tribes should then have risen
More, and of ampler make, herself new-formed,
In flower of youth, and _Ether_ all mature.[804]

Of these birds first, of wing and plume diverse,
Broke their light shells in spring-time: as in spring
Still breaks the grasshopper his curious web,
And seeks, spontaneous, foods and vital air.

Then rushed the ranks of mortals; for the soil,
Exuberant then, with warmth and moisture teemed.
So, o'er each scene appropriate, myriad wombs
Shot, and expanded, to the genial sward
By fibres fixt; and as, in ripened hour,
Their liquid orbs the daring foetus broke
Of breath impatient, nature here transformed
Th' assenting earth, and taught her opening veins
With juice to flow lacteal; as the fair
Now with sweet milk o'erflows, whose raptured breast
First hails the stranger-babe, since all absorbed
Of nurture, to the genial tide converts.
Earth fed the nursling, the warm ether clothed,
And the soft downy grass his couch compressed.[805]

[Footnote 803: The doctrine of "spontaneous generations" is still more
explicitly announced in book ii. "Manifest appearances compel us to
believe that animals, though possessed of sense, are generated from
senseless atoms. For you may observe living worms proceed from foul
dung, when the earth, moistened with immoderate showers, has contracted
a kind of putrescence; and you may see all other things change
themselves, similarly, into other things."--Lucretius, "On the Nature of
Things," bk. i. l. 867-880.]

[Footnote 804: Ether is the father, earth the mother of all organized
being.--Id., ib., bk. i. l. 250-255.]

[Footnote 805: Id., ib., bk. v. l. 795-836.]

A state of pure savagism, or rather of mere animalism, was the primitive
condition of man. He wandered naked in the woods, feeding on acorns and
wild fruits, and quenched his thirst at the "echoing waterfalls," in
company with the wild beast.

Through the remaining part of book v. Lucretius describes how speech was
invented; how society originated, and governments were instituted; how
civilization commenced; and how religion arose out of ignorance of
natural causes; how the arts of life were discovered, and how science
sprang up. And all this, as he is careful to tell us, without any divine
instruction, or any assistance from the gods.

Such are the physical theories of the Epicureans. The primordial
ele