De Rerum Natura
Lucretius
Lucretius. De Rerum Natura. William Ellery Leonard. E. P. Dutton. 1916.
- And when perchance, in mingling seed with his,
- The female hath o'erpowered the force of male
- And by a sudden fling hath seized it fast,
- Then are the offspring, more from mothers' seed,
- More like their mothers; as, from fathers' seed,
- They're like to fathers. But whom seest to be
- Partakers of each shape, one equal blend
- Of parents' features, these are generate
- From fathers' body and from mothers' blood,
- When mutual and harmonious heat hath dashed
- Together seeds, aroused along their frames
- By Venus' goads, and neither of the twain
- Mastereth or is mastered. Happens too
- That sometimes offspring can to being come
- In likeness of their grandsires, and bring back
- Often the shapes of grandsires' sires, because
- Their parents in their bodies oft retain
- Concealed many primal germs, commixed
- In many modes, which, starting with the stock,
- Sire handeth down to son, himself a sire;
- Whence Venus by a variable chance
- Engenders shapes, and diversely brings back
- Ancestral features, voices too, and hair.
- A female generation rises forth
- From seed paternal, and from mother's body
- Exist created males: since sex proceeds
- No more from singleness of seed than faces
- Or bodies or limbs of ours: for every birth
- Is from a twofold seed; and what's created
- Hath, of that parent which it is more like,
- More than its equal share; as thou canst mark,-
- Whether the breed be male or female stock.