Classic Poem

Here lived a man, by birth a Samian.
He had fled from Samos and the ruling class,
a voluntary exile, for his hate
against all tyranny. He had the gift
of holding mental converse with the gods,
who live far distant in the highth of heaven;
and all that Nature has denied to man
and human vision, he reviewed with eyes
of his enlightened soul. And, when he had
examined all things in his careful mind
with watchful study, he released his thoughts
to knowledge of the public.

He would speak
to crowds of people, silent and amazed,
while he revealed to them the origin
of this vast universe, the cause of things,
what is nature, what a god, whence came the snow,
the cause of lightning — was it Jupiter
or did the winds, that thundered when the cloud
was rent asunder, cause the lightning flash?
What shook the earth, what laws controlled the stars
as they were moved — and every hidden thing
he was the first man to forbid the use
of any animal's flesh as human food,
he was the first to speak with learned lips,
though not believed in this, exhorting them. —

" No, mortals, " he would say, " Do not permit
pollution of your bodies with such food,
for there are grain and good fruits which bear down
the branches by their weight, and ripened grapes
upon the vines, and herbs — those sweet by nature
and those which will grow tender and mellow with
a fire, and flowing milk is not denied,
nor honey, redolent of blossoming thyme.

" The lavish Earth yields rich and healthful food
affording dainties without slaughter, death,
and bloodshed. Dull beasts delight to satisfy
their hunger with torn flesh; and yet not all:
horses and sheep and cattle live on grass.
But all the savage animals — the fierce
Armenian tigers and ferocious lions,
and bears, together with the roving wolves —
delight in viands reeking with warm blood.

" Oh, ponder a moment such a monstrous crime —
vitals in vitals gorged, one greedy body
fattening with plunder of another's flesh,
a living being fed on another's life!
In that abundance, which our Earth, the best
of mothers, will afford have you no joy,
unless your savage teeth can gnaw
the piteous flesh of some flayed animal
to reenact the Cyclopean crime?
And can you not appease the hungry void —
the perverted craving of a stomach's greed,
unless you first destroy another life?

" That age of old time which is given the name
of " Golden," was so blest in fruit of trees,
and in the good herbs which the earth produced
that it never would pollute the mouth with blood.
The birds then safely moved their wings in air,
the timid hares would wander in the fields
with no fear, and their own credulity
had not suspended fishes from the hook.
All life was safe from treacherous wiles,
fearing no injury, a peaceful world.

" After that time some one of ill advice
(it does not matter who it might have been)
envied the ways of lions and gulped into
his greedy paunch stuff from a carcass vile.
He opened the foul paths of wickedness.
It may be that in killing beasts of prey
our steel was for the first time warmed with blood.
And that could be defended, for I hold
that predatory creatures which attempt
destruction of mankind, are put to death
without evasion of the sacred laws:
but, though with justice they are put to death,
that cannot be a cause for eating them.

" This wickedness went further; and the sow
was thought to have deserved death as the first
of victims, for with her long turned-up snout
she spoiled the good hope of a harvest year.
The ravenous goat, that gnawed a sprouting vine,
was led for slaughter to the altar fires
of angry Bacchus. It was their own fault
that surely caused the ruin of those two.

" But why have sheep deserved sad destiny,
harmless and useful for the good of man
with nectar in full udders? Their soft wool
affords the warmest coverings for our use,
their life and not their death would help us more.
Why have the oxen of the field deserved
a sad end — innocent, without deceit,
and harmless, without guile, born to endure
hard labor? Without gratitude is he,
unworthy of the gift of harvest fields,
who, after he relieved his worker from
weight of the curving plow could butcher him,
could sever with an axe that toil worn neck,
by which so often with hard work the ground
had been turned up, so many harvests reared.
For some, even crimes like these are not enough,
they have imputed to the gods themselves
abomination — they believe a god
in heaven above, rejoices at the death
of a laborious ox.

" A victim free
of blemish and most beautiful in form
(perfection brings destruction) is adorned
with garlands and with gilded horns before
the altar. In his ignorance he hears
one praying, and he sees the very grain
he labored to produce, fixed on his head
between the horns, and felled, he stains with blood
the knife which just before he may have seen
reflected in clear water. Instantly
they snatch out entrails from his throbbing form,
and seek in them intentions of the gods.
Then, in your lust for a forbidden food
you will presume to batten on his flesh,
O race of mortals! Do not eat such food!
Give your attention to my serious words;
and, when you next present the slaughtered flesh
of oxen to your palates, know and feel
that you gnaw your fellow tillers of the soil.

" And, since a god impels me to speak out,
I will obey the god who urges me,
and will disclose to you the heavens above,
and I will even reveal the oracles
of the Divine Will. I will sing to you
of things most wonderful, which never were
investigated by the intellects
of ancient times and things which have been long
concealed from man. In fancy I delight
to float among the stars or take my stand
on mighty Atlas' shoulders, and to look
afar down on men wandering here and there —
afraid in life yet dreading unknown death,
and in these words exhort them and reveal
the sequence of events ordained by fate!

" O sad humanity! Why do you fear
alarms of icy death, afraid of Styx,
fearful of moving shadows and empty names —
of subjects harped on by the poets' tales,
the fabled perils of a fancied life?
Whether the funeral pile consumes your flesh
with hot flames, or old age dissolves it with
a gradual wasting power, be well assured
the body cannot meet with further ill.
And souls are all exempt from power of death.
When they have left their first corporeal home,
they always find and live in newer homes.

" I can declare, for I remember well,
that in the days of the great Trojan War,
I was Euphorbus, son of Panthous.
In my opposing breast was planted then
the heavy spear-point of the younger son
of Atreus. Not long past I recognised
the shield, once burden of my left arm, where
it hung in Juno's temple at ancient Argos,
the realm of Abas. Everything must change:
but nothing perishes. The moving soul
may wander, coming from that spot to this,
from this to that — in changed possession live
in any limbs whatever. It may pass
from beasts to human bodies, and again
to those of beasts. The soul will never die,
in the long lapse of time. As pliant wax
is moulded to new forms and does not stay
as it has been nor keep the self same form
yet is the selfsame wax, be well assured
the soul is always the same spirit, though
it passes into different forms. Therefore,
that natural love may not be vanquished by
unnatural craving of the appetite,
I warn you, stop expelling kindred souls
by deeds abhorrent as cold murder. — Let
not blood be nourished with its kindred blood!

" Since I am launched into the open sea
and I have given my full sails to the wind,
nothing in all the world remains unchanged.
All things are in a state of flux, all shapes
receive a changing nature. Time itself
glides on with constant motion, ever as
a flowing river. Neither river nor
the fleeting hour can stop its constant course.
But, as each wave drives on a wave, as each
is pressed by that which follows, and must press
on that before it, so the moments fly,
and others follow, so they are renewed.
The moment which moved on before is past,
and that which was not, now exists in Time,
and every one comes, goes, and is replaced.

" You see how night glides by and then proceeds
on to the dawn, then brilliant light of day
succeeds the dark night. There is not the same
appearance in the heavens,: when all things
for weariness are resting in vast night,
as when bright Lucifer rides his white steed.
And only think of that most glorious change,
when loved Aurora, Pallas' daughter, comes
before the day and tints the world, almost
delivered to bright Phoebus. Even the disk
of that god, rising from beneath the earth,
is of a ruddy color in the dawn
and ruddy when concealed beneath the world.
When highest, it is a most brilliant white,
for there the ether is quite purified,
and far away avoids infection from
impurities of earth. Diana's form
at night remains not equal nor the same!
'Tis less today than it will be tomorrow,
if she is waxing; greater, if she wanes.

" Yes, do you not see how the year moves through
four seasons, imitating human life:
in early Spring it has a nursling's ways
resembling infancy, for at that time
the blade is shooting and devoid of strength.
Its flaccid substance swelling gives delight,
to every watching husbandman, alive
in expectation. Then all things are rich
in blossom, and the genial meadow smiles
with tints of blooming flowers; but not as yet
is there a sign of vigor in the leaves.

" The year now waxing stronger, after Spring
it passes into Summer, and its youth
becomes robust. Indeed of all the year
the Summer is most vigorous and most
abounds with glowing and life-giving warmth.

" Autumn then follows, and, the vim of life
removed, that ripe and mellow time succeeds
between youth and old age, and a few white hairs
are sprinkled here and there upon his brow.

" Then aged Winter with his tremulous step
follows, repulsive, strips of graceful locks
or white with those he has retained so long.

" Our bodies also, always change unceasingly:
we are not now what we were yesterday
or we shall be tomorrow. And there was
a time when we were only seeds of man,
mere hopes that lived within a mother's womb.
But Nature changed us with her skilfull touch,
determined that our bodies should not be
held in such narrow room, below the entrails
in our distended parent; and in time
she brought us forth into the vacant air.

" Brought into light, the helpless infant lies.
Then on all fours he lifts his body up,
feeling his way, like any young wild beast,
and then by slow degrees he stands upright,
weak-kneed and trembling, steadied by support
of some convenient prop. And soon more strong
and swift he passes through the hours of youth,
and, when the years of middle age are past,
slides down the steep path of declining age.

" This undermines him and destroys the strength
of former years: and Milon, now grown old,
weeps, when he sees his arms, which once were firm
with muscles big as those of Hercules,
hang flabby at his side: and Helen weeps,
when in the glass she sees her wrinkled face,
and wonders why two heroes fell in love
and carried her away. — O Time,
devourer of all things, and envious Age,
together you destroy all that exists
and, slowly gnawing, bring on lingering death.

" Yes, even things which we call elements,
do not endure. Now listen well to me,
and I will show the ways in which they change.

" The everlasting universe contains
four elemental parts. And two of these
are heavy — earth and water — and are borne
downwards by weight. The other two devoid
of weight, are air and — even lighter — fire:
and, if these two are not constrained, they seek
the higher regions. These four elements,
though far apart in space, are all derived
from one another. Earth dissolves
as flowing water! Water, thinned still more,
departs as wind and air; and the light air,
still losing weight, sparkles on high as fire.
But they return, along their former way:
the fire, assuming weight, is changed to air;
and then, more dense, that air is changed again
to water; and that water, still more dense,
compacts itself again as primal earth.

" Nothing retains the form that seems its own,
and Nature, the renewer of all things,
continually changes every form
into some other shape. Believe my word,
in all this universe of vast extent,
not one thing ever perished. All have changed
appearance. Men say a certain thing is born,
if it takes a different form from what it had;
and yet they say, that certain thing has died,
if it no longer keeps the self same shape.
Though distant things move near, and near things far,
always the sum of all things is unchanged.

" For my part, I cannot believe a thing
remains long under the same form unchanged.
Look at the change of times from gold to iron,:
look at the change in places. I have seen
what had been solid earth become salt waves,
and I have seen dry land made from the deep;
and, far away from ocean, sea-shells strewn,
and on the mountain-tops old anchors found.
Water has made that which was once a plain
into a valley, and the mountain has
been levelled by the floods down to a plain.
A former marshland is now parched dry sand,
and places which endured severest drought
are wet with standing pools. Here Nature has
opened fresh springs, but there has shut them up;
rivers aroused by ancient earthquakes have
rushed out or vanished, as they lost their depth.

" So, when the Lycus has been swallowed by
a chasm in the earth, it rushes forth
at a distance and is reborn a different stream.
The Erasinus now flows down into a cave,
now runs beneath the ground a darkened course,
then rises lordly in the Argolic fields.
They say the Mysus, wearied of his spring
and of his former banks, appears elsewhere
and takes another name, the Caicus.

" The Amenanus in Sicilian sands
now smoothly rolling, at another time
is quenched, because its fountain springs are dry.
The water of the Anigros formerly
was used for drinking, but it pours out now
foul water which you would decline to touch,
because (unless all credit is denied
to poets) long ago the Centaurs, those
strange mortals double-limbed, bathed in the stream
wounds which club-bearing Hercules had made
with his strong bow. — Yes, does not Hypanis
descending fresh from mountains of Sarmatia,
become embittered with the taste of salt?

" Antissa, Pharos, and Phoenician Tyre,
were once surrounded by the wavy sea:
they are not islands now. Long years ago
Leucas was mainland, if we can believe
what the old timers there will tell, but now
the waves sweep round it. Zancle was a part
of Italy, until the sea cut off
the neighboring land with strong waves in between.
Should you seek Helice and Buris, those
two cities of Achaea, you will find
them underneath the waves, where sailors point
to sloping roofs and streets in the clear deep.

" Near Pittheaan Troezen a steep, high hill,
quite bare of trees, was once a level plain,
but now is a hill, for (dreadful even to tell)
the raging power of winds, long pent in deep,
dark caverns, tried to find a proper vent,
long struggling to attain free sky.
Finding no opening from the prison-caves,
imperious to their force, they raised the earth,
exactly as pent air breathed from the mouth
inflates a bladder, or the bottle-hides
stripped off the two-horned goats. The swollen earth
remained on that spot and has ever since
appearance of a high hill hardened by
the flight of time.

" Of many strange events
that I have heard and known, I will add a few.
Why, does not water give and take strange forms?
Your wave, O horned Ammon, will turn cold
at mid-day, but is always mild and warm
at sun-rise and at sun-set. I have heard
that Athamanians kindle wood, if they
pour water on it, when the waning moon
has shrunk away into her smallest orb.
The people of Ciconia have a stream
which turns the drinker's entrails into stone,
which changes into marble all it raves.
The Achaean Crathis and the Sybaris,
which flow not far from here, will turn the hair
to something like clear amber or bright gold.

" What is more wonderful, there are some waters
which change not only bodies but the minds:
who has no knowledge of the Salmacis
and of its ill famed waves? Who has not
heard of the lakes of Aethiopia:
how those who drink of them go raving mad
or fall in a deep sleep, most wonderful
in heaviness. Whoever quenches thirst
from the Clitorian spring will hate all wine,
and soberly secure great pleasure from
pure water. Either that spring has a power
the opposite of wine-heat, or perhaps
as natives tell us, after the famed son
of Amythaon by his charms and herbs,
delivered from their base insanity
the stricken Proetides, he threw the rest
of his mind healing herbs into the spring,
where hatred of all wine has since remained.
Unlike in nature flows another stream
of the country, called Lyncestius: everyone
who drinks of it, even with most temperate care,
will reel, as if he had drunk unmixed wine.
In Arcadia is a place, called Pheneos
by men of old, which is mistrusted for
the twofold nature of its waters. Stand
in dread of them at night; if drunk at night,
they harm you, but in daytime they will do
no harm at all.

So lakes and rivers have
now this, now that effect.

" Ortygia once
moved like a ship that drifts among the waves.
Now it is fixed. The Argo was in dread
of the Symplegades, which moved apart
with waves in-rushing. Now immovable
they stand, resisting the attack of winds.

" Aetna, which burns with sulphur furnaces,
will not be always concentrated fire,
nor was it always fiery. If the earth
is like an animal and is alive
and breathes out flame at many openings,
then it can change these many passages
used for its breathing and, when it is moved,
may close these caverns as it opens up
some others. Or if rushing winds are penned
in deepest caverns, and they drive great stones
against the rock, and substances which have
the properties of flame and fire are made
by those concussions; when the winds are calmed
the caverns will, of course, be cool again.

" Or if some black bitumen catches fire
or yellow sulphur burns with little smoke,
then surely, when the ground no longer gives
such food and oily nutriment for flames
and they in time have ravined all their store,
their greedy nature soon will pine with death —
it will not bear such famine but depart
and, when deserted, will desert the place.

" 'Tis said that Hyperboreans of Pallene
can cover all their bodies with light plumes
by plunging nine times in Minerva's marsh.
But I cannot believe another tale:
that Scythian women get a like result
by having poison sprinkled on their limbs.

" If we give any credit to the things
proved by experience, we can surely know
whatever bodies are decayed by time
or by dissolving heat are by such means
changed into tiny animals — Come now,
bury choice bullocks killed for sacrifice,
and it is well known by experience
that the flower-gathering bees are so produced,
miraculous, from entrails putrefied.
These, like the faithful animals from which
they were produced, inhabit the green fields,
delight in toil, and labor for reward.

" The warlike steed, when buried in the ground,
is a known source of hornets. If you cut
the bending claws off from the sea-shore crab
and bury the remainder in the earth,
a scorpion will come forth from the dead crab
buried there, threatening with its crooked tail.

" The worms which cover leaves with their white threads,
a thing observable by husbandmen,
will change themselves to funeral butterflies.
Mud holds the seeds that generate green frogs,
at first producing tadpoles with no feet,
and soon it gives them legs adapted for
their swimming, and, so they may be as well
adapted to good leaping, their hind legs
are longer than the fore-legs. The mother bear
does not bring forth a cub but a limp mass
of flesh that hardly can be called alive.
By licking it the mother forms the limbs,
and brings it to a shape just like her own.

" Do not the offspring of the honey bees,
concealed in cells hexagonal, at first
get life with no limbs, and assume in time
both feet and wings? Unless the fact were known,
could anyone suppose it possible
that Juno's bird, whose tail is bright with stars;
the eagle, armor-bearer of high Jove;
the doves of Cytherea; and all birds
emerge from the middle part of eggs?
And some believe the human marrow turns
into a serpent when the spine at length
has putrefied in the closed sepulchre.

" Now these I named derive their origin
from other living forms. There is one bird
which reproduces and renews itself:
the Assyrians gave this bird his name — the Phoenix.
He does not live either on grain or herbs,
but only on small drops of frankincense
and juices of amomum. When this bird
completes a full five centuries of life
straightway with talons and with shining beak
he builds a nest among palm branches, where
they join to form the palm tree's waving top.

" As soon as he has strewn in this new nest
the cassia bark and ears of sweet spikenard,
and some bruised cinnamon with yellow myrrh,
he lies down on it and refuses life
among those dreamful odors. — And they say
that from the body of the dying bird
is reproduced a little Phoenix which
is destined to live just as many years.

" When time has given to him sufficient strength
and he is able to sustain the weight,
he lifts the nest up from the lofty tree
and dutifully carries from that place
his cradle and the parent's sepulchre.
As soon as he has reached through yielding air
the city of Hyperion, he will lay
the burden just before the sacred doors
within the temple of Hyperion.

" But, if we wonder at strange things like these,
we ought to wonder also, when we learn
that a hyena has a change of sex:
the female, quitting her embracing male,
herself becomes a male. — That animal
which feeds upon the winds and air, at once
assumes with contact any color touched.

" Conquered India gave to the vine crowned Bacchus
lynxes, whose urine turns, they say to stones,
hardening in air. So coral, too, as soon
as it has risen above the sea, turns hard.
Below the waves it was a tender plant.

" The day will fail me; Phoebus will have bathed
his panting horses in the deep sea waves,
before I can include in my discourse
the myriad things transforming to new shapes.
In lapse of time we see the nations change;
some grow in power, some wane. Troy was once great
in riches and in men — so great she could
for ten unequalled years afford much blood;
now she lies low and offers to our gaze
but ancient ruins and, instead of wealth,
ancestral tombs. Sparta was famous once
and great Mycenae was most flourishing.
And Cecrops' citadel and Amphion's shone
in ancient power. Sparta is nothing now
save barren ground, the proud Mycenae fell,
what is the Thebes of storied Oedipus
except a name? And of Pandion's Athens
what now remains beyond the name?

" Reports come to me that Dardanian Rome
is rising, and beside the Tiber's waves,
whose springs are high in the Apennines, is laying
her deep foundations. So in her growth
her form is changing, and one day she will
be the sole mistress of the boundless world.

" They say that soothsayers and that oracles,
revealers of our destiny, declare
this fate, and, if I recollect it right,
Helenus, son of Priam, prophesied
unto Aeneas, when he was in doubt
of safety and lamenting for the state
of Troy, about to fall, " O, son of a goddess,
if you yourself, will fully understand
this prophecy now surging in my mind
Troy shall not, while you are preserved to life
fall utterly. Flames and the sword shall give
you passage. You shall go and bear away
Pergama, ruined; till a foreign soil,
more friendly to you than your native land,
shall be the lot of Troy and of yourself.

" Even now I know it is decreed by Fate
that our posterity, born far from Troy,
will build a city greater than exists,
or ever will exist, or ever has
been seen in former times. Through a long lapse
of ages other noted men shall make
it strong, but one of the race of Iulus;
shall make it the great mistress of the world.
After the earth has thoroughly enjoyed
his glorious life, aetherial abodes
shall gain him, and immortal heaven shall be
his destiny."
Such was the prophesy
of Helenus, when great Aeneas took
away his guardian deities, and I
rejoice to see my kindred walls rise high
and realize how much the Trojans won
by that resounding victory of the Greeks!

" But, that we may not range afar with steeds
forgetful of the goal, the heavens and all
beneath them and the earth and everything
upon it change in form. We likewise change,
who are a portion of the universe,
and, since we are not only things of flesh
but winged souls as well, we may be doomed
to enter into beasts as our abode;
and even to be hidden in the breasts
of cattle. Therefore, should we not allow
these bodies to be safe which may contain
the souls of parents, brothers, or of those
allied to us by kinship or of men
at least, who should be saved from every harm?
Let us not gorge down a Thyestean feast!

" How greatly does a man disgrace himself,
how impiously does he prepare himself
for shedding human blood, who with u knife
cuts the calf's throat and offers a deaf ear
to its death-longings! who can kill the kid
while it is sending forth heart rending cries
like those of a dear child; or who can feed
upon the bird which he has given food.
How little do such deeds as these fall short
of actual murder? Yes, where will they lead?

" Let the ox plough, or let him owe his death
to weight of years; and let the sheep give us
defence against the cold of Boreas;
and let the well-fed she-goats give to man
their udders for the pressure of kind hands.

" Away with cruel nets and springs and snares
and fraudulent contrivances: deceive
not birds with bird-limed twigs: do not deceive
the trusting deer with dreaded feather foils:
do not conceal barbed hooks with treacherous bait:
if any beast is harmful, take his life,
but, even so, let killing be enough.
Taste not his flesh, but look for harmless food! "