Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Lucretius on the Passage of Time

Every time I look into my battered old copy of Lucretius' 'On the Nature of the Universe' I unearth yet more treasure!

"Look all about you and you will see the very stones mastered by age; tall towers in ruin and their masonry crumbling; temples and images of gods defaced, their destined span not lengthened by any sanctity that avails against the laws of nature...the collapsed monuments of men ask whether you believe that they in their turn grow old..." -- Lucretius, c.80BC. The translation I own is (c) 1951 by R.E. Latham, published in 1994 by Penguin; it's a good and readable work.

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