Carmina

XVII. POEMS. I. GENESIS. In the beginning the Lord established heaven and earth: For the land was formless and hidden beneath the flood, And the boundless God moved over the vast waters, While chaos and black darkness obscured everything. When He ordered these to be separated from the hinge, He speaks: Let there be light, and all things shone bright in a clear world. When the Lord had completed the first day’s work, He fashioned the gleaming axis with nascent clouds: The boundless sea receives the wandering shores, Seizing many rivers with its strong currents. The third day’s light unveiled the tawny face of the lands, The dry land is soon said to bear the name earth, Flowery shoots rise up in the windy fields, And fruit-bearing branches simultaneously bend their arms. On the fourth day He creates the moon together with the sun’s lamp, And fashions the stars shining with trembling light: These elements He gave as signs to the subject world, To teach the various changes through the turning of the seasons. On the fifth day the flowing rivers receive fish, And various birds suspend their wings in the air.

On the sixth day the Father glides the cold serpents into coils, and pours whole herds of four-footed beasts into the fields, and commanded all things to grow everywhere by manifold seed and to roam and feed on the vast lands. When divine power had established these things by command, seeing that a ruler was lacking for earthly affairs, it says this: let us make man in our image, similar in countenance, who will rule over the whole world. And although He could have composed him with a single word, yet He Himself deigned to lead with His holy right hand, and breathes into the brute a breast from the divine breast. After He saw him formed in likeness as His own, He measures out the soil to roll over biting cares. At once He bathes his eyes in flowing sleep, so that a woman might be formed more softly from a plucked rib, and substance might strengthen the limbs with a twin mixture. And a name is given from life, which is called Eve. For this reason children by custom leave their parents and cling to their spouses, having set aside their homes. On the seventh day the Creator rested from the completion of His works, establishing the consecrated day for the joys of the age to come. At once, with the throngs of living things displayed in order, He gives to each individually a name that endures. Adam, gifted with granted prudence, is clever. God deigns to address him and Eve, joined in speech: "Grow manifold in offspring into the coming times, so that the sky and the lands may be full of your seed.

My heirs, pluck the varied fruits which the groves and fields yield from the rich turf. When he had set forth these things, a joyful paradise is furnished in a hall and first beholds the lights of the sun. Among these things is born a tree with deadly fruits, generating a flavor joined of life and death. In the middle of the dwellings a river flows in a pure stream, which waters the notable springs from liquid waves and cuts fourfold channels from a surging source. Pison flows rich with gold-bearing waves and wears away conspicuous gems with its hoarse whirlpool: one is named green, another is the burning carbuncle, and the clear Euilat laps the land with its shallows. After this, Gaeon, gliding down, enriches the Ethiopians. The third is the Tigris, joined to the pleasant Euphrates, furrowing Assyria with a swift, dividing stream. Here placed as guardian, Adam with his faithful wife, and the creator, is formed by such a voice of the thunderer: Do not fear together to pluck the permitted fruits which the unshorn grove has created on a leafy branch, being careful lest you gather the harmful evil which grows from a twin juice appointed to different tasks. Meanwhile, deep darkness held the blind, and a garment had not yet covered the newly formed limbs. Among these abodes and the growth of mild berries, a serpent, foamy, surpassing animals in cunning sense, crept silently with cold coils, rolling livid lies with a biting sense, and tempts the soft hearts beneath the woman's breast: Tell me why you fear the felicitous shoots of the evil? Has not God consecrated all fruits as known? From which, if you strive to pluck honeyed sustenance,

A golden world will return on the star-bearing hinge. She denies it and fears to touch the forbidden branches: but still, their hearts are overcome by weak sensation. As soon as she bit the now-soft fruit with her snow-white tooth, a cloudless serenity shone forth, unstained. Then that flavor, instilling allure into her honeyed throat, compelled her to bring the unwonted gift to her husband. As soon as he took it, the night was wiped away, and his shining eyes gleamed forth in the clear, shining world. Therefore, when each saw their body laid bare and beheld their private parts, they shade them with fig leaves. By chance, under the setting light of the Lord's sun, they recognize a sound and, trembling, head for the byways. Then the Lord of heaven addresses sad Adam: "Tell me, where do you now dwell?" He, suppliant, answers such things: "O Lord, I tremble at your address in my fearful heart, great one, and I am weary, naked, with chilling fear." Then the Lord says: "Who gave you the harmful fruit?" "This woman gave it, saying that a bright light, a clear sky, the sun and the stars of heaven had shone forth to her, bathed in gleaming day." Straightway the wrath of God terrifies the troubled Eve, as the greatest one seeks the author of the forbidden deed. She, in response, reveals: "Persuaded by the speaking serpent, I accepted it through deceiving guile and flattering entreaty: for he, weaving his words with viper's venom, told me these were sweeter than all fruits." Straightway the almighty condemns the deeds of the dragon, commanding the monster, hateful to all, to crawl: soon to creep on its poured-out breast, then to eat only by biting, in a war lasting for all time.

Among human senses and the faltering mind itself, with head cast down, prone behind the legs of men he would crawl, so that as he slithers, pressing close, he might trample underfoot. The woman, wretchedly deceived by treacherous persuasions, is ordered by harsh judgment to set aside her offspring and to endure servitude for her husband through her own zeal. But you, to whom the true opinion of your spouse seemed, who yielded, conquered, to the cruel dragon, you will lament the wretched toil through long ages: for instead of the sprout of a wheat harvest, a thistle and a thorny paliurus with many sharp spines will rise for you, so that with weary entrails and a sorrowful heart, many sighs may provide anxious sustenance, until at the coming time of death in the west, you return the body you bear to the earth lying prostrate. After these deeds, the Lord gives the weary the weariness of life, and casts the dejected far from the sacred gardens, places them facing outward, and banishes them into the midst of fire, in which the Cherubim whirls with swift heat, while the hot summit cools and rolls flames. The Lord, lest their limbs stiffen with sluggish cold, sewed together the flayed skins of cattle, having learned, covering their naked limbs with warm garments. Therefore, when faithful Adam, by marriage, felt himself to be a man, he gives the name of his beloved mother to his wife. The one who became a father by twin offspring immediately names them with different beginnings. And this one has the name Cain, to whom Abel is joined: Abel, with much care, kept harmless sheep, while the other turned the earth with a curved plow. When they continually brought their gifts to the Thunderer,

Unlike fruits, with their tempting sense, they offered. For the first, which had been rich with udders, offered from the clods; the other devoted himself to a gentle lamb, bearing pure entrails and snow-white fat in his hand. And immediately the pious vow pleases the Lord as he watches. Because of this, cold Cain blazed with anger. God, deigning to address him, began thus: "Tell me, if you live rightly and see harmful things, can you not live pure from the contracted crime? Cease destroying your brother with a biting mind, who, subject to you as to a master, will offer his neck." Yet not broken by these words, he leads his brother to the fields, and when he saw him caught in the deserted grass, he crushes his pious throat, cheating with both hands. The Lord, watching from high heaven, inquires where in the lands Abel might be. He denies that he was set as his brother's keeper. God says to him: "Does not the voice of his blood, sent to me, sound and ascend to the high pole? Know, then, that lasting punishment awaits you for such a crime: for now the earth, wet with your brother's blood, hateful and accursed, will deny you the seeds entrusted to it, and will not produce fruit from the consumed plants, sluggish, striking your limbs with much trembling.

II SODOMA. Now the omnipotent God had abolished the crimes of the first age with a punishing flood, with all its waters, as many as the sky scatters, the earth spews forth, the sea casts out, and up to that time had decreed to determine penalties by liquid destruction, whenever the air brought on a storm, he had commanded the rainbow, restraining the varied rains, marking the clouds with its purple and green border. It is called Iris, which is its own story for the clouds. But with the second generation of men, a renewed impiety and again a new age of evil sprouts forth, no longer allotted rain for punishment, but fires: thus the land of Sodom deserved to be burned with fiery dews and to foreshadow the signs of the end. Savage luxury there, hostile to modesty, was like a law, which a foreknowing guest would flee, preferring before the Scythian lands or at the altars of Busiris to desire a sacred death and to offer bloodshed with the cestus, to submit to the Bebrycian, to satisfy the Libyan wrestling-schools, even before taking on new forms through Circean potions, than to lose one's sex, violated in Sodom. They were assaulting heaven with envy, marriages (monstrosities), with equal incest, a nature rebellious against itself, and the name of man, injured along with the body. But at a fixed time, God, having foreseen everything, judges the unjust, patient where the age of crime had forced his anger, having frustrated the opportunity for cessation. And now the avenging day was at hand: two sent from the flock, young men in angelic form, both spirits of divine ministries, as the Lord's commands ordered, approach Sodom.

There, from the stock of the pious, Loth, a just and wise inhabitant of Transuena, Was the only one mindful of God: as a useful tree Often lies hidden in wild woods with its hospitable fruit. Then, sitting before the gate (the citizens scarcely approached The heaven-dwellers), although unknowing of the divine, he of his own accord Calls, addresses, and venerates them with ancestral honor, And invites them to hospitality, as they prepare to stable far off: Struggling with long entreaties, he discharges the pious pledges of the table And the upright service with friendly zeal. Night had given rest, another day had dissolved the night, And Sodom clamors at the doors with its shameful law. Loth, suppliant in reply: "Let not ill-fed lust Inflame you, young men, to defile this youth: Why does generation lie idle in luxury? Why seeds in vain? Why do no souls marry, not those cultivating the wilds, Not those returning to stables, not those gaping beneath the waves, Nor those that hang near the clouds with their patterned wings, Nor those that glide through the lands with elongated body? Every kind has begotten by effort; a female is the spouse For all, and never for anyone is a female not the mother. Now if youthful fire dares to ravage modesty, I have within twin daughters of marriageable age, Virginity swelling in flower, already due for harvest, Worthy objects of desire for men, if your will should take them: I, a father, give them up, and for my guests I will compensate the grief." To this the maddened crowd: "Who are you, how great, and from where, That you should rule our minds and impose laws?

Transuena not the ruler of the Sodomites measures acres. Now therefore you yourself will pay the penalty, which is our desire, for your children and for your guests: one man is enough for all. Words and deeds at once: no delay of the raging mob. As a turbid winter torrent rolls with its rush, it sweeps along countless streams with a single foot: if any tree there is struck by the swift waters, it will not long endure, as long as its root allows it to hold out with its leafy delays: when the ground is eaten away beneath, already hanging with its trunk dug around, it wavers here and there, deferring its certain ruin. Not otherwise did Lot, in the midst of the whirlwind of the mob, totter, nearly overcome: but divine power came to his aid; angelic youths snatched him from the threshold and restored him to the roofs: but the mad mob there, amid the omens of punishments, sometimes deprives him of light. Then they reveal the decrees of God, that a worthy punishment from heaven was due to Sodom, and that he himself had merited salvation by the title of righteousness: why then do you not gird yourself to hasten your flight and likewise to lead out, if you have any of your kin? We are now bringing destruction to the city. Lot quickly addresses his sons-in-law, but the hard mind of men scorned to believe the warning and laughed at the fear.

Soon, at the time when light tries to cleave the shadows and the sky’s face is two-colored from night and day, the young men pressed to lead the Chaldean people out of Sodom and to grant the just house safety: “Come, rise up, Lot, take your spouse and your twin daughters, and go from here as an exile, forestalling the punishments of Sodom.” With friendly hands they lead out the trembling ones and there entrust the rest: “Save your life, Lot, and do not turn your gaze backward, nor wish to stop your step once begun, but hurry to the mountain.” Lot feared the steep path with a slow step, lest the heavenly wrath crush them first. He attempts to seek other ports, a small city he had seen opposite. “Here,” he says, “let the flight be; it certainly barely stands within its walls, and it is not far, nor great for me.” Favoring the fearful, they yielded the safety of the city itself as well: Segor, a name the barbarian tongue knows from that place. Then Lot enters Segor; at the same time the sun rises, that last one indeed for Sodom, already blazing with fires, angry, had armed its rays with all its flame.

A rival darkness is inserted, attempting to enclose the light and to weave together clouds into a confused sky. Smoking clouds converge, the ninth rain rushes in, sulphur with flames, chaos blazes, the ether seethes, the scorched air crackles with liquid fires. Hence the fable about the truth has a false fame, that the Sun’s offspring desired his father’s chariot and could not, a gentle boy, rein in the proud horses of the Sun, that the world burned: then the charioteer was snatched by a thunderbolt, his sisters changed into a forbidden lament. Let the Eridanus see to it, if any people there grows white, if any bird there grows more melodious with age. Here the wonders of changed forms grieve differently. For the companion, the spouse, alas, then too suffering the divine law, a woman, at the murmurs of the sky turned back her bold eyes in vain, not about to have speech to tell what she had seen: and there at once, changed into brittle salt, she stood, herself a tomb, herself an image, preserving her form without a body: for she still endures in a bare station under the sky, neither dissolved by rains into decay nor broken by winds: indeed, even if some stranger mutilates the form,

Immediately from itself it fills the wound with a platform. It is also said to be living, already in another body, with a sex accustomed to dispense the months with bountiful blood. And now there are cities nowhere, Sodom nowhere, an impious race nowhere; the whole region is a pyre: here with black horror of ashes, and there with gray mold, cinders mark the fires. No one plows in vain the pitchy clods of soot. That former appearance perished, which Lot, discerning, had chosen the rich fields, distinct from his uncle. Even if some half-destroyed acres there attempt joyful riches of autumn, they easily promise to the eyes the best pears, peaches, and all fruits, until birds pluck them: for immediately upon the telltale touch, the deceptive fruit dissolves into empty ash. Thus, with heaven and earth alike buried, nor does the sea live there; the death of the sea is the very peace of the sea, which animates no waves through its panting volumes, and which never sighs from its native south wind, and which cannot produce any creature from its depths.

A scaly skin or a smooth skin or one enclosed by bark, or a wrinkled shell or one closed by a double joint. There alone it measures its own bitumen from its fruit, the soot of a burnt sea, which a lively heat, cooking beneath the pools, tempers with the heat of sulfur and salt and gives to the lands to have as marine pitch: it is brought in under its own season, the rich poison of burnt water, and a skin of black foam is woven over the waters. They call it, whatever that capture of merchandise is, and they lean the light boats with the balancing of the sides, so that they teach the once-placed vein to climb aboard: for it, already spontaneously rising, will give itself to the inert ship and will sink it because of the generous gift, unless a patch touches where a woman clothes the months. Behold another monster of the sea noted from disaster: all things there swim unwillingly: nature has withdrawn from bodies destined to sink. Finally, if you set a light-bearing potsherd to swim, by which the spirit of fire, the apex of flame will sail, if the flame is extinguished, it will go under the waters, a shipwrecking destruction of light. These are the punishments of Sodom and Gomorrah, marked for the ages.

To unjust peoples, whose hard hearts have abandoned the fear of God, they will teach them to revere the heavenly laws and to hope in the one Lord of all things. III. ON JONAH. After Sodom and Gomorrah, living funerals for eternity, and the punishments of fire marked by the old age of ashes, and fruits born in vain for the eyes alone, and the death of sea and salt equally wrought there, if anything of man preserves punishment by changing his body, almost other fires from above had shaken off the city of Nineveh, which had transgressed the path of the just and righteous. For what fear is there for a perverted mind? All examples of punishments are empty where error holds possession. But the good and patient Lord, slow to punish, the Almighty, will hurl no wrath unless he first warns and strikes hardened hearts, stirring up prophets with his august mind. And now, for the merits of the Ninevites, the Lord had commanded Jonah to foretell their destruction; but he, conscious of sparing the submissive and of yielding the due penalty to suppliants, and of the easy goodness, delayed going, lest he sing in vain threats that would yield to peace. Soon flight was his plan, if indeed that is any possibility, to avoid God and escape the Lord's right hand, by which the whole trembling world is restrained. Is there reason in what the prophet does from a holy heart? On the shore of a harbor, most famous for its safe port, the city of Joppa is poised opposite the coasts of the Cilicians. From there, then, Jonah quickly demands a ship for Tarsus, through the same waters of the god: nor, finally, is it a wonder if he, fleeing the Lord on land, found him in the waves.

A small cloud had suddenly stained the air, stirred up from a sulphurous seed by the wind, and gradually, giving birth to a globe, it clung to the sun, and deceived the day, enclosing it with a host of darkness. The sea becomes a mirror of the sky; a black ring dyes the waves, heaven falls into shadows and the sea rises: and there is no middle ground, as the wave touches the clouds, the halls of the winds, which the whirlwind mixes all together. A diverse fury raged against the fugitive Jonah. One ship was the contest for both sky and sea, it is battered from here and there; every timber trembles under the wave-breaking blow, the spine of the keel, struck beneath, quivers, the yard-arms, creaking with effort, shudder from on high, the mast itself, fearing to break, bends. Meanwhile, the sailor’s groan and fear try everything for the ship and for their lives: to entrust the sluggish coils, to fasten the halyard, to strain at the tiller, to wrestle with the struggling ropes, to push the curves with their chests: some of the bilge-water, heavy with stench, they hastily bail out in turn, then they hurl overboard the cargo and all the freight, and strive to overcome the perils by losses. Then wretched voices at each fragment of the sea, and they stretch out their hands to the gods of no divinity, whom the power of sea and sky does not fear, no less drowning them hidden in the sterns with the angry whirlwind. Unaware of these things, the guilty one himself, under the hollow arch of the stern, was snoring, his swollen nostril echoing sleep, even then forming the figure of the Lord in his sleep. Meanwhile, the one who drives the duties of the wave-cleaving prow, calmly soothed by peace, proud in his rest.

It presses, driving on: "What," it says, "in this crisis do you swim in dreams, dog? And in such a whirlwind do you alone have a harbor? A single ounce covers; the only hope is the gods. You too, whoever your god is, say vows and prayers, suppliantly bending your ancestral deity, in need." Then, who is nearer to the fault, who is the cause of the storm, it pleases to learn by lot, nor does the lot lie about Jonah. Then they ask: "Who and from where among men, who finally among things, by what people, by what seat are you renowned?" He declares himself a servant and a very fearful one of God, who raised the sky high, who placed the earth, who poured forth the whole body. And he reveals himself as a fugitive from Him and the reasons. They stiffened with fear. "What fault, then, of ours to you? What now? By what pact shall we appease the seas?" For much, and much more, the savage straits were swelling. Then the Lord's prophet, with a rush of spirit, begins: "Behold, I am the storm, I am the whole madness of the world. In me," he says, "for you the ether falls and the sea rises, in me the land is far, death is near, no hope of God. Rather, give the cause headlong, and, lightening the ship, cast this one great burden into the willing sea." But they try in vain to turn the course back, for neither could the rudder be twisted, nor did the hard yardarm wish to change its balance. Finally, to the Lord: "Do not cast us into the gap of death.

You gave one life for it, and you do not wish to have sprinkled it with just blood, if your right hand so leads. And already there, rising from the deep whirlpool, a whale, unrolling its scaly mass of a body covered with shells, was pressing the waves closer, with the marble surface shaken, seizing the prey by the god's will, which, tumbled from the ship's high stern, it gulped down into its muddy jaws, and hurried the living feast into its long belly, and together with the man devoured the rage of sky and sea. The sea's wave is laid flat, the sky's shadow dissolves. On this side the waves, on that side the winds are returned as friends, and as the peaceful keel marks a safe path, white tracks bloom in the blue furrow. Then the sailor, joyful, venerating fear of the Lord, offers thanks, then enters friendly harbors. And the prophet Jonah, taken up by another ship, sails and cuts through the waves beneath the deep waves, spreading his sails in the entrails, with the beast's spirit breathing, enclosed and not wetted by the waters, innermost of the sea yet outside, among half-eaten schools and dissolved, rotting bodies by digestion, learning his own funeral even now. But as a future sign of the Lord, he was not for destruction, but a witness of death driven away.

To a Senator Who Has Converted from the Christian Religion to the Worship of Idols When I saw you again serving diverse and vain rites and being held by your old error, I was struck with amazement. Because you have always loved poems, I hastened to write verses in reply with a poem, so that I might rebuke you: who would endure that you prefer darkness to light, that you can believe the Great Mother to be called a goddess, and again think she must be worshipped, whose worshippers a shameful infamy brands? For the priests themselves, in women’s tunics, confess an inner vice by their outward attire, and they think what is not permitted is permitted: hence they walk softly through the city, speaking with a softened voice, and they hold their weary loins with an extended thumb, and they change their own sex by a notorious crime. And when they celebrate their rites, they claim to be chaste on those days: but if they are chaste only then, as they claim, what are they at the rest of the time? But because they are compelled to be chaste at least once, they rage in their minds, they lacerate their bodies, and they pour out blood. What kind of sacred rite is it that is called by the name of blood?

Now I have also learned that it is not age that has changed you, but your religion: bald, with the military boot removed, your Gallic foot bound in soft papyrus. A thing sufficiently wondrous, fallen from the highest summit: if a consul should proceed into the city from the temple of Isis, there will be laughter on every face. Who would not laugh at you, who were once a consul, now being a minister of Isis? And what is shameful first, you are not ashamed to be second, and to condemn your talent through base hymns, with the common people answering you and the senate tearing you apart, and you, once painted in your own house with the fasces, now also carrying a dog-faced image with the sistrum. Is this humility? It is an image of humility. Those monuments will always remain in your house. Public rumor has reached our ears that you said: "Goddess, I have erred, forgive me, I have returned." Tell me, if you can, when you often begged such things and sought pardon, what words did she speak to you? Truly you lack a mind, you who follow those who lack a mind. You repeat these things again and do not perceive that you are doing wrong. See what you deserve: you would perhaps be less blameworthy if you only knew this and remained in this error. But since you have passed through the doors of the law that holds the truth and it has been granted to you to know God in a few years, why do you hold what should be left behind, or why do you leave behind what should be retained? You worship nothing while you worship everything, nor do you reconsider in your heart.

True things differ from false, as light from shadows. You play the philosopher, though your own judgment changes you: for if the mob's anger stirs your stomach, you will become a Jew and be considered wholly uncertain. Indulge in words; lofty wisdom does not please. Everything excessive falls against itself: both heat and cold produce the same effect—this burns, that burns likewise. Darkness harms sight, and so does the contrary sun; both cold and hot baths injure equally. Food nourishes the body, and food corrupts the body; its power diminishes if anything is stretched too far. Finally, if you sit, it is a great rest from labor; if you sit too much, it is labor. For the poet Maro set it as a punishment: 'Unhappy Theseus sits and will sit forever.' What is useful always harms when prolonged: long dinners harm, long fasts exhaust. Thus excessive flavor makes one foolish. 'The shameless sect, the goddess taught me, loved moderation,' she said. But you care neither for sect nor for moderation now. A stable mind, however, is overturned by no storm, and simplicity itself never thinks any evil. Hence sincere faith will enjoy an eternal abode, while deceit will be tormented by a long fire. Choose what you wish, so that you may avoid fitting penalties. Yet I say, let the creditor deserve this pardon: it will be a light sin if you are unwilling to know the truth; it will be no light sin if, having known the truth, you abandon it. But perhaps old age, when it matures, will recall you, sated with these errors, to a better state.

Time changes evils; time digests all things. Therefore, when a more prudent age has brought you back to yourself, learn to keep faith with God, lest you perhaps fall into a double lapse. For that saying is true: he who, having stubbed his foot on a stone, does not know how to avoid it a second time, and carelessly injures his limbs again, should blame himself and not attribute it to any accidents. Correct your fault with steadfastness; correct your mind. It is enough to have sinned once; cease to fear. He will not be at fault who repents of having been so before. V. ON PASCHA. There is a place which we believe to be in the middle of the whole world; the Jews call it Golgotha by its native name. Here I remember that a tree, cut from a barren oak, was planted and bore wholesome fruits. Yet it did not offer these to those who set themselves as its planters; foreign peoples enjoyed the blessed fruits. This is the tree's form: it rises from a single trunk and soon extends its arms into twin branches, just as full sails stretch heavy yardarms, or as yokes are from a plow with oxen separated. The earth conceived the seed that this tree first dropped when ripe; soon from this (marvelous to say)

The third day again had brought forth a branch, terrible to earth and heaven, blessed with life-giving fruit. But for twice twenty days it grew steadily into immensity, touched the sky with its highest summit, and finally hid its holy head on high, while yet with immense weight it put forth twice six branches and, spreading them, extended them into the whole world, so that they might provide sustenance and eternal life to all peoples and teach that death can die. Then, after fifty days had passed, from the highest summit a breath of celestial spirit brought a draught of divine nectar down into the branches: the leaves, heavy with sweet dew, dripped everywhere. Behold, beneath the vast shade of the covering branches there was a spring: here, with no disturbance troubling its calm, with clear, unclouded waters, and the grass around poured forth joyful colors from varied flowers. Around this, countless nations and peoples gathered, as varied in kind, sex, age, and rank: unmarried women, married women, widows, and daughters-in-law together, infants, boys, men, youths, and elders. Here, where they saw the branches bending, laden with manifold fruits, they rejoiced to reach with eager right hands for the fruits dripping with celestial nectar. Nor could they pluck these with their greedy palms before they had wiped away the foul, muddy traces of their former path and washed their body in the holy spring. Therefore, after long strolling on the soft grass, they look up at the fruits hanging high on the tree:

Then if any of those fallen husks from the branches and sweet fruits dripping with much nectar feed on them, desiring to take true fruits: therefore, when their mouths have taken in the celestial flavor, they begin to change their minds and lose their greedy spirits, and to know man with a sweet understanding. We have seen that an unusual flavor has moved the stomach of many, and that poison stirred with honey has rejected good flavors with a disturbed mind, or that a flavor eagerly taken has not been loved for long, and that, badly drunk, it has finally been vomited up. Indeed, many, with renewed minds, have often restored their sick spirits and have endured what they denied they could, and have taken the fruit of their labor. Many also, having dared to touch the holy springs, have departed again, suddenly slipping back and rolling in the same filth and mire. Many, carrying the true good in their whole breast, receive it with all their minds and store it deep in their vitals. Therefore, those who can approach the sacred springs—the seventh light brings them to the desired waters; they dip their fasting limbs in the liquid springs: thus finally they lay down the filth of the mind and the stain of their former life, and lead back pure and illustrious souls from death, souls that will go to the light of heaven.

From here the path leads to the branches and sweet fruits of salvation, and from there the path leads to heaven through the branches of the high tree. This is the tree of life for all who believe. Amen. VI. TO FLAVIUS FELIX ON THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. I who once sought rustic Muses in my song and adorned the spring breezes with rosy flowers, and the heavy summer ears of grain, and cut down the swollen grapes of the autumn vines, and always praised the peaceful olives of winter, and poured forth measured waters from the springs, and sang of the leafy forests with their shifting grass: now I shall tune the ethereal shores of light, if only I may be allowed to touch the light-bearing Muses, to reveal the secret nymphs at the river’s source, and the joyful forests placed under another star, and I shall at the same time recount in song the eternal flames, whence the vast sea swells in its billowing waves, what power makes the solid earth tremble, and whence the golden light first shone upon a new world. What man could have been fashioned from joyful clay, whence the race could have grown in the empty age, and what varied desire for living exists among the people, what first created the offspring of death from evil, whence the good odor and modesty of rosy garlands, what makes the vine swell with joyful grapes, and how new barley grows milky on tender stalks, how the tree ripens into black olives in the frost, what gives the power of growth to the various seeds, and the soft shade of the mother protects her children.

To know all the good things that have been begun in the branches, so that through all things it may be permitted to recognize the true God, who prepared light, the seas, the sky, and the earth, and adorned the ninth world with varied stars, and first commanded cattle and birds to proceed, and gave the watery waves to be filled with fishes, and drove the sands, made fertile, with animals. Such songs I shall compose with the Muses set in order, and I shall pour forth a healthful stream from new springs, and a joyful rain coming from calm clouds, flowing deeply and freely into the souls of men, I shall receive into my plowed fields with full channels. Now, touch the secure and living nymph, and swiftly drink the easy liquid of life.

If anyone wishes to escape the eternal flames, ignorant of the day and unknowing of the age to come, and rather to obtain the rewards of a righteous life, let him remember this one God and pray to Him alone, who placed the whole world upon the threshold of the balance, remaining eternal and always about to be forever, holding all ages, and alone before the ages, unbegotten, without end, God, and alone holding the divine throne, always towering over the high heaven, alone omnipotent, to whom all things are subject, [Father, Son, Spirit, who are always one], who formed man pleasing to Himself for eternity, gave him to be shepherd of flocks, master of wild beasts, and granted him rule over birds and the sea alone to be dominated, who by word alone was able to extend the sky and by command bade the solid earth to hang, and swifter than speech separated the waters of the sea, loved to fashion this form dear to His hands, and wished His own beautiful image to be in it, breathed a life-giving breath upon the faces. That man, unmindful of God, rashly committed such great things, nor, after the warning, would he touch anything further: one thing, whence he would know evil and discern right, he immediately forbade him to touch the forbidden apple. How many gifts of the world God granted to man and marked the sweet pledge of His love, gave useful and dear commands of salvation, placed under his dominion the lands and the living soul,

The feathered kind, the herd kind, every kind of wild beast, and the watery kind, all swimming creatures. But since the first man, having transgressed the law by crime, was already changing the Lord's commands, with his wife urging all evils, he was perishing by death. For the woman first committed the evil of sin, betrayed her own husband, and deceived him by law. Eve, wickedly persuaded, opened the threshold to death and created funeral rites for herself and for the whole race. Hence (an accursed crime) death flowed forth into eternity. Thence the deep crime more easily spread, and the farmer's labor more fiercely troubled the year. The cunning serpent, with unjust zeal, cast this in. Thence many evils were committed by peoples, and unspeakable things produced seeds of evil deeds. Therefore God alone, who holds supreme power and the highest summits of heaven above the heights, dwelling in inaccessible light through the ages, mindful of the past and prescient of the future, preserves a decree of merit for the race in eternity: and all souls which slowly govern bodies and move man by reason wandering through the limbs, as soon as they yield, having laid aside the burden of limbs, and, freed from earthly bonds, go lightly, and seek their own shores in different parts, immediately some are enclosed in hidden shadows,

But others are recalled at once to the joyful breezes, kept deeply for the rewards of the law's decrees, until bodies rise again with renewed limbs. Now men pay the penalties of their first life, and the mindful judges of God stand before the former ones, each awaiting his own punishment from his own crime. Either beasts without name or weight of breath, or in vain the breath of God is poured out to no end. Or is the omnipotent God, under whose nod all things are ruled, unable to restore life after death, or does the Lord seem unable to do something with things? If He could bring forth bright light from darkness, and could compose the whole mass with a word, prepare all things from nothing with a powerful voice, why could He not fashion from something a known form, which once was, which formerly lived, and command it to rise again in a shape like its own? Since all things are God's, the earth will restore all things more fully, commanded to recall whatever it once covered. If fire has consumed someone laid to rest on a pyre, or the sea has cast someone down in its blind waves, if the belly of a fish has sated someone's hunger, or wild beasts have fixed cruel funeral rites on limbs, if blood has lain scattered, the body torn by birds:

The last rites will not deny anyone to the Lord; it is necessary for the living to appear to God from death, and for men to stand forth with their own forms resumed. Thus seeds are believed dry when the earth is turned, and, fixed deep, they rot dead in the furrows; then, restored, the stalk is animated by the ears, and again, with living grains, the strong crops grow yellow, and new harvests arise with varying yield. All the stars will fall, then, reborn, they will shine again; and the day dies into dense night with its light; the night falls into day, with things revealed by light, and the day rises again in its own high stars. The sun falls, splendid with bright light, from the sky; its light perishes, overshadowed by the coming evening for the world, and it returns, renewing joys for the whole age. Thus the phoenix, burned, lives from its own funeral, and the bird rises at once from its own pyre. And the tree, stripped of leaves, bears fruit in its own season, and again bends its branches with fruit from the bud. Therefore, as at the divine voice, with the world trembling and the powers of the high air deeply stirred, then with an unusual crash and the greatest rumblings of the sky, as God advances and the judge of the world comes:

Immediately countless ministers rush to go, And they assemble God with heavenly majesty, Angelic hosts descend far and wide in crowds. All messengers of God, to whom is divine power Preeminent and form, all spiritual powers. Fiery vigor is theirs, radiant bodies, the sky's Divine power flashes: hence the whole aether thunders, Hence the trembling earth, wholly deep, roars back Giving birth to men, whom it must give back when ordered. Comrades marvel, finally the clouds are disturbed, Stars marvel and tremble suddenly from the height of power Hence at God's command easily with the voice of the mighty one. Immediately, with tombs broken through all realms, Every soil pours forth bones from wide gaping openings And the open sand belches forth living peoples. Limbs cling to joints, bones are knit with marrow And connected nerves govern the breathing bodies, And veins move, filled with blood, And souls are given back, released from hollow cavities opened, Each organ seeking its own, all rising. (O wondrous faith!) Hence every age burgeons, The ancient crowd of the dead burgeons from dust. Mothers and men rise again, having regained the light,

Great-hearted youths, boys, and unwed maidens, And deceased elders stand with living spirits, And the orb resounds, groaning with the wailing of infants. Various peoples come from the lowest abodes, And the throngs of the East and those whom the farthest land sees, Those who dwell in the middle zones under a sloping climate, And those who hold the Riphaean citadels of the frosty constellation: Every fearful tenant of whatever end is present, The rustic and the soldier, kings having laid aside the diadem, The rich man mingled with the poor in an equal throng. A tremor is high everywhere; now the orb groans with prayers, And the peoples, stretching forth their hands, marvel with a shout. The Lord Himself sits, bright with eminent light, And, preeminent over all, He flashes in the fires of powers, And from the lofty throne and heavenly seat He gleams, Surrounded by martyrs, with a gleaming number of men, And stands accompanied by His blessed seers, Whose bright temples shine with snowy fillets. And now priests in gleaming vestments are present, Bearing the ruddy crowns, the rewards of life, And all, with knees bent and bowed, adore: “Alone holy and sacred is God” is the one voice of all. Hence the Lord will command the twin people to stand:

He commands that the just be separated in number from the evil, and orders that, with death conquered, they, clothed in vigor, always have the unextinguished breath of light, to go through the ancient, ever-flourishing realms, through rich groves, always pleasant green places, to live an eternal life in a glorious body. There is a place beloved by the Lord on Aeolian shores, where bright light shines and a more healthful breeze breathes, and there is eternal day and unchangeable time, and a region most rich in fields, secret to God, and a seat too blessed on a serene hinge, air always joyful and always to be in light, a gentle wind breathing vital blasts. The earth, pre-eminently rich, bears everything equally on a fertile soil: on balanced meadows, purple blazes with flowers. All things, very radiant, mingle light without envy, one flower joyfully clothes its own garment with its own light. Hence, roseate fields are variegated with snowy seed, and snowy fields are rippled with roseate flowers. You would not know by which the fields grow more beautifully fragrant, or by which the ethereal breeze breathes more happily.

For what surpasses in beauty or excels in honor. Never are such flower-bearing plants born in gardens, nor have such lilies bloomed in our fields; neither does the well-known rose blush so soon, nor the white rose unfold so, nor is Tyrian purple so steeped in its red glow. The precious gemstone sparkles with its colored pebbles; the prasinus gleams there, the carbunculus blazes there, and the smaragdus stone pours forth shimmering lights. Here too, cinnamon grows on fragrant branches, and the amomum, joyful with its green leaf, spreads its scent. Here lies the uncreated gold of radiant light, and the high groves, holding the sky with their flowering tops, and the branches, laden with the richest shoots, weigh down the green trees. No India has sent forth groves like these; the pine does not raise such dense green tops, nor does the cypress so curl its quivering locks, nor does the branch bloom better in its season. Here, in a different way, the tall black trees bloom at their summit, and these forests alone are eternally green without hail. No leaves fall, no flower is lacking in its season: the tops, compact with strength, are green, the tree is purple. But I think that flower is the rose; the redness in it is equal, and it breathes such beauty and fragrance from its leaves.

A tree stands with its flower and its ninth fruit, the most beautiful of trees, and the fruitful oaks thicken with life-giving produce. Fat honeys drip from the green branches, and milk also flows from full streams, drinkable. Whatever pious earth greens there breathes life, and whatever blooms from the sprout is blessed at once, and the soil there smells of healing chalk. A spring there floods the fields with a calm stream, and from it four rivers water the divided land. Spring, I think, always holds sway, the sky clothed with flowers. The cold of the winter star does not vary the breezes, nor does summer, pressed by its heats, flash with its rays; the sky tempers the calm airs with its own light and refreshes the fertile earth with a better breeze. There is no night there; the stars defend their own darkness. Wrath, treachery, dread desire are absent; fear is shut out, and cares are driven from the threshold. Hence evil is banished to the farthest shores, and forbidden labor cannot touch the blessed boundaries. Here ancient faith rests in its chosen seat. Justice rejoices, living in an eternal covenant, and secure salvation delights in the peaceful fields, always about to live and always to be in the light. Here, whoever is a pious, just, and good colonist,

Whoever fears God with an innocent mind, the Thunderer, and has honored his own parents with sacred piety, and has always cultivated a holy life without sin, or whenever he has comforted the needy with friendly resources and has greatly aided the laboring poor, a helper of the poor, accustomed to saving orphans, and has rescued the guilty, has aided those oppressed by crime, has given his own pledges of the table to dear guests, has performed all his gifts according to divine commands, has harmed no one, has coveted nothing belonging to others—for him, all, exulting with divine praises and praying together, raise their voices to the stars, singing to the Lord, they celebrate thanks through joys, and they will go along the blessed way with accompanying messengers. After the Lord completed these happy gifts and sent the righteous alike into the eternal realms, then a wretched crowd comes, mourning its crimes. There is groaning; all grieve with burning tears and testify to their deeds with frequent wailings; they tremble at the flaming darts pressing on for their merits. Angels seize them, now forbidding them to pray and forbidding them to pour out belated words of repentance.

And now, as the flame approaches, pardon for prayers is denied. O wretched ones, how often has divine power been made known to you, how often has the known majesty of truth been revealed? You have heard the thunderclaps, you have seen the lightning of the sky; you have constantly experienced rains, the rages of winds and hail, how often both by night and by clear day. Fruitful seasons gave you the gifts of God: spring abounded in roses, summer did not fail in crops, autumn offered various mellow fruits, winter always broke joyful olives with its ice. God granted everything, no goodness was lacking, yet through such great things the whole human race did not know God. The earth trembled at God, the sea hung poised by God's will, and the river, trembling, flowed back over dry sands, and all creation joyfully confesses God. Yet you denied this Lord of heaven and earth, and you rather slew the just with cruel slaughter, and often drove away the heralds of God. Truth has always clung to you as a crime. And therefore you will reap the fruit of your wicked sowing: behold, you do not know the day which you are accustomed to mock. You will go into the deep darkness of fire and sulphur, suffering fierce rages of pain as you burn. The Lord orders these to depart from eternal punishment, to go under the fires of gehenna forever without end, to be pressed by a mass through torrential flames. He who threatens commands the elements to be turned into flames.

and all the fire of heaven descends from the clouds. Then greedy Tartarus shuts out the swift fires, and the seas will surge with stormy flames, and the whole earth will be confounded with living embers, and the angry air will brandish fiery furrows, and the whole orb will be armed with every torch, and with Tartarean force the conflagrations will seize the world. Those who are driven headlong are lifted into the surge; from here they flee, from there they are carried back in sharp course. The savage anger of the flame meets the fugitives, and they recognize their punishment now, now, from their crime. And now where no farmer has possessed the land, and the sea is pressed under the deep limit at its farthest end, where the sun, having measured out its course, defines Olympus, and the stars, having passed through the transacted world, are hidden: the air swells with dense shadows, the light concealed, and the last pools blaze with hidden streams. The nature of the place is marked by fiery penalties, and the infernal marsh, glowing with heat at its depths, thunders with horrific sounds, a penal sea, a furnace.

It seethes and is disturbed with a swift, flaming summit, rushing into torments with a surging whirlpool, the river mixes with burning sand and all things are mingled with filth. Here the captive, groaning crowd of the wicked will be sent, and the troop of the criminal body (alas!) about to burn. A great lamentation arises there, with weeping joining the clamor, and a swift hissing, a wailing of the suffering from the flame, and a deep, resonant fire and a groaning of the burning will rise into the air. Then the evil offspring of humanity will hang in suspense, and they will begin to offer late prayers to heaven. And they will then wish to know God, whom they refused to know. There each one will confess the savagery of his own life, his guilty hands and minds cruel with crime, and will testify to the unspeakable savagery of his own life. First of all, whoever had previously thought wrongly of God and had worshipped with a wandering mind stones with a false divinity, and had consecrated blood-stained altars with images, and had feared painted, voiceless figures, and had adored the insubstantial shadows of a false divinity, and whomsoever evil error had immediately led astray, if anyone was an adulterer, whoever had killed his children, if anyone lived with a conscious mind in any evil whatsoever.

Or he had raged by robbery or by a client's deceit, if anyone had stained his hands with human blood, and had mingled hidden poisons with death, then if anyone concealed thefts in an empty heart, or rejoiced in the unjust profit of another's evil, whoever admitted any wrong, whatever of evils. A deep burning will torment them with bitter fire, and all will pay the penalty of a living death, thus keeping the whole mournful crowd. How often have the holy prophets sung these things, warned by the spirit of God, have they spoken of the future? [No one (alas) no one lent their ears.] Thus almighty God wished his rewards to be known, and the threats placed through such laws, by sending many crying out the heavenly words. Finally, by God's command, the prophet joined the bones, and the tombs, moved suddenly and not of their own accord, were amazed, that bodies lying in scattered ashes had risen, living, with the coming soul, and with their voice stretched their palms toward heaven. [They rejoice with God and with Christ the victor in such things.] Indeed, they returned to the tombs in silence, and yielded to the future day of the Lord to be kept: he ordered them to be held back for a little while in the deep resting places, until that great day, when the time is completed.

Let him come. All, acknowledge the true Lord, who alone can drive the soul to strive for the light and likewise can thrust it into the punishments of Tartarus, and in whose power all the authority of life and death lies. For God, to be able is enough, for to will is sufficient, and the deed is accomplished by speaking. That Lord of mine alone is to be feared in the depths of the senses. And since every course is concluded by death, whoever exists today will carry his own life with him. And therefore, while life remains, while you may still pluck the light, while repentance is allowed, before the end of the age seizes the unwary and the last day, which is held by the law of death, releases the unknowing eyes: what remains first, watch over your dear salvation and turn your course readily and surely toward the good. After your errors and the heavy atonements pressed by sacred rites, and after the storms that have too long harassed your wandering ways, enter the straight paths and hold to the favorable winds. Hence, with joyful minds first, drive out crime, and let the long-congealed guilt be washed from the heart; then, gentle ones, blot out the unspeakable evils you have committed, and appease the terrible God with eternal prayers. Let all worst things yield to good, mortal things to living. Preserve now, without crime, the ninth life.

Keep pious minds and hearts true in name. As suppliants, ask forgiveness for your first offenses. Now, now, let pure hearts ripen for pious farmers, and raise innocent hands in righteous prayers, and render easy voices to divine praises. Let minds begin to grow accustomed to true goods, and let the gifts of the divine law be celebrated more, and remember good deeds and at the same time undertake them. Let foul deeds once committed by the wicked grow vile, and all better things will burn for you among the pious, and life will be freed from dreadful dangers, and eternal rewards will come to your prayers.