even toward the spot from whence

The stroke wherewith we are strook, and if indeed

The foe be close, the red jet reaches him.

Thus, one who gets a stroke from Venus' shafts—

Whether a boy with limbs effeminate

Assault him, or a woman darting love

From all her body—that one strains to get

Even to the thing whereby he's hit, and longs

To join with it and cast into its frame

The fluid drawn even from within its own.

For the mute craving doth presage delight.

Table of Contents

This craving 'tis that's Venus unto us:

From this, engender all the lures of love,

From this, O first hath into human hearts

Trickled that drop of joyance which ere long

Is by chill care succeeded. Since, indeed,

Though she thou lovest now be far away,

Yet idol-images of her are near

And the sweet name is floating in thy ear.

But it behooves to flee those images;

And scare afar whatever feeds thy love;

And turn elsewhere thy mind; and vent the sperm,

Within thee gathered, into sundry bodies,

Nor, with thy thoughts still busied with one love,

Keep it for one delight, and so store up

Care for thyself and pain inevitable.

For, lo, the ulcer just by nourishing

Grows to more life with deep inveteracy,

And day by day the fury swells aflame,

And the woe waxes heavier day by day—

Unless thou dost destroy even by new blows

The former wounds of love, and curest them

While yet they're fresh, by wandering freely round

After the freely-wandering Venus, or

Canst lead elsewhere the tumults of thy mind.

Nor doth that man who keeps away from love

Yet lack the fruits of Venus; rather takes

Those pleasures which are free of penalties.

For the delights of Venus, verily,

Are more unmixed for mortals sane-of-soul

Than for those sick-at-heart with love-pining.

Yea, in the very moment of possessing,

Surges the heat of lovers to and fro,

Restive, uncertain; and they cannot fix

On what to first enjoy with eyes and hands.

The parts they sought for, those they squeeze so tight,

And pain the creature's body, close their teeth

Often against her lips, and smite with kiss

Mouth into mouth,—because this same delight

Is not unmixed; and underneath are stings

Which goad a man to hurt the very thing,

Whate'er it be, from whence arise for him

Those germs of madness. But with gentle touch

Venus subdues the pangs in midst of love,

And the admixture of a fondling joy

Doth curb the bites of passion. For they hope

That by the very body whence they caught

The heats of love their flames can be put out.

But nature protests 'tis all quite otherwise;

For this same love it is the one sole thing

Of which, the more we have, the fiercer burns

The breast with fell desire. For food and drink

Are taken within our members; and, since they

Can stop up certain parts, thus, easily

Desire of water is glutted and of bread.

But, lo, from human face and lovely bloom

Naught penetrates our frame to be enjoyed

Save flimsy idol-images and vain—

A sorry hope which oft the winds disperse.

As when the thirsty man in slumber seeks

To drink, and water ne'er is granted him

Wherewith to quench the heat within his members,

But after idols of the liquids strives

And toils in vain, and thirsts even whilst he gulps

In middle of the torrent, thus in love

Venus deludes with idol-images

The lovers. Nor they cannot sate their lust

By merely gazing on the bodies, nor

They cannot with their palms and fingers rub

Aught from each tender limb, the while they stray

Uncertain over all the body. Then,

At last, with members intertwined, when they

Enjoy the flower of their age, when now

Their bodies have sweet presage of keen joys,

And Venus is about to sow the fields

Of woman, greedily their frames they lock,

And mingle the slaver of their mouths, and breathe

Into each other, pressing teeth on mouths—

Yet to no purpose, since they're powerless

To rub off aught, or penetrate and pass

With body entire into body—for oft

They seem to strive and struggle thus to do;

So eagerly they cling in Venus' bonds,

Whilst melt away their members, overcome

By violence of delight. But when at last

Lust, gathered in the thews, hath spent itself,

There come a brief pause in the raging heat—

But then a madness just the same returns

And that old fury visits them again,