Lucretius III 670-710

670-678: If the mind is immortal, why do humans not remember lives in previous bodies? 

671: nascentibus dative with the notion of giving in insinuatur; "inserted into the body for [persons/animals] as they are born."  

672: super adverbial "in addition (to our current lives)." 

676: id ab leto iam longius errat "this does not now stray very far away from death," i.e., is as good as death.  

677: fateare necessest "it is necessary that you admit;" necessest is often used with the simple subjunctive (as well as accusative and infinitive; and ut and subjunctive), and Lucr. uses this phrase ten times in DRN, almost always at the end of the line. Cf. lines 470, 578, and 766 in this book. quae introduces a fused relative clause, of which the antecedent is extracted from animi potestas in line 674: haec animi potestas quae.  

679-712: The mind and life-force are so closely integrated with the body at all stages of life that their having separate existences is impossible. The argument is subtle. In the first part, Lucr. argues that a pre-existing soul entering the completed body of a person at birth would be a part of the body, not spread through it. In the second part he argues that if a pre-existing life-force were to enter the completed body of a person at birth in such away that it reconfigured itself to fully connect with the new body, then the re-arrangement would constitute the death of the former life-force and the birth of a new one. 

679-685. The force of the conditional is intertwined with the tone of the passage. The sentence as a whole relies on the reader's knowledge of what is obviously true on the one hand and false on the other to create a sarcastic tone. The form of the protasis (solitast) is simple fact, but refers to a proposition that Lucr. has explicitly rejected. Thus, the apodosis (haud ita conveniebat) sarcastically denies a proposition that is obviously true. The result is that conveniebat has the force of a present contrary-to-fact: "If indeed consciousness and life-force really do enter us at birth, then of course it was never suitable all along that they grow up with the body [which clearly they do.]" The thrust of the sentence suggests the denial of a fact obviously true now, as shown by the sequence of videatur. Likewise, the vivid convenit (line 685): "It must be that it lives by itself in a pen ... and yet it manages to affect the entire body." 

680: solitast (solita est) is present perfect. 

682-683: conveniebat is impersonal, and always used with the infinitive in Lucr.; supply inferri from line 680. In the clause of result that answers ita, uti ... videatur, the subject is animi vivata potestas (line 680). cresse = creavisse, complementary infinitive with videatur.  

684: solam modifies animi vivatam potestatatem extracted from the nominative in line 680.  

685: convenit vivid present tense balancing conveniebat in line 682 and authorizing vivere in line 684. ut...affluat clause of result, and again sarcastic in tone, for this seems an impossibility to Lucr.  

690: quod fieri totum: this is the indirect statement dependent on docet at the end of the line; quod totum refers to the paired statements that have been denied in 686-689 (i.e., that the anima is free from birth and death, and slips into the body from outside). manifesta ... res: this is the fact that every part of the body has sensation, and so must contain anima (what about hair and fingernails?), as proven by the example of the teeth in the parenthetical remark of lines 691-694.  

691: conexa est: the subject is an understood anima.  

692: participentur < participor (1), here deponent.  

693: morbus Lucr. is describing a toothache.  

694: frugibus the grains found in porridge.  

697: articulis- < articulus, -i (m.) "a tiny joint (e.g., of a finger)" is diminutive < artus, -us (m.).  

700: tanto quique magis "by so much more," an usual idiom whose meaning is made clear by context. cum corpore fusa: the sense is "infused with the body," where English would be more likely to say "infused into the body;" the sense is clearly that the anima would be broken into component parts, and so perish, in the process of dripping through all the tiny parts of the body.  

702: caulas < caulae, -arum (f.) "passages."  

703-710: with a bit of rearrangement, we can see the structure like this (main ideas are underlined and subordinators are in bold): 

ut  

cibus disperit  

cum in membra atque artus diditur omnis, atque aliam naturam sufficit ex se, 

sic  

quamvis anima atque animus integra recens in corpus eunt,  

tamen  

anima atque animus in manando dissoluuntur, 

dum particulae quasi per caulas omnis diduntur in artus 

quibus (ref. = particulae) haec animi natura creatur, 

quae (ref. = natura) nunc in nostro dominatur corpore nata ex illa 

quae (ref. = illa) tunc periit partita per artus. 

A simplified syntax tree: 

The tree is simplified insofar as it omits both the initial comparative adverbial clause and the facts that: (1) the main verb phrase (dissolvuntur) is modified by a concessive clause, (2) adverb phrase is further modified by three relative clauses, and (3) adverb phrase 3 is further modified by a temporal clause.  

The embedding of the relative clauses under adverb phrase 2 starting at dum can be visualized like this: 

705: integra neuter plural referring to both anima and animus.  

710: illa [natura animi]: we learn from the relative clause that the reference is to the very animus that was dissolved and reassembled as an entirely new animus. partita has a causal or temporal sense: "because/while it was dispersed through the limbs."