On Fate

​In this way this cause ought to be debated, not to seek protection from straying atoms that decline from their path. “The atom declines,” he says. First of all, why? For they had some other force of motion from Democritus, that of impulse, which he calls a blow; and from you, Epicurus, that of gravity and weight. What new cause is there then in nature that makes the atom decline? Or do they cast lots among themselves as to which is to decline and which is not? Or why do they decline by a minimum interval, and not by a larger one? Or why do they decline by one minimum, and not by two or three?

​This is indeed to wish, not to dispute. For you do not say that the atom, pushed from without, is moved from its place and declines, nor that in that void through which the atom is carried there was any cause why it should not be carried straight, nor has any change occurred in the atom itself to prevent it from keeping the natural motion of its weight. Thus, although he brought forward no cause that would effect that declination, he nevertheless thinks he is saying something, while saying that which all minds reject and spit out.

​Nor indeed does anyone seem to me to have more firmly established not only fate but also necessity and the force of all things, and to have destroyed the voluntary motions of the mind, than he who confesses that he could not otherwise resist fate unless he had fled to these fictitious declinations. For, grant that there are atoms—which indeed can in no way be proved to me to exist—yet those declinations of yours would never be explained. For if it is assigned to atoms, so that they are carried by gravity, by the necessity of nature—since it is necessary that every weight should move and be carried when nothing impedes—it is also necessary for them to decline, for certain atoms or, if they wish, for all of them naturally... Fragmenta “And so M. Cicero, in the book which he composed on fate, when he said that this question was extremely obscure and implicated, says that the philosopher Chrysippus also did not extricate himself from it, in these words: ‘Chrysippus, seething and laboring as to how he may explain both that all things happen by fate and that there is something in us, is entangled in this way.’” “And the definition of fate according to Tullius runs through its turns, who says: ‘Fate is the connection of things holding each other in turn through eternity, which is varied by its own order and law, yet in such a way that this variety itself has eternity.’” “Those Homeric verses also support this view, which Cicero translated into Latin: ‘Such are the minds of men, as the father Jupiter himself has illuminated the fruit-bearing lands with his light.’” ”Cicero says that Hippocrates, the most noble physician, left written that he suspected certain brothers to be twins when they began to fall ill at the same time, and their disease grew worse at the same time and was relieved at the same time. These, Posidonius the Stoic, who was much devoted to astrology, used to assert were born under the same constitution of the stars and conceived under the same. Thus, what the physician believed to belong to a very similar temperament of health, this the philosopher-astrologer attributed to the force and constitution of the stars which had been at the time when they were conceived and born.” “And lest the poet be too cheap a witness, accept on the authority of Cicero in what honor this fish was held by P. Scipio Africanus, the famous conqueror of Numantia. These are the words of Cicero in the dialogue on fate: ‘For when Scipio was at his estate at Lavernum, and Pontius was with him, a sturgeon happened to be brought to Scipio, which is caught quite rarely, but is a fish, as they say, especially noble. But when Scipio had invited one or two of those who had come to greet him, and seemed about to invite even more, Pontius whispered in his ear: “Scipio”, he said, “see what you are doing; that sturgeon is for few men.”’”