<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=450302" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Book V - Part 07 - Beginnings Of Civilization</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Afterwards, <br>When huts they had procured and pelts and fire, <br>And when the woman, joined unto the man, <br>Withdrew with him into one dwelling place, </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Were known; and when they saw an offspring born <br>From out themselves, then first the human race <br>Began to soften. For 'twas now that fire <br>Rendered their shivering frames less staunch to bear, <br>Under the canopy of the sky, the cold; <br>And Love reduced their shaggy hardiness; <br>And children, with the prattle and the kiss, <br>Soon broke the parents' haughty temper down. <br>Then, too, did neighbours 'gin to league as friends, <br>Eager to wrong no more or suffer wrong, <br>And urged for children and the womankind <br>Mercy, of fathers, whilst with cries and gestures <br>They stammered hints how meet it was that all <br>Should have compassion on the weak. And still, <br>Though concord not in every wise could then <br>Begotten be, a good, a goodly part <br>Kept faith inviolate- or else mankind <br>Long since had been unutterably cut off, <br>And propagation never could have brought <br>The species down the ages. <br>Lest, perchance, <br>Concerning these affairs thou ponderest <br>In silent meditation, let me say <br>'Twas lightning brought primevally to earth <br>The fire for mortals, and from thence hath spread <br>O'er all the lands the flames of heat. For thus <br>Even now we see so many objects, touched <br>By the celestial flames, to flash aglow, <br>When thunderbolt has dowered them with heat. <br>Yet also when a many-branched tree, <br>Beaten by winds, writhes swaying to and fro, <br>Pressing 'gainst branches of a neighbour tree, <br>There by the power of mighty rub and rub <br>Is fire engendered; and at times out-flares <br>The scorching heat of flame, when boughs do chafe <br>Against the trunks. And of these causes, either <br>May well have given to mortal men the fire. <br>Next, food to cook and soften in the flame <br>The sun instructed, since so oft they saw <br>How objects mellowed, when subdued by warmth<br>And by the raining blows of fiery beams,<br>Through all the fields.<br> And more and more each day<br>Would men more strong in sense, more wise in heart,<br>Teach them to change their earlier mode and life<br>By fire and new devices. Kings began<br>Cities to found and citadels to set,<br>As strongholds and asylums for themselves,<br>And flocks and fields to portion for each man<br>After the beauty, strength, and sense of each-<br>For beauty then imported much, and strength<br>Had its own rights supreme. Thereafter, wealth<br>Discovered was, and gold was brought to light,<br>Which soon of honour stripped both strong and fair;<br>For men, however beautiful in form<br>Or valorous, will follow in the main<br>The rich man's party. Yet were man to steer<br>His life by sounder reasoning, he'd own<br>Abounding riches, if with mind content<br>He lived by thrift; for never, as I guess,<br>Is there a lack of little in the world.<br>But men wished glory for themselves and power<br>Even that their fortunes on foundations firm<br>Might rest forever, and that they themselves,<br>The opulent, might pass a quiet life-<br>In vain, in vain; since, in the strife to climb<br>On to the heights of honour, men do make<br>Their pathway terrible; and even when once<br>They reach them, envy like the thunderbolt<br>At times will smite, O hurling headlong down<br>To murkiest Tartarus, in scorn; for, lo,<br>All summits, all regions loftier than the rest,<br>Smoke, blasted as by envy's thunderbolts;<br>So better far in quiet to obey,<br>Than to desire chief mastery of affairs<br>And ownership of empires. Be it so;<br>And let the weary sweat their life-blood out<br>All to no end, battling in hate along<br>The narrow path of man's ambition;<br>Since all their wisdom is from others' lips,<br>And all they seek is known from what they've heard<br>And less from what they've thought. Nor is this folly<br>Greater to-day, nor greater soon to be,<br>Than' twas of old.<br> And therefore kings were slain,<br>And pristine majesty of golden thrones<br>And haughty sceptres lay o'erturned in dust;<br>And crowns, so splendid on the sovereign heads,<br>Soon bloody under the proletarian feet,<br>Groaned for their glories gone- for erst o'er-much<br>Dreaded, thereafter with more greedy zest<br>Trampled beneath the rabble heel. Thus things<br>Down to the vilest lees of brawling mobs<br>Succumbed, whilst each man sought unto himself<br>Dominion and supremacy. So next<br>Some wiser heads instructed men to found<br>The magisterial office, and did frame<br>Codes that they might consent to follow laws.<br>For humankind, o'er wearied with a life<br>Fostered by force, was ailing from its feuds;<br>And so the sooner of its own free will<br>Yielded to laws and strictest codes. For since<br>Each hand made ready in its wrath to take<br>A vengeance fiercer than by man's fair laws<br>Is now conceded, men on this account<br>Loathed the old life fostered by force. 'Tis thence<br>That fear of punishments defiles each prize<br>Of wicked days; for force and fraud ensnare<br>Each man around, and in the main recoil<br>On him from whence they sprung. Not easy 'tis<br>For one who violates by ugly deeds<br>The bonds of common peace to pass a life<br>Composed and tranquil. For albeit he 'scape<br>The race of gods and men, he yet must dread<br>'Twill not be hid forever- since, indeed,<br>So many, oft babbling on amid their dreams<br>Or raving in sickness, have betrayed themselves<br>(As stories tell) and published at last<br>Old secrets and the sins.<br> But nature 'twas<br>Urged men to utter various sounds of tongue<br>And need and use did mould the names of things,<br>About in same wise as the lack-speech years<br>Compel young children unto gesturings,<br>Making them point with finger here and there<br>At what's before them. For each creature feels<br>By instinct to what use to put his powers.<br>Ere yet the bull-calf's scarce begotten horns<br>Project above his brows, with them he 'gins<br>Enraged to butt and savagely to thrust.<br>But whelps of panthers and the lion's cubs<br>With claws and paws and bites are at the fray<br>Already, when their teeth and claws be scarce<br>As yet engendered. So again, we see<br>All breeds of winged creatures trust to wings<br>And from their fledgling pinions seek to get<br>A fluttering assistance. Thus, to think<br>That in those days some man apportioned round<br>To things their names, and that from him men learned<br>Their first nomenclature, is foolery.<br>For why could he mark everything by words<br>And utter the various sounds of tongue, what time<br>The rest may be supposed powerless<br>To do the same? And, if the rest had not<br>Already one with other used words,<br>Whence was implanted in the teacher, then,<br>Fore-knowledge of their use, and whence was given<br>To him alone primordial faculty<br>To know and see in mind what 'twas he willed?<br>Besides, one only man could scarce subdue<br>An overmastered multitude to choose<br>To get by heart his names of things. A task<br>Not easy 'tis in any wise to teach<br>And to persuade the deaf concerning what<br>'Tis needful for to do. For ne'er would they<br>Allow, nor ne'er in anywise endure<br>Perpetual vain dingdong in their ears<br>Of spoken sounds unheard before. And what,<br>At last, in this affair so wondrous is,<br>That human race (in whom a voice and tongue<br>Were now in vigour) should by divers words<br>Denote its objects, as each divers sense<br>Might prompt?- since even the speechless herds, aye, since<br>The very generations of wild beasts<br>Are wont dissimilar and divers sounds<br>To rouse from in them, when there's fear or pain,<br>And when they burst with joys. And this, forsooth,<br>'Tis thine to know from plainest facts: when first<br>Huge flabby jowls of mad Molossian hounds,<br>Baring their hard white teeth, begin to snarl,<br>They threaten, with infuriate lips peeled back,<br>In sounds far other than with which they bark<br>And fill with voices all the regions round.<br>And when with fondling tongue they start to lick<br>Their puppies, or do toss them round with paws,<br>Feigning with gentle bites to gape and snap,<br>They fawn with yelps of voice far other then<br>Than when, alone within the house, they bay,<br>Or whimpering slink with cringing sides from blows.<br>Again the neighing of the horse, is that<br>Not seen to differ likewise, when the stud<br>In buoyant flower of his young years raves,<br>Goaded by winged Love, amongst the mares,<br>And when with widening nostrils out he snorts<br>The call to battle, and when haply he<br>Whinnies at times with terror-quaking limbs?<br>Lastly, the flying race, the dappled birds,<br>Hawks, ospreys, sea-gulls, searching food and life<br>Amid the ocean billows in the brine,<br>Utter at other times far other cries<br>Than when they fight for food, or with their prey<br>Struggle and strain. And birds there are which change<br>With changing weather their own raucous songs-<br>As long-lived generations of the crows<br>Or flocks of rooks, when they be said to cry<br>For rain and water and to call at times<br>For winds and gales. Ergo, if divers moods<br>Compel the brutes, though speechless evermore,<br>To send forth divers sounds, O truly then<br>How much more likely 'twere that mortal men<br>In those days could with many a different sound<br>Denote each separate thing.<br> And now what cause<br>Hath spread divinities of gods abroad<br>Through mighty nations, and filled the cities full<br>Of the high altars, and led to practices<br>Of solemn rites in season- rites which still<br>Flourish in midst of great affairs of state<br>And midst great centres of man's civic life,<br>The rites whence still a poor mortality<br>Is grafted that quaking awe which rears aloft<br>Still the new temples of gods from land to land<br>And drives mankind to visit them in throngs<br>On holy days- 'tis not so hard to give<br>Reason thereof in speech. Because, in sooth,<br>Even in those days would the race of man<br>Be seeing excelling visages of gods<br>With mind awake; and in his sleeps, yet more-<br>Bodies of wondrous growth. And, thus, to these<br>Would men attribute sense, because they seemed<br>To move their limbs and speak pronouncements high,<br>Befitting glorious visage and vast powers.<br>And men would give them an eternal life,<br>Because their visages forevermore<br>Were there before them, and their shapes remained,<br>And chiefly, however, because men would not think<br>Beings augmented with such mighty powers<br>Could well by any force o'ermastered be.<br>And men would think them in their happiness<br>Excelling far, because the fear of death<br>Vexed no one of them at all, and since<br>At same time in men's sleeps men saw them do<br>So many wonders, and yet feel therefrom<br>Themselves no weariness. Besides, men marked<br>How in a fixed order rolled around<br>The systems of the sky, and changed times<br>Of annual seasons, nor were able then<br>To know thereof the causes. Therefore 'twas<br>Men would take refuge in consigning all<br>Unto divinities, and in feigning all<br>Was guided by their nod. And in the sky<br>They set the seats and vaults of gods, because<br>Across the sky night and the moon are seen<br>To roll along- moon, day, and night, and night's<br>Old awesome constellations evermore,<br>And the night-wandering fireballs of the sky,<br>And flying flames, clouds, and the sun, the rains,<br>Snow and the winds, the lightnings, and the hail,<br>And the swift rumblings, and the hollow roar<br>Of mighty menacings forevermore.<br> O humankind unhappy!- when it ascribed<br>Unto divinities such awesome deeds,<br>And coupled thereto rigours of fierce wrath!<br>What groans did men on that sad day beget<br>Even for themselves, and O what wounds for us,<br>What tears for our children's children! Nor, O man,<br>Is thy true piety in this: with head<br>Under the veil, still to be seen to turn<br>Fronting a stone, and ever to approach<br>Unto all altars; nor so prone on earth<br>Forward to fall, to spread upturned palms<br>Before the shrines of gods, nor yet to dew<br>Altars with profuse blood of four-foot beasts,<br>Nor vows with vows to link. But rather this:<br>To look on all things with a master eye<br>And mind at peace. For when we gaze aloft<br>Upon the skiey vaults of yon great world<br>And ether, fixed high o'er twinkling stars,<br>And into our thought there come the journeyings<br>Of sun and moon, O then into our breasts,<br>O'erburdened already with their other ills,<br>Begins forthwith to rear its sudden head<br>One more misgiving: lest o'er us, percase,<br>It be the gods' immeasurable power<br>That rolls, with varied motion, round and round<br>The far white constellations. For the lack<br>Of aught of reasons tries the puzzled mind:<br>Whether was ever a birth-time of the world,<br>And whether, likewise, any end shall be<br>How far the ramparts of the world can still<br>Outstand this strain of ever-roused motion,<br>Or whether, divinely with eternal weal<br>Endowed, they can through endless tracts of age<br>Glide on, defying the o'er-mighty powers<br>Of the immeasurable ages. Lo,<br>What man is there whose mind with dread of gods<br>Cringes not close, whose limbs with terror-spell<br>Crouch not together, when the parched earth<br>Quakes with the horrible thunderbolt amain,<br>And across the mighty sky the rumblings run?<br>Do not the peoples and the nations shake,<br>And haughty kings do they not hug their limbs,<br>Strook through with fear of the divinities,<br>Lest for aught foully done or madly said<br>The heavy time be now at hand to pay?<br>When, too, fierce force of fury-winds at sea<br>Sweepeth a navy's admiral down the main<br>With his stout legions and his elephants,<br>Doth he not seek the peace of gods with vows,<br>And beg in prayer, a-tremble, lulled winds<br>And friendly gales?- in vain, since, often up-caught<br>In fury-cyclones, is he borne along,<br>For all his mouthings, to the shoals of doom.<br>Ah, so irrevocably some hidden power<br>Betramples forevermore affairs of men,<br>And visibly grindeth with its heel in mire<br>The lictors' glorious rods and axes dire,<br>Having them in derision! Again, when earth<br>From end to end is rocking under foot,<br>And shaken cities ruin down, or threaten<br>Upon the verge, what wonder is it then<br>That mortal generations abase themselves,<br>And unto gods in all affairs of earth<br>Assign as last resort almighty powers<br>And wondrous energies to govern all?<br> Now for the rest: copper and gold and iron<br>Discovered were, and with them silver's weight<br>And power of lead, when with prodigious heat<br>The conflagrations burned the forest trees<br>Among the mighty mountains, by a bolt<br>Of lightning from the sky, or else because<br>Men, warring in the woodlands, on their foes<br>Had hurled fire to frighten and dismay,<br>Or yet because, by goodness of the soil<br>Invited, men desired to clear rich fields<br>And turn the countryside to pasture-lands,<br>Or slay the wild and thrive upon the spoils.<br>(For hunting by pit-fall and by fire arose<br>Before the art of hedging the covert round<br>With net or stirring it with dogs of chase.)<br>Howso the fact, and from what cause soever<br>The flamy heat with awful crack and roar<br>Had there devoured to their deepest roots<br>The forest trees and baked the earth with fire,<br>Then from the boiling veins began to ooze<br>O rivulets of silver and of gold,<br>Of lead and copper too, collecting soon<br>Into the hollow places of the ground.<br>And when men saw the cooled lumps anon<br>To shine with splendour-sheen upon the ground,<br>Much taken with that lustrous smooth delight,<br>They 'gan to pry them out, and saw how each<br>Had got a shape like to its earthy mould.<br>Then would it enter their heads how these same lumps,<br>If melted by heat, could into any form<br>Or figure of things be run, and how, again,<br>If hammered out, they could be nicely drawn<br>To sharpest points or finest edge, and thus<br>Yield to the forgers tools and give them power<br>To chop the forest down, to hew the logs,<br>To shave the beams and planks, besides to bore<br>And punch and drill. And men began such work<br>At first as much with tools of silver and gold<br>As with the impetuous strength of the stout copper;<br>But vainly- since their over-mastered power<br>Would soon give way, unable to endure,<br>Like copper, such hard labour. In those days<br>Copper it was that was the thing of price;<br>And gold lay useless, blunted with dull edge.<br>Now lies the copper low, and gold hath come<br>Unto the loftiest honours. Thus it is<br>That rolling ages change the times of things:<br>What erst was of a price, becomes at last<br>A discard of no honour; whilst another<br>Succeeds to glory, issuing from contempt,<br>And day by day is sought for more and more,<br>And, when 'tis found, doth flower in men's praise,<br>Objects of wondrous honour.<br> Now, Memmius,<br>How nature of iron discovered was, thou mayst<br>Of thine own self divine. Man's ancient arms<br>Were hands, and nails and teeth, stones too and boughs-<br>Breakage of forest trees- and flame and fire,<br>As soon as known. Thereafter force of iron<br>And copper discovered was; and copper's use<br>Was known ere iron's, since more tractable<br>Its nature is and its abundance more.<br>With copper men to work the soil began,<br>With copper to rouse the hurly waves of war,<br>To straw the monstrous wounds, and seize away<br>Another's flocks and fields. For unto them,<br>Thus armed, all things naked of defence<br>Readily yielded. Then by slow degrees<br>The sword of iron succeeded, and the shape<br>Of brazen sickle into scorn was turned:<br>With iron to cleave the soil of earth they 'gan,<br>And the contentions of uncertain war<br>Were rendered equal.<br> And, lo, man was wont<br>Armed to mount upon the ribs of horse<br>And guide him with the rein, and play about<br>With right hand free, oft times before he tried<br>Perils of war in yoked chariot;<br>And yoked pairs abreast came earlier<br>Than yokes of four, or scythed chariots<br>Whereinto clomb the men-at-arms. And next<br>The Punic folk did train the elephants-<br>Those curst Lucanian oxen, hideous,<br>The serpent-handed, with turrets on their bulks-<br>To dure the wounds of war and panic-strike<br>The mighty troops of Mars. Thus Discord sad<br>Begat the one Thing after other, to be<br>The terror of the nations under arms,<br>And day by day to horrors of old war<br>She added an increase.<br> Bulls, too, they tried<br>In war's grim business; and essayed to send<br>Outrageous boars against the foes. And some<br>Sent on before their ranks puissant lions<br>With armed trainers and with masters fierce<br>To guide and hold in chains- and yet in vain,<br>Since fleshed with pell-mell slaughter, fierce they flew,<br>And blindly through the squadrons havoc wrought,<br>Shaking the frightful crests upon their heads,<br>Now here, now there. Nor could the horsemen calm<br>Their horses, panic-breasted at the roar,<br>And rein them round to front the foe. With spring<br>The infuriate she-lions would up-leap<br>Now here, now there; and whoso came apace<br>Against them, these they'd rend across the face;<br>And others unwitting from behind they'd tear<br>Down from their mounts, and twining round them, bring<br>Tumbling to earth, o'ermastered by the wound,<br>And with those powerful fangs and hooked claws<br>Fasten upon them. Bulls would toss their friends,<br>And trample under foot, and from beneath<br>Rip flanks and bellies of horses with their horns,<br>And with a threat'ning forehead jam the sod;<br>And boars would gore with stout tusks their allies,<br>Splashing in fury their own blood on spears<br>Splintered in their own bodies, and would fell<br>In rout and ruin infantry and horse.<br>For there the beasts-of-saddle tried to scape<br>The savage thrusts of tusk by shying off,<br>Or rearing up with hoofs a-paw in air.<br>In vain- since there thou mightest see them sink,<br>Their sinews severed, and with heavy fall<br>Bestrew the ground. And such of these as men<br>Supposed well-trained long ago at home,<br>Were in the thick of action seen to foam<br>In fury, from the wounds, the shrieks, the flight,<br>The panic, and the tumult; nor could men<br>Aught of their numbers rally. For each breed<br>And various of the wild beasts fled apart<br>Hither or thither, as often in wars to-day<br>Flee those Lucanian oxen, by the steel<br>Grievously mangled, after they have wrought<br>Upon their friends so many a dreadful doom.<br>(If 'twas, indeed, that thus they did at all:<br>But scarcely I'll believe that men could not<br>With mind foreknow and see, as sure to come,<br>Such foul and general disaster.- This<br>We, then, may hold as true in the great All,<br>In divers worlds on divers plan create,-<br>Somewhere afar more likely than upon<br>One certain earth.) But men chose this to do<br>Less in the hope of conquering than to give<br>Their enemies a goodly cause of woe,<br>Even though thereby they perished themselves,<br>Since weak in numbers and since wanting arms.<br> Now, clothes of roughly inter-plaited strands<br>Were earlier than loom-wove coverings;<br>The loom-wove later than man's iron is,<br>Since iron is needful in the weaving art,<br>Nor by no other means can there be wrought<br>Such polished tools- the treadles, spindles, shuttles,<br>And sounding yarn-beams. And nature forced the men,<br>Before the woman kind, to work the wool:<br>For all the male kind far excels in skill,<br>And cleverer is by much- until at last<br>The rugged farmer folk jeered at such tasks,<br>And so were eager soon to give them o'er<br>To women's hands, and in more hardy toil<br>To harden arms and hands.<br> But nature herself,<br>Mother of things, was the first seed-sower<br>And primal grafter; since the berries and acorns,<br>Dropping from off the trees, would there beneath<br>Put forth in season swarms of little shoots;<br>Hence too men's fondness for ingrafting slips<br>Upon the boughs and setting out in holes<br>The young shrubs o'er the fields. Then would they try<br>Ever new modes of tilling their loved crofts,<br>And mark they would how earth improved the taste<br>Of the wild fruits by fond and fostering care.<br>And day by day they'd force the woods to move<br>Still higher up the mountain, and to yield<br>The place below for tilth, that there they might,<br>On plains and uplands, have their meadow-plats,<br>Cisterns and runnels, crops of standing grain,<br>And happy vineyards, and that all along<br>O'er hillocks, intervales, and plains might run<br>The silvery-green belt of olive-trees,<br>Marking the plotted landscape; even as now<br>Thou seest so marked with varied loveliness<br>All the terrain which men adorn and plant<br>With rows of goodly fruit-trees and hedge round<br>With thriving shrubberies sown.<br> But by the mouth<br>To imitate the liquid notes of birds<br>Was earlier far 'mongst men than power to make,<br>By measured song, melodious verse and give<br>Delight to ears. And whistlings of the wind<br>Athrough the hollows of the reeds first taught<br>The peasantry to blow into the stalks<br>Of hollow hemlock-herb. Then bit by bit<br>They learned sweet plainings, such as pipe out-pours,<br>Beaten by finger-tips of singing men,<br>When heard through unpathed groves and forest deeps<br>And woodsy meadows, through the untrod haunts<br>Of shepherd folk and spots divinely still.<br>Thus time draws forward each and everything<br>Little by little unto the midst of men,<br>And reason uplifts it to the shores of light.<br>These tunes would soothe and glad the minds of mortals<br>When sated with food,- for songs are welcome then.<br>And often, lounging with friends in the soft grass<br>Beside a river of water, underneath<br>A big tree's branches, merrily they'd refresh<br>Their frames, with no vast outlay- most of all<br>If the weather were smiling and the times of the year<br>Were painting the green of the grass around with flowers.<br>Then jokes, then talk, then peals of jollity<br>Would circle round; for then the rustic muse<br>Was in her glory; then would antic Mirth<br>Prompt them to garland head and shoulders about<br>With chaplets of intertwined flowers and leaves,<br>And to dance onward, out of tune, with limbs<br>Clownishly swaying, and with clownish foot<br>To beat our mother earth- from whence arose<br>Laughter and peals of jollity, for, lo,<br>Such frolic acts were in their glory then,<br>Being more new and strange. And wakeful men<br>Found solaces for their unsleeping hours<br>In drawing forth variety of notes,<br>In modulating melodies, in running<br>With puckered lips along the tuned reeds,<br>Whence, even in our day do the watchmen guard<br>These old traditions, and have learned well<br>To keep true measure. And yet they no whit<br>Do get a larger fruit of gladsomeness<br>Than got the woodland aborigines<br>In olden times. For what we have at hand-<br>If theretofore naught sweeter we have known-<br>That chiefly pleases and seems best of all;<br>But then some later, likely better, find<br>Destroys its worth and changes our desires<br>Regarding good of yesterday.<br> And thus<br>Began the loathing of the acorn; thus<br>Abandoned were those beds with grasses strewn<br>And with the leaves beladen. Thus, again,<br>Fell into new contempt the pelts of beasts-<br>Erstwhile a robe of honour, which, I guess,<br>Aroused in those days envy so malign<br>That the first wearer went to woeful death<br>By ambuscades,- and yet that hairy prize,<br>Rent into rags by greedy foemen there<br>And splashed by blood, was ruined utterly<br>Beyond all use or vantage. Thus of old<br>'Twas pelts, and of to-day 'tis purple and gold<br>That cark men's lives with cares and weary with war.<br>Wherefore, methinks, resides the greater blame<br>With us vain men to-day: for cold would rack,<br>Without their pelts, the naked sons of earth;<br>But us it nothing hurts to do without<br>The purple vestment, broidered with gold<br>And with imposing figures, if we still<br>Make shift with some mean garment of the Plebs.<br>So man in vain futilities toils on<br>Forever and wastes in idle cares his years-<br>Because, of very truth, he hath not learnt<br>What the true end of getting is, nor yet<br>At all how far true pleasure may increase.<br>And 'tis desire for better and for more<br>Hath carried by degrees mortality<br>Out onward to the deep, and roused up<br>From the far bottom mighty waves of war.<br> But sun and moon, those watchmen of the world,<br>With their own lanterns traversing around<br>The mighty, the revolving vault, have taught<br>Unto mankind that seasons of the years<br>Return again, and that the Thing takes place<br>After a fixed plan and order fixed.<br> Already would they pass their life, hedged round<br>By the strong towers; and cultivate an earth<br>All portioned out and boundaried; already<br>Would the sea flower and sail-winged ships;<br>Already men had, under treaty pacts,<br>Confederates and allies, when poets began<br>To hand heroic actions down in verse;<br>Nor long ere this had letters been devised-<br>Hence is our age unable to look back<br>On what has gone before, except where reason<br>Shows us a footprint.<br> Sailings on the seas,<br>Tillings of fields, walls, laws, and arms, and roads,<br>Dress and the like, all prizes, all delights<br>Of finer life, poems, pictures, chiselled shapes<br>Of polished sculptures- all these arts were learned<br>By practice and the mind's experience,<br>As men walked forward step by eager step.<br>Thus time draws forward each and everything<br>Little by little into the midst of men,<br>And reason uplifts it to the shores of light.<br>For one thing after other did men see<br>Grow clear by intellect, till with their arts<br>They've now achieved the supreme pinnacle.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Lucretius">Lucretius</a><div class=q> <img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share"> <script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=450302" data-title="Book V - Part 07 - Beginnings Of Civilization de Lucretius" data-description="Afterwards, When huts they had procured and pelts and fire, And when the woman, joined unto the man, Withdrew with him into one dwelling place, Were known; and when they saw an offspring born From out themselves, then first the human race B..."></div> </div> </div>

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