Satisfactio Ad Guntharium Regem Wandalorum Dum Esset In Vinculis

The Satisfaction of Dracontius to King Guntharius of the Vandals While He Was in Chains King of the immense God, creator of all, and hope, whom every land fears, who rules the fiery pole: the stars, the flame, the day, whom the sun, the night, the moon acknowledge as author, lord, all ages prove: lacking beginning or end, and without experience of time, ignorant of change, nor acting by alternation, you change evils, mutable in no age, you will always be the same as you are now, or as you were. So long a antiquity adds nothing to you nor takes away: all things have time, for time is absent from you. You lead the minds of men, as you will, through each thing, and wherever you command, you direct their talents. When angry, you make men wish contrary things; when propitious, you command that they do all good things. Whatever men do—good, sad, prosperous, evil—this is allowed to happen by the anger or favor of God. Your words spoken to the prophet Moses prove this, that you were to harden the heart of Pharaoh. Thus God drives my heart, with our guilt sinning through excessive time, toward forbidden things. So that I, who could recount the deeds of my leaders, the war-triumph-bearing deeds of the Asdingian name, whence reward could come to me with the praise of safety, a great gift from the ruling king together, I would despise rewards, silent before so many kindly kings, and suddenly seek certain dangers, wretched. Who, unless driven mad by heavenly anger, would seek all harsh things and deny all prosperous things? When God is angry, minds are changed, and limbs, senses are turned, and even appearance is turned.

The king of the Persians, holding the realms of Babylon after the glory of empire—who would deny that he was a bird? And a diadem defiled his forehead with horns; the lowing of a beast were the words of the leader. After the Parthian realms, the farmer feared the oxherd, and the royal neck, trembling, submitted to the yoke. He wandered through the fields, a vagrant, feeding on harmful grasses, and he who had been a man-ox, from an ox became a man. That true priest, the father of John, also lost his speech, and was voiceless, silent with a silent tongue. But I, sinning against my king and lord and God, have become worse, and more base than a dog. The wounds of a troubled Molossian are healed by its own tongue; alas, my tongue has given me wounds. But He who restored the tyrant after the limbs of a beast, so that the returning cloven hoof became a hand, and who silently reshaped the modulations of the tongue, lest it give forth words bound with mutilated sound—that same God commands my lord, and will command, that He restore me, and look upon me with mercy. May He preserve me, so that I may sing praises of my grandfather, my father, and Himself. And through His offspring, may I sing the royal vows. The fault is indeed grave, but the guilt is worthy of pardon, since no one has been without the crime of sin. For almighty God could, when He founded the world, have given only joys, with sorrows removed. But creating diverse and discordant things, He joined them, mixing good with evils and evils with goods. Thus the powerful author mixed contrary elements: moist with dry, fiery with cold. The letter, learnedly eloquent, is said to be akin to bees, to which it is given that they have wounds, camps, and honeycombs.

Wax gives talent to boys, the beginnings of perception; hence it happens that writing may help or harm. The asp has deaths, and the serpent has remedies; the viper often helps, the viper often harms. The hind prepares healthful marrow from the serpent it feeds on, and the poisons themselves drive away death. The simple material of iron is said to be both harmless and harmful; the polished sword harms, the rustic plow pleases. The earth itself produces precious gems and stones; it also gives thorns, thorny wood, and roses. The deep sea prepares delights and deaths with its waves, and generates the shell’s riches of the sea. The air tempers the vital breezes, which, when corrupted, the day snatches away, along with souls. Harsh or gentle nature holds birds; the dove is a gentle bird, the vulture a harsh bird. From gathered clouds, rain, snow, hail, and frost are born in turns, by fire, vapor, and cold. The sun gives temperance, the most pleasing form of the world, preparing all things to be created, fostering all things created. Through it the ground bears flowers and the harvest’s ears; the field scorched by the sun lies as crumbling sand. The sun restores bodies with its rays and vexes bodies; by alternating suns health comes and goes. All things are neither evil nor good solely from the sky; Lucifer taught this, Sirius warned this. The temperate zone of the sky does not hold the middle of the world, for of the five zones it scarcely has two itself. What the sky, what the earth, what the sea, what the purer air could not merit together—when does a man possess this? My fault was to keep silent about modest lords, and to write about an unknown, not about my lord.

Just as it follows the ungrateful, who with profane mind, although they know the Lord, worship empty idols. Thus guilt held the people of Israel, when, forgetting God, it worshipped a calf. And yet you grant pardon to those who ask, O Author, if the mind guilty of the deed repents. I beseech you, Almighty, you whom it befits to be kind, whom no vengeance pleases, but pardon, whose holy hand sustains the hearts of rulers, and you piously incline, wherever you command. Before you first I repent of that poem, which I wickedly set forth in my audacity, and I confess. After you, highest God, to the king and lord I am bound, from whose command I, groaning, seek pardon. May your piety command the armed one, may my king and lord, always and everywhere pious, decree prosperity. Nor may he be unlike me, than what the crowd is wont to be. May he be good and placid through your piety. For whatever he does, whatever he will command, are yours, and the judgment of God is borne by the royal words. May these few words entreat God, who sees the hidden vows of the mind in ethereal senses. To you now, prince, I, suppliant, turn back my sails, begging with heart, mind, voice, and hand. Give your right hand to a wretch, grant pardon to a suppliant; in such a long time, anger does not befit a pious man. For among friends you threaten pardonable faults, and you feast your captives with delicacies. Let him punish, so that it may be what Christ is; you spare the guilty, by whose avenger you reign, by whose watchfulness you thrive. Those who perish in war die alone as enemies; he who survives the battle lives as you yourself command.

A captive lives without fear, and only the rebel Dreads death, a quiet prey you protect. You preserve their lives, you yourself provide food for the conquered, Lest life become burdensome, with hunger stealing away. No one will fall under your authority, under a bloody death; He knows he will live who wishes to be yours. Whenever a crowd of rebels persisted in arms, It would either conquer or certainly be an inert prey. Without fear of death, an enemy gives himself up to an enemy. For you well preserve necks subdued under the yoke. Thus the terrible lion roars with a bloody mouth, With claws unsheathed, with teeth threatening death: Angry, with a flashing glance like iron, And if there is delay, it rages all the more fiercely. But if the trembling hunter lays down his spears, Terrified and prostrate, soon the anger dies away. The beast scorns food which it did not itself make a corpse, And the wild one forgives, as if receiving enough. And it grants pardon to the fallen, to the conquered without a wound, Lowering its eyes with a shamefaced mouth. Thus your anger, O ruler, is broken without impiety, When the crimes committed are confessed. In forgiving, pious one, imitate for us the Thunderer, Who pardons faults and grants forgiveness. The rule of a prince is like the kingdoms of the heavens, As the holy page of God proclaims to the peoples: Telling the laws of heaven to sacrilegious throngs, Surrounded by the apostolic, discipling hand. Do not the commands of God order that the sun not set while entering, With another raging, but that a man be merciful? King David spared the peoples of his enemies with the sword, and this adulterer is certain of his crime.

A confessed crime deserves pardon from a pious disaster; the guilty one goes unpunished, or the accused without death. Moreover, Solomon, born of the same woman who committed the crime, received a gift of honor. Absalom, born of a wife, does not become heir, but the fruit of the crime holds the paternal scepter. Behold, what the sparing clemency of the father bestows, to give him kingdoms, to give them also to his offspring. Solomon himself did not demand the necks of his enemies, while he sought the Lord, but the help of the wise. This man was prudent because he did not wish to be bloodthirsty, and he was peaceable, tenacious of counsel. Stephen, a martyr before others under a hailstorm of stones, prayed willingly for forgiveness for his enemies. This good simplicity, fasting from blood, provides; a man raging without death has nothing of slaughter itself. Caesar, powerful everywhere, spared the enemy after war, and what was worse, he was both citizen and enemy. Freely restoring kindness, he repaired honors; hence he departed, called worthy of the honor of God. From whose rising empire and origin, Caesar Augustus deserved to have a pious time. For at that same time, Christ was born of a virgin, whose star shone through the stars of the sky. The Roman leader and prince was Titus, a prince; if he did not grant it, he often used to say: "We have lost this day of light," if he had given nothing to the suppliants without being entreated. Another prince, approved by a modest saying, Commodus Augustus, a man good in piety: "Learn, rulers, this precept after me: let him be good in life who wishes to be a god.

Behold, what mercy bestows upon a man [simple], that it may grant good things and confer them upon the soul. Do not cast aside a truthful people, who cry out to you with countless voices, O pious king and lord. That the true voice may sound like a horn, so may the pious one be true: the public reputation of nobles flies upon the lips of the world. The reputation of leaders is the merchandise gathered from bloody wars, from which a harsh outcome often arises. The glory of wars belongs to leaders and to peoples; powerful Anna divides triumphs given in common. For clemency bestows praise upon leaders alone; it has no companion, and denies a partner. The soldier says, "We were equal in arms with the prince: while I fought, you, comrade, return a victor from the enemy." Does the ruler not recognize what part of the people is pressing? Only he who forgives will have the glory of praise. He who fosters the dreadful contests of Mars against enemies, rushing together, conquers in arms, raging. A king who grants pardon to a subject and tempers his anger does more than a crowd, he who tames his own heart. God, looking upon you, unwilling to shed blood, that he might grant without sin, not without praise, bestowed triumphs of land and sea upon you while absent: Spain bears witness, the Moor lies everywhere. That enemies perish is called the fortune of the king; that peoples perish, the order of time governs. For if weakness caused deaths to run their course, boys or the weaker sex would not fall. Time does all things; all things are drawn along with time; the times of life go, the times of death go. There are six ages of men, far into old age; these hold distinct times, each its own.

Does the simple cry of infancy claim the noise of adults, or does sluggish old age have a roar? The puppy does not act like a child, nor does the child dare to touch the martial weapons of Mars with a tender hand. It does not rage in lust in years not yet pubescent, nor is the youth withered under the bloom of the cheek. The mature man deliberates, and trembling old age groans, ignorant of fervor or lacking in levity. Do newly born crops soon arm their blades with beards, or does fruit immediately exist in the flowers that are born? We know that the stars of the sky lose their completed courses and likewise retrace their paths again. The moon grows or wanes in its own time by its orb, by whose age many things are marked by law. For, with the moon waxing, the sea resumes its increase; when it wanes in the sky, the wave of the sea is smaller. While Cynthia waxes, springs and rivers increase; these same diminish while Cynthia wanes. The hidden marrow itself observes the horns of the moon; the hidden brains observe the globes of the moon. The sun, the torch of the sky, shining, is darkened by shadow, and yet returns to its accustomed zones. And it recovers its former faces and resumes its lights: the elements give losses or increase. The elements wear down changes and the seasons change; nights have their time, and the days themselves have their time. Days receive increases, and nights in turn, they lose their courses by the perpetual law of the sky. There are times for flowers, the harvest keeps its own times, autumn has its time, winter has its time. Spring, summer, autumn, winter, the year returns into a year; the four seasons alternate with seasons.

Everything returns, but a person’s own age does not return; rather, like a sharp bird, it flies away, fleeting. There are times of peace, or fixed times of bloodshed; leisure has its time, and so does the toil of military service. There are times for rejoicing, and fixed times for grieving; times bring profit, times bring losses. Clouds have their time, and fixed times of clear skies; even God Himself commanded that times be observed. Christ, when working miracles, sought an hour; the holy passion of the cross hoped for an hour. Why are you angry with me, why am I judged worthy of such greater anger from you, a great king? When through the airy waters the swift plunderer, the sparrow, the swallow, the woodpecker, was prey and food? When the hunger of a rabid lion, however famished, adopted the hare as food for its jaws, so that it might eat? It devours noble bulls of immense body, and eagles snatch the limbs of fawns. The pard, once angered, grants pardon after wounds, nor does it give repeated bites with pious ferocity. The best tiger disdains to be angry with shepherds, and the fiery-mouthed dragon disdains moles. Thunderbolts do not strike the creeping grasses on the earth, nor do triple-forked flames burn modest willows. But they strike lofty cedars that beat against the clouds, and vast mountains, rocks nearest the sky. Guilty sinners are wearied only by their own fault; behold, even the innocent are sought out by harmful punishment. If I myself have sinned, what, I ask, is the guilt of my people, whom cold, poverty, and hunger simultaneously harass? In the flood, the guilty perished without the destruction of the pious; good and just Lot is taken out of Sodom.

If the sins of the human race had not existed, from what source could God have a pious name? But because He grants pardon to peoples, releasing their sins, through the work of piety He has a placid name. If a brother is commanded to grant forgiveness to a brother, what of a king to his subjects, and a master to his servants? If the Lord had given sun and rains to the just, and had not given them to the unjust, what piety would that have been? He who is proven to have sinned nothing does not seek pardon; do not the hands of a physician seek out ailing limbs? The fault of the guilty offers you the material for praise, and the work of piety gives you titles of fame. Renowned in arms, the origin of your piety, and learned by nature, more inclined to pardon, said: "I do not forgive the man, but the tongue deserves it." This man, guilty and learned, was Vincomalus. Offenses do not harm God, but the author is harmed, unless, grieving over his sins, he repents of his crime. He who seeks from God on this condition, that He release his sins, ought himself to spare his own guilty one everywhere. The holy law said that guilt is not forgiven once, but as often as there is fault, so often should there be pardon. The pious words of the prophet to the reigning lord: "Even if I have sinned, I am still your own. Grant pardon, have mercy, I beg, help the suppliant; let the former beatings, chains, and hunger suffice." The horny hoof of the galloping horse, striking the rider as he makes his way, shakes him; a fault is corrected by a blow, with a punishing whip, not by having legs and feet cut off and lying there.