The viper, a most wicked kind of beast and craftier than all that are of the serpent kind — when, then, it is seized with the desire of coupling, it seeks out for itself the partner known to it, the sea-eel, or prepares a new one; and going forward to the shore and testifying its presence with a hiss, it calls forth the eel to a conjugal embrace; and the eel, being invited, is not wanting, but imparts to the venomous serpent the desired use of its union. What does a discourse of this kind mean, except that the ways of spouses are to be borne with, and, if one is absent, his presence is to be awaited? Though he be rough, deceitful, uncouth, slippery, drunken — what is worse than venom, which the eel does not flee in its mate? Being called it is not wanting, and with diligent love it embraces the slippery one.
He bears your faults and the easygoing levity of a woman's nature; can you, woman, not bear with your husband? Adam was deceived through Eve, not Eve through Adam. Him whom the woman called to fault, it is just that she should take as her guide, lest again she slip through womanish levity. But he is rough and uncultivated: once he pleased you. Is a husband to be chosen often? Even the ox seeks its mate, and the horse loves it; and if another be substituted, yet the mate of another knows not how to draw the yoke and does not deem itself whole: do you reject your spouse and think you must change often, and, if he fail for a single day, do you bring in a rival, and at once, with the cause unknown as though known, do you exact vengeance for an injury to your modesty? The viper seeks its absent mate.
It calls the absent one and summons it with a coaxing hiss; and when it perceives its mate approaching, it spews out its venom, showing reverence to its spouse, abashed before the grace of wedlock: but you, woman, drive off with insults the husband who comes from afar. The viper looks out over the sea, scans the path of its consort: but you bar the way to your husband with wrongs, you stir up the venom of quarrels, you do not lay it aside; you, at the time of conjugal embrace, boil over with dire poison, and you neither blush at the marriage bed nor revere your husband. But you too, husband — for thus also we may take it — lay aside the swelling of your heart, the harshness of your ways, when a diligent wife defers to you; drive away your indignation, when your coaxing spouse calls you to love. You are not a master, but a good one; you have been allotted not a handmaid, but a wife.
God willed you to be a guide; let us look to the lesser one, not as one all-powerful. Repay zeal with its like, repay grace to love for love. The viper pours out its venom: can you not lay aside the hardness of your mind? But you have a natural sternness: you ought to temper it by the contemplation of marriage, and by reverence for your union to lay aside the fierceness of your spirit. It can be put thus also: 'Do not seek, you husbands, another's bed; do not lie in wait for another's union. Adultery is grievous; it is an injury to nature.' God at first made two, Adam and Eve, that is, husband and wife, and the wife from the husband, that is, from the rib of Adam, and he bade both to be in one body and to live in one spirit. Why do you separate one body? Why do you divide one spirit? It is an adultery against nature.
This the embrace sought by the eel and the viper teaches — sought not by the law of kind, but by the ardour of lust. Learn, you men: whoever seeks to defile another's wife, whose companionship he desires to claim for himself, is even to be likened to the serpent. He hastens to the viper, who creeps into a man's lap not by the straight path of truth, but by the slippery course of an erring, boyish love. He hastens to her who resumes her venom like the viper, which is said, when the duty of union is accomplished, to drink up again the venom it had spewed out; for the viper is an adulteress. Whence also Solomon says that he who has become drunken, when through wine lust is wont to grow hot, is stretched out as by the stroke of a snake, and as from a horned serpent its venom is poured upon him.
And that you may know he spoke of the adulteress, he added: 'When your eyes shall have looked upon a strange woman, your mouth shall speak perverse things.' Nor let anyone suppose that we have set down contradictory things, in that we have used the example of this viper both for good and for ill, since each tends toward instruction, if we blush either not to show faith to one we love — which the serpent shows — or, abandoning holy marriages, to prefer the slippery and the harmful to the wholesome, which he does who mingles with the serpent.
And since we have begun to weave our discourse concerning cunning, by which each one strives to circumvent and deceive his brother and to compose himself for new frauds, so that one whom he cannot overcome by force he may entrap by guile and overlay with a certain dye of artifice, I will not pass over that fraudulent device of the polyp, which, finding a rock on the shoaly shore, fastens itself to it, and by its cloudy cunning takes on the rock's colour, and, with its back overlaid in a like appearance, shuts up in the snares of its furtive art the fish that have glided up undeservedly, without any suspicion of fraud — while they suppose it has not been noticed and is a rock — and intercepts them in a certain fold of its own flesh. Thus the prey comes of its own accord.
And one is caught by such devices as are those of men who often change their disposition and set in motion diverse arts of doing harm, so as to sound out the minds and senses of individuals — among the self-controlled, taking their stand and preaching continence; in a company of the intemperate, as though straying from the pursuit of chastity and plunged into the wallowings of intemperance — so that those who hear or see them may, with incautious readiness, trust them, and the more quickly slip thereby, while they know not how to turn aside or to beware of what may harm them, since wickedness veiled and overshadowed is graver and more noxious. And therefore those are to be guarded against who spread out the tresses and the arms of their fraud far and wide, or put on a manifold appearance.
For these are polyps, having very many coils and the traces of crafty wits, by which they can ensnare whatever falls upon the rocks of their fraud. The crab too, what tricks it contrives for the sake of food! For it too is delighted with the oyster and seeks for itself a banquet of its flesh. But because the catching is both difficult and dangerous — difficult, because the inner morsel is shut up within stronger shells; for nature, as the interpreter of the imperial command, has fortified the soft flesh as with certain walls, which she nourishes and fosters in a certain hollow recess in the midst of the shells, and as it were pours it out in a kind of valley;
and therefore all the crab's attempts are vain, since by no force can it open the closed oyster, and it is dangerous, if the oyster should shut in its claw — the crab takes refuge in stratagems and contrives ambushes with a new fraud. And so, because all kinds of creatures are soothed by pleasure, it watches whether at any time the oyster, in remote places now far from the sun's rays, opens that two-leaved shell of its and unbars the bolts of its valves, that it may take a certain delight of its flesh in the free air; and then, secretly slipping in a pebble, it hinders the closing of the oyster, and thus, finding the bolts opened, safely inserts its claws and feeds upon the inner flesh.
There are, then, men who by the practice of the crab creep into the way of circumventing another, and prop up the weakness of their own strength by a certain craft, weave a snare for a brother, and feed upon another's distress: but be you content with your own, and let another's losses not feed you. The simplicity of innocence is good food. It, intent upon its own goods, knows not how to lie in wait for another's, nor is it kindled with the torches of greed. To it every gain is a loss to virtue, a conflagration to desire. And therefore poverty with truth is blessed, if it knows its own goods, and is to be preferred to all treasures, because 'better is a little given with the fear of God than great treasures without fear.' For how much is it that may feed a man?
Or if you seek that which may abound also for others unto grace, that too is not much; for 'better is hospitality with herbs and grace than the preparation of fatted calves with discord.' Let us therefore use our wit for seeking grace and for guarding our salvation, not as an example for circumventing another's. We may use examples drawn from the sea for the advancement of our own salvation, not for the peril of another's. The sea-urchin, a small animal, cheap and contemptible — I speak of the sea creature — is generally an index of a coming storm, and tends to be of various forewarnings to mariners. Finally, when it has perceived beforehand a gale of winds, it seizes a stout pebble and carries it as ballast and drags it like an anchor, lest it be tossed about.
And so it does not balance itself by its own strength, but steadies and governs itself by another's weight. By which sign sailors seize, as it were, a token of the coming disturbance and rouse themselves, lest a sudden whirlwind find them unprepared. What mathematician, what astrologer — nay, what Chaldean — can so comprehend the courses of the stars, the motions of the sky and its signs? By what wit did it gather these things, by what teacher did it learn them? Who was for it the interpreter of so great an augury? Men see the confusion of the air and are often deceived, because for the most part it disperses without a storm: the sea-urchin is not deceived, its own signs in no way pass it by. Whence comes to so small an animal such great knowledge, that it should foretell things to come?
The more there is nothing in it whereby it could possess so great a faculty as true, the more must you believe that, through the indulgence of the Lord of all things, this creature too has received of this its kindred foreknowledge.
For indeed, if God so clothes the grass that we marvel, if he feeds the birds, if for each one he has prepared food for the raven — for its young cry to the Lord — if he has given to women the wisdom of weaving, if he has not left even the spider, which so subtly and skilfully hangs its loose nets in doorways, without a share of wisdom, if he himself has given strength to the horse and loosed terror from its neck, that it may exult in the field and, going to meet kings, scorn vanity, scent the battle from afar, be roused by the sound of the trumpet — if he has filled these many irrational creatures and other senseless things, like the grass, like the lilies, by the ordering of his wisdom, why do we doubt that to the sea-urchin too he has conferred the grace of this foreknowledge? For he has left nothing unexplored, nothing neglected.
He who feeds all things sees all things; he who made all things in wisdom fills all things with wisdom, as it is written. And therefore, if he has not passed over the sea-urchin as outside his visitation, if he considers it and forms it with the indications of things to come, does he not consider you? Nay rather, he does consider you, as his divine wisdom testifies, saying: 'If he regards the birds, if he feeds them, are you not of more value than they? For if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is and tomorrow is cast into the fire, how much more you, O you of little faith?' Or do we suppose that even that grace remains to fishes without a certain dowry of nature — that every kind of fish has dwellings prescribed for it, which none of its own kind oversteps, nor does a foreigner invade?
What geometer divided these dwelling-places for them, to be broken by no seasons? But we have heard of a geometer; of a 'sea-measurer' we have never heard: and yet fishes know their own measure, prescribed not by the walls of cities and their gates, not limited by the buildings of houses, not by the boundaries of fields, but the measure of what is fitting — so that just so much should be enough for each as suffices for use to abound, not so much as a certain immoderate greed claims for itself. There is a certain law of nature: to seek only so much as suffices for sustenance, and to reckon the portion of one's patrimony by the measure of nourishment. This kind of fish is nourished and bred in that gulf of the sea, that in another.
Finally, you will not find the kinds of fish confused, but what abounds here is again lacking elsewhere. That gulf of the sea nourishes mullets, that one bass, that one — and another lobsters. There is no free power of wandering, nor yet is their abundance shut off by mountains or their passage hindered by intervening rivers, but a usage impressed by nature, that each should keep itself as it were within the boundaries of its homeland, and that to go beyond as an inhabitant is suspect. But with us it is far otherwise: to change our houses by exile, to be held by disdain of the inhabitants, to court the favour of strangers, to move the perpetual landmarks which our fathers set, to join field to field, house to house.
The earth is slain for men, and the seas too are paved over; again, according to each man's lust, the land is cut into and the sea is poured in, that they may make islands and possess the straits. They claim for themselves the expanses of the sea by right of ownership, and they recount that the rights of the fish, as of home-bred slaves under the condition of servitude, are subjected to themselves. 'This gulf of the sea,' he says, 'is mine, that another's': the powerful claim even the elements for themselves. For these men oysters are nourished in the waves, for these a fish is shut up in a fishpond. For luxury not even the sea suffices, unless they have storehouses of oysters. And so they reckon up their ages and build receptacles for fish, lest a banquet cannot be filled with the seas. For with what ears do they hear, with what eyes do they look upon, the name of a neighbour and their possessions!
How they devise day and night, that they may take something away from their neighbours! 'Shall you alone dwell upon the earth?' cries the prophet. The Lord knows these things and reserves them for vengeance. How alien from fishes is the rapine of greed! They seek out the natural recesses and know the sea beyond the bounds of the world — a sea which no islands interrupt, nor does any land lie between, nor is any further land set beyond. There, then, where the sea spread far and wide cuts off all opportunity of beholding, and, for utility's sake, bars the boldness of navigation, the sea-monsters are said to hide themselves — those immense kinds of fish, bodies equal to mountains, as they have handed down to us who were able to see them.
There they pass a quiet age, set apart from islands and separated from all the contagions of maritime cities; they have their own regions and dwellings distributed to them. They abide in these within the unviolated boundary of their neighbours, nor with wandering passage do they seek changes of place, but as their native soil they love them and deem it sweet to linger in them. These they chose for this reason, that they might pass a solitary life, far removed from the interruption of onlookers.
Yet there are some kinds of fish which change their places not from any easiness of disposition, but from the necessity of fostering their offspring; procuring this at a fitting and lawful time, they gather as it were by a common counsel from very many places and from a different gulf of the sea, and in a joined column they make for the seas of the north, and by a certain law of nature strive toward that sea to bring forth their young. You would say, if you saw them ascending, that it was a kind of tidal flood; so do they rush forth and cleave the waves, flowing with violent onset through the Propontis into the Euxine. Who announces these places to the fish, who appoints them the times? Who grants them the disposition of the journey, the order of accompanying, the goals and the times of returning?
Men, to be sure, have an emperor, whose command is awaited; the token goes forth, edicts are published to the provincials that they assemble, letters are dispatched to the military tribunes, a day is appointed: and yet most are unable to arrive by the appointed days. What emperor gave a command to the fishes, what teacher imparted this discipline to them, who are the surveyors that lay out their routes, who the guides that direct their journey, so that none of them fails to appear? But I recognize who that emperor is, who by divine ordinance pours his command into the senses of all creatures, who silently bestows upon dumb living things the order of a natural discipline, who not only penetrates great things but also diffuses himself through every least thing. The fish obeys the divine law, and men contradict it.
The fish solemnly obeys the heavenly commands, and men render void the precepts of God. Or does the fish seem contemptible to you, because it is dumb and devoid of reason? But take heed lest you begin rather to be an object of contempt to yourself, if you are found to be more irrational than the seas. And what is more rational than this migration of the fishes, whose reasoning they do not indeed set forth in words, but declare by their deeds? For in the summer season they make for the strait of Pontus, because this gulf is sweeter than the rest of the sea's expanse. For the sun does not linger upon its waves so long as upon the others, and this is the reason that the sea does not exhaust all its water that is sweet and drinkable. And who does not know that even creatures of the sea are for the most part delighted by sweet waters?
In short, while they follow the rivers and ascend to the higher waters, fishes of an alien kind are often caught in the sea. Since therefore this cause makes Pontus more pleasing to them, both because the solemn blast of the north wind there tempers the heat, they judge it more suitable than the rest, as a place in which they can breed and bring forth their young and rear them all, since their tender offspring could scarcely bear the hardship of an alien region, whereas there the gentle mildness of the air fosters them. And so, when their duty is accomplished, they all return together in the same throng in which they had come. Let us consider what this reasoning may be.
The gulf of Pontus is exposed to the most violent blasts of the north wind and of the other winds, so that if a heavy storm rages there, tempests are stirred up, in such a way that sand is churned up from the deep — of which the sandy wave is the sign — which, rising higher by the motion of the winds and then heavier by its weight, is held to be intolerable not only to those who sail but even to the sea-creatures themselves. There is added this, that since very many and very great rivers are mingled with Pontus, in winter-time the gulf itself becomes colder and stiffens with all the chill of the torrents.
Therefore the fishes, as it were arbiters of the currents, in summer strive there to seize the mildness of the northern breeze when the air grows rough; and having enjoyed its pleasantness, they again hasten to shun the harshness of winter, and fleeing the savagery of the northern region they betake themselves to the other gulfs, in which either the calm of the winds is gentler or the temperateness of the sun is wont to bring spring. The fish therefore knows the time of bringing forth, which the wisdom of Solomon declared to be a great mystery; it knows the time of going and returning, it knows the time of fulfilling its task and of casting forth, and it knows it so that it cannot be deceived, because it employs not the estimation of reason nor the argument of disputation, but the inspiration of nature, which is the true teacher of piety.
In short, all living creatures have set times for bringing forth that must be observed; man alone has them undistinguished and confused. The other kinds seek the mildness of the season; women alone pour out their offspring without regard to the season; for a wandering and intemperate lust of begetting displays a wandering season of bringing forth. The fish passes over such distances there in order to seek some advantage for its kind; we too cross the wide seas; but how much more honourable is what is undertaken for love of progeny than what is undertaken for greed of money? In short, with them the crossing is reckoned for piety, with us for gain. They bring back offspring for all their wares; we bring back, in exchange for danger, a far unequal merchandise in our wretched desire for profit.
And so they seek again their native land, while we forsake ours: by swimming an increase of their kind is gained for them, while by sailing it is diminished for us. Who then would deny that an instinct of this sort and a power has been divinely infused into them, when he sees these creatures arranging with a lively instinct so solemn a pilgrimage northward for the sake of fertility, and others assuming in their tiny bodies such great strength that here they bring to a standstill in the midst of the waves the greatest ships running under full sail — just as the little fish called the echeneis (remora) is recorded with such ease to halt a huge ship, that you would see it cling as though rooted to the sea and not be moved; for it keeps it immovable for some time. Or do you suppose that to this creature too such great power could have been supplied without the gift of the Creator?
Why should I speak of the swordfish, or the sawfish, or the sea-dogs (sharks), or the whales, or the hammerheads, why too of the sting of the stingray, and that even when dead? For just as the viper, if anyone tread on it while it is fresh, is said to harm more grievously than its venom and to make an incurable wound spread, so too the stingray, even dead, is recorded to bring more danger by its sting than when alive. The little hare also, a timid animal on land, is fearsome in the sea, and brings on a swift corruption that cannot easily be repelled. For your Creator willed that you should not be wholly secure from those that lie in wait even in the sea, so that, on account of the few things that may harm, you should, as though set on guard, ever hope for the protection of salvation from your Lord with the arms of faith and the shield of devotion.
Let us come to the Atlantic sea. How huge are the whales there, of boundless magnitude, which, if ever they swim upon the waves, you would think islands were walking, that the loftiest mountains were rising with their topmost peaks to heaven! These are seen to be carried not on the shore nor along the coasts, but in the deep of the Atlantic sea, so that at the sight of them sailors are called back from any presumption of navigating in those places, and do not dare to approach the secret recesses of the elements without the supreme terror of death. But let us now ourselves rise up from the deep of the sea, and let our discourse emerge somewhat and raise itself to the higher things.
Let us consider only those things which are familiar to many and full of grace: how water is turned into the solidity of salt, so that it is often cut with iron — which is no wonder in the case of British salts, which gleam in the likeness of solid marble of that same metal with snowy whiteness, wholesome as food for the body and exceedingly pleasing for drink; how too the not-uncomely coral is a plant in the sea, but if it be transferred into the air, it is hardened into the firmness of stone; whence too nature has implanted in oysters the most precious pearl; how the water of the sea places it in flesh so soft. Things that are found with difficulty among kings lie commonly upon the shores, as it were at midday, and are gathered upon the rough rocks and crags.
The water also nourishes a golden fleece, and the shores produce a wool in the likeness of the metal mentioned, whose colour none yet of those who dye fleeces with various dyes has been able to imitate. So far is human industry unable to fill up the grace of sea-born nature. We know with what care the fleeces of sheep, even the less precious, are tended; though they be the finest, yet no dye is ever born in them. But here is a natural colour which no dye has yet equalled. This too is the fleece of a fish (the pinna). And the murex-snails themselves, which give the royal purple, are creatures of the sea. And what grace of meadows or pleasantness of gardens can equal the picture of the dark-blue sea?
Though flowers gleam in the meadows in their flight, the wool too shines back the splendour of gold as its substitute; and those flowers quickly wither, while this endures long. Nature is preserved: in the gardens things shine from afar, the sails on the ships; here is fragrance, there the wind breathes. What use is in a leaf? In ships how great are the dealings of commerce! Lilies bring sweetness to the nostrils, sails bring the safety of men. Add the leaping fishes and the sporting dolphins, add the waves resounding with hoarse murmur, add the ships running to the shores or putting out from the shores. And when the four-horse chariots are sent forth from the starting-gates, with what zeal and love of the spectators is the contest waged! Yet the horse runs to no purpose, the ships not to no purpose: the former to no purpose, because empty; the latter to advantage, as though laden with grain.
What is more pleasing than vessels that are driven not by the lash but by the breath of the winds, where there is no adversary but all are supporters, where no one is vanquished, whoever has arrived, but all the sterns that have made the passage are crowned, where the palm is the reward of safety, and victory is the prize of return? For how great is the difference between straight courses and reversed ones! These are made everlasting, those are the warriors'. Add the shores fitted out with rowing fleets, for which the banner of setting out is a breeze from heaven. And so the charioteers carry back an empty applause, these pay their vows for being saved. What worthy thing shall I say of Jonah, whom the whale received unto life and gave back unto the grace of prophesying?
The water amended him whom the land had turned aside; he sang psalms in the belly of the whale who had mourned on land; and, that the redemption of neither element might be passed over, the salvation of the lands came first beforehand in the sea, because the sign of the Son of Man is a sign of one to be feared. Just as that man was in the belly of the whale, so was Jesus in the heart of the earth. In each there is a remedy, yet greater in the sea is the example of piety, since the fishes received him whom men rejected, and the fishes preserved him whom men crucified. Peter too totters in the sea, but does not fall, and confessing among the waves, he nevertheless denied on land. And so there he is grasped by the hand as though devout, here he is dismissed as though forgotten by the censorious glance.
But let us now entreat the Lord, that our discourse, like Jonah, may be cast out upon the land, lest it longer toss upon the open sea. And the gourd too came forth well, to overshadow us from our evils. But it itself, withered as the sun advances, warns us that we must rest, lest we begin to grow parched in our wit upon the land, and words even fail us. Surely a greater remission of sins has been granted to us in the waters than to the Ninevites. And when he had been silent for a little while, taking up his discourse again he said: A necessary disputation concerning the nature of the birds had escaped us, dearly beloved brethren, and a discourse of this kind had flown away from us together with the birds themselves.
For it is by a certain natural law that those who behold something, or wish to express by speaking the quality of the things they either behold or speak of, take on that quality, so that both with the more sluggish we are roused slowly and with the swift we are carried along by a rapid glance, and use a pen either slower or rapid. And so, while I take care lest the things sunk in the sea pass by and, covered by the waters, lie hidden from me, every winged thing eluded me; for while, bent down, I searched the lowest depths of the waters, I did not look back to the aerial flights, nor did even the shadow of the wing of a swift bird grace me, which might have shone in the waters.
But when I thought every task accomplished and believed myself to have finished, and judged the fifth day to be brought to its completion, there came to mind the birds, which, when they go to roost, as though glad at their duty done, are wont to soothe the air with song. This they are wont to renew, as it were solemnly, at the rising and the setting of the day, so that, having run their course, whether of the approaching night or of the day, they may render their praises to their Creator. So I had lost a great incitement to the rousing of our devotion. For who, bearing the understanding of a man, would not blush to close the day without the celebration of psalms, when even the tiniest birds attend with solemn devotion and sweet song upon the risings of days and nights?