« Fit image see, where’er a beam of light,
Through chink or crevice, streams in darkened room: A thousand bodies, in a thousand ways,
Incessant conflict wage, sole or in groups,
Nor cease in unions and disunions vexed.
Thus smallest things example give of great,
And from their conflict you may well conceive
What elemental strife torments the Void. »
Lucrèce, De la nature (Livre II, Ier siècle av. J-C)
Through chink or crevice, streams in darkened room: A thousand bodies, in a thousand ways,
Incessant conflict wage, sole or in groups,
Nor cease in unions and disunions vexed.
Thus smallest things example give of great,
And from their conflict you may well conceive
What elemental strife torments the Void. »
Lucrèce, De la nature (Livre II, Ier siècle av. J-C)
based on a drawing of a comet from a cometary atlas of the Han dynasty, China (4th century BC)
