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Text excerpts of the poem De rerum naturae, in prosaic form. It was written by Titus Lucretius Carus the scholarchēs of the Minaveaerum. It was written and dedicated to the Academy’s founder the late dictator perpetuo Julius Caesar.

From the Age of Claws to the Atomic Age

"The human infant, like a shipwrecked sailor cast ashore by the cruel waves, lies naked on the ground, speechless lacking all aids to life when nature first tossed him with pangs of labor from his mother’s womb upon the shores of the sunlit world.

He fills the air with his piteous wailing. and quite rightly, considering what evils life holds in store for him. But beast of every kind, both tame and will, have no need for rattles or a nurse to lull them with babbling baby-talk. They do not want to change their weapons for fortifications to guard their possessions. They do not want to change their clothes at every change of weather. They need no weapons or fortification to guard their possessions, since every need is lavishly supplied by mother earth herself and nature, the clever inventor. [….]

In those [early] days, again, many species must have died out altogether and failed to forge the chain of offspring. Every species that you now see drawing the breath of life has been protected and preserved from the beginning of the world either by cunning or by courage or by speed.[…..]

The human beings that peopled these fields were far tougher than the men of today, as become the offspring of tough earth. [..] Trough many decades they of the sun’s cycle course they lived out their in the fashion of wild beast roaming at large. […] Their hearts were well content to accept as a free gift what the sun and showers had given and the earth had produced unsolicited. […]

They did not know as yet how to enlist the aid of fire, or to make use of skins, or to clothe their bodies with trophies of the chase. They lived in thickets and hillside caves and forests and stowed their rough limbs among bushes when driven to seek shelter from the lash of wind and rain. […]
Thanks to their surpassing strength of hand and foot, they hunted the woodland beast by hurling stones and wielding ponderous clubs. They were more than a match for many of them; from a few they took refuge in hiding-places. [….]

As time went by, men began to build huts and to use skins and fire. Woman mated with man,moved into a single home and marriage. Then it was that humanity first began to mellow. Thanks to fire, their chilly bodies could no longer so easily endure the cold under the canopy of heaven.The neighbors began to form mutual alliances, wishing neither to do nor suffer violence among themselves. The appealed on behalf of their [weakened] children and womenfolk, pointing out with gestures and inarticulate crics that it is right for everyone to pity the weak.It was not possible to achieve perfect unity of purpose, Yet a substantial majority kept faith [otherwise we wouldn’t be here today].

Here is the answer to another question that you may be putting yourself. The agent by which fire was first brought down to earth and made available to mortal man was lightning. It was from this source that the blaze of fire has spread. […] [Observing the fire] that taught them to cook food and soften it by heating o the flames, since they noticed in the roaming through the fields how many things were subdued and mellowed by the impact of its ardent rays. As time went by, men learned to change their old way of life by means of fire and other new inventions, instructed by those of outstanding ability and mental energy. Kings began to found cites."


People, Notes and Sources

Titus Lucretius Carus (99 BCE – c. 55 BCE) was was Roman poet and philosopher. In our timeline he wrote - De rerum natura - On the Nature of Things, were combined Epircurean Philosophy with the contemporary knowledge of natural philosophy. In this timeline he still writes the poem but he also has an alternate career as the director of a research and teaching instution known as the Minaerveum. The text is mostly unaltered and together with part II is intended how "modern" ancient thinking could be.
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