the facts of life

[ursula]

I've been auditing a class on Lucretius; he wrote a long philosophical poem about atoms, why we shouldn't fear the gods, etc. But apparently he explains everything:


Then to those, in the stormy crossing of youth, whose semen is first
winding its way, when the very ripeness of time creates it
in the limbs, images arrive externally from some body,
messengers of a radiant face and beautiful skin color,
which rouse and stimulate spots swollen with much semen,
so that often, as if the whole act had occurred, they pour forth
great waves of moisture and stain what they are wearing.
This semen is excited in us, as we said before,
as soon as the age of adulthood gives strength to our limbs.
For different objects arouse and move different things,
but only the power of a human rouses human seed from a human.
As soon as it goes out, sent forth from its locations,
it departs through the limbs and joints through the entire body,
gathering in fixed places in the groin and stirs up
without delay the very genital parts of the body.
The places are excited and swell with seed and a wish occurs
to send it forth to where the awful desire strains,
and the body seeks that by which the mind is wounded with love.
For generally all fall toward the wound and blood
jets out in the direction from which we are struck by a stroke,
and, if it is close, the red liquid stains the enemy.
So therefore he who receives wounds from the weapons of Venus,
whether a boy with womanly limbs strikes him
or a woman radiating love with her whole body,
from where he is struck, there he tends and longs to have intercourse
and to send fluid drawn from his body into the other body.