BOOK II. Lxiii. 154-156 



brought forth she upholds us always, and at the last 

 when we have now been disinherited by the rest of 

 nature she embraces us in her bosom and at that very 

 time gives us her maternal shelter ; sanctified by no 

 service more than that whereby she makes us also 

 sacred, even bearing our monuments and epitaphs 

 and prolonging our name and extending our memory 

 against the shortness of time ; whose divinity is the 

 last which in anger we invoke to lie heavy * on those 

 who are now no more, as though we did not know 

 that she is the only element that is never wroth with 

 man. Water rises in mist, freezes into hail, swells in 

 waves, falls headlong in torrents ; air becomes tliick 

 with clouds and rages with storms ; but earth is 

 kind and gentle and indulgent, ever a handmaid in 

 the service of mortals, producing under our com- 

 pulsion, or lavishing of her own accord, what scents 

 and savours, what juices, what surfaces for the 

 touch, what colours ! how honestly she repays the 

 interest lent her ! ^ what produce she fosters for Earth's 

 our benefit ! since for living creatures that are *""'"*'• 

 noxious the breath of Ufe is to blame — she is compelled 

 to receive them when their seed is sown and to main- 

 tain them when they have been born ; but their 

 harm Ues in the evils of those that generate them.'' 

 When a serpent has stung a man she harbours it no 

 more,** and she exacts retribution even on the 

 account of the helpless ; she produces medicinal 

 herbs, and is ever fertile for man's benefit ; nay, 

 even poisons she may be thought to have invented out 

 of compassion for us, lest, when we were weary of Ufe, 

 hunger, the death most aUen to earth's beneficence, 

 should consume us with slow decay, lest precipices 

 should scatter in fragments our lacerated body, lest 



291 



