 1.483–634. Lucretius next turns to the basic truths of physics. Body comes in minute and physically indivisible portions, atoms—although Lucretius does not use this Greek loan-word, and prefers a series of circumlocutions such as ‘first beginnings of things’ (primordia rerum), ‘seeds’, and ‘matter’ (materies, derived from mater, ‘mother’), which serve his poetic purposes by evoking the creative powers of these primary particles. It is by their combination into complex structures that all phenomenal beings are generated.