This leads to a satirical account of lovers' euphemistic endearments, which are expressed in the affected
Greek of the girls concerned: 'the black is "honey-gold", the filthy and smelly "unadorned" ' (1160 'nigra
melichrus est, immunda et fetida acosmos'). Yet the poet concedes that even an unattractive woman may
persuade you to live with her by her trimness and obliging ways; even without divine assistance habit
can make you love her, like water dripping on a stone (1278 ff.). This cool conclusion may have
encouraged the story, familiar from Tennyson's poem, that Lucretius was driven mad by an aphrodisiac
administered by his wife. The fifth book turns to the cosmos, which originated from the concourse of
atoms and will one day disintegrate. The gods had no part in creating it, and no reason to think of such a
thing (165 fF.): serene and immortal beings could not be dissatisfied with their previous condition.
(Epicureans were not atheists, but their gods were indifferent to the world of men.) The natural order
was not made for us: there is too much wrong with it (199). Much of the earth has been denied to man
by mountains, forests, and the sea, as well as the extremes of cold and heat; and hard-won cultivation
may be blighted by sun, frost, or wind.
Furthermore a baby, like a seafarer cast up by the cruel waves, lies naked on the ground, speechless and
lacking all vital support, when once nature has ejected him on the shores of light by travail from his
mother's womb, and he fills the place with woeful wailing, as is right for one who is destined in life to
pass through so many troubles. But the different flocks and herds and wild beasts thrive without need of
rattles, and none has to be treated to soothing lisps by a cherishing foster-mother (222 ff.)
Though Lucretius is far from idealizing the animals, he sees like others before him the particular
helplessness of the human child.
The latter part of the book gives a non-theological explanation of the origin of life and the development
of civilization. Grass and shrubs came first (783 ff.), and then animals, which grew up in wombs rooted
in the soil (a curiosity derived from Epicurus himself). The poet more plausibly emphasizes the warmth,
moisture, and fertility of the primeval world, which nowadays is like a woman past the age of child-
bearing. Many individual monstrosities were produced (837 ff), but if they could not find food or
reproduce, they died out; Lucretius is using an idea of Empedocles, but rejects his fantastic belief in
hybrids of men and beasts. The species that have survived have been preserved by cunning, courage, or
speed (857 ff), or, like dogs and sheep, by the protection of man. But in spite of the notion of natural
selection, Lucretius has no idea of evolution: though the species were originally produced by chance,
they remain for him distinct and immutable.
Primitive men had no agriculture or navigation, but lived in woods and caves off acorns and berries.
They must often have been mangled horribly by wild animals (a good instance of the poet's constructive
imagination), but thousands were never slaughtered in a single day's battle (999ff): Lucretius has no
illusions that our first ancestors can have been anything but brutish, but he is also aware that technical
innovation need not be accompanied by moral development. In due course men acquired huts and skins
and fire, which was produced in the forest by lightning or friction. They were softened by family life (in
his grim chronicle Lucretius finds a place for the Epicurean virtues of friendship and affection), and
formal compacts for mutual support; these must have been kept for the most part (1025 ff), otherwise the