Chapter III: Book III: , lines 1-160

Thou, who from out such darkness first could’st lift
A torch so bright, illumining thereby
The benefits of life, thee do I follow,
O thou bright glory of the Grecian race,
And in thy deepset footprints firmly now
I plant my steps, not so much through desire
To rival thee, rather because I love
And therefore long to imitate thee: for how
Should a mere swallow strive with swans; or what
Might kids with tottering limbs, matched in a race,
Achieve against a horse’s stalwart strength?
Thou, father, art discoverer of truth;
Thou dost enrich us with a father’s precepts;
And from thy pages, glorious sage, as bees
In flowery glades sip from all plants, so we
Feed likewise upon all thy golden words,
Golden words, ever worthy of endless life.
For soon as, issuing from thy godlike mind,
Thy doctrine has begun to voice abroad
The nature of things, straightway the soul’s terrors
Take flight; the world’s walls open; I behold
Things being formed and changed throughout all space.
Revealed is the divinity of the gods,
And their serene abodes, which neither winds
Buffet, nor clouds drench them with showers, nor snow
Congealed by sharp frost, falling in white flakes,
Violates, but an ever-cloudless sky
Invests them, laughing with wide-spreading light.
Moreover all their wants nature provides,
And there is nothing that at any time
Can minish their tranquillity of soul.
But on the other hand nowhere are visible
The Acherusian quarters; and yet earth
In no wise can obstruct our contemplation
Of all those operations that take place
Beneath our feet throughout the nether void.
At such thoughts there comes over me a kind
Of godlike pleasure mixed with thrilling awe,
That nature by thy power should be thus clearly
Made manifest and unveiled on every side.

Now since I have demonstrated of what kind
Are the beginnings of all things, and how
Varying are the divers shapes wherein
They are flying onward of their own free will,
Driven in eternal motion, and in what way
Out of these can be formed each several thing,
After these themes it would seem best that now
The nature of the mind and of the soul
Should be elucidated in my verses,
And fear of Acheron driven headlong forth,
That dread which troubles from its lowest depths
The life of man, and brooding over all
With the blackness of death, will not allow
Any pleasure to be unalloyed and pure.
For though men often tell us that diseases
And a life of public shame are to be feared
Far more than Tartarus, the house of death,
And that they know the nature of the soul
To be of blood, or even perhaps of wind,
If such should be their fancy, and that so
They have no need of our philosophy,
Yet from the following proof you may perceive
That all these boasts are uttered to win praise
Rather than from conviction of the truth.
These same men, exiled from their fatherland,
And banished far from human sight, disgraced
By foul crime, and beset by every kind
Of wretchedness, none the less still live on,
And to whatever place they bear their misery,
In spite of all make offerings to the dead,
Slaughter black sheep, and to the nether powers
Do sacrifice, and in their bitter plight
Turn their thoughts to religion far more zealously.
Thus you can better judge a man in stress
Of peril, and amidst adversities
Discover what he is; for then at last
The language of sincerity and truth
Is wrung forth from the bottom of his heart;
The mask is torn off; what is real remains.
Moreover avarice and blinding lust
For honours, which compel unhappy men
To overpass the bounds of right, and sometimes,
As partners and accomplices of crime,
To struggle with vast effort night and day
Till they emerge upon the heights of power--
These sores of life are in no small degree
Fostered by fear of death. For foul contempt
And biting penury are mostly thought
To be quite different from a pleasurable
And secure life: rather they seem to be
Already but a kind of lingering
Before the gates of death. And so while men,
Urged by an unreal terror, long to escape
Far from these ills and drive them far away,
They pile up wealth by shedding civil blood,
Doubling their riches greedily, while they heap
Massacre upon massacre, rejoice
Ruthlessly in the sad death of a brother,
And shun their kinsmen’s board in hate and dread.
Often likewise owing to this same fear
They pine with envy because some other man
In the world’s eyes is powerful, some other
Is gazed at, as he walks robed in bright honours,
While they complain that they themselves are wallowing
In darkness and in filth. Some sink their lives
In ruin to win statues and a name,
And often with such force, through dread of death,
Does hatred of life and of the sight of day
Seize upon mortals, that with anguished heart
They will destroy themselves, forgetting quite
How this fear is the well-spring of their cares,
This it is that enfeebles honour, this
That bursts the bonds of friendship, and in fine
Prompts them to cast all duty to the ground.
Since often ere now men have betrayed their country
And beloved parents, seeking so to shun
The realms of Acheron. For just as children
In the blind darkness tremble and are afraid
Of all things, so we sometimes in the light
Fear things that are no whit more to be dreaded
Than those which children shudder at in the dark
Imagining that they will come to pass.
This terror, then, and darkness of the mind
Must needs be scattered not by the sun’s beams
And day’s bright arrows, but by contemplation
Of nature’s aspect and her inward law.

First then the mind, which we shall often call
The intellect, wherein is placed the council
And government of life, I assert to be
No less a part of man than feet and hands
And eyes are part of the whole living creature.
Yet some would have it that the sense of the mind
Resides in no fixed part, but deem it rather
A kind of vital habit of the body,
Which by the Greeks is called a harmony,
Something that causes us to live with sense,
Although the intellect is in no one part.
Just as good health is often spoken of
As though belonging to the body, and yet
It is no one part of a healthy man.
Thus they refuse to place the sense of the mind
In one fixed part: and here to me they seem
To wander far indeed astray from truth.
For often the body, which is visible,
Is sick, while in some other hidden part
We experience pleasure; and ofttimes again
The contrary will happen, when a man
Who is distressed in mind, through his whole body
Feels pleasure: in the same way as the foot
Of a sick man may suffer pain, and yet
His head meanwhile is in no pain at all.
Moreover when the limbs are given up
To soft sleep, and the wearied body lies
Diffused without sensation, there is yet
Something else in us which at that same time
Is stirred in many ways, and into itself
Receives all the emotions of delight,
And all the empty troubles of the heart.
Now, that the soul too dwells within the limbs,
And that it is no harmony whereby
The body is wont to feel, this main proof shows.
When from the body much has been removed,
Yet often life still lingers in our limbs:
Whereas, when a few particles of heat
Have been dispersed, and through the mouth some air
Has been forced out, suddenly that same life
Deserts the arteries and quits the bones:
Whence you may learn that not all particles
Have functions of like moment, nor alike
Support existence; but that rather those
Which are the seeds of wind and warming heat
Are the cause that life stays within the limbs.
Therefore this vital heat and wind, residing
Within the body itself, is that which quits
Our dying frame. So now that we have found
The nature of the mind and of the soul
To be a part in some sense of the man,
Let us give up the name of harmony,
Which was brought down from lofty Helicon
To the musicians, or else they themselves,
Taking it from some other source, transferred it
To what was then without a name of its own.
However that may be, why, let them keep it.
Do you give heed to the rest of my discourse.

Now I maintain that mind and soul are bound
In union with each other, forming so
A single substance, but that the lord that rules
Throughout the body is the reasoning power
Which we call mind and intellect. Its seat
Is fixed in the middle region of the breast.
For here it is that fear and panic throb:
Around these parts dwell joys that soothe. Here then
Is the intellect or mind. The rest of the soul
Dispersed through the whole body, obeys and moves
At the will and propulsion of the mind,
Which for itself and by itself alone
Has knowledge and rejoices for itself,
When nothing at that time moves soul or body.
And just as, when we are attacked by pain
In head or eye, we do not feel distress
Through our whole body too, so often the mind
Suffers pain by itself, or is envigoured
By happiness, when all the rest of the soul
Throughout the limbs and frame remains unstirred
By any new sensation. But when the mind
Has been perturbed by some more vehement fear,
We see the whole soul feel with it in unison
Through all the limbs; sweating and paleness then
Spread over the whole body; the tongue halts,
Speech dies away, the eyes grow dark with mist,
The ears ring and the limbs sink under us.
And indeed often we see men drop down
From terror of mind. Hence easily we may learn
That the soul is united with the mind;
For when it has been struck by the mind’s force,
Straightway it pushes and propels the body.