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

And end his days in sterile love forever.

What many men suppose; and gloomily

They sprinkle the altars with abundant blood,

And make the high platforms odorous with burnt gifts,

To render big by plenteous seed their wives—

And plague in vain godheads and sacred lots.

For sterile are these men by seed too thick,

Or else by far too watery and thin.

Because the thin is powerless to cleave

Fast to the proper places, straightaway

It trickles from them, and, returned again,

Retires abortively. And then since seed

More gross and solid than will suit is spent

By some men, either it flies not forth amain

With spurt prolonged enough, or else it fails

To enter suitably the proper places,

Or, having entered, the seed is weakly mixed

With seed of the woman: harmonies of Venus

Are seen to matter vastly here; and some

Impregnate some more readily, and from some

Some women conceive more readily and become

Pregnant. And many women, sterile before

In several marriage-beds, have yet thereafter

Obtained the mates from whom they could conceive

The baby-boys, and with sweet progeny

Grow rich. And even for husbands (whose own wives,

Although of fertile wombs, have borne for them

No babies in the house) are also found

Concordant natures so that they at last

Can bulwark their old age with goodly sons.

A matter of great moment 'tis in truth,

That seeds may mingle readily with seeds

Suited for procreation, and that thick

Should mix with fluid seeds, with thick the fluid.

And in this business 'tis of some import

Upon what diet life is nourished:

For some foods thicken seeds within our members,

And others thin them out and waste away.

And in what modes the fond delight itself

Is carried on—this too importeth vastly.

For commonly 'tis thought that wives conceive

More readily in manner of wild-beasts,

After the custom of the four-foot breeds,

Because so postured, with the breasts beneath

And buttocks then upreared, the seeds can take

Their proper places. Nor is need the least

For wives to use the motions of blandishment;

For thus the woman hinders and resists

Her own conception, if too joyously

Herself she treats the Venus of the man

With haunches heaving, and with all her bosom

Now yielding like the billows of the sea—

Aye, from the ploughshare's even course and track

She throws the furrow, and from proper places

Deflects the spurt of seed. And courtesans

Are thuswise wont to move for their own ends,

To keep from pregnancy and lying in,

And all the while to render Venus more

A pleasure for the men—the which meseems

Our wives have never need of.

Sometimes too

It happens—and through no divinity

Nor arrows of Venus—that a sorry chit

Of scanty grace will be beloved by man;

For sometimes she herself by very deeds,

By her complying ways, and tidy habits,

Will easily accustom thee to pass

With her thy life-time—and, moreover, lo,

Long habitude can gender human love,

Even as an object smitten o'er and o'er

By blows, however lightly, yet at last

Is overcome and wavers. Seest thou not,

Besides, how drops of water falling down

Against the stones at last bore through the stones?

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

O WHO can build with puissant breast a song

Worthy the majesty of these great finds?

Or who in words so strong that he can frame

The fit laudations for deserts of him

Who left us heritors of such vast prizes,

By his own breast discovered and sought out?—

There shall be none, methinks, of mortal stock.

For if must needs be named for him the name

Demanded by the now known majesty

Of these high matters, then a god was he,—

Hear me, illustrious Memmius—a god;

Who first and chief found out that plan of life

Which now is called philosophy, and who

By cunning craft, out of such mighty waves,

Out of such mighty darkness, moored life

In havens so serene, in light so clear.

Compare those old discoveries divine

Of others: lo, according to the tale,

Ceres established for mortality

The grain, and Bacchus juice of vine-born grape,

Though life might yet without these things abide,

Even as report saith now some peoples live.

But man's well-being was impossible

Without a breast all free. Wherefore the more

That man doth justly seem to us a god,

From whom sweet solaces of life, afar

Distributed o'er populous domains,

Now soothe the minds of men. But if thou thinkest

Labours of Hercules excel the same,

Much farther from true reasoning thou farest.

For what could hurt us now that mighty maw

Of Nemeaean Lion, or what the Boar

Who bristled in Arcadia? Or, again,

O what could Cretan Bull, or Hydra, pest

Of Lerna, fenced with vipers venomous?

Or what the triple-breasted power of her

The three-fold Geryon...

The sojourners in the Stymphalian fens

So dreadfully offend us, or the Steeds

Of Thracian Diomedes breathing fire

From out their nostrils off along the zones

Bistonian and Ismarian? And the Snake,

The dread fierce gazer, guardian of the golden

And gleaming apples of the Hesperides,

Coiled round the tree-trunk with tremendous bulk,

O what, again, could he inflict on us

Along the Atlantic shore and wastes of sea?—

Where neither one of us approacheth nigh

Nor no barbarian ventures. And the rest

Of all those monsters slain, even if alive,

Unconquered still, what injury could they do?

None, as I guess. For so the glutted earth

Swarms even now with savage beasts, even now

Is filled with anxious terrors through the woods

And mighty mountains and the forest deeps—

Quarters 'tis ours in general to avoid.

But lest the breast be purged, what conflicts then,

What perils, must bosom, in our own despite!

O then how great and keen the cares of lust

That split the man distraught! How great the fears!

And lo, the pride, grim greed, and wantonness—

How great the slaughters in their train! and lo,

Debaucheries and every breed of sloth!

Therefore that man who subjugated these,

And from the mind expelled, by words indeed,

Not arms, O shall it not be seemly him

To dignify by ranking with the gods?—

And all the more since he was wont to give,

Concerning the immortal gods themselves,

Many pronouncements with a tongue divine,

And to unfold by his pronouncements all

The nature of the world.

ARGUMENT OF THE BOOK AND NEW PROEM

AGAINST A TELEOLOGICAL CONCEPT

And walking now

In his own footprints, I do follow through

His reasonings, and with pronouncements teach

The covenant whereby all things are framed,

How under that covenant they must abide

Nor ever prevail to abrogate the aeons'

Inexorable decrees,—how (as we've found),

In class of mortal objects, o'er all else,

The mind exists of earth-born frame create

And impotent unscathed to abide

Across the mighty aeons, and how come

In sleep those idol-apparitions,

That so befool intelligence when we

Do seem to view a man whom life has left.

Thus far we've gone; the order of my plan

Hath brought me now unto the point where I

Must make report how, too, the universe

Consists of mortal body, born in time,