ON THE NATURE OF THINGS
BY LUCRETIUS
Almost nothing is known about the Roman poet Titus Lucretius Carus (ca. 99–ca. 55 BC) beyond the little that can be inferred from his only surviving work, the De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things) six books written in hexameters giving the most thorough surviving exposition of Epicurean philosophy.
Presented here is the only passage alluding to Greek love, interesting for its iteration of the prevalent Roman assumption that boys and women (but not other men) were sexually attractive to men.
The translation is by W. H. D. Rouse for the Loeb Classical Library, published by William Heinemann in London in 1924.
IV 1039-1058
| For there are different forces that move and excite different things; but only the power of man can draw forth human seed from a man. Ás soon as the seed comes forth, driven from its retreats, it is withdrawn from the whole body through all the limbs and members, gathering in a fixed place in the structure, and arouses at once the genital parts alone. Those parts thus excited swell with the seed, and there is a desire to emit it towards that whither the dire craving tends; and the body seeks that which has wounded the mind with love. For all are generally wont to fall towards a wound, and the blood jets out in the direction of the blow that has struck us, and if he is close by, the ruddy flood drenches the enemy. So therefore if one is wounded by the shafts of Venus, whether it be a boy with girlish limbs who launches the shaft, or a woman radiating love from her whole body, he tends to the source of the blow, and desires to unite and to cast the fluid from body to body; for his dumb desire presages delight. This is our Venus; hence also comes love’s name; | namque alias aliud res commovet atque lacessit; [1040] ex homine humanum semen ciet una hominis vis. quod simul atque suis eiectum sedibus exit, per membra atque artus decedit corpore toto in loca conveniens nervorum certa, cietque continuo partis genitalis corporis ipsas. [1045] inritata tument loca semine, fitque voluntas eicere id quo se contendit dira lubido, idque petit corpus, mens unde est saucia amore; namque omnes plerumque cadunt in vulnus, et illam [1050] emicat in partem sanguis unde icimur ictu, et si comminus est, hostem ruber occupat umor. sic igitur Veneris qui telis accipit ictus, sive puer membris muliebribus hunc iaculatur seu mulier toto iactans e corpore amorem, [1055] unde feritur, eo tendit gestitque coire et iacere umorem in corpus de corpore ductum; namque voluptatem praesagit muta cupido. Haec Venus est nobis; hinc autemst nomen amoris; |
