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Animal Rights History Timeline » [BCE-CE] Antiquity » Lucretius

Lucretius

On the Nature of Things

A Cow Mourning for Her Calf

[1st c. BCE] Lucretius, "A Cow Mourning For Her Calf" and "Empedocles Eulogized" in On The Nature of Things, Literally Translated into English Prose, by the Rev. John Selby Watson.…To Which is Adjoined the Poetical Version of John Mason Good (London, 1851; Google Books: Online Library of Free eBooks).

Lucretius, in On the Nature of Things proposes that "animals, not less than men, are known to each other" recognizing the suffering of any mother at the loss of her young.

Oft at some consecrated altar-side,
Where fragrant incense burns, a calf lies slain,
And from his breast breathes out the warm life-tide:
But the one mother, o'er the grassy land
Far ranging, sees his cloven hoof-prints plain
And leaves with roving eyes no spot unscanned
For her lost young, and fills with lowings wild
The shady wood; then tireless turns again
To the bare stall, sore stricken for her child.
Naught can the dewy grass, or tender leaf,
Or brimming river-bank, once fondly known
Avail to banish that o'er-mastering grief:
Nor by the sight of other calves, upgrown
In the fair fields, is her sad heart beguiled:
So deeply yearns when for her one, her own.

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Written in the mid first century BCE; Originally published in Brescia, Italy around 1470; First English Edition [of the first book only]: John Evelyn, London, 1656; First Complete English Edition: Thomas Creech, London, 1682; First published in rhyme anonymously in 1799; and published in 1808 in Edinburgh also in Rhyme, by William Hamilton Drummond who would go on to write Humanity for Animals (London, 1830) and The Rights Of Animals, and Man's Obligation to Treat Them With Humanity (London, 1838). (John Watson, "Remarks on the Life and Poem of Lucretius")