Dictiones

SPEECHES. I. A SPEECH ON THE BIRTHDAY OF LAURENTIUS, BISHOP OF MILAN. How long shall I, sluggish with diffidence, lurk hidden within a narrow chamber? How long shall excessive caution, surpassing the bounds of proper fear, incur the losses to reputation which it shuns? For it comes about among men by experience that, as much as fame is diminished through audacity, no less perishes through timidity beyond what is needful. For a man should not be marked as a greedy appropriator of praise, nor charged with a desire for a display of affected devotion, when the task, subject to the shame of love, is driven to completion by its goads; because just as the appetite for glory drives one into the shadow of seeking it through speech, so failing to render what you know is owed indicates the nearness of night. To write superfluous things is a matter of boastfulness: to keep silent about what is necessary is contempt. Often the mother of our own reproach is the concealed praise of a teacher. Perhaps someone, with a mind to advise, might say that, under the weight of the work's magnitude, the leanness of a drained wit withers, and that, destitute of the health of speaking, garrulity earns a defect from abundance: as if, were you to pour a dripping drop of eloquence into the bed of a great river, the expenditure of liquid would by no means add to the current, and the moisture scarcely produces what is fitted to the waves. But we consider the merit of a speech to be determined by the subject matter: and a vein which is naturally dry often flows from the theme; the thinness of eloquence grows fat from the proposition.

often, according to the merits of those to whom the speech has devoted itself, the things to be said are granted, especially if one serves by praising with pure affection while about to narrate: then affection transmits an abundance of words; then love suggests what talent denies. I am about to speak of the good qualities of Saint Laurentius, to the best of my modest ability; I undertake a work full of labor, indeed, but full of love. Therefore, let fear, hostile to a reverent purpose, depart: a mind subject to terror is a fugitive from glory, as the Apostle Paul proclaims: perfect love casts out fear—that is to say, and to show by clear evidence, that one who trembles does not love. Without blame is he overcome by the immensity of the burden who, though unequal to it, nevertheless devoutly hastens to carry the load. Since these things are so, why should I not celebrate the birthday of the year with a votive speech? Why should I dishonor the beginning of a bright birthday with the foulness of silence? Cheerfulness without speech is withered, and to conceal what you rejoice in is a semblance of grief, and to have no voice in joy is an imitation of affliction. Therefore, holy father, shall I, conscious of my duty, not offer you words? Yet it pleases me to derive the beginnings of my speech from the time of your consecration and, with the flourishing infancy of the reborn year, to bloom with speech, if I am able, now when the moisture of the earth runs through the veins of dry shrubs into shoots and the womb of dry tinder swells with moisture, when it swells into a gentle light of new...

The tree-like locks of hair are spread out from the trimmed ends, and every interweaving of branches is unfolded, or those beauties of leaves which nature had confined within the bark are released, when the song of birds is adorned with a modulated flavor, when the life of the crops, buried in wintry clods, is conceived, as if the barriers of cold were released and fostered by warmth, now when the farmer measures the hope of fruits in the white blossom, when the sunny loveliness of the vineyards is woven with the mutual arms of the vine-shoots, and before the time of ripeness, cultivation composes a fruitful countenance, giving beauty with the taming sickle and curbing unfruitful luxury with the fruit-bearing iron, when the fury of the deep whirlpool passes into a gentle hiss and the ferocity of the winds, enervated by warmth, turns into delights for the sailor, when it is safe to launch a skiff on the sea and to release the bite of the anchors, while the breaking of storms, which until now terrified the shipper, invites him and admits the sleep of the helmsman over the watery expanses of the sea, when the meadows, distinguished by color, grow rich with the gem-like resources of spring, and in the ordering of the high priest, the elements testify to the joy of nature. To you, therefore, bishop, I now will not render what I have learned to provide to others, you whom gravity, modesty, chastity, and comeliness have led to the pontifical summit, who, with so many endowments gathered as if into a heap, have undertaken the white-haired dignity of the present office, possessing the adornments of as many virtues as would make each single proven species a priest.

I am silent; I do not rehearse the harmony of the whole world in your election and the unanimous verdict of distinct nations: let that stand in place of praise for one who lacks what he can proclaim about your character. For often the popular breeze of uncertain favor is driven by moments, and the crowd of Quirites, ignorant of judgment, while carried away by partisanship, loves unknown men. You held the balance when someone either showed himself a partner in your petition or its author. The unskilled assembly of the multitude weighed your merit with a perfect scale, and, while the variety of your adornments pleased them, as if you had been the sole heir of the most diverse inheritances, each one judged that this much of your renown sufficed which he approved, because all your good qualities could by no means be known to everyone, and you had specifically enticed all to the favor of your star: to one by showing that you are pious, to another that you are stern, to another that you are a distributor of well-acquired patrimony, to another that you know how to preserve rightly what has been gained. The whole populace undertook this zeal, so that, although each individual conquered in the praise he proposed, he was nevertheless conquered in the comparison of your encomia by another with a better title.

I do not wish to dwell longer on these matters. I must come to the exercises of your labor, because I, who am not fit for the greatest things in praising you, do not know how to be content with small ones. Adversity of an inescapable time received you, still a novice in the imposed dignity, with wavering footsteps, and the wars forced upon liberty made you, a raw recruit of the pontificate, a most seasoned soldier. You did not know how to fear the savagery of the plunderer; you repelled the poisons of flattery—which among malicious men is the more harmful weapon—with the shield of constancy. How often did treacherous honorifics assail you, when he who could not overcome you in open conflict provoked you? How often did he believe that you would accept the fabrications of his service to the detriment of your good reputation, demanding of you that, with collusion employed, you would shut the enemy within the city walls and offer up the limbs of your sheep to be scattered by wolves—you, who did what it is unspeakable to say, suggesting the examples of many? These things indeed you, avoiding them by despising them and committing them to memory to await the vengeance of a calmer time, retained the detestable acts lest they pass unpunished through forgetfulness, and you owed greater horror to excesses while you feared the ruin of others. But, with the obstacles to speaking removed, let us come to those things which are more worthy of remembrance for a religious man. When the hostile incursion, like cattle, scattered the Christian people through various places, you were seized in all kinds of tortures; you, gathered with fatherly piety, endured the torments of many, as the apostle says: "Who among you is tormented, and not I?

Amid these things, however, adversity did not see you broken: the enemy perceived that this was plucked from his triumphs, because he did not subdue the mind of the captured priest. You were still fighting for the absolution of many, and, fearing nothing for yourself, you disclosed the anxiety of your people. I do not wish to linger longer on sad things, I do not wish to open the tragedy of that evil time; touching lightly upon some things from your illustrious conduct, I fly past. In telling of you, I compel myself to endure again what you suffered, although the Doctor of the Gentiles recalls that he was exercised in tribulation, crying out: "When I am weak, then I am strong." I pass over the hunger, the cold, the injuries, and those things which the mind of your enemy provided—the increases of your illnesses. But, I believe, these were childish things, and the robust members, accustomed to the juice of an old constitution, endured them. Did not the soul alone, unyielding, sustain, through joints enervated in their frame and long since drawn away from their own capacity by age, and, with an imitable intention, did it not fight, fixed by a wall of constancy, against the attackers? After these things, Christ our Redeemer, never despising pious prayers, came to meet the longed-for return to freedom, and with a healing art he solidified the broken forces of the Roman name: he restored the crushed things to a healthful vigor. When the heavenly ruler looked down from on high with kind eyes, light was restored to the city of the Milanese by the return of its own priest.

At that time, when the inhabitant was rare and error roamed through the houses, and through the sweet thresholds of the bedchambers there was confused running to and fro; at that time, when everywhere there was fear and mourning, and the temples of God, consigned to the lairs of wild beasts, lay squalid; when neglect, languishing, had shrouded with the damp of ancient decay the halls that once were most splendid: you gave joy to others by your return, but you yourself returned to tears. Then, after the manner of birds, when the earth is covered with snow and the narrowness of some place, stripped of hope of food, drives them, you could see the remnants of the people who had been able to remain flock together, and the flocks, weary from bleating in the woods, run to meet the presence of the good shepherd from all sides. Some you then soothed with your speech by a manifold kind of support, others you restored with expenditure, others you encouraged by your example. Shortly thereafter, the city, already buried, revived into its ancient state, which is owed to you after God, and it began to emulate better things, not believing that what it had been could be restored in itself. Then, as is the custom of life, it was possible to see everything invited to greater progress by good successes.

I run through each point, touching briefly on matters that require a lengthy narrative, until I come to the contest of your life, to the celebration of your highest purpose. Second. After a period of uncertainty, a captivity was born in the Roman Church, which would draw you, as if long idle and a shirker of labor, from the bosom of long repose, when the arms of your labor, barely laid down in hope of peace, are taken up again, as was due. Indeed, unless the censure of your praise were to drag me, I would keep silence in a lamentable cause, so that in one age the memory of a nefarious deed might perish. The senate of the heavenly curia was summoned there: there a crowd of bishops from various provinces flowed together, where that assembly brought as many varieties of opinion as there were types of men; but those in whom there was a spiritual savor of understanding held you, as it were, as a leader by the love of the principal deliberation. Then, with what honey of blandishments you tamed the onslaught of threats, with what erection of venerable humility you broke the hearts of the proud, with what root of counsel you steadied wavering minds, I am unable to explain. I compel one eager to know the account of the deed from the contemplation of the fact. So many elect followed you alone, and the princes of so many cities fell into your opinion. He who earlier seceded with raw obstinacy is cooked by the heats of lamentation and has nothing for solace except the tears of calamity, he who is divided. Let some perhaps malicious interpreter of the deeds say: what decision did the present cause obtain from such constancy?

Let him ask what end befell the praised labor. I, trusting, will reply: it came about under your leadership that alien madness did not seize priests as ministers, nor did the sentence of bishops serve the indignation of the falling, nor were they drawn into using what could happen as they wished because of ill-commotion. Finally, let the loquacity of the wicked fall silent, at least in the estimation of this secret, because the fires of hatred, which blazed not from the merit of the one attacked but from the kindling of partisanship, could not be quenched even by the fountain of holy deliberation. To you, therefore, is owed the custody of the venerable canons: to you, that whatever wickedness raged in the present occurred without episcopal censure: to you, it was revealed what accusers concealed with clandestine deceit from others: in your case it was discovered that hatreds are not to be satisfied whenever faith is abandoned by the one who provokes. But these matters are better preserved for other times to narrate. Hail, star of the churches, and as an emulator of Abraham approach a good old age, because the testimony of integrity goes that a man is long preserved in the ecclesiastical citadel, as it is written: men of blood and the deceitful will not complete their days. You, mature in age and foremost in religious labor, surpass; you, with praiseworthy piety, offer examples to good disciples, set the wicked straight with severity, and as a clasp of both good works, endure without stain in the testimony of highest glory.

I believe, dearest brothers, that you venerate with the whole care of your mind that in this place, while the name of a temple remains, the old worship has perished for the sake of religion; that the reverence of a shrine is established with the rites of blood-sacrifice driven out; that it is deservedly called a sanctuary, after it has abjured the older victims and, in the change of the sacrifice to be offered, has assumed the name of a divine house; finally, that the foundations have migrated to another state with unshaken summits, and, although human sweat has added little to the structure, whatever existed has been renewed, while they persist in their height—of what miracle is it to be considered, where, while the building keeps its measure, it still does not cease to ascend and, established on ancient foundations, is raised up by an increase? It must certainly be asked who was the author of this work, who of this renewal: it was, namely, the predecessor of my insignificance, the venerable bishop Victor, to whom divinity, as the announcer of future innocence, gave the name. For what outcome of the struggles undertaken against worldly vices will have followed the aforesaid event, when you have learned the name, you recognize the deeds. He, through spiritual combat, as befitted a victor, triumphed over sins, and whatever the sinister portion inflicts upon mortals, do not seek its downfall from him, since you understand that he was named what he was called.

whose merits demand the field of prayer, if my broader progress were permitted either by the leanness of my talent or by merit: for there is a certain nobility of deeds in being found worthy of praise for great things. This mediocrity of mine, while following that nobility in the care of building, has, with God as guide, brought the vows to completion. Let no one think that what I have said is arrogance: it is lawful to join vows with one to whom you cannot be equal in action, because it is an assertion of conscience to follow a better person in any part. Never, as we think, does one incur a dark path if one follows him whom he knows to hold forth the light of life. Yet let us more clearly disclose the trustworthiness of the deeds performed through the service of speech. Here, once, deceived by false illusions and defiled with the foul blood of beasts, they worshipped old idols: here, to the injury of divinity, through an altar heaped with ill-omened offerings, they presented to demons what was owed to the heavens: here, the entrails of heifers, still palpitating with half-living movements, foretold the future to a wretched inquirer: from here, foul smoke, scattered through many contagions, polluted the very air. Finally, from here, a multitude of victims slaughtered by butchers drove away whatever God is, while blood, spelt, incense, and spits are offered to idols; while an age hostile to Christ does not accept a simple rite and, with the census laboring under manifold offerings, purchases heavenly offense.

Let me freely go through each detail and unlock the secret deeds of the foul with the key of speech, were I not rightly to judge that it is an injury to the mouth to narrate sordid things and that what struck them down in action defiles us in speech. Let us set forth, meanwhile, by what successes these things have been changed, with how great a splendor the night has been forestalled and put to flight. Where are the little seals of the gods, imagined by the vows of their makers, whose faces hung upon the power of the craftsman, to which either the anxiety of the worker or the metal gave value? Where are the gods, to whom men gave power by the gleam of gems? Behold, I see that all these have fled, as I believe Christ has entered: let us consider by whose supports he is sustained. With him came the rays of the heavens, the diadems of the apostles, Peter and Paul. For who would be necessary in the restoration of a building except the architect and the rock? Except the stone and the one who builds upon it? Except the foundation and the builder? Why do you tremble at the perils of mortals? Why do you anxiously prepare flight in a hasty escape? He is the one whom no fall of yours hides from your cunning, who, though he does not move from his place, pursues you wherever you go. Come, therefore, most pious lord, and flow fully into the consecration of your work: come, that by the baptism of the heart these temples, hitherto dedicated to foul patronage, may be purified. Ordain, lord, the turning of the sacrifices, and while the pure...

We heap holy altars with gifts; interpose the presence of your majesty, summoned by the merit of the holy priests, by the conscience of our present father Laurentius, chosen separately, who increased the heights of the church with as many endowments as each single one would have made a supreme pontiff, in whom flourish the prince of good work and the mother of decency, modesty, the nurse of holy religion, patience, piety that will always appease God, who gave to the church's members not the institute of life by word but by examples, who, while he walks ahead, shows every path by which one goes to God, with our Lord Jesus Christ helping, reigning with the Father forever and ever. Amen. III. A DICTIO TO BE DELIVERED TO STEPHEN, VIR SPECTABILIS, VICAR, TO BE SPOKEN TO BISHOP MAXIMUS. The mind devoted to praise reveals the vow of a religious conscience. The assertion of talent is to devote what we say to those obedient to God. In whose praises perhaps a narrow speech reveals inexperience, yet it manifests, if it is withheld, speechlessness. Who would consider a beggarly narrative, which vows enrich? Often in the endowments of eloquence the vein of the preacher is found poor, and on the other hand the treasure of the heart shines forth in a poverty of words. He who judges in the place of God does not desire painted conversations, but those which the unvarnished splendor of talent commends, because in these even eloquence flatters without love, in those naked truth commends its own splendor.

Everything that affection dictates is without ornament: those things are crafted to perfection which we wish to have not so much the appearance of rightness as a likeness of it. My address is to you, venerable bishop Maximus, in whom virtue began from your name as a testimony to your merits, in whom deed speaks, as it were, the name which the foresight of your parents called forth, wishing you to be chosen before you were tested. Once clinging to secular titles, the sweat of the camp refined you, and an adverse party strengthened you for the helm of the church, just as God speaks through the prophet: he who is faithful in small things is also faithful in great things. The judge of sacred matters deemed you worthy both as a companion in counsel and in labor. Well were you to be initiated at the venerable altars, for even in lay life you chose what was sacred. You were found to be a guardian of chastity at that age when even the law yields to desires. It is enough that the ambition of youth, which license supports, is abhorred. Christ seeks his soldiers, whom he raises to the rank of general, amid hostile battle lines. Summoned to the church, you fulfilled the duties of a bishop before the time of your office. Your kindness was not a newcomer, but, rooted in the foundations of nature, it showed a shoot from a hoary flower. Everything that is feigned is temporary; what matures with age is everlasting. We believe that the priesthood came to you not as a gift of office but as a reward. Others are commended by the favor of the popular breeze, which flatters; for you, strict severity toward the guilty won affection.

Singular wisdom abides in you, which, though generally to be desired, is nevertheless necessary in a teacher. In vain does one take on the role of an admonisher who cannot assess the weight of the office imposed upon him: he is to be compared to the basest of men, unless he excels in knowledge, he who is more eminent in honor. The pinnacle was given to you by the merit of judgment, not of favor: the love that censure reconciles is worthy of a bishop: the genius of the teacher is disgraced by one who wishes to please through favor alone. You, learned and formed by these heavenly benefits, instruct the people more by your actions than by your words. Those counsels of disciples refine their opportunity which are offered by example: without shame does he invite to innocence who has not himself followed it. Within the secret recesses of your inner chambers, they who plan to sin fear you as a witness: fear and reverence for you deny effect to nascent faults. He who meets vices at their onset both removes the occasion of a fall and purges the author of desire. These things I have dedicated to your Beatitude, as it were cursorily, for the commendation of my tongue. If the success of life smiles upon your prayers, I will consecrate myself with a full account of your deeds, so that what is known to all may be preserved for posterity in lasting letters, that the coming age may rejoice.

IV. A Speech on the Occasion of the Dedication, Sent to Bishop Maximus. The poverty of talent should never be feared where the cause for speaking is rich. The human condition is transcended whenever our mind serves heavenly observances, and the meagerness of the narrative is not reduced to narrowness if the one who is to narrate offers obedience to its maker. For he who conferred the gift of speech can also adorn the tongue with the gifts of eloquence, and he whom we acknowledge as the giver of language can bestow genius upon words. For long ago, the thinness of prophetic speech was aided when the weak infancy of Moses was raised up to the perfect eloquence of the teacher and the trumpet of the most valiant admonisher: he who, without any stages, while he meditated on skill, did not flourish, nor did he ascend to the harvest of perfection through the knowledge of any age; he who, while he carried the soldier in unformed talent, was ordered to seize the office of leader, and because he modestly refused, he steadfastly fulfilled it. Thus we, celebrating the festival of the dedication, amid the blessings of spiritual joy, await grace while we prepare. Let weak fear be absent: let confidence vainly conceived through study be removed. We neither presume nor fear anything concerning the pattern of human perfection. Moreover, who would doubt that even mute mouths are loosened in praise of the blessed John, prophet and apostle, whose temple this entrance has sanctified? He whose grace is older than nature, since before the entrance of light he had fulfilled the office of a pious prophet, he marked the threshold of this life with virtue.

For at one and the same time, he made the mother noble through her fertility and stirred the undutiful lips of the father back into their former speech, as their use returned. No one, when naming John after the miracles of the preceding example, should suspect that he will have the former lack of skill in speech. After the most sacred Zacharias, to whose throat humanity returned through that name, it is believed by all that the Apostle John holds the keys of words. In his company, Antoninus, a hero of a bygone age, and the joined renown of the most blessed Cassian make of the shrine a sacrament, of the earthly dwelling a heavenly college, of things made by hand what no old age can violate. For things offered to God do not experience decline, nor are they sent to trembling old age when propped up by piety: the solidity of the structure which Christ enters stands firm, and, forgetting its original fragility, it acquires strength from its possessor. Humble roofs are adorned by the nobility of the consecrator, while it is granted that perishable matter has value from its lord. But you, most holy brother, the donor of this building, rejoice in the reward of your recompense. Hope knows no wavering; for it, the fruit of good action is promised: confidence in rewards descends from practice, nor does he who meditates on praiseworthy things waver in any uncertainty.

A DICTIO OF A BISHOP BEGINNING HIS OFFICE. A teacher who is beginning with his disciples is indeed on a level with them, and among beginnings, a doctor is in no way more exalted in lot than his hearers: honor is owed to proven talents; the unproven scarcely demand a moderate cultivation. Those are true praises which long toil has elicited: it is flattery, not judgment, whenever glory, thrust upon one, has preceded labor. Let him count among blemishes whatever triumphs a soldier acquires before the scrutiny of the field. Those who enter the Olympic contests with hasty steps, does the hope of a crown await them before the completion of the contest, as the apostle says: "He is not crowned who has not striven lawfully"? Behold, neither does preaching befit those before merit, from whom it is justly demanded after labor. Our condition, on the other hand, differs by a long path, we for whom as much is plucked from the fruit of innocence as has been approached by labor. For, as we judge, placed as we are in our novitiates, the journey is full of necessity and peril, in which a praiseworthy life is to be pursued and yet it becomes most abundant in reproaches, if it should desire to be praised by humanity. Our action, if it is exalted for its own goods, will be tarnished by the protesting divine utterances: "Those who praise you, lead you astray, and overturn the paths of your feet." Let the splendor of a bishop be witnessed by deeds, not by tongue: the brightness of this office shines more by the indication of truth than by speech. Behold, you see how safe the cause of the subject is, and with how many dangers the lot of the superior is associated.

My duties you will be able to support more by your groans than by your clamor. Let no one believe that what pleases the ears is excellent: our speech, unless it heals the soul, is worthless. Prefer that one who cleanses the inner parts with the spiritual sickle from thorns. Then the diadem is precious, when the ecclesiastical flock, as it advances toward probity, does not resist his persuasion. He who follows his precepts loves the monitor without pretense, even with a silent mouth. It is added that our inexperience endures a just fear from the very novelty, we who, recently prepared from the sheepfolds for guardianship, grow accustomed to being suspect out of necessity concerning all, and he for whom a cautious guarantee for himself was scarcely trustworthy undertakes the office of one who fears everything. We know how much more humble he will be to those who serve, who is called to a religious command. It is necessary that he also obey persons of the lowest condition, upon whom it falls to command in this way. For the teacher of the Gentiles says: I have become all things to all, so that I might gain all. May the operation of divinity attend its own gift and make him whom it does not find worthy of so great a summit become so.

Prayer of the Masses. It is fitting and just. It is truly fitting that at the beginnings of dignity we supplicate you, the lord of beginnings, who, with how great a secret of your blessings you set in motion the infancy of the world itself emerging into the ninth light, with so great a power of might you solidified it. The tender beginning of the orb stood in wonder at itself and, shaken by the stupor of its own beauty, tottered, before the recognition of order, having obtained from the author only substance, seeking by what regulation the granted light was to be rounded, what end the time of day would receive, if through constant settings it were always reborn, if the night, about to embrace the world with dark embraces, would not hold it forever as an original thing. In this uncertainty, so that confused things might serve certain times through the long ages, the law of our God stood forth; every dispensation of will, fixed within established limits, was able to do as much as the one who created it granted. Thus, O pious maker, at the auspices of the priestly title, shine upon us with the sun of conduct: let the day of office gleam clear from our merits: let what we are called not perish by any stealth, by any blandishments of the devil: let it not be permitted to have admitted what is not fitting: let the pursuit of righteousness, with you commanding, pass into nature: let equal operation attend our duties: with composed servitude, let the blessed empire grow, and let him who excels in dignity not be subject to customs. Through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Prayer before Mass. Bestower of goods, God, for whom the effect is in the desire, who from among the people dedicated Moses in the person of a prophet. For while he complains of weakness, with you as author he grew strong: he took up the merit of a pontiff, while he, the arbiter of his own witnesses, cries out that he merits nothing, to whom humility, reconciled by action, gave a lofty pinnacle. Grant a grace equal to our beginnings, because we declare that a more weighty offense is owed to our deeds. What we ask is not unusual: your kindness is held by the testimony of example. You will be more gentle towards us in the bestowal of goods, the more our substance has become prone from the burden of sin. Grant, good emperor, a virtue worthy of your election, because under a pious prince no abjection disgraces a soldier. Through our Lord Jesus Christ. VI. DECLAMATION [ON HERETICS AND THE SYNOD]. What we have laid down for reason's sake must be resolved for reason's sake: for so that it may be clear that both the services of our tongue and our silence have served appointed times, with faith urging we break forth into the duty of speech. For it is the same to speak superfluously as not to have spoken when necessary, as the apostle says: "Woe to me, unless I preach the gospel," and elsewhere: "a time for silence" especially befits us, whom the weight of obedience urges, placed above others, either to raise up good deeds or to suppress evil ones. And indeed to teach you is nothing other than to apply goads to those already running: for what you do from intention, we are proud if we believe it is owed to our institutions.

But He who approves good pursuits increases them. It stands before your consciences how greatly Nestorius and Eutyches, twin prodigies of diabolical instruction, corrupted the once chaste discipline of the Eastern churches with the fornication of perfidy, who, according to the apostle's sentence, did not receive the love of truth that they might be saved, and therefore God sent them the operation of error, that they might believe a lie, while through the surreptitious occasion of scandal that field of contention tests Christ's soldiers, as it is written: there must be contests, that the proven may be made manifest. With whom does the venerable commemoration of the Council of Chalcedon not live, in which Dioscorus with his followers was condemned by the pen of pious severity and the venerated monuments of Flavianus of holy memory the city of Constantinople received exultantly, whose sentence the celestial decrees had already long since confirmed? Where among the nations is Timothy unknown, who did not shrink from becoming more than a parricide in the slaughter of Proterius of blessed memory, undertaken for the sake of suspicion? For by the persecution of a sacred pontiff he surpassed both the kinds and the names of crimes. Peter and Cyrus and Timothy are known, who, while reaching out a hand to the fallen Dioscorus, fell themselves: these from their predecessor obtained both an inheritance of studies and of ruin. Therefore, brothers, hold fast to the sentence of the fathers abiding in the heights and adhering to blessed Peter, because we desire the unity of a pure church and one having no stain.

We cannot patiently endure those who belch forth blasphemies against our Christ, for we know that whoever does not use the iron of medicine on rotting limbs offers service to serpentine diseases: unless festering parts are cut away, they contaminate. Peaceful is the struggle with those who strive to attack what is right. Who would be recalled from such wars by the obstacle of fear, when they might rejoice in a death that brings life? To which powers of this world, even if they threaten, do we believe we should yield, when another commands who governs the realms, as the apostle says: Are the sufferings of this world not worthy of the coming glory that will be revealed in us? The unstable hearts of churchmen are either disturbed by what exists in this present life or delighted by it. Among them is Acacius, who, moved by the dire command of the devil from his own resolve, blushed that he had long been a defender of the truth and, abandoning the bright ornaments of the contest, overthrew his own triumph, which he had merited under Basiliscus with pious effort; he almost begrudged his own rewards at the time of their attainment, cutting down the hope of good fruits with the sickle of treachery. For it is more grievous to have trampled upon goods once tasted than those untouched: no defense remains for a man who, after the sweet savor of justice, returns to the deadly poisons of schisms. From what we have spoken of above, it has arisen that what is recently reported to have been admitted in the Constantinopolitan church.

We therefore suffer a sorrow that does not even have the use of speech: for those who do not obey the remedies offered have deservedly had no consolation at the time when they are oppressed. VII. SPEECH ON THE DEDICATION OF THE AUDITORIUM WHEN THE TRANSLATION TO THE FORUM WAS MADE. Just as the plain stirs the soldier, the sea the sailors, the forums the pleader, and uncertain things the robber, so do auditoria exercise tongues. For what, in heaven's name, reason will persuade silence in a place where rewards for words have been established? Where is the palm of oratory, if favor is given to silence here? The wages of toil are well paid where there are temples of victory; servitude is well driven away among the halls of liberty. Let a captive mind keep the mouth bound here: he who still falls silent as if in retreats does not recognize the forum of the Roman people, nor the gymnasium of liberal learning. Let inns perhaps be mute: here nothing is so familiar as the pomp of speaking. The applause of a customary profession urges one to give Fescennine witticisms to weddings; warriors are roused by trumpets; the sound of heavy war-horns raises up those weak in valor; all have been given friendly incitements suited to their purposes. What shall I do, best of teachers, while you speak? If I keep unshaped words within a modest sanctuary, you will not recognize me as being like my training. I will offend the bond of friendship by being sparing in gratitude, if I do not pay the tribute both of the festival of the translation and of the praise due to you.

Hail, therefore, nurturer of progress, torch and splendor of nobility, who make noble offshoots known in their fruits by purging them with laborious hoeings, who show in the hoary flower of young posterity how much is prepared for the granaries, who recall us from the lairs of wild beasts and the haunts of owls to the forums, whence our ancestors had almost already departed through long age. For those places are not open to the learned, unless they themselves have conferred knowledge even upon the first lips. For by whose trumpet of eloquence is he to be known, unless his childish rudiments of speech have become known? To you, therefore, are owed these benefits, that the advocate, about to cite the defendant, will begin a speech to be feared, already proven in the halls. To you is to be ascribed the sole hope of an honorable profession, that nobility, after short times have run, will be pleasing through liberal toil. But whither does my affection for you, ignorant of your powers, carry me, not weighing the sea of narrative? It suffices that in the celebration of a friendly place and day, my vows are attested. I return to you, to whom I owe the voice of one admonishing, gathered by paternal affection. Restore your origin by study, restore your birth by reading: let the radiance of speech show the light of nature: multiply the titles of your parents by the sufficiency of knowledge: adorn your ancestors with seemly learning. The nobility of tawny metal, unless the hand of the craftsman leads it to perfection, is almost blunted by maternal darkness, and, if it is not beautified by masterly polishing, the sublimity which the vein has granted profits it nothing.

The teacher’s effort is indeed assisted by the gifts of purer blood, but unless they are polished, those things that rise by the prerogative of birth do not gleam. The rustic offspring empties its mother’s breasts between the furrows and, while hanging from the udders, grows accustomed to driving cattle through the pastures: it is joined to its father’s arms while he tires out the young bulls: it grasps the right hand that commits great seeds to the earth and meditates on the sweat of its origin at the very threshold of light. What do you do, whom the best mothers bore for the liberal disciplines? You must wander from a richer stock, unless noble institutions have shown you. You have a teacher of eloquence and morals as a guide: run, spurred by the goads of your lineage, and when the promised rewards have led you to the contest, deign to remember me, because there are things for which the encourager may receive your support after heavenly recompense. These are the things it has been permitted to remind you of with my words. Weigh the diligence of my mind by the consideration of my words: let not a decked-out speech, not a seductive and painted narrative delight you: seek in me not the pleasant but the necessary, not the delightful but the strong. Does it help to weave a show when one is about to give precepts? He who arranges his affection to be approved not more by his thoughts than by his speech empties the monitor. Let the diction of the chastiser be adorned with weights: let him who yearns to be heard hold a balance in his exhortation. The teacher of virtue excludes applause: a well-mannered speech commands what it urges.

If I cannot unfold these things by my power of speech, I have nevertheless learned to love them by consideration of my purpose and by choice of my resolve. There is a certain part of uprightness, even if you cannot fulfill it, to know what is better. The effect of the work follows upon the examined intention: he who loves the ornaments of learning is close to the teacher. Yet let God join himself as a companion to my vow, and what I commend to the new-planted turfs as a teacher, I may pluck from the fruits as if from a hereditary possession. VIII. PREFACE SPOKEN BY LUPICINUS WHEN DEUTERIUS, VIR SPECTABILIS, WAS ENTRUSTED TO THE AUDITORIUM Whenever the little flower of spikenard or the harvest of cassia is widowed from its root by the plundering of a wanton thumb and the noble shoot is joined to the dowry of human hands, the merit of the turf betrays itself by its scent and the genius of its nature testifies at first sight. A sublime offspring does not suffer itself to be hidden: the glory of a noble lineage is not kept in concealment: the voice of a pure origin is always heard, even in recesses. But although things are so, it is a matter of humanity not to be silent about what you are eager for: he who commends what he knows to be worthy of love takes up little of the burden: he does not avoid the stain of savagery who does not hasten to assert what he knows will be pleasing by its merits. Who would refuse to praise the day? Who would fear to extol the rays of the sun in any night of words? If speech offers obedience to its theme, it receives dignity from that theme itself.

Do not, therefore, be disturbed by the leanness of your own talent, when the cheapness of the speech is elevated by the price of the undertaking you have received: lift up, my mind, the burden of ignorance that weighs you down; right hand, you are lightened by the load imposed upon you. But why do we wrap ourselves in long delays? The narrative just mentioned serves the young man present, whom I promise—not by the declaration of augurs, but supported by hope in your perfection after God—will return to his ancestors; nor do I doubt that you can restore this man to the splendor of his own, you who have bestowed it upon others: for he can easily revive the glories of the ancients who is permitted to build new ones. Do not believe these are merely the incitements of eloquence. To you alone is it granted either to give brightness or to restore that of your ancestors. Before your eyes stand not the aged monuments of the boy, but recent ones. Firminus and Licerius, the stars of their age, join together in this voice. "Take up, most learned of men, the plant of both families and the stalk, and attend secondly to the ear on which you may produce heavy-laden heads of grain. Scrape the fertile earth with hoes; if it is the buckle of our stock, it will surely respond to your labors. Teach the grafted saplings to grow in the moist bark: apply the fruit of a better shoot to the teeth of the young twig: let the success of the fruits come, while the tender mouth bites the higher plant taught by you, because, unless the farmers have written the tamed earth three and four times with their mattocks, the thorn-bush and the darnel will surpass the wheat harvest. Cultivation enriches the gift of Pallas and the hoary groves with many berries.

India nourishes ebony, which it boasts of, with much sweat. The Sabaean twig does not thrive when the hand of the cultivator is idle. Industry has brought it about that the rose-beds of Paestum have produced what the brambles bore, which, like stars of the earth, labor draws forth from thorns. The persistence of the worker is fortunate whenever the hand is applied to fertile clods. Then the weary arms swell with the juice of poured-out strength, when the fields pay back the full interest to the farmers. The desire of the army grows from the fertility of the land: the plowshares must be driven so that the bounty of autumn may overflow through the vine-branches. Never has one deserved the foaming must at the vats, unless he has pruned the excess of the vines with a curved sickle and, in various cultivations, has poured out more liquid than he would receive of wine. Such is the nature of mortals: the early stages of children are rightly compared to shrubs, whom, after the care of their parents has plucked them from the maternal root, it must be foreseen to which soil to entrust them according to their wishes. After deliberation, we transfer our rights to teachers. Then those whom nature has granted to us become yours through instruction. Then the file of study begins to claim for itself as much as origin scarcely prevails. For it is almost not unjust that lineage be surpassed by the contribution of learning, because a father has luxury as a companion, a teacher has diligence: a parent indulges in pleasures, an instructor in labors: origin grants freedom, a mentor makes one worthy of freedom.

Therefore, what is praised in a man is more truly your own: for no one, if the testimony of eloquence is lacking, will be able to proclaim what we are by birth. The splendor of a family is revealed by the tongue, which you bestow: the gift of the teacher becomes the herald of lineage; unlearned nobility disavows a heavenly gift. Therefore, bind more tightly with closer bonds the slips of the wandering vine, as is fitting for its age: prune the branches that bear no offspring with the iron: raise up the young shoot with the nurturing warmth by which you are accustomed to make all things fruitful. Our youth has, wherever he looks among his own, those whom he may follow: trust us, he flies through every spur of action, having entered whatever sea of knowledge he may; he will be goaded by the spurs of his ancestry: through so many ranks he will find nothing that does not invite him to letters. Behold, our little one stands before you, to be initiated under favorable auspices, and, like the victim of a just sacrifice, demands the devotion of the priest: it is fitting that paternal piety be expressed by his mouth, so that by some speech he may commend the infancy placed on the threshold of life, which demands from his parents not words, but what fear reveals compels us to aid the child in his necessity. Promise, young man, things worthy of your beginnings: we conceive a firm hope of your perfection: we entrust a good nature to the best teacher. Now revere the rudiments of the sacred college: the stars that you see showing future light with tiny sparks advance toward the Latin curia. Let it suffice to have said these things to you: for me, a brief suggestion remains.

I presented to you a relative as a kinsman, an orphan to his parents as a devout man. You already hold what makes a boy's affection for me. If kinship is considered, I cannot be free from love; if piety is friendly to my purpose, those children become mine who are stripped of their parents' protection. Therefore, one bond comes from lineage; another binds us by duty. Look, venerable master, at so many suppliant hands for this one, and in the hope of the little one, consider his elders—me and you. It is a singular kind of praise for teachers to have a disciple's learning. Chiron became known through Achilles' tongue: the merit of a follower made that man more loved, whose eloquence perhaps could not have come to light by itself. Your Maro commended his teachers as much as he himself is known: and certainly fame did not reveal them through their own merits. Our Jerome would be considered better than his teacher Gregory, unless he named him as his teacher: but the goods of the named one are to be attributed to him from whom they seem to have taken their origin. In short, as I said, a teacher's reputation strikes heaven through the perfection of a disciple. To one who knows the matter, I do not bring up forgetfulness, because I mention known things. The known things of the diligent are precious. I pray God that he may join his grace as a companion to your studies, so that those whom you received from me to be polished you may render most learned, and their learning—indeed your glory—may become my service.

IX. Diction. A Preface When Arator Entered the Auditorium. It is well known to all mortals that the labor of speaking is born of the leisure of business, and that, once the storms of cares are banished, the serenities of speeches shine more brightly. Talents lose their day only when darkened by the clouds of occupations: the radiance of thoughts looks upon those free from care, and an unencumbered mind commends the pomp of declamations. He who rashly plows blind straits with oars applies a breast free from anxiety to the helm and weighs the command of the rudder only by the inquiry that befits the ship's master. Then the hempen reins are loosened into the winds as desired: then the seas, long free, are bound by the bonds of ropes, and a man destined to rule enters the imperious heaps of waves, about to recognize the uncertainties of paths with the stars revealing them. Then, observing the Bosporus, the Pleiades, Cynosura, and whatever shows the way, the path of man is ordered by the guidance of the sky, provided that the mind is not gnawed by any ambiguity of external occupation nor does the grief of idleness afflict the wandering knowledge. But if the mind, dulled by sluggish torpor, sleeps, or, aroused by various goads, is distracted through byways, it cannot wholly meet its purpose, whose limbs the trainer of souls, care, tears apart. Always ineffective and shown to be dissociated from the health of its own mass is he who cannot show the form of his treatises as great as he is.

It is, however, the mark of a good teacher to examine the origin of a serpentine stream, which is drawn to the very earth by a scratching nail, to consider what its collected channel is, what it is where it is born, and to gauge the river's strength not from what it has received, but from what it could have received. Why, venerable master, indicator of freedom, testimony of good blood, file of talents, fabricator of thoughts, I have set these words before you, if you ask: I have spoken of myself, I confess, I have set myself forth, whom, amid the infancy of sleeping ignorance, various occupations and the strong sadness of inexperience, a mother, has oppressed, to whom it is not given to loosen the neck from hard labors, so that the bits of studies may adorn the mouth. My speech, because it is rough and shines with no polish of diction, is of understanding and of practice that I unlearn. You, in your own wrestling-school, the original palm of language solicits: you, among citizens, unmindful of me, proud Delos counts. You walk as the wealthy possessor of the Castalian whirlpool: but I, with parched lips, barely pour forth a dripping drop of withered liquid. You, with continuous sweat, with no diversity interrupting, as if your own farmer, the harvest of learning amplifies: but to me, from the granaries of the great, the food of a poor bean-pod is barely extended. You, for the support of tottering freedom, a happy right hand is summoned: me, the corner of the church, even fearing the good things of the present age, encloses. Why, I ask, did it seem good a while ago for the insignia of your eloquence to direct their eyes upon me, placed so far away?

There were others more capable, who could compose the ornaments of your diction, for whom the trappings of words, acquired through Latinian elegances, would offer a name that would live and endure among posterity. For my part, it is fitting that I, silent, be held only by affection, unequal to your words and set apart from your duties. Why would you raise up spirits which another order of life had already subjected? Why would you recall a man distant through long intervals of travel, for whom, just as it is a sin not to have merited praise, so it was a crime to have been praised? They are yours, yours, do not doubt, or belong to those, if any can be found, who follow. Yet I turn my words to the young man, whom the auspices of this day have dedicated to your audiences, with whom I share a common inexperience; if you grant me pardon, I address him. Although I commend his beginnings with unpolished speech, I am excused by the commands of love. We are placed under the yoke, constrained by the necessity of affection, and while we look out for those dear to us, we do not see what becomes of us. Although a father's speech ought to have accompanied this youth, the one I offer is not alien to a father. My profession owed you this speech, O Mactus. This is a fortunate omen of his name among the learned: his name promises the necessary labor for studies, to be enriched with the fruits of knowledge. Cleave, O distinguished youth, the backs of the rich lands: imprint the tooth of the plowshare, newly formed on the anvil; exercise in the soil of studies whatever is best for a plowman.

If you have thoroughly examined the hidden secrets of the open fields, you will find there Deuterius, who, by the abundance of his tongues, will multiply your seeds with manifold sowings and repay the sweat expended. Learn now to prune the luxuriance of words with the sickle of art, so that the new turf may thrive under the discipline of the blade. Let whatever the barren shade of the tendril has transmitted be cut away: let your vines extend their branches only for the hope of grapes. It is necessary that you return to your genius in such a state; it is necessary that you look back to our prayers in such a state, and when you have adorned yourself with the heavy-laden stalks of knowledge, then it will be fitting for you to be called Magnus Arator. Therefore, let the hope of reward in you nourish the ardor of praise. I have read that it is not a game of fortune if, among the filthy—of whom I am the first—among the throngs of the unlearned, a literate man should make progress. Do not fear the oppression that weighs down the instructed: a prostrate learning has more praise than the heights of rustics. The learned are raised up by their own conscience, and if at times they are set against the uncertain blasts of the times, they endure evils that are to be ascribed more to the ages than to their merits.

My speech, which I have truly woven in a rustic manner in praise of Arator, some say is only flattered by a fortunate person, to whom favor from a father's authority reconciles a feigned necessity of affection: in whose ministry of praise, serving only the living and present, the tongue displays a temporal servitude, which, whenever it plays with the painted images of words in the praise of some, conceals the mind's conception with stronger zeal. For sometimes a learned style grants a deeper hiding-place for thoughts, if it has enticed ears with sweet comforts for those not deserving. But let such established practices be set apart from our purpose. It is fitting for us both to know these things and to hate them. For the prudent more cautiously avoid known things than unexpected ones. For me, in the praises of friends, unless love sends the words which are dictated in the inner chambers of conscience with charity as teacher, I will falter along the paths of narratives under the burden of the undertaken work. Therefore, to my Classic, whose genius has served without deceit as its own, I have brought speeches as indicators of my mind, because friendship between equals is free from suspicion of flattery, and then the faithful sincerity of lovers is approved, whenever what you fear does not come from power. For me, Classic does not deserve commands, whatever he does not impose on obedience. Yet some say that an orphan bereft of parents, under a favorable auspice, in the schools of literature, ought rather to have offered words to a religious person.

I have said that his parents are orphans, for whom, through the fortunate losses of nature, a common father and bishop has become his own. That man—the consolation of the afflicted, the food of the hungry, the eye of the blind, the foot of the lame—turns all these species of his piety, all these degrees of his mercies, toward the advancement of this person. And that genius of the lord Laurentius, which succors the needs of the world, is exercised in the service of this little child. For whom would such a calamity not be, as I have truly said, a gracious one? Whom would it not benefit to have lost a father, if under such a profitable exchange he is granted to have found such a man? I do not profane the insignia of so great a man, which I cannot fully describe, with profane words. He is the one whose authority is sweet or whose sweetness is terrible, who fulfills the role of teacher in church, teacher at home, teacher at table, teacher even in jest—who never does what he would not wish his followers to imitate, whose polished-to-perfection conduct shows his disciples the heavenly path as he walks: for it is a lesser praise to teach well, unless you have demonstrated by your deeds what must be taught. For this man’s adopted youth, what would my speech have provided, when a favorable outcome awaits him from the merits of his instructor and from the perfection of his orphaned prosperity? For him, the prayers of his patron are sufficient, through which he will merit, imbued with the best teachings, to degenerate sublimely.

X. A Speech. An Expression of Thanks to the Grammarian When Parthenius Recited Well. When we render due thanks for benefits, I believe that we renounce boastfulness by complying with what is necessary: for no swelling of arrogance is veiled by the garment of honesty when words serve not glory but blood. For it is one thing to speak in order to be praised, another to speak lest you be censured. In the former, a mind greedy for fame is subject to boastfulness; in the latter, with reason preserved, what has been achieved by the sweat of speech is rightly reduced to the place of glory. For just and superfluous declamations, even if they are received with equal favor of speech, are yet presented to minds that are discerning. Indeed, praises of tyrants and of good princes are celebrated by the same voice, and there is no difference between one who deserves commendations and one who usurps them. Unless the grave minds of judges weighed the causes of speaking, this breeze of applause, which also befalls the unworthy, would create no distinction. The secrets of undertaken speeches are examined by the audience not with the tongue but with the heart. In sum, it is one thing to listen to a reciter blandly and willingly, another to approve the affection with which you recite. But now, having set aside commendations of themes, let the infancy of our mediocrity rather speak the matter.

Once, when Parthenius was hastening to your studies, best of teachers, I brought him under the cover of my little speech, at the time when he was crossing the threshold of the liberal disciplines, at the time when it was uncertain whether he would speak of the luster of his lineage through learning: for no one uses the testimony of nobility whose blood instruction does not reveal. Then, therefore, we pursued the aforementioned with our eloquence, when it was not lawful to show in our speech what kind of man he was born, because it is always a stain on good merits to have the light of blood and to be enclosed in the night of rusticity, to be betrayed by the voices of pedigrees and to lurk hidden by obscuring ignorance. Gold is nothing, unless it is shaped by the hand of the craftsman and the price of the tawny metal is joined by the file of the fabricator: without industry, the brightness that comes from nature is of little account. The earth is praised for its offspring because of the craftsman's labors: by the benefit of the furnace, what lies hidden in the wombs of veins passes into the form of solid iron, is tamed, and captivates the savage hearts of men with a subduing affection. The backs of animals, unless they were worked, would not provide clothing for mortals; it is by art that the liquid element of the sea is entered by man in safety and that, with little risk, he overcomes the path of death through ingenuity. The simplicity of farmers, while it distinguishes the face of the earth with arms, arranges vineyards and from the offspring of trees wrings out the liquor by which health is nourished. By many signs it is shown that the diligence of workers either pours in what origin does not bestow or preserves what good things it does bestow.

And if such is the universal condition of things, how much more, most learned teacher, must your diligence be exalted with praise, through whose right hand liberty, already on the verge of collapse, is raised up? Through whose skill are either the young instructed or the honors of our ancestors preserved? Truly, I confess, if you did not exist, whatever talent displays would soon succumb. But why do I bind myself to the greatest things, when I cannot bear even small ones, and why do I offer a general expression of thanks, when I barely suffice for my own person? I offer you abundant thanks, most faultless of men, before many, because you have made Parthenius known to me through your instruction. You have removed from his breast, with the hoe of knowledge, the thorns and tares: you have raised up a harvest of wheat, with which he may feed his kin, showing him, in a happy outcome through the dissonance of families, one thing to follow and another to flee! O the virtue of your intellect, praiseworthy beyond man! By what art, in one and the same person, did you indicate what he should learn and what he should unlearn, both of which descended from his blood? May God arrange our joys with a happy outcome: let whatever adversity threatens be far away. It is more praiseworthy in you that your pupil knows how to avoid his lineage, than that he strives to imitate it. Behold, Parthenius’s own kinship, descending to him along both paths of his family, recognizes one part happily, and the other part happily does not recognize.

I feared that the aforementioned mixture, while it disagreed by its very diversity, would yield the better to the rights of the worse, conquered, and that, on account of the baseness of the times, the unlearned part would more easily hold sway within it. But you have shown me, ornament of your age, that I obtained more from my kinsman than I asked. You imitated the heavens in the abundance of your kindness, when by manifold expenditure you surpassed the wishes of the one commending. Behold, now from a wintry breast and a cold heart the little flowers of diction are budding, and the smiling shoots of words paint the baskets they present. Behold, after a pagan murmur, words that signify humanity are poured forth from his mouth. If I do not repay these gifts of yours with a reciprocal exchange, you will have shown that you bestowed them upon one who does not deserve them. For whoever, with a tongue at leisure, receives better successes, shows that he does not love the prosperity that has been brought. XI. THE DICTIO THAT WAS SPOKEN WHEN EUSEBIUS’S SON WAS ENTRUSTED TO STUDIES.

Although, just as novelty, so too do interrupted practices inspire fear, and this is what happens when, with the loss of public favor's familiarity, the brow shrinks back: it becomes what it was before it learned, while old age, worn out by the loss of speaking practice, is reduced to infancy. A colt trained in Olympic contests trusts in the palm of victory, and if it is not weakened by idleness, it believes victory lies within its own right: hope always promises it a crown with effective blandishments, unless the reward for speed is shaken off by the languor of sloth. The skilled marksman, secure in his triumphs, longs for uncertain contests, and the glory that always meets him in battle is overcome by long peace. The ivy of poets is accompanied by a more noble cluster and a greening appearance, the nurse of genius, by constant practice: when frequent use ceases, the mouths of proven orators fall silent. A sailor raised on the decks traverses the smooth sea without terror on his ships; but if he were to lead his life in earthly duties, he would neither discern the stars in their courses nor detect the winds by their signs. If a farmer, enticed by city life, ever scorns the plow, he will be dragged astray while writing on the backs of oxen. Therefore, just as for the arts, persistent application is the inventive mother in each one's work, so neglect is the stepmother of learning. Such is the condition of our speech, which we produce after intervals of time: it does not display a known figure, it does not show the pomp it ought to have acquired with age; placing all its trust in the kindness of the audience, it believes pardon suffices for favor, that pious wishes are enough, instead of merit.

Stand far off, feeble fear: the compassion of orphanhood must be insinuated; a religious duty commends the speech. What can speech, adorned with the splendor of skill, do, where the cause, even without the office of a coaxing tongue, has obtained favor by its own merit? It is enough that words earn affection: both have come to your hearing with favorable omens. I will indeed say what remains, because I will defend with my praises only as much as has remained in the present cause through silences. This Eusebius, a most noble parent, equal in character to his nature, while pressed by the final lot of humanity, wishing to overcome the narrowness of the earthly prison with a plan that would benefit the future, while he trampled upon the confines of the earthly prison with the vigor of his vital soul and poured himself back into spiritual dwellings, when he was called by God, and nothing remained in his mind of the human except the immaculate love for his son, except that which no oblivion even among celestial things erases: he left this one to me, as if to a well-informed guardian, to be cherished, as his means allow. His final words were confused with his last sighs. I will see what he left to others; to me, under the oath of God, he entrusted his heir. For him, who touches the taste of life with his first lips, I pray that the flavor of freedom be poured in, so that, provoked by the honey of disciplines and the honeycombs of knowledge, he himself may take up the nectar of the liquid element from the waxen houses.

has, venerable teacher, your praise through this man brought to a peak that it can contain: from the progress of such men the fullness of your merits does not reject increase, because the elegance of a disciple is a testimony without blemish to the teacher, especially of one whose splendid lineage the time demands you adorn with the rays of knowledge, so that the glory of his origin may proceed into a most serene day, when the radiance of his eloquence itself has shone forth. XII. SPEECH DELIVERED TO ARATOR WHEN HE WAS ADVANCED TO PRAISE. DICTATED ON THE DAY. THEME. THE PRAISE OF LETTERS. PREFACE. Let the letter be praised from its own splendid worth: for a foreign culture will contribute nothing to its genius. Drenched fleeces shine more brightly when clothed: Persian gems adorn white necks. It does not help to compose limbs with external splendor: natural light ennobles the stars. NARRATION. To all things which are deemed worthy of praise, a eulogy must be offered according to one's ability to speak: what is owed to letters, radiant with the gift of eloquence, must be rendered, because, just as a free gift indicates both the wealth and the spirit of the giver, so to deny what has been received reveals the avarice and shamelessness of those who suppress it. Let us offer to the divinity of letters what has flowed from their own altars. For however much this subject is honored with the riches of praise, however much it flows with an abundance of words, it is fed from the fruits of its own possession, because, while among the green groves, which

he arranged, and with its own charm it captivates the eyes; indeed, it has delight from its own grasses, but the harvests of talents take greater increases through the mistress. Therefore, he who has paid the interest on letters grows richer, while through more secret channels, as if through great riverbeds, the streams directed to them are led back; nor will you possess what you have sent forth in drops otherwise than if you had the right of the receding Ionian Sea. Who would deny the deposit of skill, unless he who wishes to become a beggar while he hoards? The fruit of this matter, strange to say, boils over into abundance when it makes those who brood over it empty. Therefore, after heavenly aid, after the help of divine favor, use the resources you employ. Venerable art, rejoice in praises and in the good of your invention concerning those things that have been directed by you. Embrace what arose from you in the usage of praise: nothing remains for us in this part that is worthy of punishment or reward. If with the faithful service of our mouth we suggest too little in the elevation of your merits, you gave this. We are the pipes of these rivers and we drink nothing of the supplies of the entrusted liquid. You, to satisfy your merits through us, flow in like the Aegean Sea, like the Pegasean whirlpool. Before your eyes are the examples of your character, if you retain them well. Safe are whatever gems we apply from your treasury to use.

Behold, my head is ennobled by a diadem gleaming with your light, and it grows in splendor from the varied brilliance of precious stones, while it is fittingly displayed. From you the institutions of wisdom take their root; through you, once informed, they are brought forth. Without you, there is no flavor in the heart, nor freedom in speech: you are the testimony of noble blood, you the substance of modesty; through you, whatever the heart has rightly dictated, the tongue utters. You provide the path for investigating justice, while you clear the overgrown thicket-covered path by which the higher things are sought. You make for us a wheat harvest from tares, you make fertile glebes from the sterility of talents, and you carry the heavy-laden ears of grain to the granaries of knowledge, so that the famine of ignorance cannot prevail. Preserving the luster of a pure family, you bathe an obscene lineage in a foreign light. A thing most near to God is that which, infused by your beneficence, is provided through the courses of transmitted study, so that the best do not degenerate and the wicked do degenerate, while the truth of the bloodlines is preserved.

Through you, the deeds of the innocent, which pertain to the instruction of those who follow, do not perish: by your chains brought into the midst, past events are recalled and the buried revive. You are the instruments of memory, you the cause of piety. By your plowshares, the soil of the human breast, prepared for fertility, is described. You are the authors of religion, you the enemies of crimes. With you as leaders, crimes that steal in through habit are unlearned, and through you good things are learned. You either drive men toward a straight purpose or change a crooked one. By your judgment, exiles are adorned, and you join to heaven those separated from the heights of the world. You either scorn to enter evil consciences, or, once entered into the sanctuary, you consecrate them. Let it be absent from letters either to change what is worthy or not to change what is new. By your wounds, no instruction clad in steel rescues those who are clothed. You reach the inner chambers even of those whom iron has covered. By your shields, the darts aimed by adversaries are repelled, and no wickerwork of shields is set against the spears of your skill. You raise up those placed in affliction. You soothe those placed on the cross of bodies, so bestowing increase upon joys that hilarity preserves even its extended measure. If blandishments come from you, they become sweet. It is not permitted, against your command, to weep even for a dead man whom you love. You are for weddings, you are fit for funerals. The study of this knowledge holds the most diverse things in harmony, and, embracing each part, it rejoices.

If only it were permitted to honor you with longer discourses and brevity were not owed to your laws, from which the desired abundance is supplied! Through the forms of letters, the voice that will travel far is safely entrusted and, without diminution of itself, is strengthened by the reader. Before you, humanity lived ignorant of order, and acorn-belching breasts vomited words without measure: you create a distinction among men of the same nature, while knowledge of you makes them like the heavens, ignorance renders them like cattle. It is evident what the deserted progeny of mortals was like before this fruit: for even those who have an equal coming into the light with us, through your discernment do not have a single condition of understanding. Farewell, ornaments of a better age, and possess the world, which you have refined, granted by God, as a remedy for the times. XIII. DICTIO [WHEN PATERIUS AND SEVERUS WERE ENTRUSTED TO STUDIES.] If a sailor, with favorable winds, happily crosses the direct path of the wet journey, if a better success leads a warrior to triumph, if through the rhetorical fields a soldier of letters becomes more exalted by the favor of the judge: it is ours today to rejoice with equal moments. On the theme. What have I to do with the published and degenerate poverty of my talent? Behold, from the harvest of the undertaken diction we grow rich with a joyful lot, when the merit of the reporter amplifies the report and the cause commends the actor. Where is the fear that subjugated us to itself on account of the consciousness of inexperience?

The trembling of the brow—where is it more fragile than through use and practice? We forget our own merit while we speak of another’s renown. Now we learn that there are others who are powerful, and that we are to make them, when even fame of such nobility bestows a herald. I have nothing to do with uncertainties. Splendor illuminates those who praise, and even those plunged into darkness, if they remember it, the sun reveals. But again, cheerfulness is joined with fear, and trembling becomes the companion of exultation. When does the unequal suffice for the modest in the highest matters? For he who does not commend glory by the light of his style obscures it; and just as modest things grow through the talent of eloquent men, so the most ample are disfigured by dryness; and unless you approach the burden with measured strength, you will succumb. Behold Paterius and Severus, ornaments of the curule chairs and ancestral names of the purple, who await their original education in the very beginnings of life, disdaining not to drink in the diligence of studies along with the taste of light—whom nature has gifted with both the day and letters at undivided times. For them, why should I, as a reporter, insinuate into new minds what parental honors, what ancient insignia? I will be relieved of this burden if you, the listener, ask about pride on my behalf: with me are the centuries, with me is that solemn acclamation of the Campus, with me are Severus and Paterius, whom both the palace and the curia venerate. Although their family has deserved the scipios and the trabeas, yet, setting aside for a time the dowry of blood, they have demanded by their character what knows no decline through dignities and even after the tomb.

I would be lying if Paterius did not live in the opinion of learned men and, shaped by the perennial air, present that countenance noble with the palms of eloquence among experts. Their offspring, still small indeed, yet already greatest, bearing the jeweled face of a budding flower, implores the support of a voice, which it will offer, demanding this by the silent plea of conversation. Help the little ones, whom you will soon have as parents of the fatherland: expend your resources on defenders and fight for the tender ones, lest, more mature in age, we succumb while warring for the whole. You know which house sweats for the general calamity, to whom the sacrifice for common security is owed, from whom it has flowed that civility among you does not waver in adversity. Our origin owes you this tributary function, that it always nourish the guardians of its fatherland without interruption. Therefore, if the merits of our offspring are known to you, suggest what should be grafted in, so that what shines in the seed may be improved by cultivation, and the turf, obedient to the root, may bear fruits that are not foreign, not fugitive, which we seek. If, in the Elean and Olympian contests, a colt is nourished judged by its parents, let us be fortified by the examples of still-progressing creators. Only favorable circumstances have offered you such service, when both the posterity of your defenders grows and the protection of father and grandfather does not yet fail. Therefore, spurred by these goads, O teacher.

Venerable one, receive the one who brings the voices of all, and offer a kind conscience to the pleas of his native soil: look upon our judgments concerning you, and, raised by the consideration of your merit, make yourself equal to the sentence of many in form: labor so that our fortification may be strengthened by your instruction, and, lest the hostile assault of battering-rams prevail, join the arms of studies to the walls of the fatherland. We know to whom the offspring is entrusted: see to it that what nature has borne strong, industry may fortify. It will be the leader’s doing, not the origin’s, if one born from the stock of a brave man should have fear amid wars. It is enough that you grow by the sweat of your instruction, so that the present boys may firmly obtain the form of the ancients. But perhaps you will say: although a holier profession urges you on, in these matters care does not hold me last. I am the one to whom the mother and the womb of the sacred font poured forth Paterius as a son: I am the parent in the second birth or renewal of his soul. Therefore, the provision of his particular education concerns me, whose father I have been called even among celestial things.

XIV. Speech Against an Ambassador Who Betrayed His Homeland to the Enemy. If a crime is more heinous when committed by a person worthy of veneration, you have, judges, in one man two utterly opposite things: the merit of a traitor and the sacred office of an ambassador. But the voice is overcome in its very beginnings: I scarcely believe the crime I am denouncing. Who would think that consummate treachery had fallen upon the name of integrity? We are forced to say that a traitor fears no evil, nor does a true ambassador commit any. Why do you oppose the name of innocence to my accusation? You could have escaped your pursuer if you were in your deeds what you are called. No one is more cunningly wicked than he who hides under the name of piety: the practice of iniquity is safe when it is covered by the garment of honesty. Let this pretense rest on trickery rather than on the mind: a defense is enfeebled which relies on the testimony of a bare title, which will avail nothing. So that you might stand more guilty against your homeland, our counsels opened the way for you: we acted so that you might appear a stronger enemy while we sought a defender: we would not feel the weight of hostilities you inflicted on your country, had they not taken their beginning from the bond of friendship. We engage external adversaries without effort: he who bursts forth from the fruit of grace into the affection of an enemy finds an unarmed breast: we acted at the time of the treaty so that what would burden the homeland from a general enemy would not be hidden. For this man...

the most splendid of judges, if someone, having undertaken an office, were to perform his duty more negligently due to weariness of spirit and thereby harm the interests of his allies, he would deserve a capital penalty. What, then, is it to have revealed to enemies the internal affairs of one's homeland, which it was a sacrilege not to have defended with even sluggish effort? By what torturers are such things to be expiated, when you have lost that which it is a crime not to have aided? Through how many variations of color and lethal urbanity is he thought to have been brought to this point, that he was believed to fulfill the role of an ambassador? Virtue, when not innate, is usually cultivated by care and nurture, and what you do by habit passes into affection. By the practice of falsehood: the strength of honesty is acquired by one who feigns goodness over a long duration. You would have still preserved a deceptive goodwill, had you not examined the path of harming unlocked by the key of the embassy. It is as if a healer, come to bring health to the sick tossing in the throes of fever, were to seek out the soul in its inner chambers in order to expel it under the guise of medicine: who, I ask, would not reveal to him the secrets of the vital organs and announce in which places strength still resides? An easy opportunity for extinguishing is afforded to the one from whom health is demanded. Thus, you most impure of men, we armed ourselves against you by the revelation of our innermost secrets. Now, judges, it hangs on your decision, whether one who has surpassed all in sins should not also surpass all the guilty in punishments. Cut off future crimes before they are born: from the torture of one will come the correction of the whole community.

It is a kind of piety to be severe toward an enemy of the fatherland, lest, while you spare those whom you provoke, you provoke vices into growth. XV. DECLAMATION AGAINST A STEPMOTHER WHO, WHEN SHE COULD NOT PERSUADE HER HUSBAND TO HATE HIS STEPSON, GAVE POISON TO BOTH. Here she is, judges, the stepmother who, to satisfy her hatreds, does not spare her affections, who, lest her stepson escape, chose to involve in his fate the man she loved, who, like the most savage beasts, made a token of confused deaths, deeming worthy of death by lot whomever could be slaughtered along with her enemy. With the barriers broken, her fury took its exercise, destroying as though destined for death whatever came in its path. Desiring to be destructive to the general public, had the poisons not failed, her anger would still have grown: two people drank the poisons she found; what she would have kept for the destruction of others did not remain. Alas! how she groaned at the lack of the cup, when she saw few corpses, indignant with herself that she had given more of the deadly liquid to the dead than what would kill. She sought to extract from the entrails of the slain the price of others' death, if it had been allowed, so that she might scatter fates through many by drops, so that the noble poison might possess the innermost parts of their souls. Before the experiment, the deadly liquid was poured into the cup: it made her recognize what she had lost, after she had killed only a few from the abundant juices. Where in the world was the spirit of conjugal devotion? Where the marital bond of union?

The stepson’s memory did more than the marriage bed: while she obeyed her savagery, the affection of the present husband was driven away; she believed that the stepson’s substance could remain in any living person. The impious woman wanted to confound the light and cut down the harvest of the human race as the world slipped into ruin, hurling headlong whatever could go into decline, wishing in her wickedness to submit our daylight to the eternal laws of Erebus, so that he might not look upon her, hateful even after the underworld. By how many steps and through what progress of crimes did she descend to poisons? She long deferred the destruction which she once, when he was placed in torments, thrust upon him as a favor. First she afflicted her enemy’s body with whips, hunger, cold: the execution of murder is the last thing in a stepmother’s wrath. I would wish, judges, to dwell longer in the accusation, were it not that a more prolix tongue would delay the punishment of the criminal. We do not want the woman, whom you grant a reprieve while you deliver the final speech, to deserve delays in the light for being condemned. How often, most wicked of women, did you, feigning a mother, caress your stepson with deceitful embraces? How often did you act with harmless potions, so that he might take death from your hand in security? You seized the time of thirst and the need to drink: perhaps, so that you might more quickly offer death, he was begging you: you gained a reputation for compassion by indulging your stepson’s desires. How often did you take the place of mothers, so that you might more safely show yourself a stepmother?

It is customary, O guardians of liberty, that in a marital union the offspring of one is regarded as a common pledge, while the affection which the father obtained passes to the son: when matrons pass away, by the foresight of their husbands, while they seek partners in care for the raising of their posterity, they thus find stepmothers. Yet often under this title a mother arrives, all the more cautious about another’s offspring, the more anxiously she wishes to avoid the tragic name: security fortifies a mother, and the sacrament of her own name. There are those who are even believed to be merciful when they are angry. We rightly reject your flatteries, you ill-omened women, with which you cloak your internal malice through a veneer of deceit. I blush, most holy judges, to sustain by prolonged attack a woman condemned by her own merits: the verdict is not uncertain, which I delay by my labor. Would that she might be driven from the light by exquisite tortures and, cut by slow wounds, survive as a corpse to her own body! Let the guilty soul not be expelled from its own abode at a single time. Purity is brought back into affection, whenever you have cleansed the eyes of the public by the cross of the guilty.

XVI. SPEECH AGAINST ONE WHO REQUESTED THE MARRIAGE OF A VESTAL VIRGIN UNDER THE NAME OF A REWARD. Do you believe, O judges, that through this man lamentations are mingled with victories and that the savor of triumphs is displeasing because of the reward? Do you reckon that the gods are offended in the outcome of events and that the divinities, which have fulfilled prayers, are led to repentance? Here is the most wicked of men, who compels us to groan that he has conquered the enemies of our fatherland, who, when battles are finished, while he demands the price of his labor, commends both enemies and wars, who thinks that the rewards of labor are exhausted unless they are conferred by angry celestials, so that his city may lose what it is believed to have acquired through him. He trusts that the genius of a warrior is not held by painted tablets and images, nor does he require that it be preserved for ages, formed in bronze: he thinks that only joys are those to which the gift of adultery comes. If you have offered yourself to hazards for this, that for your sweat it should be shameful to name what you seek, we cannot owe to harlots that we have conquered. You did not wage war with pious love, you who, after the adversaries, in the midst of the city, join battle with shame: you drove away enemies without cause, you who act in their place in a triumph. We had a state of freedom in honor, while we were subject to hazards: the happiness of brave men is to be shunned, through which we are joined to the miseries of subjects. And indeed, O lights of the curia, do we think that through the minutiae of crimes this man has been led to such monstrous desires?

mixed with the groans of the dying? By how many stages did the practiced crime reach the point where vices were bought with praises? We believed that while he lived in tents and invited his body to the insignia of strength through hard successes, he was constrained by civic love, so that through his military service neither would fire seize cities nor corruption possess sacred virgins. For this man buys with so many wounds that another might not enjoy the fruit of his crimes. What I owe you, most cruel of men, is made known, since through your benefits I, the victor, groan over the outcome of the vanquished. Tell me, you guardians of liberty, which of us had the greater claim, who possessed our spirits—the terror in the blare of trumpets, while the crop of iron and the neighing of horses threatened destruction? I believe it was so that the rigor of chains would not bind the free necks of the fathers, that inviolable modesty would not perish for mothers in the city's fall, that vowed virginity consecrated to sacred rites would not be seized by the fire of a plunderer, that enslaved chastity would not become a price for an insulting enemy, that freedom from the human condition would not be stolen from bodies by a hostile force, and that chastity, reduced to the last extremity, would not serve an adversary's lust. I ask you, great-spirited hero, what evil have you driven from your fatherland, if you, the victor, have desired these things which I feared, while the favor of the gods added the deaths of enemies to your blows? I inquire whether you called upon the gods as supporters in that necessity? If you did, having survived the dangers, do you now threaten their priests with the offering that is due?

if you did not offer pious prayers for the contest, what do I owe you, whom the general prosperity freed with its courtesy without your entreaties? If you understand, it is much that you owe to the gods, if they attended to a suppliant: it is greater, if they gave victory to one who did not ask. I believe that, having withdrawn from the battle, you venerated the temples in the foremost place and there gave thanks, whence you were certain to snatch booty with idle hands. I fear that, with no torch having consumed the temples, a second lot may lead a Vestal virgin captive. XVII. SPEECH AGAINST HIM WHO WITHHELD FOOD FROM HIS AGED FATHER. GIVEN TO THE PLOUGHMAN. I know not, judges, whether a punishment can be found that satisfies the crimes under accusation. Meanwhile, the tongue lacks abundance when the novelty of the crime surpasses the accuser. This is the son who, to his aged father, when he could have provided sustenance, denied it, associating the genius of his own crimes with this, so that he was a parricide while his father was still alive. Do you think you have escaped the penalty due for death not inflicted on your parent? To be more guilty, you spared him. You could have concluded with your father's final end the torments you had inflicted, if you had offered your throat to a healing hand: the first of your evils is the invention of your own creator's destruction, neither to remove it as a dutiful son nor to inflict it as a cruel one is fitting. What is this, that between each path, you, inventor of exquisite peril, follow neither, and feed on the proclaimed wasting of your parent? He lived, with you managing it, a father more unhappy because he did not deserve to die with you managing it.

No one, most holy men, doubts that the evils of this world are buried by an invoked death and that a common lot is the prayer of those placed in adversity: what sets a limit to bitterness must necessarily be desired. I ask, to what beasts is he to be compared who by his own doing inflicts hardships without end? What treachery did his hands, while refraining from the author of light, produce, to be exchanged for death? Already the father of this man was crushed by the burden of years: already the depredation of age had overthrown the once robust footsteps through the trembling limbs of the old man: already, by the bites of long duration, the form, which declared him human, was sinking into wrinkles: yet he had not reached maturity without hope of support, for a grown child was already smiling upon him. With greater confidence, he scattered the provisions gathered for sustenance, he who we always know placed his granaries in the cheerfulness of his child. He thought it an omen to consider property, he for whom a son existed safe and sound, thinking that for his cold gray hair this could suffice—that which, restored in a more youthful offspring, he did not deserve—when suddenly the distinguished young man stripped his father of such security. I would like, for a little while, venerable judges, to turn my words to this man: but I think that advice perishes when it is offered to profligate morals. Do we think, venerable men, that offspring reach these practices through anyone's teaching? The instruction of nature suffices for the shoot, when what teachers usually do, human law instills into their breasts.

It is not by accident that a good thing completes what is owed, nor can what we prove to be implanted in birds be lacking in those endowed with reason. Conversely, we read that eagles are fed by the service of their young, and the benefits of parents, which the unfeathered offspring, when they are stripped of the shells of eggs, have not obtained, they repay with a certain strict equity. Birds do not think it is permissible to deny what has been received: what kind of nature is it that, concerning care for its own, knows not how to imitate winged creatures? I pass over the rapacities of wolves with manifold examples: with hungry mouths they bring food to their parents and, with their own entrails unfed, the wild beast runs to its creators with a laden mouth. You yourselves weigh the conscience of the matter: what punishment is worthy of one who has committed an unusual crime, because vices are propagated by impunity, and, unless the judge’s censure came to the rescue, the force of sinning would spread through the whole body. XVIII. SPEECH AGAINST A TYRANT WHO, UNDER THE NAME OF A REWARD, GAVE A STATUE TO A PARRICIDE AMONG BRAVE MEN. DELIVERED BY ARATOR, VIR CLARISSIMUS.

Although, judges, the likenesses of brave men are preserved forever in enduring bronze, and through these images they know neither death nor burial, and although the image of mortals migrates into eternity through these arts and industry overcomes the narrow law of human nature: yet, has the reward of virtue ever been deserved by a parricide or paid out by a tyrant, when either a criminal has extorted the gift of the innocent or an oppressor of liberty has bestowed it? A statue, venerable bishops, is the fruit of toil, to be rendered by the most pure judgment, so that its appropriate luster may neither disfigure the recipient, if it comes from an unworthy giver, nor, if it is conferred upon an undeserving person, stain the bestower. If a free voice against a tyrant is that of one who denounces vices, if it is permitted under a guardian of crimes to press accusations, I will say what I think. Between two wicked men an honorable thing fluttered, fortified by neither's protection, and it recognized neither from whom it proceeded nor to whom it flowed. A thing long decreed for the brave and to be compared with the votes of blood, consider to whose authority it has come, so that a usurper of empire may bestow it and a father's murderer may receive it. Where shall I turn, I know not: caught in the precipice of your virtues, venerable prince, I know not whether to accuse you of being a tyrant or of honoring parricides with a reward. Both are worthy of crosses and of being driven from this present life with sacks.

Do you not think it enough that you have escaped the punishment you owed, unless you also grant what is not permitted and he receives what he does not deserve? These things were long ago presumed by you through audacity, when you, a profligate, entered the citadel of justice, borne to dominion by those same suffrages by which you conferred a statue upon another. It is necessary, most eminent of men, that all cherish what they have been, nor are excesses usefully corrected except by those who have been reformed. He is shameless who believes that a follower of crimes is a punisher of evil. The judge's conscience is constrained by the necessity of secrecy, and he does not think it free to condemn in his subjects what he himself did not hesitate to admit. By what successes or by what varied increments did you arrive at this, you bilge of crimes, so that it was permitted to you, upon arriving at the heights, to sin as much as you wished, so that you invited the shameful to better things by means of statues? You exchanged the taste of freedom for the gall of servitude; he turned the obedience owed to his father towards swords. Notice how praiseworthy are the things you have harmed, and with a holiday mouth of the accuser, judge what the father and nobility deserve.

you bind necks freed from the yoke to the most wretched condition; before him the law of nature prevailed in nothing. This you do to your fatherland which he inflicted on his parent. In this perhaps you are to be considered more cruel, because you dispense harsh commands under a kind of living death, and you do not grant death, as if with a healing hand, to those for whom death is desirable. He did not allow his father to remain in the world; with a swift blow he snatched life from the author of light. I do not know by what diversity of crimes they are separated; in the meantime, if it is permitted, they should be joined in punishment. If some swelling of pride had raised you above your fellow citizens, injured community and a renouncer of private affection would mark you as guilty; immoderate arrogance would proclaim it. If he had looked upon his creator with a grim expression while his father was still alive, he would have had the merit of a parricide. See what is worthy of those who have arrived at the heights of crimes. There is nothing left for the afflicted fatherland or the dead father to believe. Let us cease, noble princes, to embitter the crime with arguments. The bare names of the accused are sufficient, needing no privilege of defense. I will indeed add to the crime certain things which are the lofty heights of guilt, so that nothing seems to be removed from the action which you have found, as I think, with keen tracks. The statue of the parricide is surrounded, fortified by the sides of the brave, and the image which either literary care produced or the field of Mars gave back is placed after his likeness.

harshly, if you believe it, they bear that so many nothings in the inscriptions are no different from the reward from the spiller of paternal blood, and, if any vigor remains in their souls, they bewail their rewards, which they exacted by the exertion of their strength. Where is honor, where is the efficacy of liberal study, where is the reward for one fighting for his country, if the possessor of the stronghold displays bronze statues and the one who procures his father's funeral obtains them? You, at least, show torments worthy of their merits, lest, if an unequal penalty condemns the accused, not even the praise of direct judgment be owed to you. By one path, let those whose lot in crime was nearly equal be driven from life. XIX. A SPEECH GIVEN TO AMBROSIUS AGAINST A GAMBLER WHO GAVE THE FIELD IN WHICH HIS PARENTS WERE BURIED AS THE PRICE OF A GAME. After, O judges, the shameful pursuit of the gambler had escaped into the reduction of his wealth, and the growing concern for gaming had been condemned by the lack of resources, they began not even to withhold their parents' tombs from a shameful prize; they began to await the uncertain outcomes of games from ashes and to propose laughable stakes of contests from tears. Where are those who say that souls that have completed their life have nothing in common with the cultivators of this world and that, after separation from the age, the departed have their own day? Behold, already the ancestors of this man have grown old near the tombs they had obtained, and by the very fact of their long duration they seek burial mounds that are already tombs: and yet, in the opinion of the most shameless reveler, it is still believed that the price of the intention has not perished in them.

After the long courses of life, owing nothing to chance, the shades are ordered to await their fate from dice: after the resources your parents had amassed through long frugality were squandered, after the many weights of silver and gold, which a thriftiness destined for an heir had preserved with measured care, you honored the urns of the ancestors with tablets as a reward, making the offspring worse than barrenness. If a lesser degree of reverence from posterity were to adorn the mausolea of those who came before, negligence would be punishable, and they would look to judges for punishment from those who wish to correct the habits of their own children in the offenses of others. For the festivity returning by a fixed law of the seasons, for the garlands and the gifts by which souls are nourished, you believed it a crime if the tombs of your parents did not change masters. You would not have been permitted to sell the final homes for the ransom of your child taken by enemies. I ask what necessity there is that I see a foreign possessor in the ashes of your parents: and nothing but a game is set against me. O wretched condition of mortals, both when desires are denied and when they are granted more unhappily! How often did your parents, with anxious sighs, move the god, lest they pass from the enjoyment of this life, which is believed most inauspicious, without a legitimate heir? How often did the mind, ignorant of the future, incur the nearness of death from the pallor of their offspring?

After being trained, instructed, and educated for this harvest, judges, he arrived with a mind barren of shame, so that he would not allow in his own right those who had lavished the patrimony after he had lost everything. We condemn the most base will in a criminal: for it may happen that, by the kindness of your leniency, you have released the bones of your ancestors to upright masters. Reverence for the dead is common to all, and concerning religion, the final lot of the departed demands worthy cultivation from all humanity: yet the last rites due to our ancestors are rendered more excellently, whom veneration sets before our eyes in such a way that we believe we have offered to the gods what is performed in carrying out the commands of the dead. We keep everything they have ordered, not believing that what has been violated from their instruction can happen with impunity. I cannot find a ninth type of crime to explain with the novelty of my words. What sort of sacrilege is it to disobey, such as selling their final resting places for sport? Believe me, judges, all their ancestors stand before your eyes, awaiting the times of vengeance, by whose appeasement diligence toward parents, lasting into the future, can be established without stain.

XX. A DECLAMATION AGAINST THE MAN WHO PLACED A STATUE OF MINERVA IN A BROTHEL. We have always believed that the sentence of venerable judges was uncertain concerning the confusion of sin. There the judge’s deliberation, as to which way it should lean, hesitates where the nature of the offense is doubtful: for a definition consistent with equity, just as manifest vices demand it, so obscure ones suspend it. When the crime is in the light, what hope remains for the defendant? Perceive, I ask, with your minds and examine with inner judgment, what sort of man he is who has violated both the eyes of virginity and the secrets of a brothel, and in each is sacrilegious, neither revering the shameful acts to which he has brought a hostile witness, nor sparing the blush of chastity, which he associates with the unworthy. I demand of you, prodigy of the human race, what devotion to religion led your fickleness to erect a statue of Minerva, when the injury inflicted by the foulness of the place shows you to be an enemy of integrity: the publicized corruption cries out that you show no reverence even to the pollution of Venus. Those who are driven to transgressions of crime by a love of excess do not know the limits of sin: those who have attempted lofty crimes are ignorant of moderation in their errors. While you, by a mocking art, join Dione and Pallas, the most diverse divinities, subjected to wandering judgments, into one fabricated thing, you make your offense more bitter by your religion. It is a matter worthy of the greatest expiation to mix discordant things and to gather into one those to whom, unless you have provided secrecy, you have inflicted insults.

Do you think a man can be found who holds to neither of the two ways of life in this world, and who is found to be neither a friend to virtues nor faithful to vices? Some are sometimes raised up to despise the patronage of good works by the defenses of their faults, and those who are strangers to the savor of praise rejoice in the fruit of license. But which of these things will find you as a follower? You have brought contrary hands against the better order, nor have you sincerely obeyed the wicked, bowing your neck. I hate, noble lords, those who are lenient judges of their own habits; I condemn those who, through neglect of serene actions, are drawn into doubt: yet I detest more execrably the one who, caught in both, shows a stable conscience to no one. For they promise affection for honesty at a time of repentance, those whom you see displaying faith to their sins. If you, most wicked of men, placed before the shrines of Venus, had been goaded by the memory of Minerva, would you not, by loving both powers badly, have harmed the memory of your own intellect? You would have fled the dwelling of that goddess whose adversary you held in your mind. What honor is it to have placed her statue there, where the goddess of chastity could be violated by remembrance? Unknowingly, most ill-omened one, approaching by steps the heights of execrable error, you have almost, by a kind of postliminium, stirred up war among the dwellers of heaven. Those eyes always see shameful things, and they detest embraces joined by some law of obscenity.

While the interest of the brothel-keeper procures a captive deity, you alone have shown that the power of the gods above serves human lust and that they are confined to those places to which they have been assigned by mortals. How discordant will be the expense incurred in the sacrifices to be offered? The offering of one deity will do injury to another. For while through your providence a simple couch has obtained a double power of the gods above, and modesty and lust have come together in one temple, neither will look with favour upon our devotion: those whom you have mingled in habitation, we shall hold as offences to our own sacrifices. What sort of gifts will those be which must be carried in flocks through unchaste women and virgins? One must be offended by cheerfulness and the other placated by lasciviousness. Among the vervain and incense of the victims there will be a cause for strife, and the angry deities must be made such as are appeased. I remove a lengthy narrative from the sacrileges: let the accused consume the delays he receives in punishment in the penalty itself, because the foulness of others' deeds disfigures the one who reports them.

XXI. DECLAMATION [AGAINST A CERTAIN FATHER, WHO, THOUGH HE DID NOT DEIGN TO RANSOM HIS SON FROM A PIRATE, NEVERTHELESS SOUGHT SUPPORT FROM HIM]. THEME. THE LAW. Parents must either support their children or bind them. A certain man had two sons, one thrifty and one profligate. Pirates attacked both. They wrote to their father about ransom. The father, having sold his property, sought out the pirates: he was given the choice of which one he wished to ransom, because he had brought too little money. He chose to ransom the profligate, because he was ill. When the profligate was returning, he died on the way. The thrifty son escaped the pirates. The father seeks that he support him. He refuses. A case was undertaken against Quintilian. For he defends the father, we the son. I ask that you not think it arrogance, whoever reads this. PREFACE. Is it lawful to speak against Quintilian except on behalf of the truth? Or does eagerness, which grants words to justice, make one forgetful of oneself? Deceitful urbanity is fitting, while eloquence, painted with the brush of falsehood, assumes a borrowed beauty to be praised in word only. Let equity be asserted without the solace of oratorical art: I choose the pomp which defended righteousness will bring forth. Let simplicity, fortified by the favor of the heavens, proceed against the most eloquent man: from the confidence in our case arises what we dare. We only, foremost men, grant your kindness with safe caution for ears and minds, lest that loftier buskin, by the power of speech in which it prevails, believe victory to be in its possession.

What else is it to help us against his attacks, except to bring back justice after intervals of wandering, when it is abroad? INTRODUCTION. I would rejoice, most distinguished judges, that I had escaped the filth of the prison, the chains of the pirates, had not a father confronted me, in place of the pirate ships, upon my return. He demands sustenance from me, whom he freed from enemies neither with gold nor with tears. He thinks that his return ought to benefit him, whom he did not ransom when he could. You vainly implore the sustenance granted by the law, you who by your own deeds dissolved the rights of nature. The law decrees that sustenance be provided to fathers: that sacrament is not merely in the name. Let even the pirate say whether you are a father. You often say, when you speak, that I was better off dead; you never show that I am, when you judge. Consider the path of the faults of the departing brother: he who was preferred was more like the parent in character; by what omen I have spent my life among strangers, driven by these men, was made clear when my father voluntarily abandoned me to the pirates. He thinks it a strong argument against his offspring to put forward, when he boasts that a guilty son, close to burial, deserved more favor. I ask you, judges, what I owe, now that judgment has been pronounced. Meanwhile, it is clear that I was placed even after the ashes of a corrupt man. He is not ashamed to demand anything from him by parental authority, in whom he was unwilling to be what he is called. Would that the pirates' chain had preserved my health for these purposes!

I would be making my father a captive of shame by providing him with an improper allowance of food, so that an unjust judge might groan over the iniquity of his own verdict. For food that is provided by someone from whom you have deserved no good drains you: the bowels that have no consciousness of a benefit previously conferred are hungry in their own satiety. I do not know what that man thinks is the remnant of his hope from two sons, when he has given one back to the earth and has allowed the other to be kept in the perpetual domination of kidnappers. Let him take, unless he is confounded, whatever limbs exhausted by tortures may earn. I do not know what the old man demands from the weakened man: in the meantime, as I perceive, we both need to be fed. Why do you bring into the middle the account of my modest means? The man who wished to ransom one sold his property in such a way that the price would not suffice for both. Who could set forth my unhappiness, who could set forth my miseries? To whom, after the Cilicians, is even the freedom that he has regained said to be subject? Tell us, I beg you, judges, if even in my own country we will be pronounced debtors, what have I escaped? The most holy creator has added that I should grieve that the chains have released my brother. As if nature demanded from us only such servitude that the cheerfulness of a rescued brother compensates for what I have remained. We owe love to the companions of our flesh when we are set free. Believe me, who speak of manifest things: joys concerning another cannot enter a man who is afraid for himself. For, as the custom of a disapproved examination declares, the one from whom something is demanded is in a way richer.

such a trick in supplications does feigned politeness preserve, that it uses composed humility as javelins, so that by the bond of proud abjection it leaves nothing free to the one who is asked. He attests that the price was bid for both, which is known to have been spent for one: he expects double gratitude for a single favor. I do not know whether it should be asked what he thought, when it is clear to all what he did. The pirate who offered us the choice drained the defenses of your case: let the father keep the tombs of his son, which alone he desired, who only redeemed a dying man. For he who preferred a sick man to a healthy one declared that he had shuddered at the one who would live. I do not know what you demand for the survivor, having in consolation the tears which you bought. NARRATION. Perpetually, judges, I preserved the cultivation of honesty even in an age friendly to sins, withdrawing expenses from boyish desires, so that the maturity of life could rejoice. By this frugality we ensured that there remained for the father what he could offer for his profligate son. Why do you complain about the meagerness of the patrimony? If I had been equal in character, the matter would have been brought to such a point that neither could have been acquitted. The arbiter is unequal, who wished to profit another with what we concealed by our shame. As far as paternal strictness asserts, the cause of our long captivity was our probity.

A son diligent toward his father and devoted to his brother, such a man does not deserve to be brought back to his homeland, and had we not been fellow captives by the same lot, my return would have been tainted by suspicion. We were equals in misfortune, but far apart in our father's love. The fortunate youth, by the support of luxury, and before the great part, exhausted the common substance, and even what remained profited him. Wretched me, always a captive by my father's judgment! I rehearsed in peacetime what I later endured, and while I hold to the straight path, by the evidence of frugality, I learned how one might live among enemies; hence it is that, content with the food which that savagery provided, I lived among the worst horrors, comforted by habit, not by the humanity of the captor. I ask: for whom did that more frugal habit preserve me, if respect for fairness among fathers deserves offenses? OBJECTION. What of the fact that the barbarian is said to have declared, "You bore the price of one"? Accusations always receive a fitting response. You were anxious about no auction: you displayed the gold, which you had previously offered, before the eyes of the enemy. While everything proceeded thus for you, no one could doubt that the liberation of one man sufficed for your desires. Yet as soon as you entered those caves filled with the squalor of death, the pirate knew what you would choose before he granted the option. That anxiety does not come from love: he who announces concerning two sons, through all the signs of affection, as if it had come to one, shows nothing ambiguous.

After your departure, stronger guards confined me. Thanks be to the divinity, if it has protected my freedom even to the extent that I escaped. Meanwhile, your voice seems to have uttered a sentence against the enemies: unless the one I leave behind is carefully guarded, he will slip away. With the gods as leaders, our flight, placed before the eyes of the enemies, was effective. EXCESSUS. Moreover, as a father rich in speech and by length of living has learned to present what he speaks, clever at imposing necessity on minds through hearing, he says that food is common to all living in humanity and demands from one what it is not lawful for anyone to deny, generally alleging that whatever the earth produces is owed to all. But when the grain field poured forth its wheat offspring and the vineyards their liquor for common use, and the land was not distributed individually to the cultivators, no one among the enemies left a son in such a way that he was believed to have preferred groans to servitude. I do not know, judges, after he has chosen tears, what he demands concerning the survivor. But he throws the law at us as a threat and wants what is written between parents and children to be owed to him who exhibited nothing of a parent. He seeks our will while we are compelled and desires that we show to piety what he himself professed that one excusing himself cannot deny to fear. Is there any place for mercy where command presses?

What cannot be taken away, we cannot say is conferred by generosity: mercy is not so called unless it is freeborn: whatever you are not able to give, count as a sincere gift if you have given it. But the frequent repetition of nature and the holy name of the Creator will stand in our way, as if the interest on the gift of light, acquired by the favor of the heavenly ones, could be counted among those things that are bestowed by men. It is sacrilege to have called the indulgence of the higher powers the seed of mortals: a cruel father bears witness only to his own lust. He even adds to my burdens, while demanding back the comforts of the abandoned, saying that the city could have come to my aid, had I not returned. What else does this will manifest, except that the pirate should take me in again? If the unpaid-for sight of your offspring is burdensome, then certainly you will possess my tomb without price, as you are accustomed to purchase at great cost: age indeed promises life, but the magnitude of the torments, which I suffered more bitterly after you departed, promises destruction.

EXAMPLES. Then you brought forth examples worthy of a fatherly purpose: but they lost their value through interpretation, as if your hoary age had provided a form for your desires, and not an imitation of holy institutions. What great weight of the creator’s burden did the shoulders of Aeneas feel? Or did he press down his son with his body, when he himself was often the bearer of that burden in action? Do you wish to know why he deserved to be snatched from his enemies? It was placed before his eyes that he did not wish, lest he burden him, believing that the ruin of falling Ilium would provide him burial, and lest his aged limbs detain his son, who was more worthy of life as he advanced, he declared the city’s fall sufficient for a tomb. He wished to remain for the plunderers, while his son escaped: you returned to your fatherland, leaving me behind. Why do you recall the noble deeds of Scipio for his own father? He, in offering himself diligently for his author, gave everything, but did not exhaust all that he owed. The cause of good vows is always similar, and the pursuits of kindness are not distinct. He pronounces what a son deserves who thinks he does not come to the duties of nature unless compelled. The law threatens bonds, if I do not obey: what does it matter? The long duration of punishments, procured by you, has shaped me to this custom, although long endurance of penalties does not make one obstinate.

Yet I wonder if anything that escaped the barbarians was brought in by my father: there is nothing from which pirates would refrain, if fortune itself follows one into the homeland. As far as I can see, the adversity of one's native soil and of foreign travel is the same, nor is the bitterness unequal for those returning and for captives. Nevertheless, I find no difference at all, nor do I inquire which chain binds my neck most tightly: whether I incur the bond of rigid iron or offer a toll for my throat, the condition is one. Fasting, I will carry feasts to a sated man and—what is worse—to one who does not love. With how much disdain will he cast away the food offered by me? With what rancor will he trample my devotion? A man whom I could not have merciful even when I was in extremity. He announces that he redeemed both me and my brother by letters, that he begged for our release with equal tears, that he dictated letters in a similar lot, with us placed in the same condition. I do not deny it, I do not refute it: he has victory in this objection. Yet I demand this: what cause made it so that what, when two requested it, was owed to two, one received? For the sake of both you entered the seas and, as you claim, with piety as your guide you crossed the threats of the liquid element. Who would believe a man about twin love when he returns alone? Mercy is never praised except when it has been endangered. With what shame is affection proclaimed when its effect is absent? Does the key of speech always truly reveal the secret of the heart? Piety that is not held bound even by mute deeds is a monstrosity.

among all men, love stands unshaken with its root, if boasting has any power. The law says: "Either support or bind," the father cries: "That sustenance is owed to a parent, even if he does not ransom, it is already due." To these parts, indeed, I armed you, when you ceased from the duty to which you were bound by nature: the windy protection profits what is shamefully denied to genuine purity. Believe me, when the law spoke to the parent, it did not keep silent about the redeemer: it urged, commanded, extorted that all the sacraments of a religious work be sufficiently fulfilled through names. My calamity clouds your senses for understanding this matter: the redemption of a son, which lies in the diligence of kinship, could not exist both in precepts. You accuse my impiety and envy in the liberation of a brother, while you praise the children of Leda. You do not know that, if equality of your distribution had proceeded among them, it would have produced error: for you would have condemned one to perpetual beauty of light, the other to possession of eternal night. I lie, if you had other judgments concerning your sons. What did you think, when one pirate, who would never have him, let him go, and another, who would never leave him, kept him as if a father were handing him over? Whatever I endured after your eyes in that deadly land, I do not doubt proceeded from you. All hope for me is consumed, after the redeemer departed from the barbarian land without me.

What ships heading for inhuman shores did I not first scan, and whatever the eyes did not follow with fading vision, I grasped with my mind, because those who wait more eagerly see more keenly? How often before your arrival, if ever the pirate allowed us to survey the air, did my father appear to me in the persons of strangers, and I saw those likenesses which love paints for itself without the disgrace of lying? By these images, hearts long troubled are struck. Alas, how often, when I refused the food the pirate offered, did this barbarian console me with these words: "Fear nothing, sigh over nothing in this affliction: if your Creator survives, you are little separated from the station of freedom." Behold, at last the longed-for lot arrived: the pirate himself announced your coming to me cheerfully. He who gladly welcomed the redeemer was not far from the love of complete mercy. We did not have, judges, inhuman masters: there were those who could be softened by entreaty: if tears had compensated for the lack of gold, he would have brought both back at one time: he testified that what was not sought with great expense was not done. Weigh, I ask, what he who did not help me even with supplication in my extremity may justly demand from me. You added that you are fortified by the privileges of nature and that what you have done wrong against me may not be avenged, but he who places his defense in a title has no prerogative of innocence.

The innocent person shines with the light of his action: he who thinks his protection lies in what comes before confesses his crimes without dissimulation; no authority defends the guilty; in the case of criminals, the sanctity of a name vanishes. EPILOGUE. And this, most holy judges, I have pleaded after the imprisonments of thieves with a different labor of the heart, as if, even if I were not a debtor, I could produce what is demanded. It does not consider the bones stripped of flesh, foul with the inhumanity of their masters, and it does not look upon the secrets of nature laid open by executioners. In my body, torments have brought to light whatever man is, and the inner recesses of my vitals have been exposed, with a barbarian pressing me with crosses, while my father disdained to be present. The atrocity exceeds all measure, which, even in exacting debts, does not first inquire into one's strength. You, when you see that the health of my age has been softened by the burden of miseries, that the strength of my years has been crushed by the variety of manifold calamities, that I have both the needs of old age and the ill will of youth, do not cease to demand from me what even an enemy would have remitted to one exhausted. You will receive the tributary function, and you still assail me with the greatness of my name and the genius of my parent, while you scorn to show the compassion you owe to any human being, even to your own child. May the divine dispensation enrich your intention with such a reward that you may again look upon the funerals of your offspring as something to be wished for, and that you, who are burdened by a living presence, may reap the sum of your desires from tombs.

XXII. DICTIO. PREFACE. The distinguished young man has indeed copiously arranged the riches of his inventions in order, and has also endowed them with an abundance of words, and has uttered with a mouth worthy of reverence what he believed to be for religion. But let the snares of opinion and the fabrications of malicious treatises be far removed. We do not set our breast against the oration of Arator, nor do we cut down with a hostile sickle the vine-shoot bursting into the light of praise: but, showing which path of words he ought to follow, we know that we shall triumph more clearly in him, if it happens that he is preferred, because he has drawn from us whatever, with God enlarging, he has poured forth from the wealth of his knowledge. THEMA. THE LAW. From a captured city of the enemy, priests and Vestal Virgins are to be sent forth free. After the second outcomes of the conflict of war, among triumphs and laurels, the law recited to the victors cannot have the power to resist. What have we done with swords through the affection of death, if there will be something we fear after battles? Whatever until now threatened lifelessness lies before my eyes, and after the enemy engagement has been scattered, I know not what terror the decrees of dead princes bring us. He does not know how to assess the quality of proven valor who boasts of the bridle of documents over armed men. Let those with inert hearts acquiesce to these barriers: I have scattered with the sword whatever took away my license. Only that can anyone deny us, which...

We do not wish: I am content to have as a limit that to whose transgression desires have not called me. Whatever I am able to obtain, the law grants to me. Leisure and the toga, while they are at leisure, may bring something: for me, nature has produced everything that, when I am in battle array, I have extorted. Written laws alone are ours: to fear nothing. And these things indeed I have set forth to your ears, as if the formula which was objected to were a good one. Yet the nurse of brave men, the law, the avenger of liberty, the bulwark of the fatherland, orders that after the contest her heroes should have a renewed intention concerning the prize, and, not content with fortunate deeds, while it removes the price of toil, it breaks the zeal for fighting. Are good, then, those precepts which, lest we become good, stand in the way? Whatever precepts remove the fruit of labors, most prudent censors, chastise us from another's means. Is it just to have sanctions written about external law? Or does it seem near to reason to cut off hope of future possession? Why do you oppose to us the name of religion in the persons of priests? Under God as leader, whom you venerate in them, I have prevailed. By whose regard you desire them to escape from the yoke of our servitude, know that they are held captive by that same one commanding. He strives against the gods above who exalts anyone whom their judgment lays low: those whom you hasten to snatch away had by no means been made men, if they had deserved to be ministers of the heavenly ones.

Behold, I contend with you concerning the flavor of the law, as if I lacked weapons to cast in place of a reply. What justice do you think there is in that command, which, to support an enemy, condemns allies to extended empires? Remove the hope of plunder, and you have taken away the desire for battle. And if the laurel-crowned genius is defrauded, whatever was sought in contempt of light will return to repentance. Let prudent men cease to seek equity of this kind—I do not say from a law, but from a tyrannical inscription—which, ungrateful to the gods, hostile to virtue, fights against divine and human law under the false color of piety. Do you not know, most talkative of men, how just a grief arises from the lost fruit of labor? This is to say: whatever you acquired under the leadership of the gods, we snatch away. I have seen a hostile city aging as if in a single fire, and the very abodes of the dwellers of heaven laid waste and stripped of divinity, overthrown: and do you think anything remains that should not belong to the victor? What of the fact that this frivolous and empty decree is confounded by obscurity? For it says that priests or Vestal virgins ought to enjoy liberty. I believe it names those in whom the inhabitant of heaven has shown his dwelling to be, whom celestial favor has marked with its light as greater than men. It indicates the reverence of those whom the divine wishes to be recognized as pontiffs. We have seen wretches, whom it protects, wandering amid the ashes of a fallen city, relying only on lamentation for protection and having no confidence in their station amid the crowds oppressed by captivity.

A foreign splendor was not in their faces, nor a cheerfulness that would announce their office. They do not know how to be disturbed among adversities, for whom, in the storms of the world, a harbor from an innocent conscience appears. We have seen those more afflicted than others trembling, to whom you grant naked names, a laughable law. What place remains for merits, if that sacrament consists only in the title? I believe that one thing is said, another thing is to be a bishop. I have often seen, before faces wasted by fasts, a weapon aimed at the throat fall back, and swords blunted against unarmed men lose their hardened nature. If you believe one about to speak religiously, there was no minister of the temples who, amid any dangers whatsoever, needs human help. The supreme arbiter knows how to clothe his own possession with his own light. That celestial mixture does not lie hidden, and, although it is clothed in the tunic of human frailty, it shines forth. What of the fact that those who do not deserve to be dragged into servitude come ready to serve? He who is unworthy of this extremity does not rebel. They hasten to obedience whose mind is worthy of high offices, and they banish the stubbornness of mortality whom it is wrong to constrain to dishonorable things. These dangers of yours, if they in no way deserve to be absolved, they intend. They cannot be withdrawn from men whom we understand no longer to have anything of man. Help me, comrades, help me, associates, and with the aid of truth suppress the garrulity of my attacker. The matter is being dealt with, concerning which we already hold what the judgment of the higher powers has thought.

The undeserving are to be appointed, so that we may be able to have good bishops. Let them be instructed through those whom not a conciliatory fable, not an uncertain defense, but the very radiance of the highest God proclaims to be his own. XXIII. SPEECH [ON THE DISINHERITED SON WHO, AFTER KILLING HIS FATHER, ALSO PLOTTED AGAINST HIS MOTHER]. After, judges, the disinherited son, in the execution of a just grief for his father's deed, avenged his mother's consent with the sword, he thinks he can disturb the innocence of the judges and steal something from the absolution of a manifest crime. We do not know what commendatory words the criminal may find in his defense, to whose refutation we display the wound. The son, ruined by the evil of arrogance, after he killed his father, strives to extinguish his mother's reputation: grieving that we escaped the dagger, he pursues fame with a weapon, for which, out of modesty of sex, we fear more. We show the rupture, the neck of the father, we show the path of the criminal. He, on the contrary, composes words against the matter, and, because a support seemed to us to have been faithful, he drew our little one to his opinion, whom, ignorant of deceit, he subverted with the fabricated art of words, causing even that one to perish, who was thought to be the survivor. Why do you wish to veil naked justice with tricks? He could neither spare the hated one nor strike the one you falsely claim he loved. Is there any need for arguments, where the truth testifies to its own deed with its own voice? You lost the hope of defense when you described your mother's limbs with the sword.

But although the agent is handsome and polished, we have no eyes to examine these matters. XXIV. EXTEMPORANEOUS SPEECH WHICH DEUTERIUS HIMSELF IMPOSED. Having traversed the sea, Diomedes, safe in the fields, Bewails a shipwreck that was without water. Because, after contending with various swells, he had conquered, His wife had passed into another's union. The cause of the complaints, under a feigned name, is true. I beg you, attend to his words with calmness. ADDRESS. O gods, if not everything happens according to your arrangement, then your power is divided, or you are also the authors of evils. But if the care of any one of your number is troubled by human affairs, grant me the happiness of my return, or the error which you have ended ungratefully. If heaven is the possession to be called upon by the pious, if joys are granted to mortals at the appointed moments, do not join vengeance to your benefits. Why have we stretched our prayers to such an effect? That adversity might be prepared by the gods' favor from an opportunity of prosperity? Restore, I beg, the misfortunes you have brought, propitious ones: let the sea be restored, lest my reputation perish in a land shipwreck. In good times, the nearest thing is that whatever evils come should not be known. The disgrace that struck me in the face would not have touched me absent. I would not be believed to have lost my wife (for shame!), unless I had returned to her: the abjured calamity has bent my state. The error of the flowing element was closer to my station: I lost a harbor in my native land, which I often acquired in the bays of the vast deep. Is this...

The longed-for home, for the sake of which forgetfulness of dangers was promised, when the hope of subsequent joy could overshadow the present form of evils. Could it be unknown? For whom have beginnings ever arisen from the ends of miseries, or has an origin ever come from completed misfortunes? Has it ever happened that what was desired was not loved? Or that escape from danger harmed a man? Fortune has always struck me with new and worst blows: if its change tends toward the worse, let it keep the simple appearance of harming, so that it may not grow insolent through successions. I had a wife, a companion in evils, transmitted to chastity by the light of nature, whose splendor of birth had increased through training, so that, defended by a double bulwark, she could in no way be believed subject to the assaults of crimes, nor could she soften the harshness of chastity by the evisceration of obscenity. She never sought the golden ornament of metal nor imitated the snow of her body with the gleam of precious stones: she had no aids to beauty while she pleased; she knew that the bonds of the conjugal sacrament are not helped by painted arts, and that a husband is not held bound when a wife, other than through him who descends from character, sought splendor. That free servitude of raising children remained for her, while she so conducted herself that she both deserved to be missed and never thought her husband absent. She had hardened her sex by strength of mind, while in her the weak counsel of womanhood had taken on the substance of manly authority. Already fallen.

the order of its own kind, with healing instruction, was fighting back, and when transferred to other uses, it laughed at the excesses of women. In short, such a one perished as wives usually obtain tears from their husbands. By a Circaean cup, as they say, she was transformed and migrated into the desire of an adulterer. But what are we to do, caught amid anxieties and uncertainties? Let hateful sailing receive us as a remedy, and let hands weary from ropes again practice hempen bonds: let the right hand cling to the tiller, so that it may govern the rights of the restrained ship through the helm: let the axis painted with stars be restored to view: let the journeys of our nights be directed by the signs of our arrangement. Let it be a solace to my eyes, if the land of a profaned marriage is not seen: let us flee the fatherland, in which our marriage has been made such that it is shameful to have lost it, and wishes cannot receive it back. XXV. DICTIO. THE WORDS OF THETIS WHEN SHE SAW ACHILLES DEAD. The pious sought deceit was intercepted by maternal counsel. The fates found our Achilles, snatched from another nature, and it did not profit that the sex which origin had given him, cunning changed: he did not learn womanhood through duration, and the habit of softness preserved the spirit of a brave man. Who would believe that the provision, which both a goddess and a mother devised, was ineffective? Is not immortality the reward, which neither a mother transmits to her offspring, nor through it does she happen to snatch her son from misfortunes? Are we gods, that we are never withdrawn from sorrows?

What kind of condition is this, when from the depths of our own vitals we bring forth what serves death? It should have been permitted either to bestow upon posterity the power of the celestials which it possesses, or, when our dear ones fall, to be granted death as the end of lamentation. We are inferior to men, we who produce beings like ourselves, and in this we are subject to the mockery of the Fates even more wretchedly, because we do not know the deaths to which our children are bound. O greatest of the gods, either withdraw our offspring from chance, or lower us in return for the granting of a benefit. Let it be permitted, for a dear one, if we cannot conquer, to undergo death. Before my eyes stands bereavement, made worse because I foresaw it from the height of my own immortality. O lamentable happiness of the gods, when that which it is not permitted to be ignorant of concerning adversities is not granted to avert! I recall. I remember the anxiety of past time and my cares, over which I watched in vain. What good was it that the body of my son was armed with the help of the Stygian marsh, while we sought from the whirlpool what he should have taken from us? In the limbs of our offspring, where the goddess held him, there is a place for a wound. Why did the water not mingle with looser fingers, so that a higher wave might have entirely shut out the blows of the gods? What good did it do to have chosen the tutelage of Chiron, who would solidify the slipperiness of youth with learning? I believe we found, through various paths of instruction, that war pleased my son: under the most valiant teacher it was brought about that the strength, which followed, had no counsel.

Who would want a man to drink the flavor of battle mingled with the hiding-places of women, and from that same source to provide for his child, whence he causes what he provides to perish? We were already breaking hands hardened by javelins to the wicker-baskets, and that cloak, which the backs of a despoiled lion had warmed, now covered those shoulders, embroidered with gold or purple. It was no easy transition for our young man to imitate a girl after tasting glory, nor is what I did not command in the first beginnings of tender age skillfully arranged. But why do I recall past events, when the enormity of future calamity pounds upon my mind? I see the smoking ruins of Troy and the city overthrown while still standing: I see the bitter battles of Hector against the Greek-born, who grew in reputation for this reason, that for my offspring, as he falls, the price of triumph may increase: I recognize the body, still to wage war, dragged by chariots, and the advantages of my Achilles diminished because the weight of the dead decreases: I see that what perishes by loss profits the wrath. But why do I feed on these praises, I who am to be bereaved? I will cover the rest in silence, lest I be undone by the narrative before the time of grief. Let our eternity have consolation from silence, which it does not have from nature.

XXVI. DICTIO. THE WORDS OF MENELAUS WHEN HE SAW TROY BURNT. Although the abductor inflamed my grief with his own fires, although we endured the torches of injury, the author of the immense crime has grown old in the debt of time with the whole universe joined to him. The insult is almost happy which deserves such vengeance, even if with the greatest sweat. Why should one refuse to undertake a necessity to be concluded by the limit of a triumph? The bitterness of what follows excludes the wisdom of the preceding matter: what we grieved becomes sweet, because our grievers repent of provoking us. The shamefully abducted woman became the mother of our increase: the wife separated from us gave birth to an empire, and from the embraces of the adulterer she produced for us the country we hold: let those who laughed at the bachelor see him trampling the proud necks of enemies. We had a wife trained in honorable ways for a long time, ignorant of another's bed, who would not wish to desire what is not permitted. Custom did not precipitate her into vices, but the criminal abductor's impulse made her follow Paris, a captive by will. Her own conscience never raised her to this, that she believed herself loved, because, as we trust, those are most shameful in character who remember themselves to be beautiful. Such vengeance befitted the great sinner: he who took upon himself the summit of a revered wife has fallen utterly. Use such marriage rites, adulterer. Alecto attends you as bridesmaid with these insignia, and to be placated... thus it is fitting, and thus Paris should perish.

We have dictated the laws of marriage not with words but with swords, laying waste to the harvest of presumptions with an avenging sickle. It will benefit many for their preservation that we lost our marriage. Say, wherever you have taken the name of wife, will not the name and virtue of Menelaus occur to her whenever vices steal in? Those for whom chastity is not a matter of zeal will have it, unless I am mistaken, in necessity: a uniform discipline will be preserved among all, where both the willing and the compelled observe one standard. XXVII. DICTIO. THE WORDS OF JUNO WHEN SHE SAW ANTAEUS PROVED EQUAL TO HERCULES IN STRENGTH. At last someone has been found who would answer to our judgment, who would triumph over our enemy even while being conquered. The Herculean strength, unless it crushes him, will not lie prostrate: he whom we have foreseen is proud even of his falls. He stands great by his own strength, but he will be greatest through his ruin. I do not know whether Hercules is able to be his equal, or whether Antaeus can by any means be laid low: but if adversity flatters our enemy, we have arrived at the laurels. We know the future, but it is fitting for the gods to speak as if human to mortals. Let Hercules choose what he thinks should be done. The enemy must be conquered when he engages, and must be conquered even when he lies prostrate. He who toyed with poisons in the cradle, who pacified the groves of Erymanthus, who outran the hind in speed, let him have the option of what to follow: either he will cast down the enemy about to perish, or, if he fears the contest, he will be already buried with his own rocks.

The Lernaean danger, unless I am mistaken, will arise from the completion of the contest. Who would not believe that nothing remains for him to accomplish, when the enemy is seen prostrate on the ground? But the purpose of our side will be roused by oppression, and the matter, successfully discharged against the enemy, will suggest a cause for increasing strength. XXVIII. DICTIO. [THE WORDS OF DIDO WHEN SHE SEES AENEAS DEPARTING.] Neither a divine parent of your race (nor Dardanian founder). As much as your cruelty teaches, you have lost the testimony of your lineage, which you falsely claim by reputation. It is established that he is not the son of Venus who loves nothing: the order of things is that character announces lineage, and that one follows the deeds of the author by whom he came into the light. The goddess of Idalia does not acknowledge one who does not know how to respond to benefits. It is not reputation that shows sons, but equality of conduct: if the conscience is different, the offspring is scarcely to be believed to be what it is called. Rather, the crags of Caucasian harshness gave birth to you, or a rocky womb poured you forth conceived in the recesses of mountains, and, lest nature soften the dire nourishment, Hyrcanian tigresses, snatching away safety from others, provided your sustenance: that savagery which slaughters nourished you. For what do I promise myself by dissimulation? Or why do I hang in suspense hoping for better things? He did not return tears for the tears I poured forth, tortured by his love: he did not console my groans with his own sighs, his heart being bloodstained.

In my sorrows, the only remedy, he did not show a fellow sufferer with equal grief, because it is almost alone in anxiety to have found a partner in the end. But what I should say, I know not, what I should leave unsaid, I know not. Neither the right eye of Juno nor the gaze of the highest Thunderer will endure that, after so many expenses, I be consumed by sequestration and have advanced nothing by my piety except to deserve not to be loved. Alas, faith driven out by all mortals, and what until now joined men to the gods, has been expelled! I took in a wretched shipwrecked man and subjected a queen to his authority, a captive while the lot of happiness remained: I made it so that a fugitive acted as a master over one who commanded. Now, inflamed with fury, I am tormented, and I groan why the possessor abandons me. So, summoned by Apollo's auguries, do you depart, and do you prefer the outcome of Lycian fate to the certain commands of one already remaining with you? Surely this cruelty is procured for the heavenly authors, and the interpreter of the gods drives a man to such excesses, that he flees the shores of one who loves as if they were hostile soil, that through storms he betrays the safety of one who flees only affection. Go, I will delay no longer. The way by which I am deserted holds my vengeance; the sea in its fury will hold judgment. I will hear the hoarse surges of swelling storms: you will call out the name of Dido among dangers, she who was a port and provided one; or certainly, what I fear, lest while I am avenged you die while I live, I will learn the outcome of the sought-after voyage after the enjoyment of light.

See the reward undeserved for crimes: I prefer to perish innocent before I perish deserving. Hard and untamed, he boasts himself born from the seed of Venus and, abjuring her, praises the lineage of the goddess. Therefore Venus brought forth one fleeing the name of love, and the mercy of a rabid heart poured forth poison.