Alethia (On Truth) 1

Most high and holy God, origin of all power, almighty One, whom it is right neither to comprehend with human minds by sense in any subtle searching of things, nor lawful not to know: for by deep reason we believe You to be God in three, yet three thus one, so that an undivided substance renders the proper kinds of the one nature, preserving its covenants in a holy bond. You are without beginning, likewise perpetually without end, alone ever the same and subject to no age; You are the space of all things — wherever the recess of the mind extends, You exceed it in space and are bounded by none; nor is there any place that can contain You together with Your nursling creatures, nor still less is there any place itself.

Nor is it permitted to the mind to grasp what likeness belongs to You, since, confined by no limit, Your form flees the senses; nor what motion of blessed power quickens You, since You are always wholly everywhere. You are mind, and the inmost substance of the sacred mind; You are reason, and the provident origin of full reason; You are virtue, the very pinnacle of virtue; and assuredly You Yourself are life and the begetter of life and of deep light; You are the true light, O God; You are the cause and the vigor of all things. From You whatever suddenly flashed forth out of nothing has drawn its beginning, and, filled by so great an Author, it either has the force of mind or has received form in mind. Nature, preserved in its perishable parts, proves You its Lord, and the established order confesses the appointed sequence You commanded.

You, distinguishing the docile numbers, weighing the weights, varying the measures, governing the modes and the motion, bid the alternating turns and the perpetual recurrence of things to keep their course and stand fast; and, full of the image of mind, You bid the world, with the moving heavens, now roll its ages for You. You, not content to endow what is created with a single gift — whatever it is that comes through You into use — there is also something more in what is made, and all things are better in the part where they lie hidden, and an inner cause makes them please of themselves and be welcome: some sharpen their own vigor from others; certain opposites, if they contend, have the more peace. Thus, rich Founder, You bind together all things, even akin among opposing elements, and fill them with virtues poured forth from the whole.

And yet, though these things belong to the majesty of creating, You need none of these which You beget; nor does the work of the completed world, that stands fast through You by the firm framework of things, run on for You, nor is it ready at our service. To be able to do all things is Yours; nor is Your glory in this alone, that as a good Author You make things that are to be furnished, but also that You make the things themselves able to furnish, and You wrap up the secondary causes in the first — so that he who feels Your gifts is himself also Your gift. By clear reasoning You have proved that the cause for Your bidding all things to be begotten was for You, O God, goodness alone; when by Your commands You granted first to the living spirits and to the world to flourish — which You bore in mind — and to come into being for sudden things, and to yield far and wide into heaven and the earth alike, and to offer a glittering seat to the angelic flock.

To whom, having lavished free hearts and self-determination from a kindly mind, that the work of virtue might come to be, and that to the merits of the holy You might confer this also: that by Your bestowing You should become a debtor. Nor — because of those first ones created by You to reign, one of them, while he envies the Lord of light and life and his own Author, and seeks for himself this title — Author, preferred to be the author of evil and to bring death upon the lands, cast down from lofty Olympus with the partners of his crimes — nor is it lawful to prescribe anything to sacred virtue, for which it is enough to have done good; nor was it right that any gift of God should be lacking, and the summit of nourishing praise comprises this: not to have denied life and sense to the ungrateful, and a proper kingdom of the mind throughout all its affairs. For what fruit is there in things begotten, unless the mind is free?

A mind is utterly free to none, unless there is the possibility of perishing. That this possibility was granted, no one but the sinner would have proved. To this I will add: that all diverse things, brought together in turn, hold a balance, and from this it was granted to all that they could perish, so that to live might be the sweeter, and that the mutual, matched measure of alternate peril might yield to merit — when, with a stern judge, the punishment of the wicked should double the worthy rewards of the saints — or because (let it be lawful to have said it, trembling, by Your leave, O Father, with foreword) it may perhaps be in Your sight a greater good not to have sinned, through the slippery seasons of life, than for the wretched to have sinned, an evil. But let that majesty itself see how the censure of the future stands.

This is enough for us: that through You, breathing the noble work of reason into the earth from worthless dust — so that even such a one as this might conquer the foe, ungrateful to its Lord — You raised up man; and man, whom You snatched into the snares of death and to impious Tartarus by the deceit of the savage poison, You restore, deigning soon to take up a body by Your own blood, sought back with greater care from the seats of Erebus than he had been made, and You render him back to perpetual life and bear him up into heaven with Yourself, the foe subdued. Now, now let no rash man accuse our father Adam, that, undoing the slight command by his violated law, he opened the road to death. That first punishment of our parent was worth so much, because it is greater to conquer death than not to have known how to die.

Now joyful from the Father's hall he looks down upon the ethereal poles and treads upon the stars, and calls his appointed ministers into the kingdoms that are to come, whom the wisdom of the Father's Word, which begot the whole, formed again by water and taught to be reborn. In whom I beseech You, kind God, who with favoring power grant minds to perceive and compel hearts to speak the truth even when the prophet is unaware: grant me, as I pray, to know — while we prepare to form tender souls and hearts to the true way of virtue in the years of boyhood — what the renowned chests of law-giving Moses unfold: what is the origin of the sky or what the first beginnings of the world, and who shook off the hidden faith by a swelling plague, and how error sank deeply into men's ways, and by what path the truth returns again and drives away profane rites and unlocks the sacred mysteries of eternal life.

Grant likewise a mind, grant fitting times for the mind, grant zeal, lest care fail so great a labor, and a good sense of zeal — and that which by right outruns all things known and encloses them in a mighty mantle: do not condemn me only because, so guilty, I dare so great a task. Pardon kindly all the faults I have committed; both strength and sense and merit You have given to souls. But if anything in the order has sinned against the law of meter, if improper speech and wavering sense have sinned — let it be allowed to run on everywhere in an unguarded verse — let no measure of peril come upon faith from this, through Christ of the laws, who, the only Son, flourishing with You in equal majesty, by whom the kindly Spirit lives and reigns in the unperceived ages of ages of souls — to whom the solemn Amen consecrates this for You. THE FIRST BOOK.

Before the poles and the day of heaven and the darkness of the world, before the forms of works, or things, or the seeds of things — He to whom it ever underlies to be eternal without end backward, without end of the future — there was one God, with whom there lived the begotten Word, God, and likewise the nourishing Spirit, the sum of secret, life-giving vigor. One substance of the three, quickening itself by which bond, unbegotten, ever blessed itself by its own virtue and reigned mighty, in the majesty of creating already foreseeing things and the causes of things and the chances of the future, and beholding with capacious mind the things to be made and to be begotten, surveying the ages and, whatever the times unroll, ever having present.

The threefold virtue, God, was Himself His own immense kingdom in blessed bulk, nor did His kingdom lack a witness — He who first, giving bodies to things from no seed, while He compels things to exist, that He might make our gift, which He alone possessed, alone knew the work — begot all things at once that complete the rich world, but, bringing them forth in parts by a fixed limit, He produced them with a special birth, that order, by motion into a sequence, might now establish the times. For neither — as the tongue of sacrilegious madness perceived, an instance of mind bereft, while it rolled unknowing seeds — did it so prudently whirl the work; nor is it lawful to say the begotten was before the day, since things born are moved with time, and there was then no time; nor to believe that backward it held an eternal and stable vigor forever.

For what consists of bodies must be confessed to have had a beginning. For a body — which a blow wears away, which the times dissolve and abolish by that very end toward which it stretches at the last — shows a beginning, since the things that are proved to have been allotted are fittingly either believed to be made or thought to be born. For the things that are born, since they are borne along moved with time, the times running after the bulk of the world — that they are born, which is the prior point — and it is necessary that they consist of bodies, they prove could not be, they confess could be made. It is established therefore that the world was made, which everyone, subdued, assents to and, convinced by the true teaching, believes.

He granted that God made it, who, mighty by the power of the Word and by virtue, disposed, commanded, admonished whatever is reckoned nature, and sustains the created gift, ever reforming the fleeting things by successive turns, and, drawing back the swift orb, whirls it around. And if He should choose to dissolve the whole suddenly, He would take being away from things, and not only this being, but the very past — He would remove it by the reason by which He knows it has been. O how great is the Father's power, O how great is the glory of the Word! What measure is there in the whole, what summit in the work, whose first part is the vault of the lofty pole and the lands lying below? But the sea had covered the lands, and a blind shadow, with its dense gloom, pressed upon the air, dripping in the midst with a foul cloud. And the sacred Spirit, hanging over the outspread waters,

quickened the fostering waters and gave the seeds of things, not yet to be poured forth into shoots upon the still-uncomposed lands, to be infused — when light, sent from above, flashed forth, God compelling, and the separated shadow, drawing back its black mantle, departed from the highest Olympus, and cast the waters between, and, fleeing the pursuer, was soon behind its back. Thus the limit gave the name of day to the spaces of light, and the interspersed darkness made the night, poured back over the world, equal. Again a new morning:

when, the first evening now driven away, the restored light shone, while a most firm mass, stretching itself from the midst of the waves with a solidified body, lifted itself up and, made solid far and wide with hard rigidity, suspended the divided waters, and set the cold deep against the hot axes, and, resting upon the enclosed expanse, poured itself over the things which it shut in with a vast circuit, and stripped the ancient sky of its name. Perhaps here someone, in skilled error, might thus discourse with himself: lest food be lacking for the ethereal flames, and lest excessive heat, seeking the depths by pursuing its nourishment, should burn up the mortal race, and lest things earthly should not be able to endure the glittering heaven — placed beneath, downward, is the firm machine of the pole, which, while it protects us with its shadow, is also veiled by the waters. But, my mind, flee far from seeking such causes:

let it be more for you always to believe that God can do whatever is thought impossible to be done. And prove by their own reasoning, who refuse to believe and yet wish the world to hang suspended — which the Founder Himself, ever governing it by incomprehensible reason, should carry and should roll, constant in its immense weight — that a great ocean is borne above the stars and constellations. The third light marveled to see the swelling waves depart, when God, the waves of the remaining flood now thrust away, laid open a great void in the airy spaces. Then for the first time the lowest part of the world showed its uncovered face, and, trembling at the divine power of the Word, the azure seas girdled the bared lands.

These lands, suddenly bidden to grow green with varied offspring, luxuriant shoots covered with new mud, and the rough forest, bursting forth from the tender turf, flung itself out with joyful foliage and with its very fruits, and, each bearing its own seed, bore witness to the Sower.

Now, three days completed, the first day of the sun, kindled by swift motion, was bidden to gather itself into flames and into a globe of fire; and the established seeds of light scattered their purple locks with a rosy spark; and the moon, the honor of night, whether it shone with its own light or, struck by the coming globe, poured back the rays, hung set beneath the sun on a lower path; and the stars, painting the world in distinct zones, were bidden to vibrate varied colors with ethereal blossoms, and that the heaven might gleam more with adorned darkness. The azure night marveled, while points of light, poured in ruddy flames, glitter and the new constellations urge their eager casts.

These — which the radiance veils with its rays and with a certain night of deep light covers, and, marking off the times by a fixed boundary, dispersing them, bidden, once their fixed station accomplished, to return by the numerous succession of the headlong pole and to go but once — complete the year as it rolls back, and confess the sacred Artificer by their wondrous framework. The fifth day moved breathing bodies in the sea, which the liquid begot with ease and scattered through the deep, the delights of the ocean, which nature formed in varied seed by wondrous modes; nature, bidden to create on behalf of the whole, also compels the parts to live for themselves, and granted the soul to go into brute forms; and these — that they might lift up the squalid backs of the swelling salt deep in the gulf without any end, stuffed with soft fattening — were it not that a swift end should prescribe a limit to their vast age.

The generative liquid itself favors the bodies, its nurslings, which also nourishes the germ of the earth, and rather dissolves the heaped-up limbs which the moisture had over-extended. Hence the birds too, a soft kind, drew their vigor. While He shapes the liquid waters, and life, sent in, enters the sea, the swelling expanses seethe again with offspring not pregnant to themselves with their own brood; and now, sent forth from the deep, the scaly throng, while it rises into the highest waves over the brine, that which was flitting in the waters, gradually swims in the pure air, and teaches that this creature can reach the ethereal recesses — this creature which is born again in the gleaming waves.

Now twice three days were radiating from bright Olympus — the third after the generative gifts of the warm sun — and now the warming earth had loosened its laden limbs, when God, devising greater things, bade the earth bring forth every living animal which reason alone of moving quickens, to which it was granted to serve wherever the use of things demands. Nor was there delay: the vital pledges burst forth from the teeming lands, and each, having obtained the figures of its own kind, now needing a master, for whose sake He prepared all things, who alone is able to create even the things to be made. Henceforth let it be lawful for me to touch lightly upon certain things, to pass over certain others, anxious and trembling, in a deep course, and to relate certain things passed over, the sequence changed.

After the given order brought forth all things by kinds — which the almighty Son, then full of the Father's mind, should make at God's command, and the holy Spirit should approve, full of true goods and stored with much endowment, and should cherish, destined to remain in a long sequence — a nearer cause is given to the world, for which in turn there is a prior, just cause. Now the world existed, now the stars and the risings and the ether and the glassy sea and the green lands: unless a spectator is present, whom the glory of so great a mass should fill and lead, eager, through each thing with his eyes, what can they confer upon God? There is no possession, if the possessor of things is absent. Then the Ruler of Olympus: "The sum given to the work stands; whatever I have created is good. Now let us make man," He says, "who may reign in the world and be the image of God."

"It is fitting that he be like his Creator, free unto choice, who with his mind enjoys created things." He had said this, and man was made — whether in his whole body, without soul and outward form, perhaps in the manner by which He makes things future, things to be done, by which He always already possessed the thing made, now nearly in a past which had not yet drawn near in any age. And soon, having set him over things, He bade him grow through offspring with his consort and replenish the empty lands. Now, God speaking thus rightly, the nature of creating was imposed on all things which are moved alive of themselves. The seventh light saw the great Parent cease — but only that He ceased to create the numbers of kinds, and held His rest; and it was deservedly hallowed, which saw the differing work; for this too is full of virtue, that God ceased and laid aside His labors.

For the offspring it is enough that the Lord beheld for twice three days a form by which they might prepare worthy rewards; the seventh light taught the venerable examples of rest, which He bids the peoples to hope for as a gift of life, ever to be granted hereafter according to the deeds of the holy. This light too is that one, dread, by which Christ loosed Tartarus and, Avernus conquered, laid open the return, while He rests on the ground, about to return to the Father's hall. Thus God knew to cease, thus to take leisure, that ceasing He might do the more.

Likewise resting without end and working without end, and mingling the sequence and the times, by ceasing He consummates the work, whatever He had created, so that He might make and now endow the first man with a body — he who was last; for to establish the causes of things is not the same as to give limbs — or, since the seventh thus runs on that the sixth day also remains, because the sixth is assuredly to God this which the first is — to Him who always has all things present, things that flee from us — after whatever times the supreme Author still thus fashions man in the sixth light; or, that He might teach us to deservedly excel created things, whom He Himself makes with His hand, He now more manifestly declares that man was made, and intimates this to the whole firm world:

"All things whatsoever that move, begotten at the soul's bidding, do so with God working." What sacred offerings of praise can anyone bring worthy of so great a Parent, who unfolded the world and all things in a moment by His command, and, while He commands them to be, accomplished it? It is delay that makes us be; He deigns to bestow around us the care of sacred zeal, and persuades that the work of toil be nearly accomplished. For He seizes the pliant clay, easy to yield and to follow the bending and the form by the art by which it is led, and unfolds into shape such a one as He already bore in His sacred mind; and life, sent in with vaporous breath, watered the soil. The earth, softened with moisture, became flesh in part: blood, the slippery moisture, distended the soft veins through the known passages; and man, now full of mind and thrust up from the earth, leaps forth and, prudent, adores the Lord of reason.

Not otherwise — that bodies, bidden to rise again from the burst tombs, true faith — when majesty, gliding down from the open heaven, unbolts the hollow inward parts of the heavy earth. For what it did not have, since thus from the highest dust, with God forming, needy of its own virtue, it brought forth — it is easy that by the same judge it should render, bidden, what it received. Thus the whole form of the future is that which is first begotten; and while Adam himself is thus founded, so that a repeated narrative may twin the sacred gift, it is usefully sown beforehand that the peoples shall some day be reborn. The fountain of these being given, and the highest origin even then, where the happy land opens its eastern recesses, on a higher globe the paradise of a pleasant grove is set, and is distinguished by the order of the smooth woodland.

Here, where now a boundary is divided by equal spaces of the sun and an eternal spring tempers the hours with equal portions, there each tree, rich, stands with its own fruits, and ripe apples are pushed off by succeeding apples — which are alluring to the eyes and full of wondrous vigor, and cherish the limbs and the spirits, and feed them with taste and with scent.

The earth, distinct, vibrates star-like colors, ever with new flower; and those plants which, dry with a parched covering, now loose their fragile stalks, animated by the vigor of the ambrosial gift, pour forth breathing cinnamon. But neither what the Mede exhales, nor what the Achaemenian is fragrant with, his hair loosed, nor what the rich Assyrian with soft amomum and the Mareotic harvest, reddening with nard, nor what the Tartessian shrubs, nor what the rod of the Sabaean, nor what the Palestinian branch weeps from its torn wound — these fail to pour forth their airs with diverse sense. For hither God gathered all things together alike, which nature received singly in fixed places, and brought them back, packed close.

And while the grove quivers, stirred by a gentle breeze in its passing, it mingles one nectar from diverse scent, and a new gift comes to be, which no single tree may claim for itself; and where, trembling, gently tossed by a soft murmur, it shudders with its moved leaves, the whole woodland resounds with a hymn to God by its trees, and the modulating breeze whistles its songs: nor does empty motion shake the air in vain, for indeed with the Author, who binds all things, thing to thing by alternate law, holds them under one mass, nothing is empty, nor does any appearance hold an empty figure. And perhaps the grove itself and the glittering woods are arguments of His works and the seed-plots of things; and that which comes into the cultivation of men by a bare name has there a sure body and flourishes on its own stock.

Glory, simplicity; zeal, vigilance; sleep, care; safety, terror; eloquence, grace; the motions and affections of the soul, its goads; protection, virtue — and all that the world holds, because it is born there, flourishes here and stirs minds and supplies the senses. But this is enough for faith: that, rising from a joyful seed, on this side the tree of life seeks the air with its lofty fruits, on that side the knowledge that will harm with its diverse fruit has suspended the balance of things upon the tree of law. But the bosom of the sacred grove, which the woodland crowns, a fountain waters and weds the offspring with rich virtue, loosing its swelling head, joyful, into a fourfold stream, richer than the ocean; for, springing from a perpetual gulf, here it gives its own waters, there it receives all and feels not the waters.

Less is he who knows not how to swell when such great floods pour in, than he who knows not to shrink when his rivers run dry. But first the river Pishon leaps forth exulting, the fourth part of the blessed spring, putting forth such gifts as nature, guided by wisdom, bestows; it fills the peoples of the Ganges' land, and over the realms of the Havilites it spreads its silt, and rolling earth and seeds it sows the fields it makes. Where the bare sands lie parched, amid the golden filings of the gleaming metal the carbuncle glitters, glowing red with fiery flame, and the emerald shines, sparkling with green light. Nor less than it is the Gihon next, but gentler with its calm waves it raises the waters of the Nile, and with its kindly flood covers the fields that else would scorch far and wide, and, resisting the heavens, it tempers the air of the Ethiopians with its pools that flow back upon themselves.

Hence the third, the Tigris, running on with swift current, goes as companion to the Euphrates; and as the two rush together in joined mass, the conquered earth, laid open, swallows them in a hollow abyss, until into the glades of Armenia and the pastures of Media it vomits forth those rivers which it could not endure nor any longer contain. But the Tigris, as though indignant at the dark Avernus, leaps forth into the airy breezes with greater motion, and again sinks into its caverns, and plunged within the hollows it drives its roarings inside; and made stronger by the barrier, it is multiplied in waters, and swifter through the narrow cave it issues out and cuts the Assyrian plains with its swift column.

More just is the Euphrates, which, lavish with its rich current, waters the parched fields of Persia lying below; drawn off into gentle streams, it serves all alike and gives itself wholly to human uses, until, dry of waters, prodigal it consumes its very name upon the lands—that name which it owed to the waves of the sea. These regions, then, rich with every offspring of nature, these delights stocked with so great and so many gifts of virtues, are the first possession of the first man, into which, led to exult in everlasting life, he was bidden to dwell. And now amid the first of gifts, while he is still made worthy and learns to earn by labor what he enjoys, having obtained the fruit of full virtue, free of cares and ignorant of any desire he lived. So great is it before the Author, in lieu of the highest title of merit, not yet to have merited any evil.

How much, do we think, can the Father pay back to a life destined to return to time, whose first largess toward His servants, even then, was not wages but Paradise? And whereas that severe law brought forth its decrees and restrained their liberty, He still promises greater things to the good and reserves rewards—He who set the cause for merits when He said, 'Eat of all the trees: only remember to dread this one, which, bearing within it the swarms of diverse things, then, when wounded by an unholy bite, having made you know good, will make you know evil—the evil that the penalty of death shall follow.' By such a law given, the deep reason of the Parent teaches that He willed man not to become mortal but to live worthily—worthy, whom He would make so by a small observance. O how great is the indulgence of the great God!

It is the work of our praise, what He of His own kind bounty bestows upon His servants; He desires it to be of our labor, and what He gives, He would rather be seen to owe. But you, whom the guardianship of sacred law binds, do not complain that your liberty, shut within narrow bounds, is bereft of part of itself: nothing has been cut away from you by this law. Before, you had obtained only power over land and sea; now you already have the power of the eternal kingdom and of life, now also of death. Then, that the untaught dweller of the world might believe the kindly Parent had granted all things to himself, God bade every animal—which the earth, commanded, had thus far created and poured forth from silent seed, blooming in living body—to be present and obey its proper sovereign, and after their kinds to speak the chief names, the names of their parts; that he, as it were for servant-creatures, might fix names for them—Adam:

By the Lord's admonition, He who among such great gifts of life had given also a proper name. Nor is there delay: nature presents to God every kind, in whatsoever part of the new world it was created. Together they come, things so discordant in their movement, within the span of a single moment—creatures whom the Maker had formed: some strong in struggle, some sluggish with soft gait, some most ready in swift running with headlong rush, or to glide downward through the air, or upheld upon the seas and borne, slippery, by their weight—endowing them with diverse gifts, and arming them with hand, horn, foot, tooth, venom, and the rest, with which He fortified the compacted work that was poor in skill and of lesser mind.

But none of living things flourished in form, in countenance, in bearing equal to man; and being set nearly side by side, it added the greater honor. And amid so many creatures, which a twofold sex made to illustrate life, he alone was unmatched, who all this while, unknowing, possessed within himself the matter fit for begetting a spouse. Therefore God undertakes the well-known work, and swiftly loosens the man's heart, struck and made languid by so deep a sleep, that, mighty to draw forth a rib from one deprived of mind, while the commanded flesh rose to follow and the receding skin did not let the bone or the gap intermingle in the middle, He might snatch it with limbs unharmed and body whole. Opening this rib, and soon arranged through its various members, it received form, and quickened with warm marrow it drew on the work of life; now pleasing in the second sex, and given to her own husband, she was called Eve.

At this point, O most foolish throng, cease at last to deem anything superior to the holy Parent. For why was woman thus formed from a man's own members, when she could have been fashioned from soft dust, could have been made from nothing? This is indeed the true reason: lest the natural order should rather take it to itself, or lest, because man is from man, it should be made plain to the clear world that all things were made at once then—so that a certain kinship might mingle mutual love for one's own care, compelling each to recognize itself in the other's members. Hence it is that Adam, all unknowing, perceived that he had received back a part of himself:

a new grace touched his mind, and an affection, received through his eyes into his inmost flesh now known, rushed in and penetrated to his bones with such warmth that it now gave him to know that the wife is named 'spouse,' that sweet children and parents are to be set after spouses. What more? Now the two were to remain one in flesh, leading an eternal life together—for while they were free of the vices and stain of earthly things, they flourished with divine souls, needing none of the wealth the world gave: indeed they bore bodies not liable to diseases, nor nurslings of a greedy belly; only amid delights was food, and what use demanded; not yet was it an aid to life, and the immortal property of the soul flourished of its own—had not the dire serpent, goaded by the venom of a greater evil, with such deceits persuaded heedless Eve to break the law:

'O race destitute of a better life and ignorant of good things, you humans! For he who knows not how diverse things differ from goods, this one knows not even goods. And therefore God did not wish it to be lawful for man to pluck the august fruits, lest, with the cloud removed from the mind, they should give eyes to the spirit, and—teaching what things are best in all the secret matters—make the skilled like the gods, the other side of things.' Here now let it be lawful to run on a little and bewail the base ruins of the ancients. Ah, too wretched the gentiles, whom frenzy drove into varied rites! It is plain in what death the profane have utterly perished. The plural name of gods first sounded forth from the impious voice of the dread serpent, who then was the cause of death.

For after credulous Eve broke the precept with sacrilegious bites, now taught by tasted evil, she seeks solaces for her fault and, intending to draw her pliant husband into the same crime, by the very craft by which she had perished first, she makes her approach. Thus, subdued by a twofold foe, wretched Adam yields to the crime, and tasted the apples most enticing with their sacred juice. But because in these lay hidden the precepts of the severe law, which would bring death more than viper's venom, as soon as they had violated their members with the forbidden savor, at once they felt the sin and the deed accomplished, and it grew, and struck their hearts with a sense till then unknown. Hence fear, thence shame:

indeed before it had been granted them to live naked and to know nothing of it. Whether—being unschooled men, hearts full of kindly vigor, conscious of lofty things and bearing breasts intent only on heaven and the world, ever turned toward the exalted Parent, while with the splendor of an almost incorporeal mind they marked the wonders of divine secrets—no care for their own members had yet touched them, as men senseless to a better soul; or whether no motion that might make known whatever is necessary to be known could penetrate bodies that needed no delay to dissolve into old age. After that everlasting vigor of life deserted the now mortal animal, at last cold and heat, the alternations of the air, came upon them, and lo, men felt themselves in want of clothing, and secretly blushed at their sex.

Lamenting their misery with silent tears, they weave new coverings of leaves from the shady fig, joining them together, that, with the body veiled, they might strip bare the shame received into the mind after their fault. Nor is this enough for the trembling pair. What shall they do? Whither flee the branded crime and their very selves? They would, if perchance there lay a way open, hide themselves in the earth: so close a neighbor to its own penalty is their fault, that now to the wretched, fearing death, the very image of death is welcome. They spread over themselves the woods and the shady haunts—the false solaces of an empty hiding-place. For whither is it lawful to withdraw your timid body, you, you, I say, who soon must first be dragged back, O Adam? The living, all-hidden virtue of the Father of the world, present, fills the immense recesses and goes forth diffused. But it is truly a sin to cheat the fearful of their hiding-place.

He can escape by fleeing the supreme Lord who flees to the Lord; leaving Him with the mind alone, in what vast and not swift shadows you lie! Calling with His voice 'Where art thou?' He attests both at once. For why does God, who sees you, seek you—you to whom He shall ever be present, you whom not even death itself can withdraw from Him by its own theft, into which you have sunk with frail mind—why does He ask where you are, except that, after the manner of grief, He confesses you to be fallen of your own accord, no longer with Him, and to have fallen from holy heaven? Yet the holy love of the Parent forbids despair, whose clemency—it is lawful for me to have said it, and lawful too to have proved my words—exceeds His justice.

Nor does He so much hold me, rebuking with stern voice 'Where art thou? What dost thou turn over in thy trembling breast?'—as He restores me; for He still, after my crimes, calls forth and calls back the one fallen and plunged in fear into hiding-places and almost buried. That long examples be not sought: the very pardon of fault proves the Lord gentle. After the searching inquiry had distinguished the guilty and most accused, the Almighty begins—heaven, sea, and earth tremble at His speaking, and, shaken, lays open its vast recesses; and while the sentence punishes the guilty, it made Tartarus—: 'Since you have thought it safe to depart from my commands, by that very chain of crime in which the fault ran on, by this my just censure shall smite the new offenders.'

'Among all the things which I commanded to be enjoyed throughout the world, you shall be accursed, and worse than what you cover within—your envious mind, serpent, who cast down men, created to enter heaven, and drove them by your fraud to touch the forbidden fruits, you, the origin of harsh death. That a measure of penalty worthy of the sin may follow—you plunged men into the earth: and you, with limbs stretched on the unjust ground, shall furrow the hard earth with your breast; you made them sin by foods: for such daring deeds you too shall ever eat the squalid bowels of the earth. And because it pleased you to be worthy of this for yourself, to be the first inventor of death, you shall die by a bloody penalty; and especially arming the hatred of the human race against your whole kind, you steeped in savage venoms, I shall bid you—that you may be slain the more—to be ever feared.'

'And of her, whom you rejoice to have subdued by your first fraud, dwelling beneath her feet and prone of breast, you shall lie in wait only thus at the very soles, so that, trembling, you may even fix your tracks upon the head.' He spoke, and thus began upon bloodless Eve:

'But you, who, thinking it the least fruit of your crime to ruin only yourself, with a wretched mind already plotting harm, lay in ambush for your husband and lorded it over so great a crime—you shall offer your neck to a servile yoke, and, made subject, shall feel the will of a harsh man; you shall endure labors with constant misfortunes, so that you, who first dared the wickedness begun, may multiply it and be tossed in many perils; and in bearing you shall be so tormented with frequent offspring that those whom your fault shall cause to be created mortal shall sometimes be the cause of a mangling death to their mother.' 'You too, to whom it seemed good of your own accord to set our warnings and the first bonds of salvation after a woman's deceits, having dared to die—as guilty receive such a lot: cursed by your crimes be the earth, which you shall furrow with the plow.'

'Let it bear thorns and menacing thistles, and let wicked hope deceive your prayer. You have ceased to serve me with a faithful mind: nor let the earth keep faith with you. You of your own accord refused to live glad in these delights and to live through all ages: now live by hard labor, live in miseries, until slow old age makes you earth—which you the more truly are—and returns you to the earth.' He spoke, and pitying them, He clothes the unknowing pair with the skins of beasts, that heaven might shield their members, and teaches them to protect their life.

But lest Adam, driven by dread of death, should dare again the deed he was pondering in his mind—if, ignorant of things, he, who had held the right of the first law, should after the extremities of his case seek again the proud aid from the tree of life, and, redeemed by no art of the Father, should live, and the now mystic order of the world should totter, and heavier things await the wretched and ever-guilty—straightway the winds, bidden, hasten the pair commanded to depart from the sacred groves; the winds which the forest of the deep grove rouses—but the bearing breeze and the spirit hold them bound in its balancing whirl, and as nature inclines, the air snatches the whole—and bearing them back to the lands whence the body was given, with softened blast they set them down, free of so great a space and free of peril, yet not free of the grief that stirs the heart.

Whither they had fallen, what they had lost, what life would follow, what life had been—a sad comparison vexes their mind, which the more it heaps up the differences. And they revolve within themselves how much another thing they now are, how much each, changed, seeks himself—uncertain whether to ascribe this to the first fault and to the penalty, since error compelled them to know the force of evil, or whether this is to die; or, if heavier things remain, whether return be granted to the wretched, or whether by an everlasting end they lose what is left, or whether, since the way of bitter death has burst upon the world and the peoples to come through a tree, life might still by some means return through a tree. SECOND BOOK. Thus far I have run through the hidden sequence, the beginnings of the world, as pure faith laid it open, without deceit, while earthly things were free of vices deserving death.

Now, having entered upon the ways of men and things mortal in verse, let it be lawful for a poet to mingle true things. After each was bidden to depart from the hallowed seats and realms, and touched the natal fields, and stood, an exile, on his own soil—how pitiable!—with what countenance might the raw settlers then be stunned at the barbarous countryside, which does not bloom adorned with fruit-bearing stock! No beauty of the soil delights, but a brute heap, set in a compelled mass, lies neither chosen nor arranged in ordered bulk. Steep crags stand stiff, the lowlands toil under woods, the plains lie hidden in grass, the heights bristle with brambles. Alas, with what eyes do they behold these things, with what heart do they perceive them, in whose souls Paradise yet dwells! Nor is there one cause of grief—that the face of all things, now full of evils, opens itself—but that they remember the good things.

Now that honor of the sacred grove shines with a greater serenity, now the blessed wood, more heaped, brings forth its riches, now sweeter is the enjoyment of fruits and the nectar-like savor; now the earth breathes with living flowers, and grazes the sorrowful with the scent of what is absent. O Paradise, how unlike are the requitals you render to deserts! The comparison of worse things exalts you the more, and you make worse the things which alone remain to the wretched. Here the nourishing love of life perishes; the want of things insinuates that now it is sweet to die—did not a greater destitution come to the rescue with a heavier evil; for, kindling the bowels with the madness of eating, it leads the famished through all the foods which the barren wood gives, and forces them everywhere to search for doubtful sustenance from the malign roots of herbs as their fare; and that they cannot escape such a life is brought about by the very hunger which compelled them to wish it.

At last the final extremity taught them—needy and destitute of all the things use requires—to hope for the aid of the supreme Father: each, prostrate, his limbs upon the ground, with tears only and mute grief, while shame withdrew words from unjust complaints, was dying of weariness. But after his mind was restored, Adam at last, rising, supplicates with such a prayer: 'Almighty Author of the world and Creator of all things, woe is me for the stain of evil! While happy life remained, and it was granted that I might be able to follow my swift soul in sight beyond the stars, I saw with these eyes—as it were beholding the secrets of the mind—Him diffused far around and through all things, ever present and veiling sight with the splendor He poured in; and what is proper to say, I saw that He cannot be seen.'

Now too, after our fault, despoiled of the sacred light, although the better mind, free to be borne through the whole, has fled, and, in the cell of an earthly prison shut up, nothing of truth beyond mortal things remains for us to know—yet only this has remained: to feel all things full of You. And therefore, Almighty, who art ever wholly everywhere, we flee to You, praying with trembling mind:

'Hear the wretched, whom You ever see and hear, if, when he wished to bind me to the condemned party—he, the chief of crimes, guilty before the world and his own enemy, daring nothing by himself alone, lest, conquered, he should yield—the unforeseen fraud of that artificer of crimes subdued the wretched serpent (whose mind was heedless) by craft, and subdued me through the affection which both sexes feel; and when I was being condemned by a just penalty for the crime, I so repented of the fault, my mind smitten by so great a grief grew indignant at itself, that I thought You, most gentle Judge, then granted me vengeance upon myself.'

'Therefore I also denied to my cause both groans and tears, because I, even as a guilty man, judged myself unworthy of pardon; and embracing in my soul the sweet solaces of the penalty, setting this very thing hereafter among these sacred gifts, I shall hold it in lieu of pardon for the crime—that I have been condemned. It is not, then, a dread thing. But may You, in serene majesty, deign to hear those who pray nothing against Your commands, and no longer ask with tears for what You will of Your own kind bounty bestow upon Your servants, so that the censure may relax itself, yet so that the whole sentence may hold its full force. You bade me, the conquered, seek food from the moved sod: arms, then, must be given for moving the condemned fields—to make the lands give brambles, barren ground, and clinging thorns instead of fruit:'

'Pure soil, then, must first be sown by me, so that the crop sought by labor may deceive my prayers—to weave bread together with the constant seed of herbs: grant to my mind what the herbs are, what the manner of labor; grant, O Father, Your aid, having mercy, and imbue my senses. Then it shall come to pass that Eve, mistress of things and sure of salvation, may serve me, and, having experienced the savage torment of bearing, may bring forth peoples who will be punished for our crime, and that succession may purge the parents' sins by the deaths of grandchildren, making the penalty eternal.' As they prayed thus, the image of the false serpent, seen with silent dread as a sign, bearing itself gently by a winding path toward the soft tracts with quivering herbs, turned the trembling pair upon itself and, shaken from their sluggish sorrow, drew them into kindred wraths. And first Eve to her husband:

'If the supreme cause of evils moves you, snatch up stones in your hand; lo, the chance is given to deal death to death's author. The first one ought to teach, by punishments of his own and by a bloody death, how sad it is to die—he who basely ruined me and you.' She spoke, and as it slipped away they pursue it in their course with hurled weapons, and whirl rocks, of which one, sure to give an easy stroke with the arm drawn back higher to greater effort, obeys their wishes, and following their eyes and their spirit, rebounds from the bare flint with the serpent in the middle, and strikes out a spark, which, fed by dry tinder and soon turned to flame, spreads wide its tressed fires and now blooms white with dry smoke.

They had shuddered and with trembling step were seeking hiding-places, but the very amazement holds the frightened pair, and lays open the keen anxiety of human vice, that, timid, they wish to see again and to behold the things to be feared; and, withdrawn a little upon the ridge of the barren earth, they marvel that the shady foliage of the groves has sunk down, that the day grows grimy with cinders and is darkened, that the whole earth gleams, and that there is a new light beneath the sun. Nor with quiet mind do they receive the cracklings amid the woods hissing on every side, and the billowing globes of flames borne to the stars, while the devouring fire, sunk deep, stretches its roots to the lowest depths, by which heat the raw earth, overcome, opens its noble veins to generous gifts; and when it has now been dried of all its moisture, the very liquid begins to be formed, and to pour out the metals, each in its own streams.

In a tawny torrent gleams the highest honor of gold; shining with glowing milk, silver flows forth; the slippery liquidity of bronze wanders and coalesces, its body dissolved, into a soft mass—the steel, a livid clod. So Etna, with its furnaces burst open, casts up hissing sulphur mingled with flames, slippery while they boil; but when they have felt the temperate touch of the breathable air, they stiffen, and the dry liquid, swiftly congealed by fire grown icy, is turned into a gleaming clod, and becomes a sluggish body. Thus they marvel that the diverse streams come to a halt—streams which, where the heat fails, they now watch with eager eyes, and which receive a winning color in their members; and what they had feared, they pursue.

They perceived the aid of God and rejoice that, for the guilty, and with no virtue following their first fault, the prayers had yielded to their wish; and to the supreme Parent they refer it as received, both because the fire gave fire and a mind, to which He laid open what work was needful. I hold both certain: that the parents, eager, explored the sacred gift, surveying all with their eyes, but first applied their hands to the rich gold, which now strikes their minds with its flash and subdues them with the gleam of that dear poison, and does not satisfy, until, with much weight, it overcomes the marveling ones, and, when slipped, wounds them as it were on the purple of a hard crag, and teaches that an easy blow can be endured with the body marred. Suddenly a new care comes upon the astonished pair and sharpens their minds, and warns them to follow their downfall, that teacher, with skill.

Then with the weight of a hard stone they strike in alternate turns, and bend and draw into various shapes the mass yielding to the blows. This no toil can shape, but conquered, it quickly loses its figure hence, because the matter, unequal to great efforts, receives the zeal but deceives the use. They seek therefore something harder; but from this too gold pleases, which has taught the rigid metal to be the more useful. Thence, to that whose beauty is nearer and whose vein is second, they pass to silver, which, firmer than seductive gold, is more patient of service. But stronger is bronze, that which is less conspicuous. Soon, with bronze as teacher, the use, transferred to rigid steel, came to a stop.

Perhaps our lyre could also run through in verse all the chances which opinion imagines, fashioning the highest craftsmen of works: how the most fertile earth, laid open by a silent heat in baked clods, was moved into varied offspring, which, bringing them to birth with the marrying rain, the fields dissolved by their crumbling passage; whereby the swelling folds cracked, and the raised harvest sprang up, and waving it trembled with the stirred ears of grain, so that the new settler might learn the look of a cultivated crop; and how the kind of birds and beasts, and the lesser throng's black cohort, running down greedily from every side to so great a prey, thrusting into their bodies the larger seeds than themselves for fodder, packed in foods friendly to life with matter nearer at hand, and every service followed, which the care of teachable zeal received.

Meditation, always taken from masters as examples, would have made the work of art: but the bountiful glory of the Father, well known, cries out against false claims: let use claim nothing for itself from this, nor chance, destitute of virtue: 'I have given to created things, together with the light, to know what good things are, and to the lesser world to make known by sacred sense whatever the greater possesses, and through these I have willed Myself to be known.' And would that it remained inviolate, as the mind was given to man, and liable to no fault: him neither the appearance, nor the bodies of things, nor the measure of the stars, the number, nor the mass of the sand would deceive.

But with what vast spaces the earth is stretched along with the great deep, what may be the measure of the completed mass, what vocal melody of harmony the motion of the sevenfold axis resounds—now is learned by practice and granted to constant studies, and what remains inborn is reckoned a matter of art. Nor does he, made dull by the cloud of evils, perceive that, if anyone thinks he first comes to know certain things, he is but recognizing them again. Let him therefore cling to this at the highest border of truth. When Adam was driven from the august seats, no other duty did he perform prior to one worthy of his spouse, and he spent unknown loves upon his children. Amid so many cares, to him whom it pleased to create was creation sweet, and life was sweet. He who proved life to be sweet, was living with God as ruler; nor was there lacking to his nurslings what might instruct their life, what might equip them with the use of things.

And now the house, full of children, had brought wondrous solaces to the unschooled pair, and, multiplied in the parents' tender heart, care relieved their grievous labors; and hope was now at hand, to rejoice in their own ministers in the duties of the field. Of these, the greatest in age, Cain, turned the rich soil with hard mattocks; but Abel, most worthy to rejoice in living gain, on bare hills or in the fields of dry growth fed his harmless sheep and his parents with milk. After the awaited fruits had sated their joys, and they were astonished that their prayers were girt with sacred favor, the just one admonished their minds to dedicate the first libations of their works to God.

He, the elder, first loads the sacred altars with the new fruits, but this one offers more acceptably with a snow-white lamb—the first appearance of priests, soon the impious sacrifice of a brother, yet even then imbued with the sign and token of the future pious one. For when Cain noted his brother's accepted sacrifice, and that to himself, sacrificing with no fruit, no assent was given—whether because he had picked out the offerings beforehand and polluted the feast, or whether to Him who beholds all in a single moment he stands guilty as one at some time to be present and guilty in mind—from that (dread) fountain whence the serpent and his mother had drunk poison, he drinks, and butchers his brother, slaughtered by savage murder and unaware of caution. Alas the crime!

What would not frenzied lust, what would not fresh anger, old hatred, the wicked contests of crimes that harass the nations compel—if he committed so great a deed who thus grieved that his brother was holier than himself? Now there is no fault of the parents. And lest anyone think there remains some complaint at least about the serpent—that we die—we began to be slain before. O how much did the first offshoot add to the crime! That death was brought into the world in the name of a penalty is scarcely worth saying: impiety made it a new wickedness. The parents shall expiate their sins by death alone: you shall pay penalties released from death, and in place of death, worse than the abominable serpent. For he persuaded to slaying, did not inflict it: but you shall be the first author of slaughter.

The public enemy pursues you, the private robber pursues you; against you armed men shall avenge crimes with darts, swords, and the avenging iron. All wickedness is your warfare, and that the peoples to come shall perish less by ordained death than by slaughter—to you the chief blame returns. Nor is that example wholly displeasing to morals, that human blood first began to be shed by a brother's blood, so that he might feel a like deed committed against him—he who is established by such a crime to have renewed a brother's wickedness, reason teaching that every death of a man slain, not by the first lot, is the murder of a brother.

Even then, dripping with such slaughter, God did not scorn him — so great is His clemency — but deemed him worthy of address. He convicts the man who denies his crime, yet for so great a transgression punishes lightly, exacting the measure of the penalty from only a part of the deed: so that, because forewarned he did not fear to commit the dread crime, he might now tremble; and that what he refused to be a punishment might become his desert.

What his mind, refusing to drink it in, had reckoned light, his agitated limbs should prove a heavy thing; and when the soul is struck — by which inward tormentor every wickedness avenges itself — horror at his crime should shatter the body too, and rushing violently pour forth into every joint, and the limbs, set in motion, be swept along in headlong whirling: as when waters enclosed within a basin, with the light flung back, break the rays they have caught, and a slippery brightness slips into the hall and, ranging over all, is nowhere and everywhere; and as it quivers, a thread of light, woven by degrees into the faint gleam, flickers without end through the bluish shadow. This was no such trembling as cold fluid stirs in stiffened sinews, when, filling men half-dead, it so chills them that they cannot wholly lose their life.

but such as the wrath of God stirs up, when its conscious power masters the mind and the heart is wrung with a sane frenzy. Yet what, and how often, is such a sentence? The whole vengeance for the slain man's crime — the most just penalty of a savage offender, a terror to his people and to the people to come, an example set before them, the present purging of guilt, and the sign promised, the safeguard of his life — lest anyone slay him and labour to blot out by the sword one whom he sees has paid the penalty. Nor does this punishment suffice: God mingles harsh things with gentle; He banishes him far off and exiles him to vast shores.

This too the punishment achieves: that he should not pollute the fields of the godly, nor should his penalty bear witness that such a crime could have been committed against the peoples yet to be created; that he should never mingle with them, nor should the condemned race ever draw near to sorrowing parents, nor heap ever-bitter grief upon the good, nor torment the bereaved with the unequal cause of brothers' pain — that they should look for the one, and behold the other, in whom it is necessary to mourn this also: that he still remains. The worst of all in a son's death is the death itself, of whatever kind; but those afflicted with so dreadful a punishment for so great a crime perish worse alive, before any judge whatever. How much more fitting that he, condemned, should depart far from his ancestral lands — he who loves seclusion — and that it should be a heavier punishment to be seen among the happy and the blessed of pure mind.

To one who is to live on after his punishment and the shame of his deed, exile is granted in mercy. Now that a faithful wife is added as companion to the guilty man, and that the hope of God should not desert the condemned becomes a sure pledge. Behold, one is given to soften the cares of his sick heart, who by moving her body might steady his broken frame with her embrace, and, subject to no guilt herself, by entreating God alone and worshipping with a pure mind, might draw forth whatever could suffice for the two of them. O good Majesty, what may we not hope for! You yourself supply the silent ways of pardon and the cause whereby You may avail to profit the guilty — whom, increasing him with offspring to follow, You multiply through a thousand names of descendants, and soon appoint, from the supreme Father, as king of his own people. For he first taught how to gird cities with walls, which no one can do save by gathering a populace.

And, confessing through fear that he deserved an avenger from among his own kin, he warned the Syrian and taught him to perish while he feared to be slain — by which slaughter, perhaps expiated, he washed away his guilt, since he repaid it with a like death; and death itself is gain, in that it became the vengeance for the crime. Meanwhile grave Eve had again to her grieving husband made up the loss with a holy pledge, and restored once more cares and vows to their father. Seth was the name given to the boy, whom the Almighty granted, by His favouring power, to fill the place of Abel with the virtues that aided him — a gift which the gladness of the joyful father did not keep silent, and the succeeding line proved true.

For from this man's seed sprang Enos, who, first chosen as priest in his silent virtue, hoped and deserved to be able to summon God by holy prayers and by His true name; and the people that followed he steeped in keeping the worship of the eternal Father, and, by holy aid, to use it as life required — the Almighty acknowledging what He bore in His majesty, granting both the will and the desert, and for many years allowing the punishment of the ancient crime to be deferred — so far indeed that Enoch, mighty in all virtues, of the line of these whom the kindly stock contains, restored to the ancestral seats and the blessed world, lives even yet and already holds the kingdom of the life to come.

Indeed, while the world still lacked all culture, the contest of those living was to lead thrice three hundred years, completing a thousand by the gains of a tenth verse. But after crimes had infected their souls, and guilt was born in the succeeding stock, and the offspring, worse than its sire, ever added to its vices what the heir might surpass, the brevity of life came to the rescue — since this was the one way of curbing wickedness, that there should be a limit to its light. For when the youth of better blood had joined itself in profane marriages and so condemned itself with the race of Cain's descendants, deserted by sacred favour it fell into manifold crime, and, laid open to ambush, received the enemy by his snares, while God spoke thus:

'My Spirit shall not always abide among these peoples, nor shall it any longer defer the appointed times of late death twice six times ten; their guilty life shall live a hundred and twenty years, since, following earthly things, they have more of the flesh than of the mind.' Whether, then, the stern sentence of the kindly Judge broke their nature, so as to convict each guilty one of having more of his brute mother, from whom he was born; or whether the lavish grace of the divine bounty — which in His first gift He had given to the servants who were to be created by sacred power — by being drawn away from sins into the deeds of the fathers, in order to prove that it had passed from the whole man to the body alone, suddenly bred monstrous men, giants of towering bulk of limb, wild with swollen mind.

How great a power lies beneath dreadful spirits in their bodies, and how needful it was that there should be a will to match, in those oppressed by the servitude of so great and wicked a mass — to them nothing unlawful or profane was a defilement, nor anything lawful dear to the heart: lust, kindled the more fiercely by what was forbidden, and for things to be sought a worth set not by beauty but by crime.

No nights without bloodshed, nor days without slaughter; sweet to them was it to take their meals with a kinsman in tears, and to defile those very kinsmen with the meals; forgetful of the bond of fellowship, of human kind and of themselves, of holy affection, of their mothers and fathers, and of the Author of heaven. So far did they advance into the highest crimes that it repented God to have fashioned all things — He who had given them life and light — and He chose rather to gather together the souls innocent of the guilty ones' crime, than not to submerge the earth a second time beneath the headlong sea, the world returning to its ancient form... [There was one] faithful, who for five hundred years had led a life immune from crime, and had proved himself living by the law laid down; to whom God thus revealed His holy mysteries, unveiling them:

'Preparing to succour the affairs of earth, given over to the vices of men and prone to crimes, virtue cast aside, by an end of things, I have resolved, when foreseeing to chastise all faults and to wipe out the guilty too lightly, to submerge the earth again with the sea brought in upon it — so that, while in its rushing it covers all and at command subsides, it may with its headlong flood wash away the polluted world, and roll together men entangled in it, and whatever was bidden to live for man's sake, in the foul ruin of the swelling deep.'

'But because you alone, to whom Our will is dear, leading a life devoted under sacred laws, ever in this one thing — and by the better desert — resist the rest, thus shall I temper the decrees of My ordinances: that, when they have paid the just penalty of their evil, then more worthily shall the mortal race begin again from you, and the peoples that shall enjoy Our light shall reckon you their supreme father. Let an ark, then, be prepared for you, framed of squared timbers, which shall be stretched to three hundred cubits and lie open fifty wide, and rise aloft to thrice ten only; and let it be brought to a single [point] above. But in the side let a door be kept, where the structure, gathered together, shall taper to a sloping roof. Then let it, breathing through its absorbent joinery, try the warm bitumen and clothe the fine cracks on every side, poured out after the manner of a skin.'

'From here let the greatest labour call you within: let the broad sides be joined on either hand by vast posts, and let the inner chambers of the completed enclosure be laid out; and when the double area has divided a threefold space, so let the living creatures be distinguished in their own nests, lest, mingled, they violate their kind, and, set together, fight, and confound their foods — of which it is fitting that you store up only the material; for that it should not be wanting when dispensed to those received, that is My charge to provide.' Receiving these things with a faithful mind — for He Himself, ministering both soul and senses, gave the servant both the will and the power for whatever He commanded — he, together with his sons and the gathered host of the common people, set about to lay low with the iron the dense forests that had grown up for this very purpose.

They lose the beams of light; the field is lightened of its shadows, the valleys are stripped of their age-old oaks, and the groves — destined to enfold the likeness of a smaller world. But when the sum of the begun work had been hastened on with so great toil, it is deferred a hundred years, that the peoples might repent of their wickedness and strive against God's wrath. O wretched beyond measure, whom the delay of so just a penalty makes more guilty: now they shall be punished not for the crime alone, for which there is abundant store of pardon to be sought, but because they shall be punished, and how many of them shall sink into dread Tartarus through the span of time granted them — when God testifies that He would rather spare them all.

Now, the mass completed, the rescue stood framed of sides in capacious joinery — the rescue which the Father Himself had prepared as the last remedy for thy shipwrecks, O Nature, and was pleading thy cause — when God deigned from high Olympus to warn His servant Noah by His voice that now the supreme hour was at hand to hide himself in shelters and to snatch his mother, his sons and his daughters-in-law from the threatening destruction and the darkness of death, into the prison of life — and with himself all living creatures: whatever its own land nourishes, whatever the air sustains that is not its own, by sevens of each sex, the creatures God had approved as clean, two by two equally, but of the unclean kind one only of each sex. Nor is there delay:

Whatever is born unknown beneath the vaulted hinge of heaven in the diverse quarters of the globe — what the Dawn-land marvels at, what the pale Iberian dreads, what rages in the hot sands of southern Libya, what cleaves the Hyperborean nights with wondrous light — all rush trembling in one throng and plunge into the opened ark. You would think they had foreseen the flood; for though God the Author gives to brutes a sense by which to bear witness to His nurslings, the herds have more of reason here — they who, moved by His power, understand nothing of themselves.

Therefore, as soon as God commands the ark, heavy-laden with every seed of life, to be closed, night rushes on, and sudden darkness shrouds the sky; and the headlong storm, falling, strikes the earth with poured-out air, brief in manner, yet about to keep its course; thus it rages and rains down savagely upon the whole world alike, as much as it is wont upon a part, when, driven by a swift whirlwind, the tempest follows fierce fires or announces the lightning's bolt, and at the thunder both heaven and earth cry back. Nor is the rain that streams from the clouds enough for destruction: the ancient waters are loosed, and now, the upper air thrown open, the sky rains into empty clouds, and the breath of the inmost earth, expanding — which feeds the rivers — fills them and opens new springs to match the torrents.