Thou mother of the Aenead race, delight
Of men and deities, bountiful Venus, thou
Who under the sky’s gliding constellations
Fillest ship-carrying ocean with thy presence
And the corn-bearing lands, since through thy power
Each kind of living creature is conceived
Then riseth and beholdeth the sun’s light:
Before thee and thine advent the winds and clouds
Of heaven take flight, O goddess: daedal earth
Puts forth sweet-scented flowers beneath thy feet:
Beholding thee the smooth deep laughs, the sky
Grows calm and shines with wide-outspreading light.
For soon as the day’s vernal countenance
Has been revealed, and fresh from wintry bonds
Blows the birth-giving breeze of the West wind,
First do the birds of air give sign of thee,
Goddess, and thine approach, as through their hearts
Thine influence smites. Next the wild herds of beasts
Bound over the rich pastures and swim through
The rapid streams, as captured by thy charm
Each one with eager longing follows thee
Whithersoever thou wouldst lure them on.
And thus through seas, mountains and rushing rivers,
Through the birds’ leafy homes and the green plains,
Striking bland love into the hearts of all,
Thou art the cause that following his lust
Each should renew his race after his kind.
Therefore since thou alone art nature’s mistress,
And since without thine aid naught can rise forth
Into the glorious regions of the light,
Nor aught grow to be gladsome and delectable,
Thee would I win to help me while I write
These verses, wherein I labour to describe
The nature of things in honour of my friend
This scion of the Memmian house, whom thou
Hast willed to be found peerless all his days
In every grace. Therefore the more, great deity,
Grant to my words eternal loveliness:
Cause meanwhile that the savage works of warfare
Over all seas and lands sink hushed to rest.
For thou alone hast power to bless mankind
With tranquil peace; since of war’s savage works
Mavors mighty in battle hath control,
Who oft flings himself back upon thy lap,
Quite vanquished by love’s never-healing wound;
And so with upturned face and shapely neck
Thrown backward, feeds with love his hungry looks,
Gazing on thee, goddess, while thus he lies
Supine, and on thy lips his spirit hangs.
O’er him thus couched upon thy holy body
Do thou bend down to enfold him, and from thy lips
Pour tender speech, petitioning calm peace,
O glorious divinity, for thy Romans.
For nor can we in our country’s hour of trouble
Toil with a mind untroubled at our task,
Nor yet may the famed child of Memmius
Be spared from public service in such times.

For the rest,[A] leisured ears and a keen mind
Withdrawn from cares, lend to true reasoning,
Lest my gifts, which with loving diligence
I set out for you, ere they be understood
You should reject disdainfully. For now
About the most high theory of the heavens
And of the deities, I will undertake
To tell you in my discourse, and will reveal
The first beginnings of existing things,
Out of which nature gives birth and increase
And nourishment to all things; into which
Nature likewise, when they have been destroyed,
Resolves them back in turn. These we are wont,
In setting forth our argument, to call
Matter, or else begetting particles,
Or to name them the seeds of things: again
As primal atoms we shall speak of them,
Because from them first everything is formed.

When prostrate upon earth lay human life
Visibly trampled down and foully crushed
Beneath religion’s cruelty, who meanwhile
Forth from the regions of the heavens above
Showed forth her face, lowering down on men
With horrible aspect, first did a man of Greece[B]
Dare to lift up his mortal eyes against her;
The first was he to stand up and defy her.
Him neither stories of the gods, nor lightnings,
Nor heaven with muttering menaces could quell,
But all the more did they arouse his soul’s
Keen valour, till he longed to be the first
To break through the fast-bolted doors of nature.
Therefore his fervent energy of mind
Prevailed, and he passed onward, voyaging far
Beyond the flaming ramparts of the world,
Ranging in mind and spirit far and wide
Throughout the unmeasured universe; and thence
A conqueror he returns to us, bringing back
Knowledge both of what can and what cannot
Rise into being, teaching us in fine
Upon what principle each thing has its powers
Limited, and its deep-set boundary stone.
Therefore now has religion been cast down
Beneath men’s feet, and trampled on in turn:
Ourselves heaven-high his victory exalts.

Herein this fear assails me, lest perchance
You should suppose I would initiate you
Into a school of reasoning unholy,
And set your feet upon a path of sin:
Whereas in truth often has this religion
Given birth to sinful and unholy deeds.
So once at Aulis did those chosen chiefs
Of Hellas, those most eminent among heros,
Foully defile the Trivian Virgin’s altar
With Iphianassa’s lifeblood. For so soon
As the fillet wreathed around her maiden locks
Streamed down in equal lengths from either cheek,
Nature of vision has quite shut us out
From seeing. Finally whatever time
And nature gradually add to things,
Obliging them to grow in due proportion,
No effort of our eyesight can behold.
So too whenever things grow old by age
Or through corruption, and wherever rocks
That overhang the sea are gnawed away
By the corroding brine, you cannot discern
What they are losing at any single moment.
Thus nature operates by unseen atoms.