Episode 084 - Thunder and Lightning Part Two - Very Very Frightening

Welcome to Episode Eighty-Four of Lucretius Today. I am your host Cassius, and together with my panelists from the EpicureanFriends.com forum, we'll walk you through the six books of Lucretius' poem, and discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. We encourage you to study Epicurus for yourself, and we suggest the best place to start is the book, "Epicurus and His Philosophy" by Canadian professor Norman DeWitt. For anyone who is not familiar with our podcast, please visit EpicureanFriends.com where you will find our goals and our ground rules. If you have any questions about those, please be sure to contact us at the forum for more information. In this Episode 84 we will read approximately Latin lines 173 through 335 as we continue further into Book Six. Now let's join Don reading today's text.Browne 1743[173] And so the clouds will blaze with winged fire, and tempests will shine with trembling flame, when the winds get within a cloud, and roll about, and make it hollow (as I said before) til it grows condensed, and then by motion kindles and breaks into a flame. For things made hot by motion, we see, will fall on fire, and leaden bullets, in a long course through the air, have melted as they fled. Therefore this fiery wind, when it has burst the sides of this dark cloud, forces and instantly scatters many seeds of fire, which makes the sudden flash of lightning strike our sight. This happens when the clouds are thick and roll on heaps, one pile above another, with wondrous swiftness through the air. Nor must you think this false because the clouds, to us that stand below, seem rather broad than deep, or raised on heaps; for see how the winds will whirl along the air these rolling clouds, raised mountain-high; and on the mountain-tops the clouds, observe, are higher some than others, and piled on heaps; and, when the winds are still, the higher row will press the lower down. Then you may judge of their prodigious weight, and view their hollow caverns, formed as it were in hanging rocks, where in a tempest the rough winds are shut, and scorn to be confined, and roar with horrid noise, like savage beasts within their dens chained down. They grumble here and there, on every side, within the clouds, and striving to get free, roll every way about, and as they move collect the fiery seeds in great abundance, and in the heated caverns toss them about until the clouds burst, and then they flash in shining flame.[204] And for this reason, perhaps, the lightning (that swift and golden stream of pure fire) flies down upon the earth, because the clouds must needs contain within themselves plenty of fiery seeds, and such as are without moisture, look bright and of a fiery color, for they must receive many fiery particles from the sun, and therefore cannot but look red, and send out flame. These, when the force of winds have pressed and driven into a narrow space, the fiery seeds, being squeezed, fly out and make that glaring flame to shine abroad.[214] Or it lightens because the clouds above are rarefied; for when the winds blow on them as they pass, and gently stretch them out, and wear them thin, the seeds of fire that make the light must needs fall out, but then it shines without much noise and terror, and causes no confusion in the sky.[219] Now of what seeds the lightning is composed its strokes will show, and marks of fire it leaves behind, and steams of stinking sulphur in the air, for these are signs of fire, not wind or rain, for lightning will set on fire whole towns, and with swift flames consume the houses to the ground.[225] Nature has formed this subtle fire of seeds of heat the most minute, and particles most apt to move, which nothing can resist. It passes forcibly through the walls as voice and sound. It flies through stones and brass, and in a moment melts both brass and gold. It has strange power to draw the...