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

Of ocean, and courses of the sun and moon,

I'll now in order tell. For of a 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, lo, because primordials of things,

Many in many modes, astir by blows

From immemorial aeons, in motion too

By their own weights, have evermore been wont

To be so borne along and in all modes

To meet together and to try all sorts

Which, by combining one with other, they

Are powerful to create: because of this

It comes to pass that those primordials,

Diffused far and wide through mighty aeons,

The while they unions try, and motions too,

Of every kind, meet at the last amain,

And so become oft the commencements fit

Of mighty things—earth, sea, and sky, and race

Of living creatures.

In that long-ago

The wheel of the sun could nowhere be discerned

Flying far up with its abounding blaze,

Nor constellations of the mighty world,

Nor ocean, nor heaven, nor even earth nor air.

Nor aught of things like unto things of ours

Could then be seen—but only some strange storm

And a prodigious hurly-burly mass

Compounded of all kinds of primal germs,

Whose battling discords in disorder kept

Interstices, and paths, coherencies,

And weights, and blows, encounterings, and motions,

Because, by reason of their forms unlike

And varied shapes, they could not all thuswise

Remain conjoined nor harmoniously

Have interplay of movements. But from there

Portions began to fly asunder, and like

With like to join, and to block out a world,

And to divide its members and dispose

Its mightier parts—that is, to set secure

The lofty heavens from the lands, and cause

The sea to spread with waters separate,

And fires of ether separate and pure

Likewise to congregate apart.

For, lo,

First came together the earthy particles

(As being heavy and intertangled) there

In the mid-region, and all began to take

The lowest abodes; and ever the more they got

One with another intertangled, the more

They pressed from out their mass those particles

Which were to form the sea, the stars, the sun,

And moon, and ramparts of the mighty world—

For these consist of seeds more smooth and round

And of much smaller elements than earth.

And thus it was that ether, fraught with fire,

First broke away from out the earthen parts,

Athrough the innumerable pores of earth,

And raised itself aloft, and with itself

Bore lightly off the many starry fires;

And not far otherwise we often see

And the still lakes and the perennial streams

Exhale a mist, and even as earth herself

Is seen at times to smoke, when first at dawn

The light of the sun, the many-rayed, begins

To redden into gold, over the grass

Begemmed with dew. When all of these are brought

Together overhead, the clouds on high

With now concreted body weave a cover

Beneath the heavens. And thuswise ether too,

Light and diffusive, with concreted body

On all sides spread, on all sides bent itself

Into a dome, and, far and wide diffused

On unto every region on all sides,

Thus hedged all else within its greedy clasp.

Hard upon ether came the origins

Of sun and moon, whose globes revolve in air

Midway between the earth and mightiest ether,—

For neither took them, since they weighed too little

To sink and settle, but too much to glide

Along the upmost shores; and yet they are

In such a wise midway between the twain

As ever to whirl their living bodies round,

And ever to dure as parts of the wide Whole;

In the same fashion as certain members may

In us remain at rest, whilst others move.

When, then, these substances had been withdrawn,

Amain the earth, where now extend the vast

Cerulean zones of all the level seas,

Caved in, and down along the hollows poured

The whirlpools of her brine; and day by day

The more the tides of ether and rays of sun

On every side constrained into one mass

The earth by lashing it again, again,

Upon its outer edges (so that then,

Being thus beat upon, 'twas all condensed

About its proper centre), ever the more

The salty sweat, from out its body squeezed,

Augmented ocean and the fields of foam

By seeping through its frame, and all the more

Those many particles of heat and air

Escaping, began to fly aloft, and form,

By condensation there afar from earth,

The high refulgent circuits of the heavens.

The plains began to sink, and windy slopes

Of the high mountains to increase; for rocks

Could not subside, nor all the parts of ground

Settle alike to one same level there.

Thus, then, the massy weight of earth stood firm

With now concreted body, when (as 'twere)

All of the slime of the world, heavy and gross,

Had run together and settled at the bottom,

Like lees or bilge. Then ocean, then the air,

Then ether herself, the fraught-with-fire, were all

Left with their liquid bodies pure and free,

And each more lighter than the next below;

And ether, most light and liquid of the three,

Floats on above the long aerial winds,

Nor with the brawling of the winds of air

Mingles its liquid body. It doth leave

All there—those under-realms below her heights—

There to be overset in whirlwinds wild,—

Doth leave all there to brawl in wayward gusts,

Whilst, gliding with a fixed impulse still,

Itself it bears its fires along. For, lo,

That ether can flow thus steadily on, on,

With one unaltered urge, the Pontus proves—

That sea which floweth forth with fixed tides,

Keeping one onward tenor as it glides.

And that the earth may there abide at rest

In the mid-region of the world, it needs

Must vanish bit by bit in weight and lessen,

And have another substance underneath,

Conjoined to it from its earliest age

In linked unison with the vasty world's

Realms of the air in which it roots and lives.

On this account, the earth is not a load,

Nor presses down on winds of air beneath;

Even as unto a man his members be

Without all weight—the head is not a load

Unto the neck; nor do we feel the whole

Weight of the body to centre in the feet.

But whatso weights come on us from without,

Weights laid upon us, these harass and chafe,

Though often far lighter. For to such degree

It matters always what the innate powers

Of any given thing may be. The earth

Was, then, no alien substance fetched amain,

And from no alien firmament cast down

On alien air; but was conceived, like air,

In the first origin of this the world,

As a fixed portion of the same, as now

Our members are seen to be a part of us.

Besides, the earth, when of a sudden shook

By the big thunder, doth with her motion shake

All that's above her—which she ne'er could do

By any means, were earth not bounden fast

Unto the great world's realms of air and sky:

For they cohere together with common roots,

Conjoined both, even from their earliest age,

In linked unison. Aye, seest thou not

That this most subtle energy of soul

Supports our body, though so heavy a weight,—

Because, indeed, 'tis with it so conjoined

In linked unison? What power, in sum,

Can raise with agile leap our body aloft,