Alethia (On Truth) 2 part 2/4

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.