It was the hour when the sun had passed beyond the middle of its axis, and, sloping down and leaving the summits of the lofty zenith, with night now near, had sent ahead light breezes. But for those two a greater surge of cares rolls on, and their guilty hearts hold burning sorrows. And when shame had turned their eyes from the captured sense, and repelled their wretched gaze from each other's body, and it was no longer granted them to look upon, in untroubled light, their flesh stamped with the fixed brand of sin, they seek garments, that with soft leaves they might cover both their limbs, and that the naked evil might be hidden from their clothing. Nearby stood a fig-tree with shady boughs, its leafy foliage spread wide, whose leaves Adam straightway, taking the moist bark scraped from the trunk, sewed on, and with a green garment consoles his blush.
The tearful woman is clothed with like art, and those parts which the deceitful madness fed with the wretched apple, she clothed with a leaf; those which the cruel tree rendered naked, these she covered the more heavily with the slender tree. And yet a time shall come when he shall heal the crimes of the wood through the wood, and the last Adam shall purge them, and make that very material the medicine of life by which death prevailed: by wood you shall destroy death. A brazen serpent shall hang upon a lofty pole, and, when it shall have feigned the venomous one, it shall purge every venom, and its own form shall slay the ancient dragon. Meanwhile the Father, through the soft places of the green grove, was catching the dewy winds from the clear air. Straightway, with astonished ears, both perceived the Lord present: then in the sad light they dreaded the day, hateful, witness to the chosen crime.
For if perchance a chasm should open for them with vast caverns, or the earth should show a sudden gaping, it would not irk the trembling pair to descend with a headlong leap; even if the sentence of death were now at hand, let the care of soothing their shame yet repair this too. Whether they should give themselves to flames or waters, or an avenging right hand should assail their breasts with the sword in a cruel wound—thus the wretched pair, when first they deserved it, long for death not yet known by trial; their beginnings mark the end, and foretell that like griefs shall be present, when the last age of the world shall have consumed its old age, and when a sudden brightness shall have struck all things—when, at the trumpet's blare, the messenger of the coming of the Judge shall terrify the shaken world:
Then, when the Shepherd has separated the pure lambs, with the unlike goats set apart in another quarter, while a chasm divides them through the midst — a whirlpool that fills them with sulphurous waves, rolling its billowing fires, in a stagnant lake of flame, where once the cloud of Sodom is said, drawing down a storm, to have poured out drop by drop the scattered thunderbolt upon their crimes, when foul night rained fires, and falling deaths dripped everywhere from heaven through the burning air. Even so, sad rivers, sent from the fire-bearing fount of Gehenna, flowed out into alien ages. But those whom the Judge in that dread hour decrees to live on after death, with the burning of unending punishment, a sentence heavier than death shall snatch away from the death they long for.
And though it were better, with their bodies scattered limb from limb, to take an everlasting sleep beneath a harsh death, yet the urn will vomit them out unwilling, whose only wish is to be able to die once more and be rid of the sense of grieving. But so shall the flame of the burning furnace receive them, that in consuming it never ends its fuel. Meanwhile the first pair, with vain effort, rush through the wastes, and think their deeds hidden by safe stealth, longing to have lain concealed in blind darkness. What use is it, unhappy one, to turn your eyes away from the Judge? The Judge beholds you: why will you not yourself look, when you are seen in the open? The lovely sun is not darkened if downcast eyes dread its heavy light, and weak sight cannot bear the shining orb. Then thus first does God rebuke with terrible voice, and, though knowing where the wretched one is, questions Adam.
He, bringing forth a trembling voice from his fearful breast, scarcely returns these few words: 'Your terror, O Most High, settling upon my mind, drove me to seek a hiding-place. For because my body was naked, its limbs uncovered, I blushed, I confess, and fled through hidden places from your presence.' And He says: 'And who has struck this sudden shame into your heart, and whence this new sight? For neither fleece before, nor any woven garment, has ever veiled you with a covering. The unadorned form, better content with its own comeliness, pleased itself as its own judge; but after, the covenant broken, your taste grazed the forbidden shoots, the one natural covering no longer suffices you. Until now hidden even from the naked, the bared parts now lie exposed, because an obscene motion accuses the shameful body.'
He, when he saw himself convicted in the clear light, and the just examination had betrayed the whole guilty man, does not with humble prayer beg pardon for his crime, nor plead with vows or tears, nor does a suppliant confession forestall the deserved penalty with contrite weeping. And now made wretched, he is not yet pitiable. He rears up in his mind, and pride, kindled by timid complaints and let loose, is carried into insane words: 'Alas, the woman ruinously joined to me by your own giving! Whom you gave as companion to wretched me under the first law, she, herself overcome by sinister counsels, overcame me, and persuaded me to take the apple already known to her. She is the head of this evil; the crime arose from her. Credulous I was, yes — but you taught me to believe, granting wedlock and weaving its sweet bonds.'
'And would that the happy celibate life, which once alone flourished, had endured, nor ever felt the bonds of such a wife, unsubjected to a wicked companion!' Moved therefore by this thought, the stern Creator addresses mourning Eve with lofty words: 'Why, in your falling, did you drag your wretched husband down with you? Not content, deceiving woman, with your own fall, did you cast the manly mind down from its high citadel?' She, ashamed, her cheeks suffused with a sorrowful blush, deceived, cries out that the dragon was the author of the crime, who persuaded her to touch the fruit with a forbidden bite. After this the sentence pronounces its final law, and thus with its first utterance marked out the guilty serpent: 'You, snake, by whose fraud the woman sinned, and who herself made the man a partner in the error, guilty on account of both, you shall pay for what both did.'
'Nor shall your crest stand firm upon a lofty breast, but, grovelling, you shall roll your cunning body along the ground; and, that your winding coils may run in fearful flight, it shall be no step but a slither, and you shall follow your own self through your bends, and living bonds shall knot themselves in spirals. Then, because of the food you urged upon the hearts of the wretched, seizing at the earth you shall feed on empty pasture; and driven from the upper world at certain months, shut within the earth you shall lack the common sun. Among all the living creatures that now fill the world you shall be the author of death, and become a heavy horror to all. Chiefly the unhappy woman, together with her offspring to come, shall so lay up enmities with running hatred, that seeds may hand down to seeds the wars of harming. Ever pressing on, you shall dog the heel of the frightened one;'
'yet she shall crush your head, and at the last conquer the conqueror.' After this the Judge, roused against astonished Eve: 'But you, woman who violated the first law, receive what remains for the declining span of your life. You shall endure the rule of the marriage-bed, and shall fear as master him whom I had given as companion: subject, you shall obey his commands, and with bowed head grow accustomed to the man's will. And soon, when your conceiving womb has felt the child within, you shall attest the belly's burden with groaning, and your anxious inward parts shall carry for you the enclosed, growing bundle; until, the time run out, fulfilling its loathings, the natural evil is paid under the avenging birth, and the offspring, bringing forth life, becomes thus the punishment of its parent. Why should I recount the sundry perils that follow a mother's? For when you, woman, worn out with hardest labor, have brought forth by such a birth the offspring you longed for,'
'you shall sometimes, bereaved, bewail an empty grief.' Meanwhile trembling Adam has long awaited what the terrible sentence at last holds in store for him. To him the Father says: 'Now with attentive ears do you too receive what you deserve, you whom a fickle woman overcame. The earth, once undefiled beneath its fair growth, now not faithful enough, nor simple with pure seed, shall show its former surface corrupted throughout the world; and, by your example forever rebelling against you, armed with briars and thistles it shall learn to resist. Or if, yielding, it succumbs to the breaking plough and is subdued by the fixed, biting tooth of the ploughshare, the rich, tilled fields shall deceive you with lying growth.'
'For instead of the wheaten fruit, darnel shall rise up, and you shall grieve over counterfeit crops and empty oat-husks. Thus the acres shall scarcely yield the bread wrung from them, which want, straining with ceaseless sweat, may snatch, and the penal fare shall claim as its due the very lure of food. The fodder shall make your life the equal of the brutes, as you seek at once the sap and pasture of herbs; your belly, weighed down, shall be burdened with a like dung. Long shall your toilsome age be turned through such things, until the ages set the appointed end for you, and the limbs compacted of clay are in time dissolved. Formed of mud, you shall be reduced again into the field. Yet first you shall behold your own child's death run on ahead of your own, and see your punishments in your offspring, that the image of death may be seen still more to be feared;'
'that you may learn what it is to have sinned, what it is to weep for the dead, and what it is to die. And lest by chance any of the evils be wanting to you which the corrupted world brings forth to chastise, a sharper wrath shall be mingled with your measureless grief; for when the earliest times bring you forth sons, devouring envy shall contend within the narrow bound of the world. Nor shall the empty world, wide as it stretches, suffice, and the round earth shall be too strait for two brothers. One brother shall rise up for the other's death, and shall stain the new earth with kindred blood. Thereafter posterity, doomed to suffer sundry toils, shall pay in many mischances its mortal debts, until the appointed end, brought on, dissolves the old world, all that thrives dies away, and the finish refutes what once arose.' He had heard, and the terrified earth gave a tremor.
These things done, the Father clothed them both in goatskins, and cast them out from the holy seat of paradise. Then together they fell to the earth, and enter the empty world, and range over all things in swift course. Though it shows them varied growths, and meadows painted with grass, and green fields, and springs and rivers, yet to them the world's aspect is deemed foul after yours, O paradise; to those who behold it, the whole thing bristles with horror. And, as is the way of men, what has been lost is loved the more. The ground seems cramped, and to the groaning pair the bound of the narrowed earth is not to be seen and yet presses near. The very day is squalid; they complain that light is withdrawn beneath the sun itself; the stars, hung in the far-off heaven, moan, and the axle-pole once so near is scarcely to be seen.
Then both felt cares of grief mingled with gall, and new emotions; and weeping, beating upon their breasts, burst forth into waves not yet known, and unbidden moisture ran down their intent cheeks. Not otherwise does the living spirit, beguiled by its fallen shell of clay, when its term comes with the age fulfilled, grieve after death for its sins; then it recalls to mind whatever wicked thing it did, then it repents of every lapse of error, condemning itself as its own judge; and were the abundance of past life restored, it would willingly bear whatever labors the commandments might lay upon it. For holy Luke tells of a certain rich man, whom a life dissolving in excessive luxury cherished. Himself buskined with gems and gleaming with gold, he changed his silken robes dyed with twice-boiled purple.
Then, when the season prompted a riotous table, the banquets came running, such as the whole world affords. And when a foreign heap had sent its harvest, the ancient Falernian foamed in cold crystal. Moist cinnamon, too, they mingled with frankincense, and the fumigated house was fragrant with rich amomum. Whatever the sea creates, whatever the earth, whatever the rivers breed, the pale servant, weary on every side, kept bringing with a burden of gold to the tables that gave way beneath it. Then, by chance, the languid poor man lay before the rich man's doors, his body slack, its limbs bound fast, and, a suppliant, begged for aid, grasping at no gifts, but only the leavings, if abundance cast any down; these his fasting belly, waiting, kept begging for.
But to the man who cried aloud the rich one lent no ear, and no pity regarded the languishing pauper. Nor did anyone give to the poor man's sustenance the surplus that fell from the full tables; moreover the sick man's face was despised, and the rotting matter of his wound shuddered at. And though the dogs licked his sores with gentle tongue, and a kindlier, healing creature was present to the weary wounded man, the mind of men alone, ever hard, knew not how to be moved. These things, while conducted under wholly opposite lots, impending death struck both alike, the rich man overtaken first — who never believed this could be; the poor man, at length and scarcely, comes after to the death he longed for, and, victorious, leaves behind his diseases and his limbs.
He indeed, who long flourished on a lofty height, is borne to the tomb amid weeping, his funeral thronged, and, his limbs entombed, is given to a gilded sepulchre, and precious linens cover the raised-up marble. But his spirit, soon sent down to hidden Avernus, fell into eternal punishments through savage fires. From the midst of these, set in a lofty seat, not far off (so indeed it is reckoned, for far from there, as the outcome teaches), he beheld in the bosom of just Abraham the poor man's countenance rejoicing and transformed — unlike him whom, when he lately passed into the light of death, scarcely anyone, generous in burial, on perhaps the fourth day, lest the corpse, swiftly dispersed by nature's law, should send dire contagion to the crowded city, laid, wrapped in a thin veil of torn rags, with nostrils pinched shut, upon the bare earth.
Then, raised on high by angelic hands, he was now rich, now whole; and, in contrast, the proud man, who, holding his hoarded store, had run to waste in ample wealth, thus with parched throat begs drops from the flames: 'O father, who gather the chosen souls into the blessed seat, and dispense rewards to the just according to their merits, these things I do not deserve; but at least I beg one thing, that Lazarus be sent and come, and on his lifted finger bring hither some drop of moisture from there for my burning lips, so that with its refreshment, if it does not quench them all, it may at least for a time soften so great a heat, until my weary limbs may breathe a moment's rest.' As he asks thus, with a hissing mingled with tears, the great-souled patriarch at last so addresses him: 'Cease now to pour forth wild cries in vain, and to mingle empty prayers;'
'not such were the words you gave of old, when, as you dined, he lay for the mere leavings — himself unknown, needy, sick, fasting, empty — when your table could not hold its heaped-up provisions, and the poor man's cry went not to your ears. Wherefore at last, the balance of truth being weighed, each pays out the lot of his former life, and they exchange their turns; and it is now enough that you overflowed with ample goods; let him rejoice at the ending of his evils who grieved at their beginnings: there is now no further term. Moreover, the boundary that girds us with a dreadful path, and the chaos set between, dividing us with a wide-yawning gulf, allows not the sundered parts to be joined in any bond, and denies all passage — so to you forever, as to these.' He, groaning, prays on in vain with reiterated voice.
'If it profits nothing after death to confess the sins committed, nor is your sentence changed by fixed words, then grant me this, which no law forbids: five brothers I left just now on departing the light; to these I beg that one be sent to set the living right, before they fall, thus freed from the flesh, into such torments. For although they persist rebellious with hardened heart, yet if anyone were to return from barred death, they will believe one who has proved it, and will fear to enter into the punishments.' He indeed, demanding, obtains no effect; but us, while life remains, while we thrive in the light, the message of Adam, long dead, terrifies — while there is room for weeping, while no unjust things are asked, and the door is not knocked upon with its bars barred. Behold, we all know what that first man bewailed, who, once driven out, knew not how to return to his ancient seat.
For then, in that very event, he suffered a kind of death, so that by no prayers or tears could he bring back what was lost. From that time the former life began little by little to slip and be carried backward, and the power of evils began to be let loose. Then came sad diseases and sundry pains, and the earth, corrupted enough by dire rankness, suffused certain growths with a deadly juice. Thence savage beasts began to rage, and their now conscious strength then first rouses to the fight those long timid, and claw, tooth, hoof, and horn render them armed. The very elements too then broke their laws, and all things vie to violate their pledge to mortals. The sea is puffed up with winds, the waves roll on, and the stirred deep swells into a strange new tide.
Then for the first time, the heavens veiled in foul gloom, about to chastise the ungrateful toils of men, the clouds poured hail-storms upon the frightened, and the discordant sky begrudged its growths to the lands. Nay rather, the earth itself, turned against itself, denied its increase, belying the promise of the seed it had received. These things the twin first-formed parents were the first then to feel. For how great losses posterity should bear, not one who had a hundred tongues, or a voice of iron, could number; nor could the poet whom Mantua sent, nor the Maeonian bard, sing them out in their varied strains. Who could recount such upheavals? Who, in the end, could unroll in speech all the floods that roll through the ages? Arms roar, the world is shaken with frequent dread, watering blood is poured out, and yet more is thirsted for.
What shall I say of lofty cities with their illustrious throngs given over to the wastes? of peoples scattered by ravaging ruin, and the mangled world emptied of its parts? of masters made subject to servitude, and slaves in turn set above their masters, and perishing by the lot of war — those whom the chance of birth once sent forth from illustrious blood? But if perhaps wars rest for a brief while, of lawsuits armed with statutes raging into strife, of doubtful justice fighting in the forum, where the quarrels of brothers strike no more lightly with pleadings than battles with weapons? But who could note the vows, while the deeds of the guilty cry out? Who could bewail the frauds and thefts, while rapine exults? Or who could weep the lesser crimes? Not even the greatest can be summed up. Yet the lesser too, if reckoned alongside the greatest: for in itself no crime is small before the Judge.
Nor does it matter that all the causes be run through in song. This I will say in few words: after the losses of the men of old, no evil remains that the world does not either perpetrate or endure, full of crimes and toils alike, holding danger in its mischance and guilt in its deed. But you, mighty Christ, to whom it is ever ready to spare, you, the potter, are able to remake the fallen mass, and to fashion anew the vessels long shattered and dissolved. You who lately find the drachma lurking in much dust, the lamps lit by the power of the word; the sheep that had left the fold and strayed in base error, you, the Shepherd, deigning to seek it with swift step, carry back up, and, that it might rejoicing be returned to its own fold, what had been your care becomes your burden.
So that younger son, after he had squandered his exhausted heaps, and his prodigal life was changed, his substance spent, worthily following the base banquets of the swine, longed to fill his belly with cheap husks, until savage hunger, through the long peril of want, at last forced him to give himself back to the father he had offended, and, the guilty man confessing, to be released, his crime remitted. At length the gentle father of his own accord lifts up the prostrate one, and soothes his trembling shame with a caressing voice. The first robe gives fresh adornments to the returned one, and the solemn gathering keeps glad feast, because the offspring, revived as it were from some death, rises again to its own, and new light returns to the bereaved father.
But you, all-powerful Creator of men and of things, although you will that all should stand fast unto faithful salvation, yet you suffer no loss from our death, nor can any harm befall your riches by anyone's perishing; you know not how to be diminished, know not how to be increased, and glory stands firm for you in a kingdom that is full. But to your servants restore what Adam lost; and what the origin of the corrupted stock first took away, let a better life now restore by a second birth. The old form, wrapped in a tattered robe, has grown too foul; laying aside with its guilt the rent garment, O father, hold out the first mantle to your returning child.
You who once, pitying, when you chanced upon him half-dead and cast out on the road, whom savage robbers with murderous blows had stripped of every covering — you, holy one, running the road in the body you had taken on, find the man struck down, and pass him not by: moreover you carry the sick one, on the beast of your own flesh, home under shelter. We too were once given as prey to raging fury; but if now grace, bringing forth oil, and wisdom, wine, should run over our wounds with healing balm, and the foreign care of the Samaritan should commend us to the inn, the stubborn faintness shall be driven off, the body healed. Receive us, you who will not that the causes of dying should increase — us whose devout hearts pour out to you their confessing groans.
As once, together with you, in the time of the flesh's suffering, the robber hanging close by upon the huge gibbet, whom not guilt but only punishment held like to you; he nevertheless, bound in his limbs but not fettered in heart, and though he could not stretch out his palms nailed fast, stretched his mind out, free, along with his voice. And thus, guilty of crimes while he pays the fitting expiation, he snatches martyrdom out of death: to whom, with sagacious end, the greatest care was not to lose such penalties; climbing, he seized the entrance beforehand, and, to be lifted to heaven, held the steep short-cut by a lofty leap. So hold out to us your exalted right hand, illustrious father. May life win us too for perpetual salvation, and, though we are profaned, deceived by the robber's fraud, even as, having compassion on the robber who suffered with you, come to the aid of us robbers in your mercy.