The Roman Poets of the Republic Part 39

[Footnote 24: 'So more and more, the sweat oozing from the salt body, increased the sea and the moving watery plains by its flow.'--v. 487-88.]

[Footnote 25: 'Since neither its veins can support adequate nourishment, nor does Nature supply what is needful.'--ii.

1141-42.]

[Footnote 26: 'For one thing will grow clear after another: nor shall the darkness of night make thee lose thy way, before thou seest, to the full, the furthest secrets of Nature: so shall all things throw light one on the other.'--i. 1115-17.]

[Footnote 27: 'Dishonouring immortal things by mortal words.'--v. 121.]

[Footnote 28: 'They, doubtless, became the prey and the gain of others, unable to break through the bonds of fate by which they were confined, until Nature caused that species to disappear.'--v. 875-77.

Professor Wallace (Epicureanism, p. 114) in commenting on this pa.s.sage adds, 'Of course in this there is no implication of the peculiarly Darwinian doctrine of descent, or development of kind from kind, with structure modified and complicated to meet changing circ.u.mstances.']

[Footnote 29: iii. 327-28.]

[Footnote 30: i. 305.]

[Footnote 31: iv. 705.]

[Footnote 32: 'Dogs, lightly sleeping, with faithful heart.'--v. 864.]

[Footnote 33: 'When from the strong torrents of Helicon the swans raise their liquid wailing with doleful voice.'--iv.

547-48.]

[Footnote 34: 'As the low note of the swan is sweeter than the cry of the cranes, far-scattered among the south-wind's skiey clouds.'--iv. 181-82.]

[Footnote 35: 'And gulls among the sea-waves, seeking their food and pastime in the brine.'--v. 1079-80.]

[Footnote 36: Od. v. 66.]

[Footnote 37: 'And likewise, when the lithe serpent casts its skin among the thorns; for often we notice the briers, with their light airy spoils hanging to them.'--iv. 60-2.]

[Footnote 38: iii. 213-15.]

[Footnote 39: 'Consider, too, the special madness of the mind, and forgetfulness of things; consider its sinking into the black waves of lethargy.'--iii. 828-29.]

[Footnote 40: 'Unbroken speech prolonged from the first light of dawn till the shadows of the dark night.'--iv. 537-38.]

[Footnote 41: 'Now, too, let us examine the "h.o.m.oeomeria" of Anaxagoras, as the Greeks call it, though the poverty of our native speech does not admit of its being named in our language.'--i. 830-33.]

[Footnote 42: 'Whence returning victorious he brings back to us tidings of what may and what may not come into existence: on what principle, in fine, the power of each thing is determined and the deeply-fixed limit of its being.'--i.

75-77.]

[Footnote 43: 'According to what condition all things have been created, what necessity there is that they abide by it, and how they may not annul the mighty laws of the ages.'--v.

56-58.]

[Footnote 44: 'Since it is absolutely decreed, what each thing can and what it cannot do by the conditions of nature.'--i.

586.]

[Footnote 45: 'It is fixed and ordered where each thing may grow and exist.'--iii. 787.]

[Footnote 46: ii. 254.]

[Footnote 47: ii. 1091.]

[Footnote 48: vi. 32.]

[Footnote 49: 'This, in these circ.u.mstances, I think I can establish, that such faint traces of our native elements are left beyond the powers of our reason to dispel, that nothing prevents us from leading a life worthy of the G.o.ds.'--iii.

319-22.]

[Footnote 50: ii. 8.]

[Footnote 51: ii. 297-99.]

[Footnote 52: i. 262-64.]

[Footnote 53: ii. 573-74.]

[Footnote 54: ii. 575-76.]

[Footnote 55: iii. 964.]

[Footnote 56: ii. 77-79.]

[Footnote 57: 'So one thing shall never cease being born from another, and life is given to no man as a possession, to all for use.'--iii. 970-71.]

[Footnote 58: 'Hence, moreover, the race of man and the beasts of the forest are fed; hence we see cities glad with the flower of their children, and the leafy woods on all sides loud with the song of young birds.'--i. 254-56.]

[Footnote 59: v. 271-72.]

[Footnote 60: 'Finally, since the vast members of the world, engaged in no holy warfare, so mightily contend with one another, see'st thou not that some end may be a.s.signed to their long conflict, either when the sun and every mode of heat, having drunk up all the moisture, shall have gained the day, which they are ever tending to do but do not yet accomplish?' etc.--v. 380-85.]

[Footnote 61: 'And that you may see how very small a part one firmament is of the whole sum of things, how small a fraction it is, not even so much in proportion as a single man is to the whole earth.'--vi. 650-52.]

[Footnote 62: 'And traversed the whole boundless region of s.p.a.ce, in mind and spirit.'--i. 74.]

[Footnote 63: 'Who can order the infinite ma.s.s? who can hold with a guiding hand the mighty reins of immensity?'--ii.

1095-96.]

[Footnote 64: ii. 16.]

[Footnote 65: ii. 348.]

[Footnote 66: i. 28.]

[Footnote 67: Lucretius, in other places where he introduces pictures or stories from the ancient mythology, as at ii.

600, etc., iii. 978, etc., iv. 584, etc., treats them as symbolising some facts of Nature or human life. Occasionally, as at v. 14, etc., he deals with them in the spirit of Euhemerism. He never uses them, as Virgil, Horace, and Ovid do, merely as materials for artistic representation.]

[Footnote 68: iii. 23.]