Puzzling about a matter of translation. Lucretius, the great Latin poet, wrote ON THE NATURE OF THINGS some time around 58 BC, giving us a book-length rendering of the views of the Greek atomists. The matter of translation I have in mind is Lucretius' decision to refer to "atoms" as "primordia." That word in turn gets translated into English as "first beginnings." This is odd. "Atom," as even a flunk-out of languages like Christopher Faille knows, means "indivisible." Isn't there some word in Latin that would be a better translation for that then "first beginnings"? Oh, I don't know (he looks up the etymology of the English word "indivisible") -- indivisibilus? Well, "primordia" has only four syllables and "indivisibilis" has six. That may have made it easier to use in verse -- easier to rhyme, and to work into the meter as necessary. A further investigation of that would take wa...