Written 50 B.C.E.

Therefore death to us

Is nothing, nor concerns us in the least,

Since nature of mind is mortal evermore.

And just as in the ages gone before

We felt no touch of ill, when all sides round

To battle came the Carthaginian host,

And the times, shaken by tumultuous war,

Under the aery coasts of arching heaven

Shuddered and trembled, and all humankind

Doubted to which the empery should fall

By land and sea, thus when we are no more,

When comes that sundering of our body and soul

Through which we're fashioned to a single state,

Verily naught to us, us then no more,

Can come to pass, naught move our senses then-

No, not if earth confounded were with sea,

And sea with heaven. But if indeed do feel

The nature of mind and energy of soul,

After their severance from this body of ours,

Yet nothing 'tis to us who in the bonds

And wedlock of the soul and body live,

Through which we're fashioned to a single state.

And, even if time collected after death

The matter of our frames and set it all

Again in place as now, and if again

To us the light of life were given, O yet

That process too would not concern us aught,

When once the self-succession of our sense

Has been asunder broken. And now and here,

Little enough we're busied with the selves

We were aforetime, nor, concerning them,

Suffer a sore distress. For shouldst thou gaze

Backwards across all yesterdays of time

The immeasurable, thinking how manifold

The motions of matter are, then couldst thou well

Credit this too: often these very seeds

(From which we are to-day) of old were set

In the same order as they are to-day-

Yet this we can't to consciousness recall

Through the remembering mind. For there hath been

An interposed pause of life, and wide

Have all the motions wandered everywhere

From these our senses. For if woe and ail

Perchance are toward, then the man to whom

The bane can happen must himself be there

At that same time. But death precludeth this,

Forbidding life to him on whom might crowd

Such irk and care; and granted 'tis to know:

Nothing for us there is to dread in death,

No wretchedness for him who is no more,

The same estate as if ne'er born before,

When death immortal hath ta'en the mortal life.

Hence, where thou seest a man to grieve because

When dead he rots with body laid away,

Or perishes in flames or jaws of beasts,

Know well: he rings not true, and that beneath

Still works an unseen sting upon his heart,

However he deny that he believes.

His shall be aught of feeling after death.

For he, I fancy, grants not what he says,

Nor what that presupposes, and he fails

To pluck himself with all his roots from life

And cast that self away, quite unawares

Feigning that some remainder's left behind.

For when in life one pictures to oneself

His body dead by beasts and vultures torn,

He pities his state, dividing not himself

Therefrom, removing not the self enough

From the body flung away, imagining

Himself that body, and projecting there

His own sense, as he stands beside it: hence

He grieves that he is mortal born, nor marks

That in true death there is no second self

Alive and able to sorrow for self destroyed,

Or stand lamenting that the self lies there

Mangled or burning. For if it an evil is

Dead to be jerked about by jaw and fang

Of the wild brutes, I see not why 'twere not

Bitter to lie on fires and roast in flames,

Or suffocate in honey, and, reclined

On the smooth oblong of an icy slab,

Grow stiff in cold, or sink with load of earth

Down-crushing from above.

'Thee now no more

The joyful house and best of wives shall welcome,

Nor little sons run up to snatch their kisses

And touch with silent happiness thy heart.

Thou shalt not speed in undertakings more,

Nor be the warder of thine own no more.

Poor wretch,' they say, 'one hostile hour hath ta'en

Wretchedly from thee all life's many guerdons,'

But add not, 'yet no longer unto thee

Remains a remnant of desire for them'

If this they only well perceived with mind

And followed up with maxims, they would free

Their state of man from anguish and from fear.

'O even as here thou art, aslumber in death,

So shalt thou slumber down the rest of time,

Released from every harrying pang. But we,

We have bewept thee with insatiate woe,

Standing beside whilst on the awful pyre

Thou wert made ashes; and no day shall take

For us the eternal sorrow from the breast.'

But ask the mourner what's the bitterness

That man should waste in an eternal grief,

If, after all, the thing's but sleep and rest?

For when the soul and frame together are sunk

In slumber, no one then demands his self

Or being. Well, this sleep may be forever,

Without desire of any selfhood more,

For all it matters unto us asleep.

Yet not at all do those primordial germs

Roam round our members, at that time, afar

From their own motions that produce our senses-

Since, when he's startled from his sleep, a man

Collects his senses. Death is, then, to us

Much less —if there can be a less than that

Which is itself a nothing: for there comes

Hard upon death a scattering more great

Of the throng of matter, and no man wakes up

On whom once falls the icy pause of life.

This too, O often from the soul men say,

Along their couches holding of the cups,

With faces shaded by fresh wreaths awry:

'Brief is this fruit of joy to paltry man,

Soon, soon departed, and thereafter, no,

It may not be recalled.'—As if, forsooth,

It were their prime of evils in great death

To parch, poor tongues, with thirst and arid drought,

Or chafe for any lack.

Once more, if Nature

Should of a sudden send a voice abroad,

And her own self inveigh against us so:

'Mortal, what hast thou of such grave concern

That thou indulgest in too sickly plaints?

Why this bemoaning and beweeping death?

For if thy life aforetime and behind

To thee was grateful, and not all thy good

Was heaped as in sieve to flow away

And perish unavailingly, why not,

Even like a banqueter, depart the halls,

Laden with life? why not with mind content

Take now, thou fool, thy unafflicted rest?

But if whatever thou enjoyed hath been

Lavished and lost, and life is now offence,

Why seekest more to add—which in its turn

Will perish foully and fall out in vain?

O why not rather make an end of life,

Of labour? For all I may devise or find

To pleasure thee is nothing: all things are

The same forever. Though not yet thy body

Wrinkles with years, nor yet the frame exhausts

Outworn, still things abide the same, even if

Thou goest on to conquer all of time

With length of days, yea, if thou never diest'-

What were our answer, but that Nature here

Urges just suit and in her words lays down

True cause of action? Yet should one complain,

Riper in years and elder, and lament,

Poor devil, his death more sorely than is fit,

Then would she not, with greater right, on him

Cry out, inveighing with a voice more shrill:

'Off with thy tears, and choke thy whines, buffoon!

Thou wrinklest—after thou hast had the sum

Of the guerdons of life; yet, since thou cravest ever

What's not at hand, contemning present good,

That life has slipped away, unperfected

And unavailing unto thee. And now,

Or ere thou guessed it, death beside thy head

Stands- and before thou canst be going home

Sated and laden with the goodly feast.

But now yield all that's alien to thine age,-

Up, with good grace! make room for sons: thou must.'

Justly, I fancy, would she reason thus,

Justly inveigh and gird: since ever the old

Outcrowded by the new gives way, and ever

The one thing from the others is repaired.

Nor no man is consigned to the abyss

Of Tartarus, the black. For stuff must be,

That thus the after-generations grow, —

Though these, their life completed, follow thee;

And thus like thee are generations all —

Already fallen, or some time to fall.

So one thing from another rises ever;

And in fee-simple life is given to none,

But unto all mere usufruct.

Look back:

Nothing to us was all fore-passed eld

Of time the eternal, ere we had a birth.

And Nature holds this like a mirror up

Of time-to-be when we are dead and gone.

And what is there so horrible appears?

Now what is there so sad about it all?

Is't not serener far than any sleep?

And, verily, those tortures said to be

In Acheron, the deep, they all are ours

Here in this life. No Tantalus, benumbed

With baseless terror, as the fables tell,

Fears the huge boulder hanging in the air:

But, rather, in life an empty dread of gods

Urges mortality, and each one fears

Such fall of fortune as may chance to him.

Nor eat the vultures into Tityus

Prostrate in Acheron, nor can they find,

Forsooth, throughout eternal ages, aught

To pry around for in that mighty breast.

However hugely he extend his bulk —

Who hath for outspread limbs not acres nine,

But the whole earth—he shall not able be

To bear eternal pain nor furnish food

From his own frame forever. But for us

A Tityus is he whom vultures rend

Prostrate in love, whom anxious anguish eats,

Whom troubles of any unappeased desires

Asunder rip. We have before our eyes

Here in this life also a Sisyphus

In him who seeketh of the populace

The rods, the axes fell, and evermore

Retires a beaten and a gloomy man.

For to seek after power—an empty name,

Nor given at all—and ever in the search

To endure a world of toil, O this it is

To shove with shoulder up the hill a stone

Which yet comes rolling back from off the top,

And headlong makes for levels of the plain.

Then to be always feeding an ingrate mind,

Filling with good things, satisfying never —

As do the seasons of the year for us,

When they return and bring their progenies

And varied charms, and we are never filled

With the fruits of life—O this, I fancy, 'tis

To pour, like those young virgins in the tale,

Waters into a sieve, unfilled forever.

Cerberus and Furies, and that Lack of Light

Tartarus, out-belching from his mouth the surge

Of horrible heat—the which are nowhere, nor

Indeed can be: but in this life is fear

Of retributions just and expiations

For evil acts: the dungeon and the leap

From that dread rock of infamy, the stripes,

The executioners, the oaken rack,

The iron plates, bitumen, and the torch.

And even though these are absent, yet the mind,

With a fore-fearing conscience, plies its goads

And burns beneath the lash, nor sees meanwhile

What terminus of ills, what end of pine

Can ever be, and feareth lest the same

But grow more heavy after death. Of truth,

The life of fools is Acheron on earth.

This also to thy very self sometimes

Repeat thou mayst: 'Lo, even good Ancus left

The sunshine with his eyes, in divers things

A better man than thou, O worthless hind;

And many other kings and lords of rule

Thereafter have gone under, once who swayed

O'er mighty peoples. And he also, he —

Who whilom paved a highway down the sea,

And gave his legionaries thoroughfare

Along the deep, and taught them how to cross

The pools of brine afoot, and did contemn,

Trampling upon it with his cavalry,

The bellowings of ocean—poured his soul

From dying body, as his light was ta'en.

And Scipio's son, the thunderbolt of war,

Horror of Carthage, gave his bones to earth,

Like to the lowliest villein in the house.

Add finders-out of sciences and arts;

Add comrades of the Heliconian dames,

Among whom Homer, sceptered o'er them all

Now lies in slumber sunken with the rest.

Then, too, Democritus, when ripened eld

Admonished him his memory waned away,

Of own accord offered his head to death.

Even Epicurus went, his light of life

Run out, the man in genius who o'er-topped

The human race, extinguishing all others,

As sun, in ether arisen, all the stars.

Wilt thou, then, dally, thou complain to go? —

For whom already life's as good as dead,

Whilst yet thou livest and lookest?—who in sleep

Wastest thy life—time's major part, and snorest

Even when awake, and ceasest not to see

The stuff of dreams, and bearest a mind beset

By baseless terror, nor discoverest oft

What's wrong with thee, when, like a sotted wretch,

Thou'rt jostled along by many crowding cares,

And wanderest reeling round, with mind aswim.'

If men, in that same way as on the mind

They feel the load that wearies with its weight,

Could also know the causes whence it comes,

And why so great the heap of ill on heart,

O not in this sort would they live their life,

As now so much we see them, knowing not

What 'tis they want, and seeking ever and ever

A change of place, as if to drop the burden.

The man who sickens of his home goes out,

Forth from his splendid halls, and straight—returns,

Feeling i'faith no better off abroad.

He races, driving his Gallic ponies along,

Down to his villa, madly,—as in haste

To hurry help to a house afire.—At once

He yawns, as soon as foot has touched the threshold,

Or drowsily goes off in sleep and seeks

Forgetfulness, or maybe bustles about

And makes for town again. In such a way

Each human flees himself—a self in sooth,

As happens, he by no means can escape;

And willy-nilly he cleaves to it and loathes,

Sick, sick, and guessing not the cause of ail.

Yet should he see but that, O chiefly then,

Leaving all else, he'd study to divine

The nature of things, since here is in debate

Eternal time and not the single hour,

Mortal's estate in whatsoever remains

After great death.

And too, when all is said,

What evil lust of life is this so great

Subdues us to live, so dreadfully distraught

In perils and alarms? one fixed end

Of life abideth for mortality;

Death's not to shun, and we must go to meet.

Besides we're busied with the same devices,

Ever and ever, and we are at them ever,

And there's no new delight that may be forged

By living on. But whilst the thing we long for

Is lacking, that seems good above all else;

Thereafter, when we've touched it, something else

We long for; ever one equal thirst of life

Grips us agape. And doubtful 'tis what fortune

The future times may carry, or what be

That chance may bring, or what the issue next

Awaiting us. Nor by prolonging life

Take we the least away from death's own time,

Nor can we pluck one moment off, whereby

To minish the aeons of our state of death.

Therefore, O man, by living on, fulfil

As many generations as thou may:

Eternal death shall there be waiting still;

And he who died with light of yesterday

Shall be no briefer time in death's No-more

Than he who perished months or years before.

Source: Lucretius. De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things). Trans. William Ellery Leonard. The Internet Classics Library (29 September 2000). http://classics.mit.edu/Carus/nature_things.3.iii.html. Accessed 15 December 2002.