Many men struggle and utter groans in pain, And as though mangled by a panther’s fangs Or savage lion’s, fill the whole neighbourhood With vehement clamourings. Many in their sleep Discourse of great affairs, and often so Have revealed their own guilt. Many meet death: Many, as though falling with all their weight From high cliffs to the ground, are scared with terror, And like men reft of reason, hardly from sleep Come to themselves again, being quite distraught By the body’s tumult. Likewise a man will sit Thirsting beside a river or pleasant spring And gulp almost the whole stream down his throat. Innocent children also, slumber-bound, Often believe they are lifting up their dress By a tank or broken vessel, and so pour The liquid, drained from their whole body, forth, Soaking the gorgeous-hued magnificence Of Babylonian coverlets. Then too To those into the currents of whose age For the first time seed is entering, when the ripe Fulness of time has formed it in their limbs, From without there come images emanating From some chance body, announcing a glorious face And beautiful colouring, that excites and stirs Those parts that have grown turgid with much seed, So that, as if all things had been performed, The full tide overflows and stains their vesture. This seed whereof we spoke is stirred in us When first ripening age confirms our frame. For different causes move and stimulate Different things. From man the influence Of man alone rouses forth human seed. So soon as, thus dislodged, it has retired From its abodes throughout the limbs and frame, It withdraws from the whole body, and assembling At certain places in the system, straightway Rouses at last the body’s genital parts. These places, irritated, swell with seed; And so the wish arises to eject it Towards that whereto the fell desire tends; While the body seeks that by which the mind Is smitten by love. For all men generally Fall towards the wound, and the blood glistens forth In that direction whence the stroke was dealt us. And if he is at close quarters, the red drops Sprinkle the foe. Thus he who has been struck By the missiles of Venus, whether a boy With womanish limbs launches the shaft, or else Some woman darting love from her whole body, Yearns towards that whereby he has been wounded, And longs to unite with it, and shoot the stream Drawn from the one into the other body. For dumb desire gives presage of the pleasure.