GENESIS. In the beginning the Lord set in place the heaven and the earth: for the earth was formless and hidden beneath the flood, and the measureless God moved over the vast waters, while chaos and black darkness shrouded all things. When he commanded these to be parted from their axis, he says: 'Let there be light,' and all things gleamed in a bright world. When the Lord had completed the works of the first day, he founded the firmament, whitening with rising clouds: the immense sea received the wandering shores, sweeping up manifold rivers in mighty currents. The third light unveiled the tawny face of the lands; soon, a name being given, the dry land is called earth; flowery shoots rise up in the windy fields, and at once the fruit-bearing branches bow down their arms. On the fourth day he begets the moon together with the lamp of the sun.
And he fashions the stars, radiant with trembling light: these elements he gave as ensigns to the world set beneath, that they might teach the seasons to be changed through their various risings. On the fifth day the flowing rivers receive the fishes, and the birds hang their various wings upon the air. On the sixth the Father makes the cold serpents slip into their coils, and pours forth whole herds of four-footed beasts into the fields, and commanded all things everywhere to grow with manifold seed, and to roam and feed upon the boundless lands. When the divine power had established these things by command, seeing that a ruler was wanting to the affairs of the world, he speaks thus: 'Let us make man in our own image, like to our countenance, that he may reign over all the world.'
And although he could have composed him with a single word, yet he himself deigned to lead him forth with holy right hand, and breathes into the dumb breast a spirit from his own divine bosom. When he had seen him formed into an image as though his own, he judged that solitude would breed gnawing cares. At once he pours upon his eyes an irrigating sleep, that more gently a woman might be formed from the plucked rib, and that the substance might strengthen the limbs by a twofold mingling. And a name is bestowed, which for life is called Eve. Wherefore children, according to custom, leave their parents and cleave to their spouses in a fixed abode. On the seventh light God rested at the end of his works, ordaining that day as hallowed for the joys of the age to come: then, the throngs of living things being brought forth in order, Adam, skilled by the prudence granted to him, gives to each one, one by one, a name that endures.
Him, joined now with Eve, God deigns to address: 'Increase by manifold birth unto the coming ages, that both the sky and the earth may be full of your offspring; and, my heirs, pluck the various fruits which the groves and the fields yield from their rich turf.' When he had discoursed thus, glad Paradise is set up as in a hall and beholds the light of the first sun. Among these there is born a tree of deadly fruits, breeding a taste of life and death joined together. In the midst of the dwellings a river flows in a pure stream, which waters the notable sources with its clear waves and cuts fourfold channels from its surging spring. Phison, most rich, flows with gold-bearing waters and grinds out conspicuous gems from its hoarse whirlpool:
This one's name is the leek-green stone, that one's is the glowing carbuncle; and clear in its shallows the river Havilah first laps the earth. After this Gihon, gliding down, enriches the Ethiopians. The third is Tigris, joined to the pleasant Euphrates, furrowing Assyria apart with its swift stream. Here Adam is placed as guardian with his faithful spouse, and as its tiller he is fashioned by such a voice of the Thunderer: 'Do not fear together to pluck the permitted fruits, which the unshorn grove has brought forth on its leafy bough; only be anxious lest perchance you gather the harmful evil, which grows green, set apart for a twofold office by its double sap.' And nonetheless meanwhile deep night held the blind pair, nor had any garment covered their newly-formed limbs.
Among these seats and among the risings sweet with their mild berries, the foaming serpent, surpassing the beasts in cunning sense, was creeping silently in cold coils, rolling livid lies with biting intent, and tempts the soft heart within the woman's breast: 'Tell me, why do you fear the happy shoots of the evil tree? Has not God hallowed all the fruits as known to you? If of these you were eager to pluck the honeyed food, the golden world would return upon its star-bearing axis.' She refuses, and fears to touch the forbidden branches: yet nonetheless her heart is overcome by feeble sense. At once, when now she bit the mild fruit with snowy tooth, the serene sky, stained by no cloud, shone forth. Then the taste, planting an allurement in her honeyed throat, compelled her to bear the gift to her unwitting husband.
As soon as he took it, night being wiped away, his shining eyes flashed forth, the world gleaming serene. Therefore, when each beheld the naked body, and when they see their shameful parts, they shade them with fig leaves. By chance, under the now-setting light of the Lord's sun, they hear a sound, and, trembling, make for the byways. Then the Lord of heaven addresses the mournful Adam: 'Say, where do you now dwell?' He, a suppliant, answered thus: 'O Lord, being addressed, I tremble in my fearful heart; O Great One, being yours and naked, I am worn out with chilling fear.' Then the Lord: 'Who gave you the harmful fruits?' The woman handed them over, while he says that his eyes, flooded with the white day, and the clear serene sky, the sun and the stars of heaven, had shone upon him.
Straightway the wrath of God terrifies the troubled Eve, while the Most High seeks out the author of the forbidden deed. She discloses under these words: 'Persuaded by the speaking serpent, I received it, deceived by his guile and coaxing entreaty: for weaving his own words with viperous venoms, he told me these things sweet above all fruits.' At once the Almighty condemns the deeds of the dragon, commanding all to look upon the hated monster: soon to crawl forward with breast poured out on the ground, then alone with its bite to chew the earth, with war remaining for all time among human senses and against man himself in his tottering, so that, its head cast down, it should creep prone behind the legs of men, that man may trample it as it slides and presses close. The woman, wretchedly deceived by fraud-bearing persuasions, is sentenced to bring forth offspring in hard peril, and to endure servitude to the will of her husband.
But you, to whom the counsel of your wife seemed true — she who, conquered, yielded to the pitiless dragon — you shall bewail your wretched toil through long ages: for instead of the seed of wheat there shall rise for you the thistle and the buckthorn with many sharp thorns, so that, with weary entrails and mournful breast, your anxious food shall yield you very many sighs, until, at the coming of the time of death in the west, you be given back to the earth as you lie there, whence you bear your body. When these things were done, the Lord gives to the trembling pair a weariness of life, and drives them far off from the hallowed gardens, and sets them turned away, and expels them by fire in the midst, in which the Cherub is whirled with swiftest heat, while the hot point boils down and rolls its flames.
The Lord, lest their limbs should stiffen with sluggish cold, sewed together the skins plucked from beasts, covering the naked limbs with warm garments. Therefore, when the faithful Adam now felt himself to be a husband by wedlock, he bestows on his wife the name of the beloved mother of the living. Made a father by twin offspring, he at once names them with different words. And this one bears the name Cain, to whom Abel is joined: with much care the one guarded the harmless sheep, while the other turned the earth with the curved plow. When these bore their gifts perpetually to the Thunderer, they offered, at the prompting of their disposition, dissimilar fruits. For the elder offered what had been sown from the fertile clods; but the other devotes himself with a gentle lamb, bearing the pure entrails in his hand and the snowy fat. And at once it pleases the Lord who watches over pious vows.
On account of which Cain grew hot with a cold wrath. Him God, deigning to address, begins with such words: 'Tell me, if you should live rightly and discern harmful things, could you not pass your life pure from contracted crime? Cease to destroy your brother with biting intent, who, subject to you as to a lord, will offer his neck.' Nor yet, broken by these words, does he desist, but leads his brother out to the fields, and when he saw him caught unawares on the deserted grass, he crushes his pious throat, throttling it with both palms. Which deed the Lord, watching from heaven on high, inquires into: in what part of the lands does Abel dwell? The other denies that he was set as guardian of his brother. To whom God declares: 'Does not the voice of his blood, sent to me, sound aloud and ascend to the lofty height? Know, therefore, what awaits you for so great a crime:'
For the earth which now was drenched with a brother's blood, ill-cursed, will deny you the seed committed to it, and, the herbs being consumed, will bring forth no fruit, so that you, benumbed, dash your limbs together with much trembling. II. SODOM. Now God almighty had abolished the crimes of the primeval age with an avenging flood in all the waters — as many as the heaven scatters, the earth spews forth, the sea spits out — and, having thus far agreed to decree punishments by watery destruction, whenever the air should bring on winter, he had commanded the varied bow to be for the reining-in of the rains, marking the clouds with a purple and green fringe: called by the name of Iris, which is the storm-cloud's own clasp. But relapsing, the impiety of men, together with the second race, springs up, and again a new age of evil sprouts forth, now allotted for its punishment not rains but fires:
Thus the land of Sodom deserved to be burned by fiery dews and to foreshow the signs of the end to come. There a savage wantonness, the enemy of modesty, stood in the place of law, which the foreseeing guest would flee — choosing rather, at the Scythian altars or at the altars of Busiris, to seek death amid the rites, and by the boxing-glove to yield his gore to the Bebrycian king, to glut the Libyan wrestling-grounds; rather even to take on Circean shapes through the ninth cup, than at Sodom to lose his violated sex. Their monstrous unions beat upon heaven with their outrage, nature rebelling against itself in like incest of kind, and the very name of man violated together with his body. But in due time God, having foreseen all things, patiently judges the unjust, when the age of crime, having wasted the space granted for ceasing, had compelled his wrath. And now the avenging day was at hand: two, sent from the heavenly host.
Two youths, angelic in form, both of whom were spirits performing divine ministries, as the Lord's commands ordained, come to Sodom. There, of the stock of the pious, the sojourner Lot, wise tiller of what is fair and just, was alone in remembering God: even as a useful tree is wont to lie hidden in the wild woods with its hospitable fruit. He then, sitting before the gate — scarcely were the heaven-dwellers approaching the walls — though all unknowing, of his own accord calls the divine ones, addresses them, venerates them with fatherly honor, and calls them to his hospitality, though they were preparing to lodge far off: striving with long entreaties, he discharges with friendly zeal the pious pledges of his table and the honest duty. Night had given rest, another light had unloosed the night, and Sodom clamors at the doors with its shameful law. Lot, a suppliant, against them:
'Let not ill-fed lust inflame you, young men, to defile that youth of yours — the lust by which begetting is left idle, by which the seed is spent in vain, by which no living souls mate; not the beasts that haunt the lairs, not those returning to their stalls, not those gaping beneath the waves, nor those that hang near the clouds by the measures of their wings, nor those that glide along the earth with body drawn out. Every kind has begotten by union; a female is spouse to all, and never to any is a mother anything but a female. Now if the youthful torch craves to lay waste modesty, I have within twin daughters, of marriageable age, their virginity swelling in bloom, now due to the harvest, worthy of the desire of men — take them as your will shall incline: I, their father, give them up, and for my guests I will pay out the sorrow.' The frenzied mob to these words:
'Who are you, and how great, and whence, that you would lord it over our minds and stow away laws for us? A sojourner, not a ruler of the Sodomites, you measure out our acres. Now, therefore, you yourself shall pay the penalty for what our desire is, both for your daughters and for your guests: one man is enough for all.' Said and done at once: no delay of the raging mob. As a turbid torrent is rolled with wintry force, and bears up on a single foot the countless streams of the brooks: if any tree there is struck by the rushing waves, not destined to remain long — as long only as its root will allow the leafy delays to endure — when, the soil beneath being eaten away, it now hangs with its trunk dug round about, this way and that it postpones its certain ruin, uncertain which way. Not otherwise Lot, in the midst of the whirling of the mob, was tottering, now almost to be overcome:
but the divine power comes to his aid; the angelic youths, snatching Lot from the threshold, restore him to the house: but the mad mob there, meanwhile, as the first tokens of their punishment, they smite at times in their eyes with loss of light. Then they unfold the decrees of God: that a fitting punishment would come from heaven upon Sodom, but that he himself had deserved salvation by the title of righteousness: 'Why, then, are you not girded to hasten your flight from here, and likewise to lead out anyone of your kin that you have? We now bring destruction upon the city.' Lot swiftly addresses his sons-in-law, but the hard mind of men scorned to believe the warning and laughed at his fear. Soon, at the time when the light attempts now to cleave the darkness, and the face of heaven is two-colored, of night and day, the youths were pressing to lead the Chaldean stock out from Sodom and to grant the just household to salvation:
'Come now, Lot, arise and take your wife and your two daughters, and go hence as an exile, forestalling the punishment of Sodom.' With friendly hands too they lead forth the trembling ones, and there give the rest of their commands: 'Save your life, Lot, and do not by chance wish to turn your gaze backward, nor to begin that, nor to halt your step; onto the mountain — make haste!' Lot feared the heights, that with slow step he must clamber up, lest the heavenly wrath should first overwhelm them: he sets about to beg for another haven, the little city which he had seen over against him. 'Hither,' he says, 'let my flight be; surely it scarcely stands out with walls, neither far, nor great to me.' They favored the fearful man, and likewise granted the safety of that very city: from that place the barbarous tongue came to know the name Zoar.
Then Lot enters Zoar; at the same time the sun rises, that day indeed the last for Sodom, for now the wrathful sun, seething with conflagrations, had armed its rays with all its fire. A rival gloom is sown up in its place, beginning to shut in the light and to weave globes of smoke into the confused heaven. Smoking clouds come together, an unwonted rain rushes down, sulphur with flames, chaos blazes, the ether boils, the scorched air crackles with liquid burnings. Hence the fable has drawn its fame from the true into the false: that the offspring of the Sun longed for his father's chariot, and, a weak boy, was not able to rein the proud horses of the Sun, and the world caught fire: then the charioteer was snatched away by a thunderbolt, and the sisters changed their unlawful lament into poplars. Let Eridanus be witness, if any poplar there gleams white, if there any bird more tuneful feathers with old age.
Here in another manner they mourn the marvel of a changed form. For the companion, his wife — alas, then too ill-suffering the divine law — the woman, at the murmurings of heaven, in vain turned her bold eyes back behind her, though she would have no one to whom to tell what she had seen: and at once there, changed into brittle salt, she herself stood, her own sepulchre and her own image, keeping for herself a form without a body: for she endures even still under the open sky in her naked station, neither dissolved into decay by the rains nor overthrown by the winds: nay even, if any stranger should mutilate the form, straightway of itself, by a swelling-up, it fills up the wounds. And she is said to be living, now in another body, as a sex discharging its accustomed months with bountiful blood. And now nowhere are the cities of Sodom, nowhere the impious race; the whole region is one pyre:
hence with the black horror of embers, and hence with hoary decay, the ashes mark the burnings. No one plows in vain the pitch-dark clods, grimy with soot. That former beauty perished, which Lot, looking out and parted from his uncle, had chosen as his rich fields. Even half-consumed, if any acres there attempt the glad wealth of autumn, they easily promise to the eyes to be excellent — pears and peaches and all manner of apples — until the birds go to pluck them: for straightway, at a betraying touch, the deceit of the empty fruit is dissolved into ash.
Thus, therefore, heaven and earth alike being buried, neither does the sea live there — death is the very peace of that sea, whereby it stirs no waves through panting rollings, and whereby also it never sighs from its native south wind, and whereby it lacks the power to bring forth from its whirlpool any race — scaly-skinned or smooth-skinned or hedged about with a shell, or a curled conch or one baffled by a double joining. There alone it measures out bitumen from its own produce, the soot of the burnt-out sea, which the living heat, cooking beneath the pools from the boiling of sulphur and salt, tempers, and grants to the earths to possess a sea-born pitch: at its proper season is brought forth the fat poison of the burnt water, and over the surface a skin of black foam is woven.
They call it — what a taking of merchandise is this? — and they lean their smooth skiffs with a balancing of the sides, that they may teach the boat, once laid upon it, to climb the vein of bitumen: for, now lifting itself of its own accord, it will give itself to the idle vessel and will sink it beneath so bountiful a gift, unless a woman touch that region with the blood by which she clothes the months. Behold, another marvel of the deep is noted from this disaster: all things there swim unwilling; nature has withdrawn the law fixed for the sinking of bodies. If at last you should set a light-bearing shell to swim, in which is the breath of fire, the point of flame will spread its sail; but if the flame be quenched, the shipwrecked destruction of the light will pass beneath the waters.
These punishments of Sodom and Gomorrah, sealed unto the ages for the unjust nations — in whom hard hearts forsook the fear of God — will teach them to revere the heavenly ordinances and to hope in the one Lord of all. III. CONCERNING JONAH. After the living funerals of Sodom and Gomorrah unto the age, and the burnings of punishment marked by the decay of ashes, and the fruits born in vain for the eyes alone, and likewise the death there of sea and salt made so — if man is anything, keeping his punishment in a changed body — the heaven's fire had almost struck down others with a shower from above: the city of Nineveh, which had transgressed the way of the equitable and the just. For what fear is there to a subverted mind? All the proofs of punishments are of no avail among the common folk where error holds sway.
But the good and forbearing and slow-to-strike Almighty Lord will hurl no wrath, unless first he admonish and knock upon the hardened breasts, driving on with his august mind the foreseeing prophets. And now the Lord had bidden Jonah to proclaim destruction to the deserving Ninevites: but he, knowing that God is wont to spare the subject and to remit the due penalty to suppliants and to be ready in doing good, delayed to go, lest he should prophesy in vain, the threats being about to yield to a peace that would annul them. Soon flight becomes his counsel — if indeed there is any such power, to avoid God and to escape the Lord's right hand, beneath which the whole trembling world is held in check. Or is there reason in what the prophet does from a holy heart? On the lip of the shore, most renowned for its trusty harbor, the city Joppa is poised over against the coasts of the Cilicians.
Thence, then, Jonah in haste demands passage to Tarshish by ship, over the pools of the same God: nor, in the end, is it any wonder if, fleeing the Lord on the lands, he finds him in the waves. For suddenly a tiny cloud had stained the air, roused by the wind from a sulphurous fleece of seed, and little by little, bringing forth its swelling mass, it clung together with the sun, and shut the deceived day within a column of gloom. The sea becomes a mirror of heaven, a black circuit stains the waves, into darkness the ether rushes and the sea rises: nor is there anything between, while the wave touches the clouds, the halls of the winds, all of which it mingles in a whirlwind. A many-sided fury gnashed against the fugitive Jonah.
One ship was the battleground of both heaven and sea; it is battered on this side and that, all its timber trembles under the wave-breaking blow, beneath, the spine of the shaken keel throbs, the creaking labor of the yardarm shudders from on high, and the very mast, hesitating to be broken, is bent. Meanwhile the sailors' groaning and fear try everything for the ship and for their lives: to make fast the delaying coils of rope, to lash the stay, to strain at the efforts of the rudders, to haul the struggling lines, to drive the pulley-wheels with the breast: a part in turn admirably snatch up the well of the inner sea, heavy with its stench, then they hurl headlong the merchandise and all the cargo and strive to overcome the perils by their losses. Then wretched cries at every crashing fragment of the deep.
They stretched out their hands to none of the powers of the gods, they whom the might of sea and sky does not fear, and drowned those men no less, buried in their vessels beneath the wrathful whirlwind. Unaware of all this, the guilty one himself, beneath the hollow arch of the ship's stern, was snoring out sleep that echoed through his puffed-up nostril, even then, in his slumber, prefiguring the type of the Lord. And he who directs the tasks of the wave-cleaving prow came upon him, lulled by placid peace, proud in his repose, and shoved him, pressing hard: 'What,' he says, 'amid such a crisis are you snoring out dreams? In so great a tempest do you alone possess a haven? Behold, the wave overwhelms us; our one hope is in the gods. You too — whoever your God may be — say your vows and prayers, and as a suppliant, calling upon him, bend the ancestral godhead.'
Then who was nearer to the fault, who was the cause of the storm, they resolve to learn by lot; nor did the lot lie about Jonah. Then they keep asking: who and whence among men are you, who, in short, in the order of things — of what people, of what dwelling do you boast renown? He confesses himself a servant, and one who greatly fears the God who lifted the heaven on high, who set the earth in place, who poured out the whole world from his own substance. And he reveals that he himself is a fugitive from that God, and discloses the causes. They stiffened with dread: 'What fault, then, do we hold against you? What is to be done now? By what pact shall we appease the waters?' For more and much more the savage straits kept swelling. Then the prophet of the Lord, with the Spirit's prompting, begins: 'Behold, I am the tempest, I the whole madness of the world; upon me,' he says, 'for your sakes the sky comes crashing and the sea rises; upon me the land afar off, death close at hand, no hope of God at all.'
'Nay, cast me headlong as the cause, and lightening the ship, throw this one great burden into the willing deep.' But they strove in vain to turn their course back toward return, for neither did the rudder allow itself to be steered, nor did the hard beam of the yardarm consent to be shifted. At last they cried to the Lord: 'Do not give us over into the maw of death for one soul's sake, nor will that we be spattered with righteous blood, if thus your right hand guides.' And now there, rising from the lowest gulf, a sea-monster, unrolling the scaly mass of its body with its shells, was pressing closer upon the shaken flood, seizing by God's own will the prey which, tumbled from the ship's height, it swallowed down its slimy jaws, and hastened the living feast into its long belly, and gulped down, along with the man, the fury of sky and sea.
The wave of the sea is stilled, the shadow of the sky is dissolved. From here the billows, from there the breezes are rendered friendly, and as the placid keel marks out a safe path, the white wake blossoms in a sea-blue furrow. Then the sailor, glad, offers to the venerable Lord the sacrifice of thanks for his fear, and enters the friendly harbor. The prophet Jonah too sails on, taken up in another vessel, and cleaves the waves beneath the deepest waves, making a sail of the entrails, breathing with the beast's own breath, enclosed yet not drenched by the waters, the inmost of the sea yet an outsider, amid half-eaten fleets and bodies loosened by rotting decay, learning even now his own coming funeral. But being destined to serve at some time as a sign of the Lord, he was not for destruction, but a witness of death driven away. IV. TO A SENATOR CONVERTED FROM THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION TO THE SERVICE OF IDOLS.
When I saw you once again enslaving yourself to diverse and empty rites and held fast by ancient error, I was struck with amazement and moved. Because you have always loved songs, answering you in song I made haste to write these verses, that I might rebuke you: for who could endure your preferring darkness to light — that you can believe her to be called the Great Mother, and think again that she must be worshipped as a goddess, whose worshippers foul infamy brands? For her priests in women's tunics confess by their outward garb the vice within, and think that permitted which is not permitted; whence through the city they walk mincingly, speaking with softened voice, and holding their worn-out loins with outstretched thumb, and change their own sex by a crime made public. And when they celebrate their rites, they claim that on these days they are chaste.
But if only then, as they claim, are they chaste, what are they in all the remaining time? Yet because they are compelled to be pure at least once, they rage in mind, mangle their body, and pour out their gore. What sort of sacred rite is it, indeed, that is offered under the name of blood? Now too I have learned that it was not age that made you bald, but your religion, and that, the Gallic boot removed, your foot is bound with soft papyrus. A thing wondrous enough, and cast down from the highest summit: if some consul should march into the city from the temple of Isis, there will be laughter on every face; and who would not laugh at you — you who were once a consul, and are now a minister of Isis?
And what shames you at first, you are not ashamed to be at second, and to condemn your own genius through shameful hymns, while the crowd answers you back and the senate mangles you, and though once painted in your own house with the fasces of office, now also with the sistrum you bear a dog-like face. Is this humility? It is a mere image of humility. Those memorials will remain in your house forever. And a public rumor has reached even our ears, that you have said: 'Goddess, I strayed, forgive me, I have returned.' Tell me, so you may prosper — when you would often ask such things and beg for pardon, what words did she speak with you? Truly you lack a mind, you who follow the mindless. These things you take up again, nor do you perceive that you sin. See what you deserve: perhaps you would be less to be censured, if you only knew this and remained in this error.
But when you have entered the doorway of the truth-honoring law, and it has been granted you within a few years to know God, why do you hold fast to what must be forsaken, or why do you forsake what must be retained? You worship nothing while you worship all things; nor do you ponder in your heart what truth differs from falsehood, what lights differ from shadows. You pretend to be a philosopher, since opinion sways you: for if a popular anger stirs your bile, you will even become a Jew, and you are held wholly uncertain. Indulge my words: lofty wisdom does not please you. Everything excessive falls into its opposite: both heat and cold work one effect; thus this, thus that, sears. Thus darkness takes away sight, thus the contrary sun takes it too, and the icy and the boiling bath harm alike.
Food nourishes the body, the body is spoiled by food, and lessens its own strength if anything is prolonged beyond measure. In short, if you sit down, it is a great rest from labor; if you sit too much, it is toil. For Maro the poet set it down as a punishment: 'Unhappy Theseus sits, and shall sit forever.' The useful, when prolonged, always does harm: long banquets harm, long fasts weary. So too much savor makes a man foolish. 'A base sect' — thus the goddess taught me — 'has called restraint lovely.' But you care for neither the sect nor its restraints. Yet the steadfast mind is overturned by no surging passion, and simplicity itself never devises any evil. Hence sincere faith shall enjoy an eternal dwelling, and deceit, on the contrary, shall be tormented with a long-lasting fire. Choose what you will, that you may shun the punishments you deserve.
Yet so, I say, may the believer merit this pardon: light will the offense be, if you are unwilling to know the truth; no light offense will it be, if you forsake the truth once known. But perhaps ripe old age, once you are corrected and sated with these errors, calls you back to something better: for time changes evils, time disposes all things. Then therefore, when a considered age has led you back, learn to keep faith with God, lest by chance you incur the same fall twice; for truly that saying holds: he who does not know how to avoid a second time the stone on which his foot has struck, and, incautious, has again bruised his limbs, let him blame himself, and not blame it on any chances. Correct your fault by trust, correct your mind. It sufficed to have sinned once; cease to fear: he shall not be in fault who repents of what he was before. V. ON THE PASCH.
There is a place, midmost of the whole world, as we believe, which the Jews call Golgotha by their ancestral name. Here I recall that a tree, cut from a barren trunk and then planted, brought forth wholesome fruits — yet it did not offer these to those who had set themselves up as its cultivators; strangers had the blessed fruits. Such is the form of the tree: from a single stalk it rises and soon extends its arms into twin branches, just as full sails stretch the heavy yardarms, or as yokes are joined to the plow with the oxen unyoked. The one whom it bore, with its first ripe seed, fallen to the ground, the earth conceived; then from there (wondrous to tell) the third light again raised up a branch, dreadful to earth and to those above, blessed with life-giving fruit.
But firmly, within twice ten days, it grew there to an immense size, and touched heaven with its topmost peak, and at last hid its holy head on high, while yet it put forth twice six branches of vast weight, and, scattering, stretched them out over the whole world, that they might furnish to all nations sustenance and everlasting life, and teach how death itself could die. Then, when fifty days more were completed, from its highest crown the breeze of the heavenly Spirit brought down into the branches a draught of divine nectar: the heavy leaves dripped sweet dew on every side. Behold, beneath the vast shade of the branches' canopy there was a spring: here, with no mishap troubling its calm, clear and undefiled with pellucid waters, and the grasses round about poured forth glad colors from varied bloom.
Around this spring innumerable nations and peoples gathered together, how varied in kind, sex, age, and rank — the unwed and the wed alike, and widows and young wives, infants and boys, men and youths and old men. Here, when they saw the branches bending down with fruits of every kind, they rejoiced to touch with eager right hands the fruits dripping with heavenly nectar. Nor could they first pluck these with their eager palms until they had worn away the foul, muddy traces of their former way and had washed their body at the holy spring. Therefore, long walking about upon the soft grass, they gaze up at the fruits hanging on the lofty tree; then, if any husks and fruits sweet with abundant dripping nectar have fallen from those branches, they feed on them, longing to take the true fruits.
Therefore when their mouths have received the heavenly savor, they change their dispositions, and begin to lose their greedy minds, and to come to know the man with a sweet perception. We have seen that to many the unaccustomed savor moved the stomach, and the poison of gall stirred by honey, that with troubled mind they rejected the good savors; or, having taken it eagerly, did not love it, and long afterward, having drunk it ill, at last vomited up the savor. Often indeed many, with minds renewed, restored their sick souls, and endured what they denied they could do, and reaped the fruit of their toil. Many too, having dared to touch the holy springs, departed again suddenly, and, slipping back, are rolled once more in the same filth and mire. Many, truly, bearing the good with a good breast, receive it with their whole souls, and store it deep within their inmost parts.
3:42
ErgoquiquesacrospossuntaccederefontesSeptimaluxillosoptatassistitadundas, Tinguntinliquidisieiunosfontibusartus: SicdemuminluuiemmentisuitaequepriorisDeponuntlabempurasqueamortereducuntInlustresanimascaeliqueadlumenituras. Hinciteradramosetdulciapomasalutis, Indeiteradcaelumperramosarborisaltae. Hoclignumuitaecunctiscredentibus. amen. VI. ADFLAVIVMFELICEMDERESVRRECTIONEMORTVORVM.
Therefore all who are able to approach the sacred springs, the seventh light sets them at the longed-for waters: they dip their fasting limbs in the liquid springs. Thus at last they lay aside the defilement of the mind and the stain of their former life, and lead back from death their souls, made pure and shining and destined to go to the light of heaven. Hence the road leads to the branches and the sweet apples of salvation; thence the road leads to heaven by the branches of the lofty tree. This is the tree of life for all who believe. Amen. VI. TO FLAVIUS FELIX, ON THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD.
I who chose in song the country-dwelling Muses, and inscribed the breezes rosy with vernal flowers, and the heavy ears of summer's harvest, cut down the swelling grapes upon autumn's vines, and always praised winter's peaceful olives, and shut out the modulated waters from the springs, and sang the leafy woods amid the wandering grass —
Forthwith I shall sing the ethereal shores of light. Now may it be granted me to reach the light-bringing Muses, to disclose the hidden nymphs at the river's source, and the glad woods set beneath another star; and at once I shall recount in song the eternal flames, whence the immeasurable sea heaves in swelling waves, what power bids the solid lands to tremble, and whence the golden light first shone forth upon the new-made world, who could fashion man out of glad clay, whence the race could grow to fill the empty age, and what varied desire of living there is in a people, what propagation of dying was first created by evil, whence come the good scent and the modesty of rosy garlands, what makes the vine seethe with joyous grapes, and how the new barley grows milky in tender stalks, how the tree ripens into black olives against the frost, who gives increase of vigor to the varied buds, and shields the mother of her offspring with soft shade.
It is good to know all the beginnings of the branches, that through all things one may acknowledge the true God, who prepared the light, the seas, the heaven, and the earth, and adorned the ninth world with a varied constellation, and first bade the cattle and the birds come forth, and gave the watery waves to be filled with fishes, and drove the sands, made fruitful, with living creatures. Such songs I shall lead forth with well-ordered Muses, and set forth the wholesome water from the ninefold springs, and the glad rain coming from the gentle clouds, flowing deep and freely into the souls of men, which I shall catch with brimming streams into our fallows. Now come, touch the safe and living nymph, and swiftly draw the easy water of life.
If anyone would escape the punishments of the eternal flame and, ignorant of the day and unaware of the age to come, would rather attain the rewards of a righteous life, let him remember this one God, and that he alone must be entreated, who set the whole world in the balance beneath its threshold, abiding eternal and forever to be, holding all the ages, and alone before the ages, the unbegotten God without end, alone possessing the divine throne, who ever towers above the lofty heaven, alone almighty, whom all things obey, [Father, Son, Spirit, who are ever in one,] who fashioned man well-pleasing to himself in bronze, gave him to be shepherd of the flocks and lord of the wild beasts, and gave him the right to rule the birds, the sea, and the land alone; who by a mere word could stretch out the heaven, and by his word bade the solid earth to hang suspended, and quicker than speech divided the water of the sea; who loved to fashion this dear form with his hands, and willed his own comely figure to be in it, and breathed a life-giving breath of spirit upon its face.
Forgetful of God, lest he rashly commit such great things, and lest he touch anything beyond the warning — this one thing, whence he might know evil and discern the right — at once God forbade him to touch the unlawful apple. How great the gifts of the world God permitted to man, and signed the pledge most sweet of his own love, and granted him useful and dear commandments of salvation; under his dominion he gave the lands and the living soul, and the winged kind, the cattle, every kind of wild beast, and the watery kind, all creatures that swim. But since by his first transgression, in that first crime, the first man was even now altering the Lord's commandments, at his wife's persuasion he was perishing by death, with all evils. For the woman first committed the evil of sin, betrayed her husband, and deceived him against the law.
Eve, wickedly persuaded, opened the thresholds to death, and created funerals for herself along with her whole race. Hence (dire and ill-omened thing) death flowed forth into the ages. Thence the deep wickedness spread the more, easily and far, and the farmer's toil harried the year more savagely. The crafty serpent injected this with wicked envy. Thence the more, the many committed sins of evil peoples, and unspeakable seeds bore fruit through wicked deeds. And therefore God alone, whose is the highest power, and who, holding the topmost heights above the lofty heaven, dwelling on high in inaccessible light through the ages, mindful of the past and foreknowing what is to come, keeps his decree concerning the offspring of merit unto the age:
And all the souls that slowly govern their bodies and by reason move the man, wandering through his limbs — as soon as, the burden of the members laid aside, they depart, and, made light, loosed from earthly bonds, they will go, and seek their own shores in diverse regions: some straightway to be enclosed in hidden darkness, but others to be recalled at once to glad breezes, to be kept deep within for the rewards decreed by the law, until the bodies rise again with their members re-arisen. Now men must weigh the interest of their first life, and the judges, mindful of God, stand before those of former days, each awaiting his own punishment from his own crime; either that, or, like cattle, without name and without breath's weight, or, in vain, to pour out breath as the end appointed by God.
Or shall God almighty, under whose nod all things are ruled, not have power after death to restore life? Or does the Lord seem unable to do any of these things? If he could shut out the bright light with darkness, and by a word could compose the whole mass, and prepare all things from nothing with a mighty voice, why should he not be able to piece together from something the mark which once had been, the figure which had lived before, and bid it rise again like to its own form? Since all things are God's, the earth will rather render up all things when bidden; it will recall whatever it once covered over. If perhaps the flame has destroyed anyone, laid to rest on the pyre, or the sea has cast someone down into its blind waves, if the entrails of a fish have sated their hunger on anyone, or wild beasts have fixed cruel death upon his limbs, or, the body being snatched, the blood has lain for the birds —
The last funeral rites shall not deny anyone to the Lord: living men must appear before God out of death, and men must stand, having resumed their own figures. So the dry seeds are entrusted to the turned earth, and deep within the fixed furrows they rot away, dead; thence, the ears being restored, the stalk is animated, and again grows golden with living grains, and the new harvests rise up with varied increase. All the stars shall set, and, born again, shall shine; and the day dies, with its light, into the dense night; night falls, and, when the things are uncovered by light, into day, and the lofty day rises again among its stars. And the sun sets, splendor-bearing with its clear high light; the light perishes as evening comes over the shadowed world, and returns and renews joys for the whole age.
So the phoenix, cremated, lives on out of its own funeral, and forthwith the bird rises again from its own pyre. And the tree, stripped of its leaves, in its own season bears fruit, and again bends its boughs with the burgeoning of fruit. Therefore, as at the divine voice, with the world trembling, and the powers of the lofty air moved to their depths, there is then an unwonted crash and the mightiest murmurs of heaven, God setting it in motion, the Judge of the world coming — straightway the countless ministers rush to come, and encompass God with heavenly majesty; the angelic ranks descend far and wide in throngs. All are messengers of God, whose is a divine and preeminent power and form, all virtues of the Spirit. Fiery is their vigor, glowing their bodies; heaven's divine might flashes forth.
Hence the whole ether thunders, hence the trembling earth, wholly and to its depths, bellows in answer, giving birth to the men whom, as bidden, it must render up. The companions marvel, the clouds at last are thrown into turmoil, the stars, amazed, suddenly quake at the power from on high, hence with God commanding, easily, with the voice of the Almighty. Straightway, the sepulchers being broken open throughout all realms, the whole ground pours forth bones through its wide-gaping chasms, and the opening sand belches out living peoples. The limbs cling in a mass, the bones are knit with marrow, and the joined sinews govern the breathing bodies, and at once the veins, infused, are stirred with blood, and the souls, sent forth, are rendered back to the hollows laid open, and all things, rising, seek again each their own organs. (O wondrous faith!) hence every age sprouts forth, sprouts forth the ancient throng from the dust of the dead.
Mothers and men rise again in the recovered light, high-souled youths, boys and unwed girls, and the deceased old men stand with living souls, and the world resounds, groaning with the wailings of infants. Varied nations come from the lowest dwellings, both the band of the East and those whom the farthest land beholds, those who inhabit the middle zones in the sloping clime, and hold the Riphaean heights of the frosty constellation: every dweller of every region is present, trembling — the rustic and the soldier, kings with their diadems laid aside, the rich mingled with the poor in an equal throng. Everywhere is deep trembling; now the world groans with prayers, and the peoples, stretching out their hands, marvel with a clamor.
The Lord himself, seated, resplendent with towering light and mighty above all, flashes like fire in his powers, and on his lofty throne he gleams from the heavenly seat, girt about with martyrs, with a shining number of men, and attended by his blessed prophets he stands forth, men whose bright brows shine with snow-white fillets. And now the priests are present in gleaming garments, bearing the glowing crowns, the rewards of life, and all, with knees bowed and bent, adore him: 'Holy and sacred God alone' — there is one voice for all. Hence the Lord will bid the twofold people take their stand:
He commands the righteous to be separated in number from the wicked, and bids them, clothed in vigor with death vanquished, to have ever the never-extinguished radiance of light, to go through realms ever flowering with age, through rich groves and ever-pleasant green places, to lead a perpetual life in a glorious body. There is a place, dear to the Lord, on Aeolian shores, where clear light shines and a more wholesome breeze breathes, and eternal day and unchanging time, and a region most rich in fields, set apart for God, and a seat too blessed on its serene pole, air ever glad and ever destined to be in light, and a gentle wind breathing life-giving breezes. The all-bearing earth yields fair produce from its most wealthy soil; a flowery purple blazes on the balanced meadows.
All things, radiant, mingle their light without envy; the glad flower clothes its cloak with its own splendor. Hence the fields are dappled with rosy hue upon snow-white seed, and the snow-white meadows are curled with rosy flowers. You could not tell by which those fields are more beautifully fragrant, or by which the ethereal breeze breathes more happily, or which surpasses in beauty of form, which excels in honor. Never in flower-bearing gardens are the like of these born; nor did such lilies ever bloom in our fields, nor does the known rose so redden or the white rose spread open, nor is purple so steeped in Tyrian crimson. The gem gleams beautiful with colored stones; here the emerald-green shines, there the carbuncle burns, and the smaragdus-stone pours forth its glittering lights. Here too the cinnamon springs on fragrant twigs, and the amomum, joyous with green leaf, breathes its perfume abroad.
Here lies the inborn gold of radiant light, and the high groves, holding heaven with their flowering crown, and the most abundant buds weigh down the greening branches. No India has stretched forth groves like its own; not so does the green pine raise its dense summits, nor does the quivering cypress so curl its lofty foliage, nor does the vernal branch bloom better in its season. Here otherwise the lofty black woods flower at the crown, and alone are ever green without hail. No leaves fall, no flower fails in its season; the summits, compacted with hardwood, are green, the tree grows purple. But I think that flower is the rose, an equal redness in it; so does the fragrant one breathe such beauty upon its leaves. The tree stands, most beautiful, with flower and nine fruits, and the fertile hardwoods make dense the life-giving produce.
Honey rich and fragrant streams upon the greening branches, and milk too, fit to drink, flows in full-running streams. There whatever the holy earth makes green breathes forth life, and whatever blossoms from the bud gladdens all alike, and the healing soil of fair chalk smells sweet. There a spring floods the fields with a placid current; thence four rivers water the divided land. I think that spring, clad in flowers, ever keeps its day; no cold varies the breezes of the wintry star, nor does radiant summer glisten with oppressive heats; heaven tempers the serene breezes with its own light, and refreshes the teeming earth with a kindlier breath. There is no night: the stars ward off their own shadows; wraths and snares are absent, and dire desire, and fear is shut out, and cares are driven from the threshold.
Hence the evil one is banished, an exile, to the farthest shores, and toil is forbidden to touch those blessed bounds. Here ancient faith rests in its chosen seat; Justice, rejoicing, lives in an eternal covenant, and untroubled Salvation gladdens itself in the placid fields, ever destined to live and ever to be in the light.
Here whoever is a devoted cultivator of the just and the good, and who fears God the Thunderer with a harmless mind, and honored his own parents with holy piety, and always cultivated a holy life without crime; or as often as he consoled the needy with friendly wealth and greatly succored the laboring poor, a helper of the pauper, wont to save orphans, and rescued the injured, aided those pressed by accusation, gave to guests the pledges of a dear table as his own, performed all his duties by divine commands, harmed no one, coveted nothing of another's — all these, exulting in divine praises and at the same time praying, raise their voices to the stars, and, singing psalms to the Lord, celebrate thanks amid joys, and shall go the blessed way with attending messengers.
After the Lord had accomplished these happy gifts and likewise sent the righteous back into the eternal realms — lo, there comes, lamenting its crimes, a pitiable throng: there arises a groan, all mourn with burning tears, and attest their deeds with frequent howlings, and tremble at the fiery, impending weapons for their deserts. The angels seize them and now forbid them to pray, and forbid them to pour out the too-late voices of penitence, and now, with the flame coming on, the pardon of prayers is denied. O wretched ones, how often did the divine power make itself known to you, how often was the majesty of the true God recognized? You heard the sounds, you saw the lightnings of heaven, and constantly experienced the rains, the wraths of the winds and the hail, how often the serene nights and days.
The fruitful seasons gave you the gifts of God: spring rosy in abundance, nor did summer fail in fruits, autumn offered mellow apples in variety, ever-glacial winter broke the joyous olives. God bestowed all things, nor was any goodness lacking; yet through so many things the whole human race did not come to know God. The earth trembled at God, the sea hung suspended at God's nod, and the trembling river flowed back over its dry sands, and all creation gladly confesses God through all things. Yet you denied this Lord of heaven and earth, and rather slew the righteous with cruel slaughter, and often put to flight the heralds of God, most of them. The truth clung in you always as a crime. And therefore you shall reap the fruit of an unjust sowing: behold, you do not know the day at which you are wont to scoff.
You shall go into the deep darkness of fire and brimstone, doomed by burning to suffer savage wraths with torments. These the Lord bids depart to eternal punishment, to go beneath the burnings of Gehenna, ever without end, to be driven, a mass, through the seething pools of flame. He bids the elements be turned into the threatening flames, and the whole fire of heaven descend from the clouds. Then greedy Tartarus lets loose the rushing fires, and the waters shall billow with tempestuous flames, and the whole living earth shall be confounded with embers, and the wrathful air shall brandish fiery furrows, and the world, a torrent, shall be armed with every firebrand; with hellish onset the conflagrations shall seize the world. They are driven and lifted headlong into the surging heat; hence they flee, thence they are driven back with a sharp course.
The savage wrath of the flame meets those who flee, and now, now they recognize their punishment from their crime. And now, where the earth is possessed by no husbandman and, at the sea's extremities, is pressed beneath the deep's end, where the sun, its beam run out, marks the limit of Olympus, and the risen stars are hidden as the world is done — there the air grows dense with darkness, its light shut away, the last pools flaming in secret channels. Such is the fiery nature of the place, marked out for punishments, and the marsh of hell, glowing white at its lowest depths with burnings, thunders with horrific sounds — a penal strait, a furnace — and seethes and is churned with a rapid whirl of flame, a river rushing into torments with its billowing flood; the scorched sand is all mingled with mire. Hither, groaning, the captive throng of the wicked shall be sent, and the band of the guilty body doomed to burn (O horror!).
There is a great wailing, with weeping joining the outcry, and a swift gnashing; then the howling of the grieving shall rise from the flame afar, and the lofty groan of the burning fire shall mount up into the sounding air. Then the human offspring of evil pays for its deeds, and shall begin to stretch too-late prayers toward heaven, and shall now wish to know God, whom they refused to know.
There each one shall confess the savagery of his own life, his guilty hands and minds savage with crime, and shall testify to the monstrous savagery of his own life. First of all, whoever had ill-conceived thoughts of God before, and had worshipped the wandering rocks with a lying godhead, and had consecrated bloodstained altars with images, and feared the painted figures without voice, and adored the thin shadows of a false divinity, and whomever wicked error at once led astray — if anyone was an adulterer, whoever had slain his own children, if by whatever evil anyone lived with a guilty conscience, or had gone plundering by robbery or by a client's fraud, if anyone stained his palms with human blood, and mingled poisons with hidden death, then if anyone concealed thefts in an empty breast, or rejoiced in the wicked gain of another's misfortune — whoever committed any wickedness of evils.
A towering blaze shall torment them with bitter fire, and all together shall pay their penalty in a living death, thus mourning as they preserve the whole multitude of men. How often did the holy prophets sing of these things, warned again and again by the Spirit of God, and foretell what was to come? Yet no one, alas, wretched man, no one lent his ears. Thus did God almighty will that his rewards should be known, and the threats laid down through such a law, by sending many to cry aloud his heavenly words. At length, at God's command, a prophet joined bones together, and the graves stood astonished, moved suddenly and not of their own accord, that bodies once fallen might rise as dust that had been strewn; then he marveled to see the dead rise as their soul returned, and stretch their palms toward heaven with their own voice.
And they give thanks to God and to Christ the victor for such things. They indeed sought again their silent tombs and yielded, to be kept by God for the day to come: he commanded that they be held a little while in the depths of their resting-places, until that great day should arrive when the appointed time is fulfilled. All of you, acknowledge the true Lord, who alone can make the soul strive toward the light, and the same can thrust it down into the punishment of hell, and to whom all power of life and death lies open. For God, to be able is but to will, and to speak is to have done it. He alone, my God, is to be feared with the deepest of our senses. And since every course is shut off by death, whoever a man is today, his own life shall be borne away with him.
And therefore, while life remains, while it is still permitted to enjoy the light, while there is yet room for repentance, before the boundary of your age overtakes the unwary and that last day of death, which is held fast by law, looses your unknowing eyes: what is first and paramount, keep watch over your dear salvation, and bend willingly and surely your course toward the good. After your errings, and the expiations pressed upon you by his holy rites, and after the roving storms that have tossed you all too fiercely, enter the straight ways and hold to the joyful breezes. First, then, with glad hearts drive out your sin, and let the guilt long hardened be washed from your breast; then, being gentle, blot out the wicked deeds you have committed, and appease with eternal prayers the God who is to be dreaded. Let all worst things give way to good, mortal things to the living. Preserve now, now at last, a ninth life free of crime, and keep your minds devout and in the true Name.
And humbly beg pardon for your first offenses. Now, now let hearts grown pure ripen for devout husbandmen, and lift up innocent hands in righteous prayers, and readily render your voices to divine praises. Let minds begin to grow accustomed to good and true things, and let the gifts of the divine law be the more celebrated; call to mind good things and at once press on to good deeds. Let the foul deeds once committed by the wicked grow cheap, and all better things shall blaze for you who are devout; at once your life is freed from dreadful perils and shall come to eternal rewards according to its vows.