ℹ️ This corpus has no verse-level morphological tagging. Lemmas come mainly from word-level tagging of other books in the same language (not from this verse), falling back to dictionary form-matching for the rest. Rare homographs can still be misread; verify against the original and a specialist lexicon where precision matters.
ℹ️ The Chinese and English alongside are this site's own translation, made directly from the original text on this page (not the CUV or the WEB, which follow the Masoretic Text and a different textual tradition).
Wherefore, taking up a manly and sober spirit, set your weapons in opposition to the beast that bristles with arms, and do not give way at all, troubled by the things in which it grows bold; for you will have untold glory if, conquering, you carry off from it the seven crowns, for the sake of which the contest and the wrestling lies before us, according to the teacher Paul. For she who has first beaten down the devil and put to death the seven heads becomes mistress of the seven crowns of virtue, having striven through the seven great contests of chastity. For one head of the dragon is incontinence and luxury; she who crushes this is wreathed with the crown of self-control. Another head is cowardice and effeminacy; she who tramples this carries off the crown of martyrdom. Another head is unbelief and folly and likewise the other advantages of wickedness; she who has worked these down and destroyed them carries off the honors set upon them, the strength of the dragon being thus variously shattered. For indeed the ten horns and stings which it was said to bear upon its heads are the ten oppositions, O fair virgins, to the Decalogue, with which it is wont to gore and strike the souls of most people, devising and contriving the contrary to the commandment, 'You shall love the Lord your God,' and to the subsequent ordinances. For behold its horn, fiery and bitter—fornication—with which it strikes the incontinent; behold adultery, behold falsehood, behold avarice, behold theft, and the others kindred and akin to these, as many as have power about its man-slaying heads; which you, when Christ fights alongside you, shall shatter and receive, garlanding your divine heads with the crowns of victory over the dragon. For it is ours to prefer the better things and to set them before the things earthborn, having received reason as sovereign and self-determining and outside all necessity, so as to choose what pleases us with self-mastery, not slaving to fate and chance... so that a person would be not merely human but blessed and good, if, using the human example of Christ and portraying himself after him and imitating him, he would live. For the greatest of all evils ingrained in most people is to refer the causes of their sins to the motions of the stars and to say that our life is steered by the necessities of fate, just as those who with great arrogance gaze at the stars; for, having trusted in conjecture rather than in thinking—which lies between truth and falsehood—they were greatly deceived from the vision of the things that truly are. Wherefore, if you are present, O Virtue, now that the discourse which you yourself commanded, O mistress, to be spoken has been fulfilled by me, I will then try, with you contending and breathing alongside me, against those who are harsh and dispute, saying that we do not speak truly when we assert that man is self-determining, to make clear that 'by their own presumptuous deeds they have griefs beyond their portion,' choosing the pleasant before the profitable. VIRTUE: But I am present and I contend alongside you; for the discourse will be perfectly adorned once these things too are appended.
THECLA: Again, then, let us first speak as best we can about such matters, laying bare their charlatanry, in which they grow bold, as though they alone had comprehended with what sorts of figures the heaven is adorned, according to the Chaldean hypotheses. For they say that the circumference of the world is likened to the revolutions of a turned sphere, with the earth holding the place of center and point. For since the revolution is spherical, they say it is necessary that, according to the like distances of the same intervals, the earth happens to be at the middle of the whole, around which the heaven, being older than it, revolves. For if from a point and center a circumference is constituted, which seems to be a circle, and it is impossible for a circle to be drawn without a point—a circle being impossible without a point—how, they say, was not the earth constituted before all things, and the chaos and depth in it? For into chaos indeed and depth the wretches have slipped down in their error, because, though knowing God, they did not glorify or thank him as God, but became vain in their reasonings, and their senseless heart was darkened—and that too when even the wise among them have said that nothing earthborn is more honored or more ancient than the Olympians. Wherefore those who have known Christ are not, in truth, always children, as are the Greeks, who, having buried the truth under myths and fictions rather than under skill of arguments, and having fitted the misfortunes of men to the heavenly things, are in no way ashamed to map out the circuit of the inhabited world with geometrical theorems and figures. And introducing that the heaven is adorned with images of winged creatures and swimming creatures and land creatures, and that the qualities of the stars were fashioned from the misfortunes that befell men of old, so that the motions of the planets depend, according to them, upon such bodies. For they say the stars revolve about the nature of the twelve signs of the zodiac, drawn by the motion of the zodiacal circle, so that through their commingling the things that happen to many are seen, according to their conjunctions and effluences with one another, and their risings and settings. For all the heaven, being spherical and using the earth as center and point according to them—because all the straight lines falling from the circumference to the earth are equal to one another—is encompassed by the circles surrounding it; of which the greatest is the meridian, and second the one called the horizon that cuts it into equal parts, and third the equator that further divides these. On either side of this are two tropics, the summer and the winter; the one toward the northern, the other toward the southern. According to these is the so-called axis, about which are the Bears, and the antarctic outside the tropics. And the Bears, revolving about themselves and weighing down the axis through the poles, accomplish the motion of the whole world, having their heads toward each other's flanks and being undefiled by our horizon, since the zodiacal circle touches all the circles, making its motion oblique; and in it there is a number of signs, which are called the twelve twelfth-parts, having their beginning from Aries down to Pisces; which they represent as having been set among the stars for reasons kept secret—saying that Aries is the one that carried Helle daughter of Athamas and Phrixus across to the Scythians, and the Bull's-head was set, in honor of Zeus, for the bull that ferried Europa across to Crete; and the so-called Galaxy (Milky Way) circle, which is said to have flowed forth from the breasts of Hera for Heracles, from the joining of Pisces up to Aries, by the commands of Zeus. So that, according to them, before Europa and Phrixus and the Dioscuri and the other signs set among the stars from men and beasts, there was as yet no genesis (birth-fate), but without genesis our more ancient forebears lived. For we must make the attempt, lest somehow the falsehood prevail, blunting it like physicians with the curative drugs of arguments and so quenching it, viewing the truth in this way.
If it were better for men to be subject to genesis (birth-fate) than not to exist, O wretches, for what reason was there not genesis from the very moment when the race of men first sprang up? But if there was, what need of those recently set among the stars—Lion, Crab, Twins, Virgin, Bull, Scales, Scorpion, Ram, Archer, Fishes, Goat-horned, Water-pourer, Perseus, Cassiopeia, Cepheus, Pegasus, Hydra, Crow, Cup, Lyre, Dragon, and the rest—through which, when the heaven was, as you allege, adorned, the many comprehended this 'mathematical,' or rather 'accursed,' foreknowledge? Either, then, there was genesis even among those before, and the constituting of these signs is vain; or there was not, and God transferred life into a better state and conduct, since those before lived a worse span of time. But the more ancient were better than those of now, whence they were also called the golden race. There is no genesis, then. If the sun, coursing over the circles and traversing the signs in its annual revolutions, accomplishes the changes and the turnings of the seasons, how did those who came to be before the signs were set among the stars and the heaven was adorned with them survive, when as yet summer, autumn, winter, spring had not been distinguished, by which the nature of the body grows and is held together? But they did survive, and became longer-lived and more robust than those of now, God likewise then directing the seasons. The heaven, then, is not embroidered with such figures. If the sun and the moon and the other stars—which came to be for the determining and guarding of the numbers of time and the order of heaven and the turnings of the seasons—are divine and better than men, it is necessary that they too lead a better and blessed and peaceful life, differing much from our life in righteousness and virtue, moving with a well-ordered and happy motion. But if they contrive and effect the misfortunes and evil-mindedness of mortals, busying themselves about licentiousness and the changes and turnings of life, then they are more wretched than men, looking down to the earth and to the perishable and lawless deeds, and conducting themselves in no way better than men—if indeed our life depends on their effluence and motion.
If every action does not come about without desire, nor indeed desire without lack, but the Divine is without lack, then it is unconceiving of wickedness. And if the nature of the stars is ranked nearer to God, being better than the virtue of the better men, then the stars are unconceiving of vice and without lack. And otherwise: everyone of those who are persuaded will agree with us that the sun and the moon and the stars are divine and far removed from vice and incapable of the earthborn deeds, being unsusceptible of the passion of pleasure and grief; for such abominable cravings do not belong to the heavenly things. But if they are outside these and are by nature without lack, how do they contrive for men the things which they themselves do not will and outside of which they are? Those who define that man is not self-determining, but say that he is steered by the inescapable necessities of fate and by unwritten ordinances, commit impiety against God himself, introducing him as the bestower and maker of human evils. For if he himself harmoniously governs all the circular motion of the stars by an unfailing and unconceiving wisdom, directing the helm of the inhabited world, but the stars accomplish for life the qualities of vice and virtue, dragging men by the bonds of necessity into these, they declare God to be the cause and giver of evils. But God is to all the cause of no harm whatsoever. There is no genesis, then. Everyone who is even a little intelligent will agree that the Divine is just, good, wise, true, beneficial, the cause of no evils, unmingled with passion, and everything of the sort. And if the just are better than the unjust, and injustice is abominable to them, and God rejoices in righteousness, being just, while injustice is hateful to him, being contrary and inimical to righteousness, then God is not the cause of injustice. — If the beneficial is in every way good, and self-control is beneficial to household and life and friends, then self-control is good. And if self-control is by nature good, and licentiousness is contrary to self-control, and what is contrary to the good is evil, then licentiousness is evil. And if licentiousness is by nature evil, and according to licentiousness adulteries and thefts and angers and murders come about, then the licentious life is by nature evil; but the Divine is unmingled with passions. There is no genesis, then. — If the self-controlled are superior to the incontinent, and incontinence is abominable to them, and God rejoices in self-control, being unconceiving of passions, then incontinence is hateful even to God. And that the action according to self-control, being a virtue, is superior to that according to incontinence, being a vice, one may learn from kings, from rulers, from generals, from women, from children, from citizens, from masters, from servants, from tutors, from teachers; for each of these, exercising self-control, is beneficial both to himself and to the community, but being licentious is harmful both to himself and to the community. And if there is some difference between catamites and men, and between the licentious and the self-controlled, and the way of the brave and self-controlled is superior, while that of the contrary is worse, and the former are near to God and friends of God, but the latter are far off and enemies, then those who assert genesis define injustice and righteousness to be the same thing, effeminacy and manliness, incontinence and self-control—which is impossible. For if the good is contrary to the evil, and the unjust is evil, and to this the just is contrary, and the just is good, and the good is an enemy of the evil, and the evil is unlike the good, then the just is other than the unjust. God, then, is not the cause of evils, nor does he rejoice in evils—as the argument itself has established—being good. And if there are some who are wicked, they are wicked according to a deficiency of mind, and not according to genesis, having griefs beyond their portion by their own presumptuous deeds. If genesis brings it about that someone slays another and bloodies his hands with murder, but the law forbids this, punishing the murderers and by threat warning off the decrees of genesis—such as to do wrong, to commit adultery, to steal, to poison—then the law is contrary to genesis. For whatever genesis decrees, these the law forbids, and whatever the law forbids, these genesis compels to be done. The law, then, is at war with genesis. And if it is at war, then the lawgivers are not lawgivers according to genesis; for in laying down decrees contrary to genesis they dissolve genesis. Either, then, there is genesis and there ought not to be laws, or there are laws and they are not according to genesis. But it is impossible for anyone to be born and for anything to be formed without genesis; for they say that one cannot even move a finger without fate. According to genesis, then, Minos and Draco and Lycurgus and Solon and Zaleucus, being born lawgivers, framed laws forbidding adulteries, murders, violence, plunderings, thefts—as though these did not exist and come about according to genesis. But if these too are according to genesis, then the laws are not according to genesis; for then genesis would be abolished by itself, annulling itself and warring with itself, here laying down laws forbidding adulteries and murders and punishing and exterminating the wicked, and there working murders and adulteries. But this is impossible; for nothing is so monstrous as to be at enmity with itself and hostile to itself and dissolving itself and disadvantageous to itself. There is no genesis, then. — If everything whatsoever comes about according to genesis, and nothing is apart from genesis, then the law too must have come about by genesis. But the law abolishes genesis, teaching virtue to be teachable and to accrue from diligence, and vice to be avoidable and to grow from lack of instruction. There is no genesis, then. — If genesis makes us wrong one another and be wronged by one another, what need of laws? But if it is so that they may requite those who sin, God caring for those who are wronged, it would have been better not to make men wicked according to fate than, after making them, to correct them by laws. But God is good and wise and does the better things. There is no genesis, then. — Either upbringings and habits are the causes of sins, or the passions of the soul and the desires through the body. Whichever of these is the cause, God is not the cause. — If it is better to be just than unjust, why does not man become such of himself from his genesis? But if afterward, in order that he may become better, he is brought to soberness by lessons and laws, then he is brought to soberness as self-determining, and not as being evil by nature. — If the wicked are by nature wicked according to genesis by the appointments of providence, they are not blameworthy and worthy of punishment from the laws, living according to their own nature, since they are unable to be changed. — And otherwise: if the good, living according to their own nature, are praiseworthy, genesis being the cause of the good being good, then neither are the wicked, living according to their own nature, to be blamed before a just judge. And if it must be said plainly, he who lives according to the nature that belongs to him sins in nothing; for he did not make himself such, but fate did, and he lives borne along by its motion under inescapable necessities. No one, then, is wicked. But there are wicked, and vice is blameworthy and hateful to God, as the argument has established, while virtue is dear and praiseworthy, God having ordained a law avenging evils. There is no fate, then.
But why do I dwell so long upon these refutations and draw out my discourse to such length, when I have already set forth the more necessary and useful points for persuasion and for assent to what is profitable, and have made plain to all, even from a few arguments, the inconsistency of their contrivance? So that even a child may now clearly see and perceive the error: namely, that it lies with us to do good or evil, and not in the stars. For there are two impulses within us: the desire that belongs by nature to the flesh, and that which belongs to the soul, and these two differ from one another. Hence they have received two names: the one of virtue, the other of vice. And we ought to obey the most beautiful and golden guidance of virtue, choosing what is best in preference to what is base. But of these things enough now, and I will check my discourse. For after the words on chastity I am ashamed, and I blush, to be forced to bring forward the opinions of the astrologers, or of those vain speculators among men, who waste the time of their life in conceit, busying themselves with nothing but mythical fictions. These gifts, then, O lady Virtue, let them be brought to you from us also, woven together from God-spoken words. EUBOULION: How exceedingly combative and glorious Thecla was, O Gregorion! GREGORION: What then, if you had heard her herself discoursing fluently and with a nimble tongue, with great grace and delight? So that one who attended would be filled with wonder, and her beauty bloomed forth in her words, since she carried on as though truly and vividly picturing the things she described, while her face flushed deep red with modesty; for she is by nature wholly white, both in body and in soul. EUBOULION: Rightly do you say these things, O Gregorion, and there is no falsehood in any of them. For I came to know her wisdom also from her other noble deeds, and I could tell how many and what kind of things she accomplished, making display of her surpassing love toward Christ, and how often she appeared illustrious, confronting the great and foremost trials of the martyrs, possessing zeal equal to her eagerness and bodily strength matching the vigor of her resolves. GREGORION: Most true is what you too say; but let us not linger. For concerning these matters there will often be occasion for us to converse again. Now, however, I must first report to you the discourses of the remaining virgins, as I undertook to do—rather, those of Tysiane and Domnina; for these are the ones who still remain.