XLVI
But, you ask, why does Jupiter pass over the guilty and strike the innocent? That is too big a question to enter on here; it shall have its own place and time. Meantime I insist on this, that bolts are not sent directly by Jupiter, but that all things are so arranged that even what is not done by him is yet not done without some plan, which plan is his. The force of the bolts is a consequence of his permission. For even though Jupiter does not make them, he caused them to be made. He does not superintend every detail; but to all he gives the signal, force, and cause.
XLVII
There is another division of them made to which I cannot agree. They are, according to the assertion of some, either constant or limited or deferred. The constant are those whose prognostication extends all over life, not merely intimating a single occurrence, but embracing the series of coming events through the whole subsequent life. This is the kind of bolt that occurs first after entrance on an inheritance, or when an individual or a city has entered on a new phase of existence. Limited ones answer exactly to a definite date. Deferred are those whose threats may be delayed, though they cannot be averted and completely avoided.
XLVIII
I will now state my reasons for disagreeing with 1 this division. One is that even the bolt which is called constant lasts for a limited period. Such bolts correspond no less than others to a definite date. Nor do they cease to be limited because the period they signify is a long one. So, too, what is thought to be deferred is limited. For by the admission of the advocates of this division the period for which delay can be procured is a definite one. Bolts that relate to private matters cannot, according to them, be delayed longer than ten years, those relating to public affairs not more than thirty. So this class, as well as the first, is limited, as it includes the date beyond which the prognostication cannot be deferred. There is thus a fixed 2 period for bolts and results of every kind. For of what is uncertain there could be no distinct knowledge. Then, too, these people talk in too vague and general terms about the points to be noted in lightning. They ought rather to divide them according to the scheme of the philosopher Attalus, who had specialised in this department. The inspection should determine where the lightning occurred, when, to whom, in what connection, of what kind, of what amount. If I were to attempt to arrange and classify all these, I should just be committing myself to an endless task.
XLIX
Let me now glance at the names of the lightning 1 adopted by Caecina, and explain my own opinion of them. He calls one kind imperative, as it demands the re-establishment of sacrifices neglected or informally offered. Admonitory is the second kind, giving information of what must be guarded against. Pestilential is a kind that portends death or exile. Deceptive is that which, under guise of some benefit, inflicts injury; for example, it gives the 2 consulship to some one whose ruin the office will prove, or bestows an estate the profit of which must be compensated by some great loss. The avertible, again, bring an appearance of danger without real danger. The destructive remove the threats of previous lightning. The attested signify an agreement with former lightning. The earth-borne occur in a covered place. The overwhelming strike what was previously struck without due atonement having been made. The royal smite 3 either the election ground or the government quarter of a free city; their prognostication threatens a free state with an absolute monarchy. Infernal are when fire issues from the ground. Hospitable summon or, to use a more polite word, invite Jupiter to share a sacrificial feast with us. If he happen to be angry with his host when he is invited, then his coming, Caecina says, is fraught with danger to his entertainers. Auxiliary come by summons too, but bring good to the summoner.
L
But how much simpler is the division employed 1 by our distinguished Stoic, Attalus, who combined skill in the Etruscan lore with all the subtlety of Greek thought! Of the different kinds of lightning, he says, one gives intimation of something that concerns us, another kind intimates either a thing of no importance or something whose meaning does not reach us. Of the significant lightning there are several varieties—one is favourable, one unfavourable, a third neither one nor other. Of 2 the unfavourable there are all these forms—the evils portended may be either unavoidable or avoidable, or such as may be mitigated, or such as may be delayed. Again, the benefits foretold by the favourable may be either abiding or transient. The mixture of favourable and unfavourable may either consist of half and half, good and ill; or ill may be turned by them into good, or good into ill. The lightning that is neither unfavourable nor favourable gives us intimation of some action by which we need neither be terrified nor elated, for example, a journey abroad from which there is nothing either to fear or hope.
LI
Let me revert for a moment to the lightning that portends something, but a something that does not concern us; for instance, whether the same kind of lightning as has occurred will again occur in the same year. Sometimes lightning contains no indication at all, or one whose grasp eludes us; as, for example, those manifestations of it that are scattered through the spaces of the sea or in lonely deserts. Their indication, if any, is lost.
LII
I have still a few remarks to add in order to show 1 more fully the force of lightning in various ways, for its power is not always displayed in just the same way in every kind of material. For instance, the stronger bodies are shattered with greater violence on account of their resistance; it sometimes passes through the yielding ones without doing any damage. With stone and iron and all the hard substances it enters into conflict, because in its impetuous course it must find a way through them; so it makes a way by which to escape. The more flexible and thinner substances, though they seem very suitable material for flames, it spares, mitigating its fury when it encounters no obstacle to its passage. And so, as I said at a previous point, coin is found fused, while the purse that contained it is untouched; the extremely thin fire runs through the invisible interstices of the latter. But whatever solidity it meets in a beam it subdues as being refractory. For, as I have just said, its 2 fury does not always take the same form; the nature of the force in each case is revealed merely by the kind of the damage, and you can tell the species of the lightning by its effect. Again, the force of the same flash produces many varieties of damage in the same material. For example, in a tree it scorches any portion that is very dry; what is firm and hard it bores through and smashes; the outer bark it scatters, the inner layers nearer the centre it bursts and cuts up, the leaves it lashes and strips off. Wine is frozen, iron and copper fused.
LIII
It is a strange fact that when wine that has been 1 thus frozen is used after it returns to its liquid state, it either kills or drives mad those who have drunk of it. When one inquires why this effect should be produced, the suggestion presents itself that the lightning contains a pestilential force, some taint of which probably is left in the liquid it has condensed and frozen. Indeed, the substance could never have been solidified had not some bond of cohesion been introduced. Moreover, in oil and every kind of unguent there is a foul smell after lightning has touched them. Whence it is manifest 2 that this subtle fire, driven in a direction contrary to its nature, contains a pestilential power, for not only its blow but even its mere breath is overwhelming. Moreover, wherever lightning has struck there is sure always to be a smell of sulphur, a substance which, being naturally poisonous, causes delirium if breathed too freely. But we shall return to this point when we are more at leisure. For I should like some day to prove the extent to which the world is indebted to philosophy, the parent of the arts, for knowledge of all such matters. She it was that first both investigated the causes of things and noted their effects. She performed a service far more valuable than the inspection of lightning in thus comparing results with the principles from which they are derived.
LIV
I will at this point revert to Posidonius’ opinion 1 of the cause of thunder. From the earth and its confines are exhaled certain elements, partly moist, partly dry and smoke-like. The latter element remains in the sky as material for lightning, while the former falls in rain. The dry smoky particles that reach the atmosphere will not allow themselves to be enclosed in clouds, but burst their envelope. Thence comes the report which we name thunder. Besides this, anything in the atmosphere itself that is rarefied is at the same time dried and heated up. This also, if it is enclosed, seeks an exit with equal 2 eagerness, and causes a report as it escapes. On one occasion it makes a complete burst, and the thunder is consequently the more violent; on another it escapes by degrees in small portions. Air of this kind, then, by either bursting or flying through the clouds, produces peals of thunder. The rolling of the air enclosed in a cloud is the most potent cause of setting fire to what is struck.
LV
Thunder is, in short, simply the report of explosions 1 of dry air, which cannot occur unless there is either friction or a rent in a cloud. Posidonius adds that if the clouds merely collide with each other, the kind of blow needed to produce an explosion is given, but not completely; clouds do not meet through their whole extent, but only part with part. And again, soft substances do not resound unless knocked against hard ones; a wave is not heard unless when it beats on the hard shore. But fire, which is soft, says an opponent, when let into water, also a soft substance, produces sound in being extinguished. Well, suppose it is so, it makes 2 for the opposite view which I urge. For it is not really the fire that makes the sound, but the air escaping through the water that is quenching it. Granted that fire is both produced and extinguished in the cloud, it arises from air and friction. Well then, it is urged, may not some of the shooting stars plunge into a cloud and be extinguished? Even supposing that such a thing can and sometimes does occur, it does not remove the difficulty. It is not the occasional chance cause but the natural normal one that we are in search of. Suppose I admit the truth of your contention that occasionally after thunder fires gleam in the heavens much like shooting and falling stars. Yet this does not prove 3 that the thunder was caused by them; it merely shows that the thunder occurred simultaneously with this other phenomenon. Clidemus asserts that a lightning flash is an empty reflection, and not real fire; for in the same way after nightfall a gleam appears from the motion of oars in water. His illustration is not on all fours with the phenomenon. In the latter case the gleam is seen actually within the water; in the former, in the atmosphere, it bursts and leaps out of its element.
LVI
Heraclitus is of opinion that the flash of lightning 1 is the first attempt of a fire to kindle; just as on earth when the flame is at first unsteady, now dying down and now darting up again. The ancients used to call this summer lightning. We now say in the plural thunder peals (tonitrua); the ancients said either thunder (tonitruum, sing.) or merely peal (noise, tonus). The foregoing 2 remark I find in Caecina, an eloquent man, who would have had a considerable reputation as such had he not been overshadowed by Cicero’s towering form. Besides, the ancients had other variants of a similar kind. They employed with the penult short the word that we use with it long; we say fulgēre (to lighten) just as we do splendēre (to gleam). But in order to denote this sudden burst of light from the clouds their usage was to shorten the middle syllable so as to make it fulgěre.
LVII
What do I think myself about the matter, you ask. 1 For up to this point I have been reproducing the opinions of others. Well, I will tell you. There is lightning when light bursts out suddenly and widely. This occurs when the atmosphere has been changed, by the rarefaction of the clouds, into fire, which has not gathered strength to issue to any considerable distance. There is, I presume, no cause for surprise either that movement rarefies air or that rarefaction kindles fire. In the same way a leaden bullet is liquefied when discharged from a sling, and falls in drops by reason of atmospheric friction just as it would do through fire. Bolts of lightning are more numerous in 2 summer, for the reason that there is most heat at that season. Fire naturally starts more readily when the friction is in warmer air. A flash of lightning which merely gleams and a bolt which is discharged are produced in exactly the same way. But there is less force in the former case and less fuel. To put my opinion on the point shortly: a bolt is just lightning in its most intense form. So 3 then, when a body of the nature of heat or smoke is exhaled from the earth and, meeting with clouds, is for a long time rolled about in their hollows, at last it bursts out. Since it possesses no strength, it is merely a flash. But when lightnings have more material and burn with fiercer glow, they not merely become visible, but also fall to the earth.
LVIII
Some writers are firmly convinced that the lightning 1 bolt always returns to the clouds. Others hold that the bolt settles in the ground, at least when its fuel is heavy, and when it has comparatively little force in its stroke as it glides down. But why, it may be asked, does the bolt make its appearance suddenly, and is there not a continuous trail of fire? It is on account of the extreme rapidity of its motion; it fires the air at the same moment as it bursts through the cloud. By and by when the motion ceases, the flame subsides. For the course of the 2 air that forms the bolt is intermittent, which prevents continuity in the fire. As often as the air by its more violent agitation sets itself on fire it conceives an impulse toward flight. When the internal conflict has been ended by its escape, it is afterwards for the same reason sometimes carried down as far as the earth, and sometimes, if urged down with less force, it is dissipated in air. Why, again, is the course of the lightning oblique? The reason is that the air current of which it is composed is oblique and tortuous. Nature summons fire upward, 3 violence presses it downward, and so it begins to be zigzag. Sometimes, when neither force gives way to the other, the fire is at the same moment urged toward the upper and depressed toward the nether regions. Why are the peaks of mountains frequently struck by it? Because they are exposed to the clouds, and objects falling from heaven to earth must pass by way of them.
LIX
I know quite well what you have long been anxious 1 to say and what you demand. I had rather, you say, get rid of fear of thunderbolts than learn all about them. So you may reserve for others your instruction regarding their origin. Let me be delivered from fear of them rather than be informed of their nature. Well, I will follow your invitation, for I quite allow that some moral should be attached to all studies and all discourse. As we dive into 2 the secrets of nature and treat of things in the heavens, the soul must be delivered from its errors and from time to time reassured. Even the learned who devote themselves exclusively to this pursuit require such reassurance; not in order to escape the arrows of fortune, for her missiles are hurled on us from every side, but in order to bear them with resolution and constancy. Unvanquished we may be, unassailed we cannot be, though meantime the hope sometimes insinuates itself that even this is possible. How? you exclaim. Despise death and 3 then everything that leads to death is despised, be it war or shipwreck, or the jaws of wild beasts, or the weight of roofs rushing down with sudden fall. What more can they do than part the body from the soul? And this parting no care can shun, no good fortune can remove, no power can prevent. Other features in human lot are variously 4 assigned; to death’s call all are alike subject. Whether heaven is propitious or wrathful, die we must.
Let courage be derived from our very despair. The most cowardly of animals which nature has created for flight, if they find no way of escape open to them, show fight with their unwarlike body. In fact, no foe is more deadly than one into whom a tight corner has put courage. Far more violent resistance is offered to death through necessity than through valour. A desperate soul 5 shows as much daring as a courageous, probably more. Let us assume that, so far as concerns death, we are given over to it; and so we are. The fact is so, Lucilius; we are all destined to death. All this nation that you see, all the people you can anywhere suppose to exist, will some day soon be recalled by nature to the grave. There is no question of the fact, only of the day. Sooner or later we must all go to the one place. Well, then, 6 does not he seem to you the most fearful and silliest of men who by great entreaty seeks to delay death? Would you not despise a man who was set in a company of those appointed to death if he asked by way of favour to be allowed to be the last to lay his head upon the block? We do the same in setting such store upon a little delay in the time of death. Capital punishment is the sentence on all mankind, and the sentence is most just. We 7 possess what is wont to be regarded as the greatest consolation that those sentenced to the extreme penalty could enjoy; the circumstances of all being the same, our fate is the same. If handed over by a judge or magistrate to execution, we should follow and render obedience to our executioner; what difference does it make whether it is by order of another or of our own accord that we go to death?
How foolish you must be, how forgetful of your feebleness if you are afraid of death every time it thunders! Does your abiding safety really depend on this? Will life be secure if you escape the 8 lightning? You will be a victim of the sword, of a stone, of a fever. The lightning is not the most serious of dangers, it is only the most conspicuous. Your fate, I should think, would not be a bad one if the inconceivable rapidity of your death prevented any sense of it, if your death was the occasion of sacrificial ceremonies, if even when you breathe your last, you are not quite a superfluity, but remain as a sign of some great event. Your 9 fate is surely not bad if you are buried along with the bolt of lightning. And yet you are in panic at a crash in the sky, you tremble at the sound of a hollow cloud; as often as there is a flash you are ready to give up the ghost. Well then, is it in your judgment more creditable to die of sheer chicken-heartedness than to be killed by lightning? Rather, say I, confront all the more resolutely the threats of the heavens, and when the universal world is in flames around you, consider that in such a mighty mass you have nothing to lose. But if you can bring yourself to believe that 10 that wreck of heaven, that conflict of the stormy winds, is aimed at you, if it is on your account that the clouds are piled up and collide and roar, if it is for your destruction that such a mass of fire is scattered abroad, then you may surely regard it as some consolation that your death has cost so dear! But there will then be no room for such a reflection. The fate of one struck by lightning removes all fear. Among other advantages it includes this, that it anticipates your expectation; no man ever was afraid of lightning except one who had escaped it.