This scion of the Memmian house, whom thou Hast willed to be found peerless all his days In every grace. Therefore the more, great deity, Grant to my words eternal loveliness: Cause meanwhile that the savage works of warfare Over all seas and lands sink hushed to rest. For thou alone hast power to bless mankind With tranquil peace; since of war’s savage works Mavors mighty in battle hath control, Who oft flings himself back upon thy lap, Quite vanquished by love’s never-healing wound; And so with upturned face and shapely neck Thrown backward, feeds with love his hungry looks, Gazing on thee, goddess, while thus he lies Supine, and on thy lips his spirit hangs. O’er him thus couched upon thy holy body Do thou bend down to enfold him, and from thy lips Pour tender speech, petitioning calm peace, O glorious divinity, for thy Romans. For nor can we in our country’s hour of trouble Toil with a mind untroubled at our task, Nor yet may the famed child of Memmius Be spared from public service in such times. For the rest,[A] leisured ears and a keen mind Withdrawn from cares, lend to true reasoning, Lest my gifts, which with loving diligence I set out for you, ere they be understood You should reject disdainfully. For now About the most high theory of the heavens And of the deities, I will undertake To tell you in my discourse, and will reveal The first beginnings of existing things, Out of which nature gives birth and increase And nourishment to all things; into which Nature likewise, when they have been destroyed, Resolves them back in turn. These we are wont, In setting forth our argument, to call Matter, or else begetting particles, Or to name them the seeds of things: again As primal atoms we shall speak of them, Because from them first everything is formed.