Alethia (On Truth) 2

INTERPOLATED BY JOHN GAGNY. The Preface of Claudius Marius Victor, orator of Marseilles, to his commentaries on Genesis, addressed to God most good and most great. Most high and holy God, source of all virtue, Almighty, whom it is neither permitted for human minds to comprehend by sense in subtle searching of things, nor lawful to be ignorant of (for by profound reason we believe Thee to be God in three, yet so believe the three to be one that a single substance renders three persons, preserving the bonds undivided in a holy union)—Thou art without beginning, likewise everlasting without end, alone and ever the same, subject to no age. Thou exceedest the expanse of things wherever the recess of mind reaches; Thou art encompassed by no space. Nor is there any place that can contain Thee, for Thou art immeasurable.

Moreover, what Thine image is, it is not lawful for the human mind to attain, unknown to be seen by the eyes—unless Thou shouldst show Thyself to be beheld by some special divine gift; nor indeed is there any created power that quickens Thee with motion, through which we are and are moved. Thou art the mind and inmost substance of the sacred mind; Thou art reason and the fully prudent source of reason; Thou art the virtue and summit of virtue, and verily Thou Thyself art life and the begetter of life, and of profound light: Thou art the true Light, O God; Thou art the cause and vigor of things. From Thee whatever has suddenly flashed forth out of nothing has drawn its beginning, and, filled by so great an Author, either has power in its measure or has received form into its members. Nature, preserved in its fleeting parts, proves Thee to be Lord; and the order that is given confesses the appointed succession.

Thou, distinguishing the docile numbers, dost balance weights, varying measures and proportions, and dost govern motion; Thou biddest the alternating turns to serve, and the unbroken recurrence of things to stand firm, and the world—full of the image of the mind—to bring forth the ages already known to Thee, and to roll on. Thou art not content to endow created things with one gift; whatever Thou doest, Thou bestowest for varied uses. Nay rather, kindly God, Thou doest nothing without a cause for Thy creatures; although that ordering of Thine, unknown to us, is utterly indestructible by any wave: yet to the ungrateful Thou hast not denied life and sense; nay, Thou hast even granted them to rejoice in the will of the mind. Nor yet must the nature of a will strong toward either side be blamed by us: for therefore the power to perish was given to all, that to live might be the sweeter; and the mutual...

...measure of mutual peril would yield according to merit, since the punishment of the wicked would double the rewards of the saints, worthy of a stern Judge. Furthermore—if it is lawful for me to say this, saving Thy peace, O Father—perhaps in Thy sight not to have sinned is a greater good, amid the slippery seasons of life, than for the wretched to have sinned an evil: but how this may be, do Thou see; the causes we entrust to Thee alone, in whom we all believe. Meanwhile it is enough for us that, while Thou dost inspire the lowly weights of earth with sacred reason and form them by Thy virtue, fashioning them after Thine own likeness, nobler in countenance: while Thou hast raised man upright, with face lifted toward the stars—him, snatched by the fraud of the savage tyrant into the snares of death and to impious Tartarus, Thou redeemest by the poured-out blood of Thine only-begotten Son: and...

...sought back from the depths of Erebus to greater gifts, Thou restorest him to a state greater than he had been made, and renderest him to everlasting life, and bearest him into heaven, the dread foe subdued. Now, now let no rash man accuse father Adam, because, breaking the law and loosing the light precept, he opened the way to death: for the parent's fault has been amply compensated, since it is more to conquer death than not to have known how to die. Now, joyful from the hall of heaven, he looks down upon the ethereal vaults and treads the stars, and summons his descendants, set in order, into the kingdoms to come—those whom the rich wisdom of the eternal Father formed again by waters and taught to be born again. Therefore I beseech Thee, kindly God, who with favoring power dost grant our souls to perceive; and Thee, O dearest Son of Thy Father, give to our hearts Thy mellifluous Word:

and pour eloquent tongues into us, while we prepare to form tender souls and hearts toward the path of true virtue in childhood years. Now open the renowned caskets of law-giving Moses—what the origin of heaven is, or what the first beginnings of the world, and what shook hidden faith from doubting minds throughout the whole earth; whence the plague, increased, drew its strength, and the ancient morals gave way to vice. Grant me, O God, to describe the mystic things of eternal life; grant likewise the mind, grant fitting times for the mind, grant zeal, lest care be lacking to so great a labor, and a good outcome of my zeal; and—that which overruns all my prayers by right (clear is the mind to him who writes)—do not condemn the task that I, though guilty, now dare to undertake; and...

...wink kindly at my faults, and spare me graciously. But if anything in the arrangement should err against the law of meter, or if improper speech should err and the sense should waver, let no measure of peril against the faith come from this. Through the Lord Christ, who, born of Thee, flourishes in the same majesty wherein the kindly Spirit, incomprehensible to minds, lives world without end. Book One of the Commentaries of Claudius Marius Victor, orator of Marseilles, on Genesis. Before the poles and the day of heaven and the darkness of the world, before the forms of works, and things, and the seeds of things, the Eternal, without past and without end of future, underlies all being: with whom the one God was ever; with whom the begotten Word, God, was living, and His own kindly Spirit, the sum of hidden, life-giving force.

By a harmonious bond the one substance of the three, joining them, eternally blessed them with supreme virtue. And mighty, He reigned in the majesty of creating, already seeing things and the causes of things and future events and what was to be done, and begetting them with a capacious mind, surveying the ages, and ever holding present whatever the seasons unroll: His kingdom was His very self, immeasurable in blessed mass; nor did the threefold virtue, God, lack a witness of His kingdom: who, first giving bodies to things from no seed, while He compelled things to exist, even then accomplished our office, which He alone possessed. And that rich Wisdom might make this world, He begot all things at once: but afterward He adorned the formless seeds of things with forms superimposed; and a well-given order reduced the times into succession.

For not as the tongue of sacrilegious madness has imagined—that the helpless event of a mindless mind, while it rolled unknowing seeds, twisted forth so prudent a work; nor is it lawful to say it was made before time, since what is born of time is moved. Nor again is it lawful to believe the world eternal and coeval with the heavenly ones, having ever held a stable vigor: for what consists of bodies must be confessed to have begun. For a body, which a blow wears away, which space dissolves, and which abolishes itself by the very end toward which it tends to its utmost, shows its beginning: and what is proved to have been allotted thus, it is fitting either to be believed made or to be thought born. Therefore it stands established that the world was made—which everyone, when subdued, grants, and, convinced by true doctrine, believes; thou wilt concede that God made it:

who, mighty by the power of the Word and by virtue, disposed, commanded, and admonished whatever is reckoned as nature, and sustains the created gift in successive turns (ever reshaping the fleeting), and, drawing back the swift thing, whirls it in its orbit. And if He prefers to dissolve all things suddenly, He will at once restore them, returning into like forms. So great is the power of the Father, and so great is the glory of the Word. But that I may at last touch upon the first beginnings of things: the vaults of high heaven and the lands lying below are the first part of the work; but water covered the lands, and the air in the midst, moist with a dingy cloud, and the vast abyss veiled itself in black darkness, and the sacred Spirit, brooding over the outstretched waters, quickened the nurturing waters, and gave to be instilled the seeds of things, not yet to be poured into shoots in lands not yet composed:

when light, sent from above, flashed forth as God spoke; and the separated shadow, drawing back the black mantle, departed from highest Olympus. Then divine prudence, calling the light 'day,' bestowed also upon the darkness the name of 'obscure night.' Thus one day was made from morning and the first evening: again, the first evening driven off, the restored light made a new morning: when the most firm mass, yielding from the midst of the waves with congealed body, rose up; and, far and wide made solid with hard rigidity, it suspended the divided waters; and set the cold deep against the warm axles; and, leaning, with the sea hedged in, poured itself over the things which on every side with vast circuit...

...it covers the ethereal heaven, the mass having been drawn down from here. Perhaps here someone, by skilled error, may thus reason within himself: lest fuel be lacking to the ethereal flames, and excessive heat, seeking the depths in pursuit of nourishment, should burn up the mortal race, and earthly things should not be able to endure the glittering heaven, the firm framework of the pole is set beneath, downward: which, while it protects us by its shadow, meanwhile grows cold from the waters set upon it. But to seek out the causes of the divine Godhead—flee that far from us, my mind: let it ever be more for thee to believe that God can do whatever is thought impossible to be done; and that a great sea is borne above the stars and constellations, prove it by the very reasoning of those who refuse to believe, and who wish the world to hang suspended, which the Creator Himself bears, and rolls firm with immeasurable weight.

The third light marveled that the swollen waves departed: when God, the waters of the remaining flood now driven on, opened up 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 power of the Word, the blue seas girded the bared lands. These, swiftly bidden to sprout with varied offspring, the luxuriant twin earths covered with new mud. And the rude forest, bursting forth from the tender turf, with glad foliage tossed itself; and each and every tree and the greening herb brought forth its own kind, with fruit and seed; and the earth was clothed with grass. Now, three days completed, the first day of the sun, kindled by swift motion, was bidden to gather itself into flames and a globe of fire; and the founded seeds of light scattered ruddy locks with rosy tinder.

And the moon, the honor of night, gleaming with borrowed light, hung suspended on a lower path beneath the sun; from which, when struck, it poured back the rays it had received. And the blue night marveled that the stars, painting the sky with their distinct zones, flicker varied colors with ethereal flowers, and shine the more resplendent in the more adorned darkness, while the bolts, poured forth with glowing flames, gleam, and the new constellations press on with eager flashes—stars which the sun's radiance overshadows with its open rays, measuring out the four seasons of the four-parted year. The sun too, though the moon's course is monthly, content with one course, completes the revolving year, and confesses its sacred Artificer by wondrous structure. The fifth day moved breathing bodies in the sea, which the moistening water begot; and it strewed the deep delights of the ocean:

which nature formed in wondrous ways with varied germ, bidden to bring forth parts from the whole, and forms from an empty body. Moreover, it gave the soul to go into brute shapes: and the vast whales, which lift their scaly backs from the swell of the briny gulf, stuffed with soft fat, it brought forth: and that very liquid which preserves the bodies of these harms our bodies—the generating nurse to the fishes: that same water which nourishes the germs of the earth; hence the birds too, that soft kind, drew their vigor: for while it forms the liquid waters, and life sent in enters the sea, the swollen seas seethe with much offspring; nor is it enough that the fishes, a single race, should rise up: and that the scaly throng in the briny flood escapes to the topmost waves:

unless, flitting in the waters, it should swim gently in the pure ether, the flying creature taught to reach the ethereal recesses: therefore the material is one for both birds and fishes. Now twice the third day was radiant in the bright heaven, the third after the genial gifts of the warm sun: and now the warming earth had loosened its heavy limbs, when God, stirring greater things, bade the earth bring forth every living thing which reason alone, the source of motion, quickens—to which it was given to serve as the use of things demands. Without delay, vital pledges burst forth from the teeming lands, each allotted the shapes of its own kind. Here now let it be lawful for me to touch upon something which I would in anxious haste pass entirely over: to relate things handed down in a somewhat altered order.

After the appointed order had brought forth all things kind by kind, full of true goods and stocked with much endowment, which God should foster as an order destined to abide: then the structure seemed most beautiful to its Author. But what is that—that there was a world, that there were stars, and risings, and ether, and the glassy sea, and the greening lands, unless there be a spectator present whom the glory of so great a mass might fill, and who might lead his eager eyes through each thing one by one? To what purpose are boundaries so wide, and ample possession, if the possessor of things is absent? Turning these things in His mind, the Ruler of Olympus, and weighing them by the weight of the Word, stands; the sum has been given to the work, good are all the things I have created; now let us make man, He says, to reign in the world and to be the image of God: it is fitting that he be like his Creator, free to his own will, who enjoys with his mind the things created.

He had said these things, and man was made—whether in whole body or in soul and form, perhaps in that manner in which He makes future things, in which He makes things to be done, in which He always held what was done: even though the past age had not yet come on. Therefore He bade this man, set over things together with his consort, to increase through offspring and to fill the empty lands. Then nature, once granted to created things—especially to those which moving life seems to animate—multiplies whatever was first brought forth in its own forms. When the seventh light saw that the great Parent had ceased—but only that He had ceased to create the kinds in their numbers—and had held His rest: then it was rightly hallowed, having seen the work perfected: for this too is...

...full of virtue, that God ceased and laid aside His labors; for to the things begotten the Father's right hand had prepared the form which it is enough for the Lord to have accomplished in twice three days. The seventh light taught the examples of venerable rest which we are all bidden to hope for in the heavenly hall, if only the good works of pious deeds be not lacking. This light also signifies that day on which Christ loosed the underworld and, hell conquered, opened the way of return. While He, the victor about to return once for all into His native hall, and now free of evils, rests in human flesh. Thus God knew how to cease, thus to take repose, so that resting He might do more, likewise resting without end and working without end, and mingling the succession and the times, by ceasing He consummates whatever work He had created. But of what kind and in what kind...

...of matter God formed Adam, here it is right to take up in few words with Moses. For first by merits, yet last in the whole order, man was made: that he might know how to surpass created things, and hence might pay equal praises to the two. Therefore the most excellent hand of the most high God takes for man clay easy to handle and well apt to yield to the touch, and to follow the bend and form by which it is led with art, and unfolds into a shape what He already bore in His human mind: then, life sent in by the steaming breath, watered the soil: the earth, softened by liquid, is turned into flesh: and blood, a slippery moisture, distends the soft veins through their known passages. Then man, now full of mind, leaving the earth, leaps up, and prudent, adores the Lord of reason.

Not otherwise, when the bodies committed to the tomb shall rise again, the open graves laid bare, when the Majesty of Christ, glided down from the open heaven, unbars the entrails of the pregnant earth, they shall leap forth, and the things of earth and of heaven shall worship the Lord. For what the earth did not have, when thus from cheap dust the human body was compacted into honored form, it is most easy to restore again whole, that from dust it may render back what the earth, engraved through many years, already had. Thus from the ancient sepulchers, at command, the bodies shall come forth, each one again assuming its own parts. Thus there is nothing of the past which is not a form of the future. But to disclose that time of the first man, and the seat and dwelling, where a wound was received in place of the whole seed: where the happy land opens its eastern recesses, on a higher globe the Paradise of a pleasant grove is spread open:

and it is distinguished by the order of the rounded woodland. Here, where now the boundary is marked off with equal spaces of the sun, and an eternal spring tempers with even hours. There each tree stands rich with its own fruits, and the mellow apples are pushed off by succeeding apples: which, pleasant to the eyes and full of wondrous vigor, cherish the limbs and souls, and feed them with savor and scent. Here the earth, varied, vibrates starry warmths, ever leafing with new bloom and fresh fruit: here the breathing cinnamons, quickened with vigor, loosen their fragile reeds, scents of an ambrosial gift. But neither what the Mede exhales, nor what the Achaemenian breathes with loosened hair, what the Assyrian, rich in soft amomum, and the Mareotic harvest reddening with nard, what the shrubs of Tartessus, what the rod of the Sabaean...

...and what the Palestinian branch weeps from its torn wound: all these, heaped together, you would think were gathered in this one garden, for hither God brought together in close array all that nature received severally in fixed places. And while the grove, stirred by a gentle breeze, vibrates in soft passage, it blends one nectar from diverse scent: and there arises a new gift which no single tree can claim for itself. And wherever the trembling grove, gently shaken by a soft murmur, quivers with stirred leaves, the whole forest sounds a hymn to God with its trees, and the measured breeze whistles songs, nor does an empty motion shake the air in vain. For surely, with the Author, who under one mass holds back thing to thing, binding them by alternate law, it is fitting to believe that nothing happens rashly or in vain. Nay rather, the beautiful grove and the gleaming woodlands...

...are proofs of His works, and the nurseries of things; nor is there doubt that, before the first parent's sins, glory, simplicity, zeal, wisdom tenacious of truth, prudence, grace, honor, and salvation here had likewise fixed their tents with him, and the illustrious affections of the soul, and renowned virtue, and whatever beautiful thing the world holds: why, in short, should I wish to enumerate in a few words such manifold gifts? Now it is enough of faith that, springing from a glad seed, on the one hand the tree of life seeks the air with lofty fruits: on the other, that knowledge destined to harm, with its diverse fruit, hangs the cognizance of things upon the tree of the law.

At the bosom of the sacred grove, which the forest crowns, a fountain gushes and weds the offspring with rich virtue, joyously loosing its swollen head into a fourfold stream, richer than the unbroken ocean; for, with downward current, the one gives its waters, while the other receives them all. Nor yet does it swell: but lesser is he who knows not how to grow with such infused floods than he who knows not how to diminish, with rivers poured out: of which, in the first rank, Phison leaps forth exulting, the fourth part of the blessed spring, putting forth the endowments which prudence of nature gives; and it fills the peoples of the Ganges and stretches out the Indian realms with its silt, and, rolling lands and seeds, sows the fields it makes, where, bare with naked sands, it gleams golden amid the shavings of glittering metal. Here, where the carbuncle glows ruddy with lightning fire, and the emerald flashes radiant with green light.

Nor less from there does Gihon, but milder with peaceful waters, lift up the waters of the Nile, and with kindly flood covers the fields that would otherwise burn far and wide, and, resisting the sky, tempers the regions of the Ethiopians with its refluent pools. Third from here, coursing with rapid stream, the Tigris goes as companion to the Euphrates—both of which, rushing in joined mass, the conquered earth, laid open, swallows in a hollow abyss, until in the glades of Armenia and the Median vales it vomits forth the rivers which it could not bear, nor now contains. But the Tigris, as if indignant at the black hell, leaps forth beneath the ethereal breezes with greater motion. And again it enters the caverns, and, plunged in hollows, drives its roar within: and, made stronger by the barrier, is multiplied with waters, and, swifter from the dark cave, comes out, and cleaves the Assyrian plains with swift march.

More just is the Euphrates, which, lavish with rich stream, waters the parched fields of subject Persia below: drawn forth in gentle brooks, and serving all alike, and offering itself wholly to human uses: until, dry of waters, lavish even of its very name, it consummates upon the lands what it owed to the waves of the sea. These dominions, therefore, rich with the whole offspring of nature, and these delights stocked with so great an endowment of virtues, are the first possession of the first man, into which, brought to exult in everlasting life, the dweller had been bidden: so then, that man, placed amid the delights and the far-rich vales, while he is yet made worthy and learns to merit by labor, lived free of sorrows and ignorant of care. So much, with the Author, is there of merit, in place of the name of the highest, in having merited as yet no evil.

How great, then, do we think the Father can pay to one returning into the times of life, with whom, even then, among His servants, His pure bounty was Paradise, not a wage? And in that what those decrees of the stern law brought—when, about to make a trial of liberty—He received the appointed life for one keeping the commands: He pledges still greater things to the good, and reserves rewards: who set a cause to merits, when He said, Eat of all the trees; only this one beware. Which, bearing the swarms of diverse things, carries beneath its bark the knowledge of right and evil. For cruel death and dread shall follow the transgressors. By such a law given, the best reason teaches that God did not make mortal in the first age the first man; nay, he brought death upon himself of his own accord. For in this too is the indulgence of the great and highest God:

in that what He bestows on His servants not by merits but only of kindly free will, He desires to be of our labor. And He prefers to seem to owe what He gives. But thou whom the keeping of sacred law binds, do not complain that liberty, shut up within narrow bounds, is robbed of a part of itself: nothing has been cut off from thee by this law. Before, thou hadst gained only the power of land and sea; now already thou hast that of the kingdom and of life everlasting, and besides that of death. Then, that the rude inhabitant of the world might believe that the kindly One had granted all things to be subject to him, God bade every animal which the earth, bidden, had now created—pouring forth seed from its silent, greening body—to be present, and to obey its own sovereign: namely, that he might assign well-fitting names to all things, and call each created thing by its own...

...name, by which nature it is born to be moved of its own accord. Without delay, nature, not ignorant of obeying, sets before God every kind of living thing: in whatever part of the new world it is summoned, the animals come together in that very moment of brief time: whether they had been sluggish with soft step, or most ready in swift course, or wont to glide suddenly through the air with a rush, or to swim in the waves, or to be borne slippery by weight: these God almighty, called before Adam present, endowed each with its own gift, generous; and armed it with hand, horn, foot, tooth, venom, and with other things by which an animal, helpless in skill and of lesser spirit and lacking reason, might protect itself and keep itself from adverse things: but no living thing flourished with countenance, face, and bearing equal to man.

But to man He added almost divine honors. And among so many things illustrating life with twofold sex, he alone was unequal—he who long had the matter for a fitting consort, unknowing of begetting. Therefore God undertakes a known work: and, the man's struck heart suddenly loosened, languid with so great a sleep, He draws away the lowest rib from one bereft of mind, whence flesh is bidden to follow: for the skin, withdrawing of its own accord, offered a smooth way to the rib as it went, the limbs being wholly unharmed and the body sound. Which, arranged by God working through the various joints, received form, and, animated with warm marrow, was turned into a work of life, now pleasing in the second sex. Thus Eve, granted, was formed for her husband. Now at this point cease at last, most foolish throng, to torture the mind with vain questionings:

nor here to ask why woman was fashioned from man's limbs—since even from the beginning she could have been shaped from soft dust and out of nothing: and cease to scrutinize hidden causes: as far as it may be permitted to conjecture, woman was made from man so that a certain kinship might mingle a mutual and alternate love between them, compelling itself to recognize itself in alternate members. Hence Adam at once thereafter perceived Eve to be a part of himself, so that, exulting, a new grace touched his mind, and the affection of the mind, received into the inmost being, rushed in; and it penetrated to the bones with so great a warmth that now it might give him to know what a consort was, and a wife; what sweet children, and that parents must be set after spouses; what it was for both to abide in one flesh, leading likewise an everlasting life together.

Furthermore, while they lacked the vices and corruption of the world, they flourished with divine souls, in need of nothing: since the substance of the world was in their power, and all the resources the world gave; nor did they bear bodies at all subject to diseases: hunger, ignorant of any pause, did not compel them to eating: who, if they had kept the commands of the supreme God whole, would never have known the cruel dominion of death and dread sufferings forever. But the cunning serpent, breaking the Lord's law, by such deceits persuaded the unwary Eve. O race, devoid of a better life and ignorant of good things, ignorant of men: for he must be thought not to know good who, ignorant of evil, knows not even to distinguish by what boundary diverse things differ from good. And therefore God did not wish it to be lawful for man to pluck the august fruits:

lest, the cloud of the mind removed, they should cast their eyes into heaven and know the best things, and be like gods. Here now let it be lawful to run on a little, and to lament the base ruins of the ancients. Ah, too wretched, the gentiles whom madness drove into various rites, to feign many surnames of the gods, and to add a plural voice to God alone. The impious voice of the dread serpent first uttered this, who was then the cause of death: for credulous, after Eve broke the precept with sacrilegious bites, now learned in experienced evil, she seeks a partner in her fault: and, ill-skilled in fraud, seeks her unwary husband by the same art by which she perished first: thus, subdued by the foe, miserable Adam yields to a twofold crime, and tastes the apples most full of the sacred juice.

But because in these things lay hidden the prescriptions of the stern law, destined to bring death more than with viperous venom, as soon as they violated their lips with the forbidden taste, at once they perceived the wickedness, and the deed accomplished grew, and struck their breasts with a sense before unknown. Hence fear, thence shame, had first taken their rise. For while men, their hearts conscious of lofty things and intent only on heaven and the right, bore their breasts turned toward the exalted Parent: while with the clear splendor of the incorporeal mind they marked the miracles of divine secrets, the care of their members had not yet touched them; but when that everlasting vigor of life forsook them, now stricken with death, at last cold and heat, the changes of the air, came upon them: and men first perceived themselves needy of clothing; and of sex...

In secret they blushed, lamenting in silence their own pitiable plight. Therefore they wove fresh coverings from the leaves of the shady fig, plucked off after their fault, to clothe with veiled body the shame their mind had taken in. Nor is that enough: they know not what they do, by what means they may flee the brand of their crime and even themselves; they could wish, if perchance a way lay open, to bury themselves in some abyss—so much is guilt the very neighbor of its own punishment, that now the image of death delights the wretched who dread mortal death. They stretch out shady woods and dim coverts as empty veils of false comfort. For how can it be right to withdraw your timid body? You, I say, whom the living power of the Father, who made you, fashioned but now from cheap dust—He conceals you, He fills you when present, and goes forth poured into your inmost recesses. Can you then, fleeing your Lord, escape Him?

Did you then hope that you could lie hidden from Him who sees all things, that you might lie in vast darkness? You shall never be concealed. So when shame, born of sin, touched Adam as he sought hiding-places, at once he heard: 'Ho there, where are you, Adam?' But what is this, that God seeks you—does He perhaps in ignorance ask that which not even death itself, which you have undergone with your frail mind, can withdraw from the supreme Lord? Why does He ask where you are, except that He declares you, fallen by the death of sorrow through your own will, to be no longer with Him, and to have fallen from holy heaven? Yet the holy love of the Father forbids despair—whose mercy (may it be lawful for me to say it, and lawful too to have approved my words) surpasses His justice; nor does He so terrify me by rebuking with stern voice, 'Where are you?', when you ask with trembling heart;

rather He revives by it what, still after his crimes, lay fallen and plunged in fear into hiding-places and almost buried; He calls forth and calls back. And lest examples be sought from farther off, the very pardon of the fault shows Him gentle. After the cause, once shaken out, makes the guilty parents manifest, heaven, sea, and earth began to tremble at God's speaking, and, shaken, to open their vast recesses. And while the sentence punishes the guilty, it establishes hell. 'Since it has seemed good to depart from My commands, now just censure shall strike new offenders for Me. First, among all the living things of the whole world, you shall be accursed, you envious serpent, worse than what you hide within: you who cast down to be sold men into the prisons of heaven, and, the origin of harsh death, urged on by your fraud those who were to touch the forbidden fruit.'

'Therefore, that a fitting measure of punishment may follow your wickedness, from the man into whom you plunged—you, stretched flat, your limbs on the unequal ground, shall furrow the hard earth with your breast. And because you have caused him to try forbidden foods, from now on, base creature, you shall ever eat the filthy entrails of the earth. And because it pleased you to be the very first inventor of death for yourself, you shall die by everlasting punishment. And the hatred of the human race you shall in special measure experience against yourself and all your kind in mighty war. And I shall make your death, long-drawn for you, a perpetual terror to you; you shall creep on feet and on prone breast; and the woman with her seed shall destroy you, for whose furthest soles alone you, the cunning one, shall lie in wait, so that, trembling, she may even plant her steps upon your head.' He spoke, and thus began against the bloodless Eve.

'And you, who, not content to ruin yourself alone by the smallest fruit, rashly dragged your husband into like daring—you shall be as a handservant: subjected, you shall suffer the harsh judgment of your husband, and shall feel his toils. And indeed (since, being first, you dared to multiply wickedness begun) you shall be ever tossed by many misfortunes. And in childbearing you shall be tormented by frequent births, so that those whom your fault shall cause to be created mortal may sometimes be the cause of a mangled death to their mother. You too, who chose to set our admonitions and the first bonds of salvation behind a woman's deceits, daring of your own will to die—receive, O guilty one, such a lot. The earth which you shall furrow with your plow shall be accursed for your crimes; let it bear thorns and menacing thistles though tilled; and may the wicked hope deceive your vow.'

'Nor let the earth keep faith with you—you who of your own will refused to live joyful amid these delights and to live through all ages: now live in hard toil, and live wretched forever, until slow old age restores you to the earth and the earth buries you again.' He spoke, and, taking pity, He clothed them with the skins of beasts, lest the injury of heaven should harm them in their ignorance; and He taught them to guard their life. And lest Adam should again venture into like darings, He struck him with the fear of death, that ill-omened thing. But lest from the tree of life they should draw out perpetual life, and lest heavier torments should await the wretched guilty ones—too long protracting their time amid such great perils, and liable to dread punishments—at once the winds, which the forest of the deep grove stirs up, expel them, bidden to depart from the sacred groves; and...

the air, bearing them bound in a whirling tempest, drives them away from the sacred seat of Paradise. So, cast forth from here, the young pair, banished and given back to the earth, sigh for the lost joys of light—untried by so great a span, untried by such peril, yet not untried by the grief that stirs their hearts. What they had rushed into, what they had lost, what life would follow, what life had been—these sad things they turn over in silent mind. Moreover they cling anxious as to what is to be for them at the final end: whether heavier things still remain for them, whether no hope at all survives for the wretched, whether by everlasting death they shall lose what is left—or whether, when the bitter way of death has burst in through the wood upon the world and the peoples to come, life might yet be able to return through some wood. End of the first book.

The second book of the Commentaries on Genesis by Claudius Marius Victor of Marseilles, orator. Thus far I have run, without deceit, through the hidden sequence, the beginnings of the world, as sincere faith has taught—while earthly things were free from death, free from the worthy vices. Now, as I take up the manners of men and at last mortal matters in verse, almighty God, add strength to your poet. After both, bidden to depart from the consecrated seats and realms, reached the native fields and stood, exiled, upon their own soil: with what mouth do the rude settlers gape, amazed, at lands so wild, which bloom green with no fruit-bearing, no well-set tree? Nor does any beauty of soil please, for a confused heap, mixed with packed weight, is set in a mass: lofty cliffs stand stiff; level places, sunk beneath forests, labor and lack grasses;

the high places bristle with brambles. Alas, with what eyes does he look on these things, with what heart does he behold them, in whose minds Paradise is present? One cause of grief underlies it, while now the face of every evil, full and far the saddest, opens itself—after all your delights, O Paradise, and the pleasant joys of fertile places, whose most fleeting image is ever present, and the thought of them wearies their sad souls. Now that honor of the sacred grove shines forth with a greater serenity; now the blessed wood brings to mind your riches taken away; now the sweeter use of fruit and the nectar-like savor; now the earth breathing with living flowers saddens the grieving with its absent fragrance. 'O Paradise, how unlike are the things you repay (he cries); nay, what you sought, you make worse than those—worse than these gifts amid the blessed delights?'

Thus for those sorrowful ones the kindly love of life now perishes; the lack of things now whispers that death is sweet—lest a greater want should meet them with a heavier ill: for raging hunger compels them to search the entrails of the earth and to seek what fruitless food the wood gives; and so it pleases them everywhere to explore the doubtful nourishment from the grudging roots of plants, and to fill the growling belly. At length their utmost lot taught them, needy and destitute of all the things whose use they lacked, to hope for the help of the supreme Father. Then both, stretched flat with limbs on the ground, with tears alone and mute grief sought the comforts they could not seek in words; while shame withdrew their words into inward complaints. So when Adam knew that the gifts of his mute tongue were restored to him, rising he made supplication with such a prayer.

'Almighty Author of the world, Creator of all things, whom—stained by the blight of evil and by daring deeds—I set against myself, while once a happy life remained, and while it was granted that I could follow with swift mind by sight even beyond the stars, with vision poured wide around through all things: why do I either no longer have these eyes that once beheld your secrets, or have them in great part diminished and shut up in the foul cavern of an earthly prison, so that now I am given to see nothing true except certain mortal, fluid things, and the world slipping into worse? And therefore, O Almighty, who are always wholly everywhere, to you we flee, with trembling mind we beseech you: hear the wretched, whom you always see and hear. When that head of crimes, the world's most hostile enemy, wished once to bind me to the condemned party,'

'daring nothing by himself alone, lest being overcome he should yield, he took the form of a serpent, and through those weapons of mine—my wife—with a hard wound he finished the work; thus the unforeseen fraud of the contriver of crimes subdued us. And when I was condemned by just punishment for the crime, my mind, smitten with such great grief, acknowledged the fault, so that I thought I offered myself a punishment from myself for myself. Therefore I refused both the groans and the tears of punishment, and, embracing in my soul the sweet comforts of punishment, henceforth setting this very thing among sacred gifts, in pardon for my crime: now I do not decline whatever labors you may add. Yet meanwhile, best Judge, if it pleases, hear us who pray nothing against your commands. Nor do we now pray this with tears and mournful voice, that the censure of your judgment may be loosed for us:'

'rather that the whole sentence may hold its full force. You commanded me, when the clod was stirred, to seek my food, and you said that barren thorns must be cleared away in place of scattered fruit, and thistles instead of fruits; therefore the crop sought with labor must be sown so that it may cheat my prayers. Grant me to know what crops there are, in what manner they are to be sown, what plants are fruitful, what the form of the labor: give help to the wretched, Father, and steep our senses; then it shall be that Eve, master of things and sure of safety, may serve me, and, having experienced the cruel punishment of her father, may bear peoples, so that they may be smitten by our crime, and that the succession may purge the parents' sins, making eternal punishment by the deaths of descendants.'

Meanwhile, as they prayed thus, the image of the serpent, perceived with silent dread as a sign, was seen to bear itself by a hidden path, gliding gently with creeping coils to the soft grasses. It turned the trembling pair upon themselves, and, shaken by hatred of dread grief, drew their kindred into wrath. And Eve first to her husband: 'If the supreme cause of evils moves you, snatch stones in your hand—lo, the chance is given to give over to death the author of death; let the cunning one learn by his own torments and bloody death how sad it is to die, who has wickedly destroyed both me and you.' She spoke, and pursued the one that slipped away in flight with hurled stones; nay, both hurl them at the hard rocks among the oaks, where the cunning snake hid itself by crawling. Of these, one stone, let go by chance, rebounds against a bare flint with stiff arm, and strikes out a spark;

which, born from the dry tinder, went forth into flame, and, spreading wide its tressed fires, the whole forest now burned, once it had caught. Here they shudder, and with trembling step seek hiding-places. But amazement itself holds the frightened pair, and casts upon them a keen care for the unaccustomed flame, which they wish to behold again and, swollen with wonder, to watch. So, withdrawn a little, on the ridge of the barren earth they marvel that the shady foliage has flowed down, that the woods bristle with embers, that the day is darkened, that all the lands grow bright, and that a new light is beneath the sun; nor with quiet mind do they receive the cracklings amid the hissing woods on every side, and the surging globes of flames carried up to the stars, nor that the devouring fire, sunk deep, stretches into the lowest roots; whereby the conquered earth, taking on heat, opens its veins, generous to its gifts.

When all its moisture had now been dried up, soon it began to become liquid, and to pour out metals in streams, each in its kind: hence in a tawny torrent the highest glory of gold glitters; gleaming with shining milk, silver flows out; the slippery hardness of bronze strays, and gathers into a soft mass when its body is dissolved. Do you wish to grasp in brief the form of the burning forest? Sulphurous embers flit through the dark places of the grove, no otherwise than when dry Etna, its furnaces burst open, casts up hissing sulphur mingled with flames. Then the very rich earth, with its clods boiled down, was stirred into varied offspring, which, giving birth to them by the wedded rain, with its rotting soil dissolved by a crumbling passage—where the swollen bosoms cracked open and the lifted harvest came forth, and, with the ears set in motion, the waving crop quivered:

so that the new dweller might learn the appearance of the cultivated crop. Yet let no long-continued use claim anything for itself from this, nor let chance, devoid of virtue, claim it: God, knowing all things that are good, gave them along with light; and He willed that whatever the greater world holds should be made known to the lesser world by sacred sense, and Himself through these things—for if the mind, as it was given to man, had remained unimpaired and subject to no fault, neither the appearance of things, nor the bodies of things, nor the course of the stars, nor the soft number of the sand would deceive it; nor over what great spaces the earth is stretched out with the mighty deep, nor what measure there is of the completed Mass; what vocal melody of harmony the motion of the sevenfold axis sounds—this is now learned by use and given to constant studies; whatever we grasp by art or use, we always hold given by the Lord.

And indeed, that our lyre may return, having digressed, to the first parents, now I beg you attend in few words. Adam, driven from the august seats of Paradise, had at first no other office than the use of his wife, and to bestow all his labor on begetting offspring. So when the first house, now full of two children, brought many comforts amid such varied labors, and each saw himself a new parent, multiplied care relieved the heavy griefs; and now hope arose to rejoice in their own attendants in the work of the field: of whom the eldest in age, Cain, turned the rich fields with hard mattocks. But Abel, most worthy to rejoice in living gain, on bare hills and in the growth of the dry field, pastured harmless sheep, and the parents with milk.

But when they perceived the joys of the awaited fruit, and saw, by divine regard, their vows overcome by favor, soon each resolved to dedicate to God the first offerings of his fruit: the one first loaded the sacred altars with new produce; the other rather sacrificed with a snow-white lamb—the first kind of priesthood, soon the impious victim of a brother; yet far beforehand signifying Christ by a figure. For since He was to be the everlasting priest after the order of the Most High Melchizedek, presently envy was kindled against Him, and by the malice of His own brethren He became the saving victim, while He hung from the tree: so once, beforehand, the bright Abel foresensed the envy of his brother; for when the one had sacrificed of his produce, and the other with a snow-white lamb, soon at once the smoke from the burnt lamb ascended high into heaven:

but on the contrary, flying through the void, the smoke from those crops returned to the earth as Olympus fled away—either because he had consecrated worse things to the Lord, or because what proceeds from a greedy soul is not pleasing to Him in spirit. From there Cain nonetheless is inflamed into mad wrath, drawing the poison of envy from that fountain whence the serpent had given it to drink; and his brother, unaware of any need to beware, he butchers, slain by savage slaughter. Alas, the deed! to what does furious lust not drive the wretched, to what does anger, fresh hatred, and wicked violence not compel? What had the harmless brother deserved? was he holier, who was, to deserve to be killed? Now the deeds of the parents are not posterity's, that it should accuse anything; and we ourselves have added the outrage; now there is something the cunning snake may cast up, if perchance we should wish to accuse him—we who die:

and that offspring added nothing to the heap of crime save death, and made the parents' fault, brought into the world (it is dreadful to say it), to be a new crime by its impiety. So impiously, so do you, dire Cain, stain the new world with the first slaughter: for which you, already loosed by death, shall now pay perpetual and eternal punishments, far worse than the wicked serpent, if we measure your crimes; for he brought death to us, but did not inflict it, whereas we took up what was brought; but you inflict this for the first time: by so much worse than he, who, a public enemy, could be avoided; you, a private one, could now be guarded against by no art: for who would fear from a beloved brother? But indeed there is no fault of a man so dire and nefarious that God would not remit it with a forgiving mind, if only one repent of the deed:

which we learn with Cain as witness, whom God then, dripping with fraternal slaughter, held with no unworthy correction (so great is His clemency)—nay, having gently asked him where that brother of his might be, and convicting him as he denied the deed, He punished him lightly for so great a crime. He sends him away no farther than as a fugitive and an exile from both parents alike, and banishes him into vast regions; and bids him at once depart from his native lands: in this too graciously favoring the wretch far happily; for it is by far a heavier punishment to be seen among the happy and the blessed of pure mind, by one who is to live after his punishment and the shame of his deed. And that the exile might be lighter, a wife is added as companion, faithful to the guilty one, lest perhaps despair should seize him alone: you too, who...

might lift the cares of the sick heart, and, with body stirred, might steady the broken man with embrace, and, subject to no fault, by worshiping both with desire for his rule and with pure mind, might draw forth whatever might suffice for two. Thus much grace attends the exiles; and God almighty, multiplying their progeny, increased it through a thousand names of grandchildren; and He granted Cain to be a king to the peoples, whom he taught to gird cities with walls, foreseeing his descendants for very long ages. Meanwhile, grave Eve again to her sad husband had compensated the first loss by a holy pledge, and had again given back to the parent, by offspring now born, manifold cares of mind, and joys mingled with toil: they made the name Seth for the boy, whom God almighty gave them in place of Abel,

from whom followed the posterity, of whose seed went forth Enos, who first, chosen as a priest by quiet virtue, hoped and deserved that he could rouse with pious prayers and vow the God mighty to grant; and he steeped the people that followed in the worship of the eternal Father, to keep it. From whose line, mighty in virtues, Enoch descending, not unequal even to his ancestral merits, restored to his native seats and the blessed world, still lives, and now holds the realms of the life to come. He is the forefather of just Noah, in whose times frequent guilt infected the whole world with concordant zeal, and the following posterity added vice to ancestral vices; wherefore, when they had been wont to live through a thousand years or near it, even longer:

lest the perverse manners of men should receive increase with growing years, that there might be a limit to vices, the greatest span of human life was reduced to twelve lustra. For when the youth of the line of Cain, prone to worse, had condemned itself, joined in profane marriage-beds with the impious—deserted by the favor of the heavenly ones, it leaps forth into varied wickedness and rushes rashly into all falls. Then God, hostile to the world turned away because of its many crimes, at once bursts forth into these words: 'By no means henceforth shall that Spirit of mine remain in the human race, nor shall it prolong life further: let the guilty life of men be content to live through twice sixty years; since, following earthly things, they have more of flesh than of mind: thus then the stern sentence of the unmoved Judge appointed a fixed time of life:'

lest the seasons of a long life should be able to furnish cause for increasing crime. For what wickedness of the wicked would the impious race of men now not dare? For with great bulk, giants—monstrous horrors of men, born of varied seed—dared everything; whose one and greatest virtue was not to be utterly depraved to the last; whom dread lust, dragging guilt over all, allowed to spend no nights without bloodshed, nor ever days without slaughter: forgetful of divine and human right, and of their own; of pious affection, of their mothers and fathers, and of God their Author: and so far did they advance into the highest crimes, that it grieved Him to have formed enemies as the Lord: so that for the wicked sins of the guilty, God willed even to involve in destruction the souls innocent of crime, and to plunge the lands beneath outpoured waters:

the world returning again into its ancient figure. There was one Noah, just, on whose account God deferred to come forth into wrath: whom a faithful life had now led through five hundred years free from crime, and had proved as one living in the holy law. To him God thus, unveiling, reveals the sacred secrets. 'Now it has seemed good to wash away the whole air, infected with the foul vices of men, together with the lands relapsed into worse, and to submerge it beneath the swelling sea: so that, while rushing on it covers all things, and, bidden, subsides in a headlong flood, it may wash away the polluted world and the men entangled in it, and whatever was bidden to live for man's sake, and may roll it all together in the ruin of the swollen deep.'

'But because you alone, to whom our will is dear, have led a life devoted to holy laws, ever resisting the perverse with a better vow: thus shall I govern the rights of my decrees, that, when the impious race has paid me just penalties, and the dregs of the world have been purged, then the mortal kind may more worthily begin from you; and the peoples who shall live in times hereafter may reckon you their supreme parent. Therefore let an ark be prepared for you, woven of squared beams, but such as may be three hundred cubits long, fifty wide above ten, rising on high to the air at thrice ten, adorned with a window of one cubit. Moreover let a door be set in this side. Then let warm bitumen, breathing with its absorbent joining, search out the fine cracks and clothe them on every side. And when...'

'a double area has divided a triple space, let the living creatures be separated thus in their own nests, lest, mingled, they violate their kind and, joined, fight and confound their foods, of which it is fitting that you store up only the material: for it is mine to provide, lest it be lacking, distributed to those received.' These things Noah, conceiving with faithful mind (for He who supplied the senses of his mind gave to the servant both to will and to be able whatever He commanded), approaches the bidden work, beginning to lay low the dense woods, and to cleave the aged oaks. They admit the rays of light, and the plain is lightened of its shadows, and the valleys are stripped of their coeval timber. But when the sum of the begun work had been hastened with so great labor, it is deferred into a hundred years, so that the good life following might amend the sins of the former life, and might change...

the impious race its fierce ways. O wretched ones, whom so just a delay of punishment makes the more guilty—nor now only for the crime past, but far more grievously shall they be smitten, for the very span of time indulged and the pardon neglected: when the Lord testified that He would rather spare those who returned in the deferred time. Now, the bulk completed, the structure stood firm in the spacious joining of its sides, which the Father Himself had prepared as a supreme refuge, by its very nature, against your shipwrecks, O nature, and against the rushing floods. Then God, deigning from lofty Olympus to warn His servant with His voice, that the supreme time was now at hand for Noah to hide himself in lairs, to snatch his sons with wife and daughters-in-law from impending destruction and the darkness of death, and to restore all the animals to life-giving enclosures:

whether the earth nourishes them, or the bright air sustains them—each kind sevenfold, and each twofold from those which, less fit for sacred things, are called unclean. Nor is there delay: whatever is born under the vaulted hinge of heaven, unknown in the diverse parts of the world—what the Eastern man marvels at, what the pale Iberian dreads, what southern Libya nourishes in its hot sands, what cleaves the Hyperborean nights with wondrous light—hastens trembling, and is plunged into the opened ark. You would say that the Flood had already foreseen it, and that they obeyed God their Author; and that the beasts, void of reason, prevailed in reason more than imprudent men, even if they understand nothing. So when God bade the ark be first closed, heavy with every seed of life, night rushes on, and sudden darkness drew the heaven over, and, pouring forth...

the falling cloud strikes the lands through the air. And it rages, and runs riot alike over the whole world. Nor is the rain that flows from the clouds enough for destruction: the ancient waters are loosed, and now, with the sky opened, heaven rains into the empty clouds; and, unbarred, the heavenly world flows down into the waters from the abyss, and opens new fountains equal to torrents. And while in one whirlpool there joins itself in a rush whatever heaven, whatever earth vomits forth, whatever the clouds poured out, it envelops the submerged fields with their mingled tillers, and the entangled flocks in their stalls, and the cities with their citizens; it overwhelms them amid the waters; and with the floating ruin of the peoples no appearance of things remains: the flood covers all: and by growing the very rivers lose their name. Soon also the ocean, never satiable by any rivers,

now perceives the waters rushing in with so great a mass; which, with its whirlpool increased, it drives on the greater, and compels them, returning, to rise in a heap. Until, with the deep raising the tide on every side and the shores drawn in, the wave joins itself to the highest circle, and the seas meet over the oppressed lands. And now the ark, loftier than all things by thrice five ells, was borne along: for this measure exceeded the highest mountains, when for forty days the fury of a single rain and a single death had lasted. Then, for thrice fifty suns, with serene air, a like measure and quantity of the sea remained. While the almighty Father, taking pity on the race long shut up in prison, bade the great sea little by little to withdraw from the lands, and gradually to slip back: lest, fleeing in haste, it should overturn all the lands:

and that the dry earth might pass into a stable seat. At last, with the air spread out, the level summit soon began to show itself: little by little the highest ridges could be seen, and the waves to descend level with the crags; and, as the sea subsided, gradually the woods to burst forth and the hidden hills little by little to rise. And now the black watcher, sent forth from the wide ark, had found the air calm, and, its prey discovered, no longer cared to return to its accustomed enclosures. Therefore the dove, once sent out from the seat of life, bringing back nothing certain, sent out again brings back a small offering of the peace-bearing fruit of the olive. So great, at this great sign, with praise of the parent, was the captive weeping by which they reveal that they rejoice, that it arises:

as great as when the bitter victor, exulting, leaps suddenly upon the besieged at the walls, if perchance aid be brought; as great as when the sentence sent by a moderate judge restores the condemned again to life; as great as when life runs back in the case of an ambiguous death, amid the tears of mourners and the joys of weeping. Afterward, when the watcher again announces that the fields lie open—by this very thing, that, sent out, it did not return to the lands now received—it wearies them to endure the sluggish lairs any longer: and it delights them to breathe at the winds of heaven in the open, and to feed the soul, loosed, with the ethereal sense. But to none is it lawful to go forth from the open enclosure, until He who had bidden the remnants there should enter the world, should bid them depart from the sacred enclosures—Noah, admonished from heaven, with his faithful wife, and with his household, and his sons together and his chaste daughters-in-law:

and to give again the new rare things to the colonists led forth: and to send out, now from the opened enclosures, all the animals preserved for the succeeding offspring—long now captives in the enclosures—which the good Maker had preserved for human uses: which, after the gate was given, rush forth: a part the air with wings, a part seek the glades and woods; a part, plunged into caverns, is buried in the open ones; a part, free on the open plains of the earth, exults in the dry places, and grows green in the open meadow. But indeed Noah, allotted the realms of the second world, surveying all things with his eyes and receiving them with capacious mind, and willing to sate his soul by filling it, drinks in all, surveying everything with swift gaze. And he marvels at the new world, more shining than its wont; then the sun is more ruddy: the glad face of the sky laughs with a greater serenity: and the despaired-of fields grow green with new offspring:

but still the image dwells before their eyes, ever to be remembered, of so great a ruin—what they endured amid the waters; what too they did not endure by sacred gift, when the sea raged with savage lash and the ark scorned the dashing storms. And when Noah with his own turns over how ready and ample was the bounty of the supreme Father showered around himself, it compels them, astonished, to marvel and ponder among themselves whence so much food sufficed for so many souls through a whole year, what drink—for this is established, if the other things of life were supplied, that the shut-in ones, while the ark floated, could perish of thirst amid the waters: unless the ruler of Olympus had sustained them, utterly lacking human aid and gift, by that same nod by which He founded all things.

For He indeed, stripping those far destined to perish in the prison of night of the desire for light, filled them with strength; He, that they might be able to endure so sluggish a rest, poured in the placid love of slothful torpor. For now what could the almighty's right hand not do, who, when it seemed good, makes those suddenly plunged beneath the waves of the icy whirlpool to burn; and those carried beneath the very flames to be cold; and who, having now taught that men can perish in a short time as the waves submerged them, will show that they can be reborn by flames and by waves. End of the second book. The third book of the Commentaries on Genesis by Claudius Marius Victor, orator of Marseilles. Bearing such things in mind and discerning the ages to come, Noah resolved to enter upon no part of his office before he should repay God with sacred praise, and render thanks,

and recount, as one escaped from peril, how Noah had escaped. Soon sacred altars rise of snow-white stone: and the newly-renewed world acknowledged these first altars; for before, the whole world was a temple by the vaulted track of heaven. Then, with things at once prepared for the sacred rites, a victim came headlong from the sevenfold flocks: whether of the kind of birds, which the soft air sustains, or of those which the earth brings forth: every seventh animal, devoted, is laid upon the holy altars of sacrifice. Then soon a fire, sent down from the ethereal Olympus, tastes the fragrant offerings at the sacred altars; and the holocausts blaze for God with ambrosial vapor. And although that Lord and God of the whole world needs nothing of our gift, yet He delights to be venerated by the offices and gift of His own: who at last thus addresses Noah, with the waters now taken away:

'And although the punishment was small, by way of penalty, for so great a crime—to have condemned so many guilty of sins by avenging rains and a poured-out heaven, and to have purged with a wider-spread deep the guilty seat of the lands: yet, offended, I will not strike the mortal race with such a lash any further: although I see human minds about to rush again, through varied wickedness, through former crimes, and profane peoples: yet meanwhile my avenging right hand shall not cease to render punishments to the unjust, and rewards to the just. To you, therefore, whom a most just life approves to us, increase secure, and fill the fertile fields with offspring, and stretch new flocks over the long lands: the elements shall keep their turns, and on all days, with the seeds scattered, the due harvest shall be rendered. The work of the world shall run on, matched, with discordant hours:'

Winter shall contend with summer; and the year, balancing the seasons of spring and autumn, shall be unrolled in flight and renewed. And you (to whom I have entrusted dominion over the whole world) shall make all things tremble; the substance of the vast world shall be in awe of you. Behold, I give you power over absolutely all things; and among all the kinds of things that move of their own accord, I bestow their flesh and limbs upon your use. Yet I will that the blood of living things be forbidden you: if anyone eats of it, no less shall the sharp sentence of judgment punish him than if he had drained the flowing gore from human slaughter, which I shall ever require as avenger, and so demand, that not man alone shall pay me ample penalty as in reckoning, but even the beasts as well; let human blood be equally sacred to all.

But that hereafter no one may dread a flood, let him be safeguarded by such a covenant. When the light vapor turns itself into clouds, and heaps up dark waters in the hollow clouds, I will pour forth my rays, and at the highest vault the image of the sun shall fashion for me a beautiful curved bow, framing the joined points of the sky; which by its light may display varied colors and disperse the rains into the air. As a token of this future sign, posterity may safely take it beforehand, so that by such a covenant it may believe thereafter that no flood is to be feared. Attentive to such commands, Noah with his spouse, after rendering thanks and repaying praises to the Lord, eagerly turned the rejoicing fields—the father and his sons together—from the mud and sweet moisture, the soil being more enduring, soon working it with hoes, and wedded the lands with seed.

Then indeed the most dense green grass, spread wide over the fields where it had ripened into golden ears, on account of the sun's heat with its milk congealed into grain, yielded a manifold harvest with heaped-up increase. And the new vineyard, now with branch heavy-laden, luxuriated in rich fruit, and the twisted tree brought forth nectar—cups being born from the hard wood. By chance Noah, joyful, was celebrating honors to God, indulging in sacred feasts, and pouring out wine, the first from the new vine; of which, drunk at last too freely, thereupon heavy with deep sleep and with limbs loosened, since he lay with his garment not well arranged, and prostrate on the ground gave his sons a sight of his genitals to behold—the limbs that were to be seen: O Ham, most vile, the source of your own being moved you alone to laughter.

Believing it now not enough for you alone to have sinned, you strive to stain your brother with the sprinkling of your fault: but a far better judgment and a better spirit taught those whom your parent's exposed manhood had confronted to cover it with a robe. For Sem and likewise Iaphet, turning aside their hands, covered their father's shame—offspring most worthy of such a father; and therefore the father, loosened by sleep and wine, gave that they should by right be lords of the lesser brother. Soon, waking and aware of the good deeds of his sons and of Ham's demerit, he repaid him with such a recompense. "You, Ham," he said, "shall be accursed, and shall become forever the servant of your brothers in the ages to come. But Sem indeed shall be blessed; and the younger brother..."