I THALES TO LUCRETIUS 25 



For he argues that since upon ' the increase of 

 some nature set a ban, so that they could not 

 reach the coveted flower of age, nor find food, 

 nor be united in marriage/ . . . ' many races of 

 living things have died out, and been unable to 

 beget and continue their breed.' Lucretius speaks 

 of Empedocles in terms scarcely less exaggerated 

 than those which he applied to Epicurus. The 

 latter is ' a god who first found out that plan of life 

 which is now termed wisdom, and who by tried skill 

 rescued life from such great billows and such thick 

 darkness and moored it in so perfect a calm and 

 in so brilliant a light, ... he cleared men's breasts 

 with truth-telling precepts, and fixed a limit to lust 

 and fear, and explained what was the chief good 

 which we all strive to reach.' As to Empedocles, 

 * that great country (Sicily) seems to have held 

 within it nothing more glorious than this man, 

 nothing more holy, marvellous, and dear. The verses, 

 too, of this god-like genius cry with a loud voice, 

 and make known his great discoveries, so that he 

 seems scarcely born of a mortal stock.' 



Continuing his speculations on the development 

 of living things, Lucretius strikes out in bolder and 

 original vein. The past history of man, he says, lies 

 in no heroic or golden age, but in one of struggle out 

 of savagery. Only when ' children, by their coaxing 

 ways, easily broke down the proud temper of their 

 fathers,' did there arise the family ties out of which 

 the wider social bond has grown, and softening and 

 civilising agencies begin their fair offices. In his 

 battle for food and shelter, ' man's first arms were 

 hands, nails and teeth and stones and boughs broken 



