Alethia

Prayer. Highest and holy God, source of all power, almighty, whom it is not lawful for human minds to grasp by the subtle investigation of things, nor to be ignorant of without sin; for by profound reason we believe you to be God in three, but three we believe as one, so that the specific forms of kind are rendered by an undivided substance, preserving the bonds of a pious union: you, without beginning, equally without end, everlasting, alone always the same and subject to no time, you exceed the space of things, wherever the recesses of the mind extend, by space, and are bounded by none; there is no place that contains you along with its dependent things, nor are you yourself more a place; nor is it lawful for the mind to touch what your image might be, because, constrained by no limit, form escapes the senses, or what motion might quicken you in blessed power, because you are always wholly everywhere: you are mind and the very substance of sacred mind, you are reason and the prudent source of full reason, you are power, the peak of power, and indeed you are life and the begetter of life and of deep light, you are true light, God, you are the cause and vigor of things. From you every thing that suddenly shone forth from nothing took its beginning and, filled by so great an author, either has the power of mind or received form in mind. Nature, preserved in its decaying parts, acknowledges you as lord, and the order given, maintaining its commanded sequence, confesses you: you, distinguishing teachable numbers, balancing weights, varying measures, guiding rhythms and motion, command the alternating changes and the perpetual return of things to stand, and with the image of mind set in motion by you, the world already rolls the ages.

You are not content to endow the created with a single gift, whatever it is that comes through you into use; and it is something more that something has been made better, and all things that are better lie hidden in part and, being pleasing in themselves, an inner cause also makes them please; some things sharpen their own vigor from others; certain opposites, if they contend, have more peace. Thus you, the rich creator, bind even opposing elements together and fill them with powers poured forth from the whole. And yet, though these things are in the majesty of creating, you lack none of these things which you generate, and of the completed world, and of the stable structure of things that endures through you, the work does not run for you, and it is ready in our gift. Your power is to be able to do all things; nor is your glory in this alone, that as a good author you do what must be provided, but also that you make the causes themselves able to provide, and you entwine secondary causes with the first, so that he who feels your gifts is himself your gift. By clear reason you have proved that for you alone, God, the cause for commanding that all things be born was goodness, when you first commanded spirits to live and to enjoy the world, which you held in your mind, and that it was given to sudden things to be and to yield widely, and to provide a shining seat in heaven and earth together for the angelic flock. Who granted free hearts and their own choice with a kind mind, so that the work of virtue might come to be, and so that you might also bestow this upon the merits of the pious, by providing that you would be a debtor.

Nor is it that from the first created beings you rule as one, while the one who envies the lord of light and of his own life and his own author, and seeks this title, preferred to be the author of evil and to bring death upon the earth, cast down from high Olympus with his accomplices in crime; it is not lawful to prescribe anything to sacred virtue, which is content to have done good: nor was it lawful for anyone to lack the gift of God, and this is the sum of nourishing praise, nor to have denied life and sensation to the ungrateful, and the kingdom of the mind through all its own activities. For what fruit is there in the begotten, unless the mind is free? The mind is utterly free for no one, unless it is lawful to perish. That this is a given right, no one would have proven except by sinning. To this I add, that all things, diverse in themselves, hold an examination by comparison in turn, and from this it is given to all to be able to perish, so that living might be sweeter, and the mutual measure of alternating danger would yield to merit, when the severe judge doubles the rewards of the saints by the punishment of the wicked, or because—let it be lawful to have said this beforehand, trembling, with your peace, father—perhaps it is greater in your sight not to have sinned in the slippery times of life than for the wretched to have sinned in evil.

But let the majesty see to that, as the judgment of the future may hold itself; this is enough for us, that through you, inspiring the noble work of reason from base dust, you raised up man, so that, ungrateful to his lord, he might also overcome such an enemy, and when he was snatched by the deceit of savage poison into the snares of death and to impious Tartarus, you soon deigned to take up a body with your own blood, and, sought from the abodes of Erebus with greater care, you restored him more perfectly than he was made, and you give him back to eternal life and bear him with you into heaven, the enemy subdued. Now, no one may rashly accuse father Adam, that by violating the light commandment and dissolving the law, he opened the way to death. That penalty of the first parent was worth so much, because it is greater to conquer death than not to have known how to die. Now, happy from the ancestral court, he looks down upon the heavenly poles, treads upon the stars, and calls the ministers appointed for the coming kingdoms, whom the wisdom of the Father, the Word, has again formed with waters and taught to be reborn, which waters the whole world bore. In this, I pray you, kind God, who with inclined power grant feeling to minds and compel truth in hearts, and make even an ignorant prophet speak, grant to me as I pray, while I prepare to shape tender minds and hearts for the true path of virtue in the years of boyhood, what the renowned writings of the lawgiver Moses unfold: what is the origin of the sky or what the beginnings of the world, and what secret faith the plague that shook the whole growth and error that descended deep into morals, and by what path truth may return and drive out profane rites and unlock the sacred mysteries of eternal life.

Give also a mind, give fitting times to the mind, give zeal, so that diligence may not be lacking for such a task, and the good sense of study, which runs over all known things by right and encloses them in a strong embrace; do not condemn the gift, though I, so guilty, dare it. Forgive all the crimes I have committed, O gracious one; and you have given strength, sense, merit to souls. But if by the law of meter the order has erred anywhere, if the speech has erred in impropriety and the sense wavers—let it be permitted to run through the verse carelessly here and there—let no danger to faith arise from this measure, by the laws of Christ, who as Son alone with you thrives equally in majesty, where the nourishing Spirit lives and reigns, undetected by minds, through ages of ages, the solemn Amen which is consecrated to you. ALETHIA BOOK ONE Before the poles and the day of heaven and the darkness of the world, before the forms of works or things or the seeds of things, eternal, without end backward, without end future, to whom it always belongs to be, there was one God, with whom the begotten Word, God, lived, and at the same time the nourishing Spirit, the vital sum of hidden power. A single substance, quickening itself in a threefold bond, unbegotten, always blessed itself in power and reigned mightily, in the majesty of creating already seeing things and the causes of things and future events, and discerning the ages to be begotten in a capacious mind, and whatever times roll, always holding it present.

immense in its blessed mass was his own kingdom, nor did the kingdom lack a witness, a threefold power, a god, who first, from no seed, giving bodies to things while compelling things to exist, to make our gift, which he alone possessed, he alone knew the work, the rich world, absolving, he generated all things simultaneously, but brought them forth in a specific origin, distinguishing them by a fixed limit in their parts, so that motion might now establish times in a series. For it is not, as the tongue of sacrilegious madness perceived, a mindless chance, while it rolled unknowing seeds, that twisted such a prudent work, nor is it right to say that he was born before the day, because things born in time are moved, and there was no time then, nor to believe that he always held eternal and stable vigor in the past; for what consists of bodies must be admitted to have begun. For body, which a blow wears away, which time dissolves and abolishes by the very end that tends to the ultimate, shows a beginning, so that what is proven to have been allotted must be considered either made or thought to be born. For things that are born are carried with time in motion, times running after the mass of the world are born, which is prior. And it is necessary that what consists of bodies cannot be proven to have been able, but can be admitted to have been made. Therefore it is established that the world was made, which everyone, subdued, agrees and, convinced by true doctrine, believes; he conceded that a god made it, who by the power of the word and by might, whatever is thought to be nature, arranged, commanded, warned, and the created gift, always reforming fleeting things in successive turns, sustains and, drawing back the swift, whirls the orb around.

And if he should prefer to dissolve everything swiftly, he would take being away from things, and not only this being, but he would remove from the past that which he knows existed by reason. How great is the father's power, how great the glory of the word! What measure is there in the whole, what sum in the gift, of which the lofty vault of the sky and the lying lands are the first part? But the sea had covered the lands, and in the middle the air, dripping with a foul cloud, the blind shadow of the sky oppressed with thick darkness. And the sacred spirit, hanging over the extended waters, gave life to the nurturing waters and gave the seeds of things, to be poured forth for the germination of the not yet composed lands, to be insinuated, when light, sent in from above, shone forth, compelled by God, and, separating, the black shadow drew back its veil and departed from high Olympus! And it cast the middle waters before it, and fleeing, it was soon behind the pursuer. Thus the boundary of day imposed a name on the spaces of light, and the darkness, poured back onto the world, made the interrupted night equal. Again a new morning: with the first evening already driven off, the restored light shone, when a very solid mass, stretching from the middle waters with a concrete body, rose up and, solidified with hard rigidity far and wide, suspended the divided waters and exposed the cold deep to the hot axes, and, with the sea fenced off, leaning, it poured itself over the things which it enclosed in a vast circuit and stripped the ancient sky of its name.

Perhaps someone here, with a learned error, might argue with himself thus: that the ethereal flames may not lack fuel, and that excessive heat, seeking the depths by following its nourishment, might burn up the mortal race, and that the earthly realm cannot endure the gleaming sky, for it is placed below; the firm framework of the pole, which protects us with its shadow, is also veiled by waters. But let our mind flee far from seeking such causes: it is better for you always to believe that God can do whatever is thought impossible. And prove by their own reasoning that the great sea is borne above the stars and constellations, those who refuse to believe and who wish the world to hang, which the Creator himself, governing by an incomprehensible reason, carries and turns, constant in its immense weight. The third day saw the swollen waves recede, when God, the waves of the already driven-back flood having been pushed aside, opened up a great void in the airy spaces. Then for the first time the dry, lowest part of the world showed its uncovered face, and, trembling at the power of the word, the dark blue seas encircled the bared lands. These lands, quickly ordered to grow green with varied offspring, were covered by luxuriant new shoots from the mud, and the forest, bursting forth rough from the tender turf, tossed itself about with joyful foliage, and the crops themselves, each bearing its own seed, bore witness to the sower.

Now three periods had passed, and the matter, roused by swift motion, was ordered to gather itself into a sphere of fire and flame. The first day of the sun was established, and the sown seeds of light scattered their rosy tresses from a purple kindling. The moon, the honor of night, shone either by its own light or, struck by the arriving sphere, reflected its rays back, hanging below the sun on a lower path. And the stars, painting the world with distinct zones, made the ethereal flowers vibrate with varied colors, and the dark blue night marveled at the sky shining with more adorned darkness, while darts fused from ruddy flames glittered and urged on new stars with lively casts. That radiance veils with rays and covers with a certain night of deep light, and, marked by a fixed limit, dividing the seasons, after completing a fixed station, and by the numerous turns of the headlong pole, to return, once ordered to go, the revolving year completes itself and confesses the sacred craftsman by its wondrous structure. The fifth day stirred breathing bodies in the sea, which liquid easily generated and scattered through the deep—delights of the sea, which nature formed in wondrous ways from varied seeds, and which, ordered to create, compels parts to live for the whole and also for themselves, and sent a soul into brute shapes. And the scaly backs of the swollen sea, swelling in the gulf, would rise without end, stuffed with soft fat, did not a swift limit prescribe a boundary to their vast age. The generative liquid itself favors its nurslings, which also nourishes the earth's offspring and dissolves the accumulated limbs rather than the moisture had extended them. Hence the birds also, a soft kind, drew their vigor.

while it shapes the liquid waters, and the sea, once poured in, receives life, the swelling waters again seethe with a birth not their own, and soon, from the deep, a scaly throng is released, rising to the topmost waves; what once flitted over the waters now gradually swims in clear air and teaches this creature, born again from the gleaming waves, that it can reach the ethereal heights. Already twice six days had shone on bright Olympus, the third after the warm gifts of the generative sun, and already the warming earth had loosened its pregnant limbs, when the god, stirring greater things, commanded the earth to bring forth every animal that is animated only by the power of motion, to which it is given to serve as the use of things demands. No delay: the vital offspring burst forth from the fertile lands, each allotted its own kind of form, already in need of a master, for whose sake all things were prepared, who alone is able to create even what must be done. From this point, let it be permitted for me to touch briefly on some things, to pass over others in anxious haste deep within, and to report some things altered, transmitted through a changed sequence. After the order given generically brought forth all things, which, at God's command, the omnipotent Son, full of the parent's mind, would make, and the Holy Spirit, filled with true goods and rich endowment, would approve and foster to endure in a long succession, a cause nearer to the world is given, to which a prior just cause corresponds in turn. Now the world existed, now the stars and the rising, the ether and the glassy sea and the green lands: unless a spectator is present, for whom such great glory of the mass

Let it fill and lead the eager one through each thing with his eyes—what can they contribute to God? There is no possession if the possessor of things is absent. Then the ruler of Olympus said: “The sum has been given to the work; all that I have created is good. Now let us make man,” he said, “who will rule on earth and be the image of God. It is fitting that the creator be like the one who, free in will, enjoys the things created with his mind.” He had said this, and man was made, either in his whole body without soul and form, perhaps in the manner of future things, as he makes what is to be made, as he always had what was made already near to the past time that had not yet come. And soon he ordered the one placed over things, together with his spouse, to increase through offspring and fill the empty lands. Now, with God speaking thus well, the nature of creating was imposed on all things that move by themselves alive. The seventh day saw the great parent cease, but only the numbers of kinds cease to create and hold his rest, and it was rightly consecrated, which saw the diverse work; for this too is full of virtue: that God ceased, that he set aside his labors. For the form of the offspring, by which they might prepare worthy rewards, it was enough for the lord to have looked upon for twice six days: the seventh day taught the venerable examples of rest, which it commands peoples to hope for as a gift for the life always to be granted after the deeds of the pious. This also is that day on which Christ loosed dread Tartarus and, with Avernus conquered, opened the way back, while he rests on earth about to return to his father’s hall. Thus God knows how to cease, thus to take leisure, so as to do more by ceasing.

equally without end resting and without end working, and mixing the sequence and the times, by ceasing he completes the work, whatever he had created, so that he may act and first endow man with a body, who was last—for establishing the causes of things is not the same as giving limbs—or, when the seventh day runs thus, so that the sixth day also remains, because the sixth day is indeed to God what the first is, to him who always has everything ready, which flee from us, after any times the highest author still fashions man on the sixth day in such light, or, so that he may teach that we rightly surpass created things, whom he himself makes by hand, he now more clearly brings forth what man was made, and with this solid thing he intimates to the world: 'All things which move, generated by the soul commanding, you working by God.' How great a one could bring worthy sacred praises to the parent, who unfolded the world and all things swiftly by command, and while he commands, completed being? We are made by delay, he deigns to surround us with the care of sacred zeal and urges that the work of almost labor be accomplished; for he seizes the clay, which yields easily and follows the shape and form wherever it is led by art, and unfolds into appearance what he already carried in his sacred mind, and with breath sent in as vapor, life watered the earth. The earth, softened by liquid, partly became flesh: blood, which is a slippery fluid, distends the soft veins through known channels: and man is already full of mind, and, thrust from the earth, he leaps up and, prudent, adores the lord with reason.

not otherwise does true faith believe that bodies rise from broken tombs when majesty, having slipped from the open sky, unlocks the hollow bowels of the pregnant earth. For what it did not have, when from the topmost dust, with God informing it, lacking its own power, it produced, it is easy that the same judge returns what it received when commanded. Thus the whole form of the future is what was previously born, and while Adam himself is so constituted, that the repeated narrative doubles the sacred gift, it is prefigured that peoples will be reborn sometime. From whose given font and highest origin even then, the fortunate land opens the eastern recesses where, on a higher globe, the pleasant grove of paradise is planted and distinguished by the order of a rounded wood. Here, where the boundary is already marked by equal spaces of the sun and eternal spring tempers the hours equally, there each tree stands rich with its own fruits, and mild fruits are driven out by successive fruits, which are pleasing to the eyes and full of wondrous vigor, they nourish and feed limbs and minds with flavor and fragrance. The earth, distinct, vibrates with starry colors, always with new flowers, and those dry with a dry covering already loosen fragile stalks, animated by the vigor of an ambrosial gift, they pour forth breathing cinnamons, but neither what the Mede smells of nor what the Achaemenian with loosened hair is fragrant with, nor what the wealthy Assyrian with soft amomum, nor the Mareotic harvest red with nard, nor the Tartessian shrubs, nor the Sabaean branch,

and the branch of Palestine weeps from a torn wound, while the breezes cease to infuse a different sense. For God has packed together here all things equally, which nature received separately in fixed places: and while the grove, stirred by a gentle breeze, vibrates with motion, it blends a nectar from diverse scents into one, and a new gift arises, which no single tree claims for itself, and trembling, gently tossed by a pleasing rustle, it quivers with stirred leaves, the whole tree resounds, the forest sings a hymn to God, and the modulated breeze whistles songs: nor does the empty motion shake the air in vain, since with the author, who binds things to things under one mass by an alternating law and holds them back, nothing is empty nor does any appearance hold an empty form. And perhaps the grove itself and the shimmering forests are proofs of the works and plantations of things, and what comes into human cultivation under a bare name has a definite body there and flourishes on its own stem. Glory is simplicity, zeal is vigilance, sleep is care, health is terror, eloquence is grace, motion and emotion are stimuli of the soul, guardianship is virtue, and everything that the world has, because it is born there, thrives here and stirs minds and supplies senses. But this is enough for faith: that from a joyful seed rising, the tree of life here seeks the air with lofty fruits, and there, with a different fruit that will harm, the expertise of things has hung the examination from the tree of the law. But the lap of the sacred grove, which the forest crowns, a spring waters and enriches the offspring of Ditis with virtue, joyfully releasing its swollen head into a fourfold stream,

richer than the ocean; for here a constant stream readily gives its own waters, while there it receives all and does not feel the waters. The one that grows from such great floods poured in is less than the one that knows not how to diminish from rivers poured out. But first the river Pison leaps forth exulting, the fourth part of the blessed spring, yielding the gifts that prudence gives by nature, and fills the peoples of the Ganges and the realms of the Evileans, spreading out the lands with mud and rolling seeds that make the fields fertile. Where it lies barren with bare sands, amid gleaming fragments of gold metal, the carbunculus blazes with lightning fire, shining with a ruddy glow, and the emerald radiates with a green shimmer. Nor is Geon lesser, but with gentler waves it raises the Nile's waters and, about to burn, covers the fields with a pious flood, and, contending with the sky, tempers the breezes of the Ethiopians with refluent pools. Third, the Tigris runs forth with a swift current, a companion to the Euphrates; joined together, they rush with such force that the conquered earth, opened by a hollow abyss, swallows them, until in the glades of Armenia and the pastures of Media, it vomits forth the rivers it could not hold nor now contain. 'But the Tigris, as if indignant at black Avernus, leaps forth into the ethereal breezes with a greater motion.

and again it enters caves and, submerged in caverns, within it roars and, made stronger by the barrier, is multiplied by the waters and, swifter in the narrow cave, it exits and cuts through the Assyrian plains with a swift stream. The Euphrates is more just, which, generous with its rich flood, irrigates the dry fields of subject Persia drawn off into gentle channels and serves all equally and offers itself entirely for human uses, until, dry of waters, it also consumes its very name, prodigal, on the lands, which it owed to the sea's waves. This kingdom, therefore, rich with all of nature's offspring, these delights, endowed with so many and such great gifts of virtues, is the first possession of the first man, into which he was led, commanded to rejoice in eternal life as a dweller: and already among the first gifts, while he is still worthy and learns to earn by labor, he enjoys the fruit of full virtue, having attained it, free from cares and ignorant of desire, he lived. So great is the merit before the author for the name of the highest to have not yet merited anything evil. How much do we think the father could pay for a life returning to the times, when among his servants even then the first largesse, not a reward, was paradise? And that the decrees of strict law bore and repressed freedom, still promises greater things to the good and preserves rewards, he who established the cause in merits, when he said 'remember to eat from all trees: only fear this one, which, bearing swarms of different things, then you will have known good, when with profane bite it is harmed, it will make you know evil, which the punishment of death follows.

By this law given, reason teaches the high parent that he did not wish man to become mortal, but to be worthy of life, worthy of the small observance that would make him so. How great is the indulgence of the great God! That our praise should be his work, which he spontaneously and kindly bestows on his servants, he desires to be our labor, and he prefers to seem to owe what he gives. But you, whom the guardianship of sacred law binds, do not complain that your confined freedom is deprived of a part within narrow bounds: nothing has been cut off from you by this law. Before, you were only granted power over land and sea; now you have rule over life and eternal life, now also over death. Then, so that the raw inhabitant of the world might believe that the pious parent had granted everything to him, God commanded every animal that the earth, ordered to give, had created and, with silent seed flourishing in the body, had poured forth, to be present and obey its own tyrant, and after the highest summons to speak the names, by which the servant would fix the names of things, Adam: admonished by the lord among such great gifts of life, who gave both life and a proper name. Nor is there delay: every kind of nature stands before God, wherever in the new world it was created. They come together, so dissonant in motion, within the space of a single time: those strong in effort, those soft and slow in step, those swift and most rapid in course, those rushing headlong or prone to glide through the air, or those supported by the sea and carried slippery by their weight.

The father instructed, endowing with diverse gifts, and armed with hand, horn, foot, tooth, venom, and other things, with which he fortified the work, lacking in skill and of lesser mind, that was formed solid. But no living creature flourished with a form, face, and bearing equal to man, and when compared closely, it added greater honor, and among so many illuminating life in a double sex, only he was unequal, who long had, ignorant of generating, suitable material in himself for a spouse to be produced. Therefore, the god undertakes the known work, and quickly dissolving the languid heart of the man with so great a sleep, he, powerful in mind, draws out a rib, while the flesh, ordered to follow, rises and the receding skin does not mix an opening between bone and middle, but snatches it uninjured from the limbs and healthy body. Opening this, soon arranged through various limbs, it received form, and, animated by warm marrow, drew the work of life, now pleasing in the second sex, and, permitted to her own, was called Eve by her husband. Now, most foolish crowd, cease at last to think anything stands before the sacred parent: why indeed was the woman formed from the man's limbs first of all, when she could be shaped from soft dust, and could be from nothing. This is the true cause, lest natural order rather assume for itself, or because man is from man and it would clearly be established for the world that all things were made at once then, so that a certain kinship

He would mingle the love of his own care with another, forcing himself to recognize himself in another's limbs. Hence it is that ignorant Adam felt he had received a part of himself: new grace touched his mind, and affection, received into familiar flesh through the eyes, rushed in and penetrated the bones with such heat that it now gave him to know what name a wife has for a husband, what sweet children and parents to be set aside for spouses. What then? That two should remain in one flesh, living an eternal life together, would have been—for while they lacked the vices and stain of the earth, they thrived with divine spirits, lacking none of the wealth the world gave: they did not bear bodies subject to diseases, nor were they nurslings of the belly; food was only for delight, and what use demanded was not yet a support for life, and the immortal soul flourished on its own—had not the dire serpent, goaded by the venom of a greater evil, persuaded unwary Eve to dissolve the law with such deceits: 'O race of men, ignorant of a better life and of good things! For he who does not know how to distinguish how diverse things differ from goods, knows not goods either. And therefore God did not wish it to be lawful for man to pluck the august fruits, lest, with the cloud of the mind removed, they give eyes to the mind and, teaching what things are best, the other part through all secrets make the skilled like gods.' Here now I must digress a little.

Let it be permitted to lament the foul ruins of the ancients. O too wretched pagans, whom madness drove into various rites! It is clear in what death the profane have utterly fallen. The plural name of the gods first sounded from the impious voice of the dread serpent, who was then the cause of death. For after credulous Eve broke the prescribed command with sacrilegious bites, already taught by experience of evil, she seeks solace for her guilt and, about to draw her husband easily into crime, she aims with the same art by which she perished first. Thus, overcome by the enemy, wretched Adam yields to a twin sin and tasted the most seductive fruit with its sacred juice. But because the severe prescriptions of the law lay hidden in these, bringing death more than viper's venom, as soon as they violated their limbs with the unlawful taste, they immediately felt the wrong, and the accomplished crime grew and struck their hearts with an ignorant sensation. Hence fear, hence shame: for before it was given to live naked and to be ignorant, while the hearts of rough men, full of nourishing vigor, conscious of high things and bearing breasts intent only on the world and heaven, always turned toward the high parent, as they noted the miracles of divine secrets with the splendor of an almost incorporeal mind, the care of their own limbs had not yet touched them, maddened by a better soul, nor could the motion, which would make known whatever is necessary, penetrate bodies not yet to be dissolved into old age.

After the perennial vigor of life abandoned the now mortal animal, then cold and heat succeeded to the aerial changes, and men, lacking covering, felt themselves and blushed secretly at their own sex. With silent, pitiable laments, they weave new coverings from the leaves of the fig tree, joined together, covering the body after the fault, a covering that will expose the shame received in the mind. Nor is this enough for the fearful. What should they do, where should they flee the branded crime and themselves? They would wish, if it were possible, to hide themselves in the earth: so much is the penalty contiguous to its own fault, that now the wretched, fearing the mortal, are helped by the image of death. They offer forests and shady lairs, vain consolations, false hiding places. For where is it permitted for you, timid one, to withdraw your body, you, you, I say, who soon are to be the first to be drawn back, Adam? The living power of the father of the world, most hidden, is present, and fills and spreads out through immense recesses. But it is truly wrong to cheat the fearful of their hiding place. He can escape the highest lord while fleeing, who flees to the lord, whom only by leaving with the mind do you lie in such vast darkness and not in concealment. Calling with a voice, "Where are you?" equally testifies to both. For why does God, seeing you, ask where you are, and, to whom you will always be present, from whom you cannot steal yourself by your own theft, not even death itself can, which you underwent with a fragile mind, why does he ask where you are, unless that, having fallen by your own will, he confesses that you are not with him, and that you have fallen from the sacred heaven? But the holy

Piety forbids despair, whose clemency—if it is right for me to have said it, let it also be right to have approved what was said—exceeds justice. Nor does it so much hold you, rebuking you with a stern voice where you are, what you turn over in your trembling heart, as it revives you, because it still, after crimes, calls forth and recalls the fallen one, plunged into fear and hiding places and almost buried. Let not long examples be sought: the very gift of guilt proves the master to be gentle. After the examination, having shaken out the guilty, distinguished the highest offenders, the Almighty begins—heaven, sea, earth tremble at his speaking, and shaken, open up vast recesses, and while the sentence punishes the guilty, he made Tartarus: 'Since you considered it safe to depart from our commands, through the chain of crime by which guilt ran, this censure of mine will justly strike the new guilty. Among all things, which we ordered to enjoy throughout the whole world, you will be accursed, and worse than what you hide within, envious mind, serpent, who cast down created men from entering heaven and, by your fraud, you are the origin of harsh death for those driven to touch forbidden fruits. So that a measure of punishment equal to the crime may follow—you plunged men into the earth: and you, stretched out on the unjust ground, will furrow the hard earth with your breast; you made them sin with foods: for such audacities you too will always eat the squalid entrails of the earth. And because it pleased you, worthy of yourself, that you be the first inventor of death, you will die a bloody punishment.

hatred of the human race, specially arming you with savage poisons against your entire kind, so that you may destroy more, I will command that you always be feared. And you, who rejoice in the first woman subdued by your deceit, living lower than the feet, prone in breast, you will only ambush the soles of the feet in such a way that, trembling, she will even fix her steps on your head.' He spoke and, pale, began thus against Eve: 'But you, who thought that you alone would destroy the fruit, thinking it a small crime, already with a mind for harming, having plotted against your husband and dominated by so great a crime, you will provide a servile yoke and, subjected, you will endure the harsh judgment of a man, suffering labors with constant misfortunes, so that, what you first dared to begin, to multiply the wickedness, you will be turned about by many dangers, and, giving birth to many children, you will be so tormented that those whom your fault will cause to be created as mortals will sometimes be the cause of death for their torn mother.' 'You also, who preferred to die willingly, having dared to set aside our warnings and the first bonds of salvation for womanly deceits, receive such a lot as guilty: the earth, which you will furrow with the plow, let it be cursed by your crimes. Let it bear thorns and threatening brambles even when cultivated, and let your wicked hope deceive your wish. You ceased to serve me with a faithful mind: let not the earth keep faith with you. You, to live happily,

He lived in delights and through all ages willingly; you refused: now live in harsh labor, live in miseries, until slow old age makes you earth, which you more are, and pours you back into the earth.' He spoke and, pitying them, covers their ignorant limbs with the hide of beasts to defend them from the sky and teaches them to guard their life. But lest Adam, driven by fear of death, should dare the crime again which he bore in his mind—if, ignorant of things, seeking back the proud support of the life-giving tree after the ultimate cause, by no father's art redeemed, he would live and the already mystical order in the world would totter and heavier things would remain for the wretched and always guilty—the winds, which the deep forest's grove stirs up, immediately drive the ordered ones to depart from the sacred groves—but the air, carrying and balancing them in a whirling bond, holds them, and the spirit, with nature inclining, seizes the whole sky—and, brought back to the lands, whence the given body, they set them down with softened breeze, sharers of such great space and sharers of danger, but not sharers of the grief which stirs the heart. Where they fell, what they lost, what life follows, what life was, sad comparison vexes the mind, which heaps up more diverse things, and they turn over within themselves how different they now are, how much each changed seeks himself, doubtful whether to ascribe this to the first sin and punishment, to know the force of evil which error compelled,

Is this to die, or, if heavier things remain, is a return given to the wretched, or do they lose what remains in an eternal end, or, when the path of bitter death has burst upon the world and future peoples through the wood, can life still return through some wood? ALETHIA BOOK TWO Thus far I have run through the secret sequence, the beginnings of the world, as pure faith lay open, without fraud, while the earth lacked vices worthy of death. Now the customs of men and already mortal things it is permitted for the poet, entering verse, to mingle with truth. After each was ordered to depart from the sacred dwellings and realms and touched the ancestral fields and stood an exile on his own soil, pitiable, with what countenance the rude colonists marvel at the barbarous countryside, which does not grow green, distinguished by a fruit-bearing trunk. Nor does any appearance of the soil help, but a brute mass placed by forced weight, not set in a chosen heap. Steep rocks are stiff, low places labor oppressed by woods, plains lie hidden by grass, heights bristle with brambles. Alas, with what eyes do they behold these things, with what heart do they perceive them, whose minds hold paradise! Nor is the cause of grief

One thing remains: the face of all evils now fully unfolds, but also the memory of good things. Now that sacred grove's honor shines with greater serenity, now the blessed forest yields its wealth more abundantly, now the use of sweeter fruits and nectar-like flavor, now the living flowers breathe forth fragrance and the absent earth stings with its sad scent. O paradise, how unequally you repay merits! You exalt yourself more by comparison with worse things, and you make worse what alone remains for the wretched. Here the nourishing love of life perishes; scarcity of things already makes death sweet, unless greater need succors with a heavier evil; for the rage of eating, inflaming the guts, drives them through all the greedy things which the barren forest gives, and compels them to seek out doubtful meals from the roots of malignant herbs everywhere, and such a life to escape, which hunger itself, which forced the will, cannot make possible. Finally, destitute of all things which use requires and lacking resources, the ultimate thing taught them to hope for the help of the highest father: both prostrate, limbs on the ground, with tears alone and mute grief, while shame withdraws words from unjust complaints, they grow old in inaction. But after the mind is restored, rising up at last, Adam prays with such a supplication: "Almighty author of the world and creator of things, woe to me from the stain of evil! While a happy life remained and swift minds were given to see beyond the stars...

to be able to follow, spread far and through all things, always covering the sight with an overwhelming brightness—with these eyes, as if they were beholding the mind's hidden secrets, I saw what, by its own nature, cannot be seen. Now too, after the fault, with the sacred light stripped away, although the better mind has fled, carried freely through the whole, and in the closed cave of the earthly prison nothing remains for us to know of truth except mortal things, only the feeling that all things are full of you has remained. And therefore, almighty one, who are always wholly everywhere, we flee to you, praying with trembling mind: hear the wretched, whom you always see and hear, if, when he wished to bind me to the condemned part—that author of crimes, guilty of the world and enemy of himself, daring nothing alone lest he be defeated and yield—through the wretched serpent, whose mind was incautious, by his art and through the affection which both sexes feel, the unforeseen fraud of the craftsman of crimes subdued me, and, when I was condemned with a just penalty for the crime, I so regretted the fault, my mind so struck with grief, that it became indignant with itself, so that I thought you, most gentle judge, then granted me vengeance against myself. For that reason I denied both groans and tears to the cause, because I, the guilty one, proved myself unworthy of pardon, and, embracing in my mind the sweet consolations of punishment, I will count this very thing among these sacred gifts after this, that I was condemned, as a substitute for pardon of the crime. Therefore it is not dreadful. But with serene majesty

Willingly hear those who pray, not against your commands, nor those now demanding with tears what you will freely grant to your servants by your own kind will—that the severity may relax itself, but that the full sentence may retain all its force. Moved, you ordered me to seek my livelihood from the soil: therefore, to the condemned fields, arms for moving must be given—to give barren thickets and clinging thorns instead of fruit: so first the pure ground must be sown for me, that the crop sought by labor may deceive my hopes—to weave bread from the constant seed of herbs: give to my mind what the herbs are, what the form of labor, give, father, your merciful aid and imbue my senses. Then it will be that, master of things and sure of salvation, Eve will serve me, and, having experienced the cruel punishment of creating, she will bear peoples who are punished by our crime, and the succession, purging the sins of the fathers through the deaths of the grandsons, will make the punishment eternal. To such ones praying, the image of the false serpent, seen by a silent fear, turning itself onto a hidden path, gently to the soft tracts with quivering grasses, turned the trembling ones, shaken from the sluggish grief of old age, into kindred angers. And Eve first to her husband: 'If the supreme cause of evils moves you, seize stones with your hand; the opportunity is given to give the author of death to death. She who first ruined me and you must teach by her own punishments and bloody death how sad it is to die.

He spoke, and they follow the arrow that has slipped away in its flight and with missiles and rocks they whirl, one of which, drawn back higher to give an easy throw, with a sure arm obeys their prayers, follows their eyes and soul, and rebounds from the bare flint in a mid-course serpent, and strikes a spark, which, fed by dry tinder, soon became a flame, a crested fire spreading widely, and already blooms white with dry smoke. They had shuddered and sought hiding-places with a trembling step, but fear itself holds the terrified, and reveals the shrewd care of human vice, that they wish to see again what is fearful, and, a little withdrawn, on the barren back of the earth they marvel at the shady tresses of the woods having fallen prostrate, at the ashes soiling, at the day growing dark, at the whole lands gleaming, and at a new light beneath the sun. Nor do they accept with a quiet mind the crackling from the hissing woods on all sides and the surging globes of flames being carried to the stars, while the devouring fire, sunk deep, stretches its roots to the lowest depths; once the raw earth, conquered by the heat it has absorbed, opens its veins to generous gifts, and, when it has been dried of all moisture, it itself begins to become moisture, and metals flow in streams.

each to its own. The tawny torrent flashes with the highest honor of gold, gleaming white milk flows forth as silver, the slippery hardness of bronze wanders and coalesces into a soft mass with its body dissolved, and the livid clod of steel. Thus broken Aetna from its furnaces spews forth hissing sulphurs mixed with flames, while they are slippery and hot; but when they feel the tempering of the breathable air, they stiffen and quickly turn into a glittering clod, the dry liquid congealed by fire, and become an inert body. They marvel that the various streams thus halt, which, while the heat fails them, they now watch with eager eyes, and they receive a pleasing color into their limbs and follow what they once feared. They felt the help of the god and rejoice as the accused, and no fault followed the first virtue, that their prayers yielded to their wish, and they report to the highest parent as accepted what fire gave, both fire and mind, and revealed to what use the mind is needed. I hold it certain that the parents, having explored the sacred gift, measured everything with eager eyes, but first applied their hands to the rich gold, which already strikes minds with its thunderbolt and subdues them with the gleam of precious poison, nor does it satisfy until, with great weight, it conquers the wondering ones and, like a hard rock slipping from a purple fish, wounds them and teaches that an easy wound can be suffered on a damaged body. Suddenly a new care came over the astonished ones, sharpens their minds, and reminds them to follow chance as a master with skill. Then with the weight of a hard stone they strike alternately in turns, and bend and drag.

into various species, the mass yielding to the blows. No labor shapes it, but once conquered it quickly loses its form here, because the material, unequal to great efforts, receives attention but deceives use. Therefore they seek something harder; but here too gold pleases, because it has taught that a metal is more useful when it is rigid. Then, to that which has a nearer beauty and a secondary vein, they go to silver, which, more yielding than gold, is more patient of service. But bronze is stronger, that which is less conspicuous. Soon, with bronze as master, use, transferred into hard steel, came to a halt. Perhaps also all the chances that opinion fashions, our lyre, opened by silent heat, could run through in verse: how the richest earth, after the clods are boiled down, stirs itself into various offspring, which, with rain as husband, the putrid field, parturient, dissolves in a flowing stream, whereupon the swollen folds burst, and the raised harvest stands forth and, waving, trembles with moved ears, so that a new settler might learn the appearance of a cultivated crop; and how the greedy flock, running from all sides to such great prey—the race of birds and beasts and the lesser throng, the black cohort, the larger ones thrusting seeds into their own fodder—might inculcate into their bodies the friends of life.

the material for closer food and every subsequent service, docile to the care that study received. Practice always taken from the examples of teachers produced the work of art: but false glory, known to the father, cries out in protest: let use claim nothing for itself here, let chance, bereft of virtue, claim nothing: I, to be known through what I have created, gave the good things that exist along with light to the lesser world, and whatever the greater world holds, to be known by a sacred sense, and I willed myself to be known through these things.' And would that it remained unimpaired, as the mind was given to man, and subject to no fault: not the appearance of things, not the bodies of things, not the pattern of the stars, nor the number of grains of sand would deceive it. But how vast the spaces over which the earth stretches with deep sea, what the measure of the completed mass, what sound the sevenfold axis makes with its vocal melody of harmony, is now learned by use and given by constant study, and what is inborn is thought to be art. Nor does a man, made dull by a cloud of evils, perceive that, if he first believes he recognizes something, each person recognizes it again. Therefore let him cling to this highest limit of truth. When Adam was driven from his august abode, he performed no other duty first than one worthy of a wife and bestowed unknown loves on his children. Amid so many cares, for whom it was sweet to create, life was sweet. He who approved a sweet life lived with God as his guide: nor was there a lack of offspring

that would instruct life, that would equip for action with experience. And now the house, full of children, had brought wondrous comforts to the unskilled, and in the tender heart of their parents, multiplied, it lightened heavy cares and labors, and hope already arose to rejoice in their own servants in the tasks of the countryside, of whom the eldest by age, Cain, was turning the rich fields with hard rakes; while Abel, most worthy of rejoicing in living profit, was pasturing harmless sheep on the bare hills or on the seed of the dry field, and providing milk for his parents. After the long-awaited fruits had satisfied their joys and they marveled that their vows were encircled by sacred favor, the offerings of their works reminded their minds to dedicate the first fruits to the just God. The former first consecrates the sacred altars with new crops; the latter sacrifices more with a snow-white lamb, first a type of priests, soon an impious sacrifice of a brother, but even then imbued with a sign of the future and an indication of the pious. For when Cain noted his brother’s sacred offerings accepted, while he himself, sacrificing nothing from his crop, was not granted a sign—whether because the other had chosen first and polluted the feast, or because in a single moment, seeing the present, he was guilty of the future, his mind already harmful—from that dreadful fountain, from which the serpent and the mother drank, he drank poison and, his brother unaware and unwary, he slaughtered him with a savage murder. Alas, the crime! What do not mad lust, fresh anger, old hatred, and shamelessness drive wretched men to do?

that harass peoples with struggles of crimes, so much if a crime he committed, who grieved that a brother, more holy than himself, had been. No fault now remains of the parents. And let no one think that any complaint at least about the serpent survives, because we die: before we began to be killed. How much the first offspring added to crime! To say that death was introduced to the world as a name for punishment is scarcely worthy: impiety made the crime a new one. Parents atone for sins only by death: you dissolve punishments by death and will pay for death, worse than the accursed serpent. For that one urged death, did not inflict it: but you will be the first author of slaughter. The public enemy follows you, the private bandit follows you, crimes punish you with armed weapons, swords, and avenging steel. Every crime is your soldiery, and the future people will perish less by a commanded death than by slaughter; the sum returns to you. Nor does that example wholly displease the customs, that human blood first began to be shed with a brother's blood, so that a like crime may feel admitted, by which crime it is established that he renewed a brother's wickedness, with reason teaching that every death of a man not killed by the first lot is the death of a brother. Then, dripping with such slaughter, he does not spurn — so great is the clemency — deeming him worthy of address, and the one denying the crime he convicts and punishes so lightly for the crime, seeking the measure of punishment from part of the deed, so that, because he was forewarned to commit a dire crime

He did not fear, he would tremble: the merit which he had not wished to be became a punishment; what the mind, refusing to absorb, had deemed light, the limbs, shaken, would experience as heavy, and with the spirit struck, by which every crime avenges itself with a profound torturer, the horror of the crime would also break the body and, vehement, go out into all the limbs, and the members, set in motion, would be snatched in a headlong whirling, just as liquids confined by lips, when they break the rays of light received with a shaken gleam, a slippery brightness enters the halls and, traversing the whole, is nowhere and everywhere; and while it trembles, a line of dark blue, woven with a faint shimmer, flickers endlessly within the shadow. This was not the motion which a cold humor, when the nerves are contracted, strikes into them, when those filled with death are so drenched that they cannot entirely lose their life: but such as the anger of God stirs, when a power subdues the conscious mind and hearts are tormented with a sane madness. Yet what, and how often, is such a sentence? The whole thing is vengeance for the slain crime, the most just punishment of the guilty, terror for the people and a future example set before the nation, a present purging of guilt, and a sign of the preservation of life which it promised: that no one should kill or labor to destroy with the sword one whom he sees has paid the penalty. Nor does this punishment suffice to mix harsh things with the pleasant for the informer: he sends him far away and banishes him to vast shores. This also he has as a gift, that he not pollute the fields of the pious,

Lest this crime be proven to have been possible for the peoples being created, let the punishment bear witness; lest the condemned race ever mingle with them, lest it ever draw near to grieving parents, lest it always bring bitter grief to the good, and lest the unequal cause of brothers torment the bereaved with sorrow—that one seeks the light, that the other sees it, in whom it is necessary to mourn even this, which remains. Any evil whatsoever in the death of a son is the greatest; but in such a crime, those afflicted with such a penalty are destroyed alive worse than under any judge. What is more fitting than that the condemned man himself, far from his father's lands, should depart, since secret places please him, and it is a heavier punishment to be seen among the happy and those blessed with a pure mind? He who will live after punishment, and shame for the deed, is spared by exile. Now, that a faithful wife is added as a companion to the accused, and that the gift of not abandoning the condemned becomes a certain hope of God, is granted. She who would soften the cares of a sick heart, who with her body moved would support the broken one in her embrace, and, liable to no fault, alone by prayers and a pure mind cultivating God, would draw forth whatever could be enough for two.

O good majesty, what may we not dare to hope! You yourself supply the silent paths of pardon and the cause, by which you are able to benefit the guilty one, whom, increasing him through the following offspring, you multiply through a thousand names of descendants, and soon you establish him as king of his own people from the highest father. For he first taught how to surround cities with walls, which no one can do except with a gathered populace. And, having confessed, through fear he earned merit from his own people, and warned the avenger, and taught the Syrian to perish, while he fears being killed, perhaps by which slaughter, atoned, he washes away the committed sin, which he repays by a similar death; and death itself is gain, because it has become the vengeance of the crime. Meanwhile, the grieving Eve again bore a heavy burden for her husband, and had already compensated for the first loss with a sacred pledge, and had again returned cares and vows to the parent. The boy had the name Seth, whom, with favoring divinity, the almighty granted to fill the place of Abel through added virtues, a gift which the joyful father's rejoicing did not conceal, and the added lineage proved. Indeed, from the seed of this man came Enos, who, first chosen priest through silent virtue, hoped and merited to be able to summon God with pious prayers and the true name, and he imbued the following people to preserve the worship of the eternal parent and to use sacred aid, as life demanded.

confessed that the omnipotent one bore with majesty, and gave mind and merit, and through many years allowed the punishment of the ancient crime to be deferred, so much so that Enoch, powerful in all virtues, from this line which the nurturing offspring contains, restored to his ancestral seat and the blessed world, still lives and already holds the realms of the future life. Indeed, for the new cultivation of the world, which lacked it until then, after three hundred years he would lead triple periods, filling a thousand numbers, the compendium of the tenth verse; it was a contest of living. But after crimes infected minds and in the following offspring was born the guilt of the fathers, and a progeny worse than its greater one always added vices which the heir would surpass, the brevity of life came to the rescue, since this was the only way that would be the limit of light for increasing crime. For when the Cainite race, joined with the profane, had condemned itself through marriages, the youth, which had a better vein, abandoned by sacred favor, fell into various crimes and, exposed, received the enemy through ambushes. Thus spoke God: 'Our spirit will not always dwell among these peoples, nor will it further delay the late times of death given to a guilty life for twice six decades of years, since those who follow earthly things have more of flesh than of mind.' Therefore, either the severe sentence of the nurturing judge broke nature, so that each guilty one would have more of a brute mother

he argued, whether by the place where he was born, or by the first gift which he had given to the servants to be created with sacred virtue, the abundant grace of divine power proved that it had passed from the whole to the body alone, transmitted through the sins of the fathers, suddenly generating monsters of men, giants with lofty mass of limbs, with minds swollen by savage pride. How much power lies in dire spirits through their bodies, and how much they must will, oppressed as they are by the unjust servitude of such great bulk, nothing was profane for them to violate, nothing was licit to their heart: lust, kindled more fiercely by what was forbidden, and desire for things not sought by form but by crime, imposed a price. No nights without blood, no days without slaughter; it was sweet for relatives to have taken up food with tears and to have violated the very foods with relatives, forgetful of the bond of fellowship, of humanity, and of themselves, and of the sacred affection for their own mothers and fathers, and for the author of the heavens; and so far was it carried into the greatest crimes that the one who gave them life and light, and who formed all things, would regret it, and would prefer to roll up the innocent souls, who were not guilty of the crime, into a single mass rather than not submerge the lands under a headlong sea, with the world returning again to its ancient form.

the faithful man, who for five hundred years had led a life immune from crime and had proven himself living under the established law. To him God, revealing sacred mysteries, discloses: "Since the vices of the lands and men prone to crimes, with virtue cast aside, are rushing to aid evil things, I am preparing to set an end to affairs. When I see that it is cruel to punish all faults and lighter to destroy the guilty, I have decided again to submerge the lands under the sea, so that, while everything collapses and the commanded flood covers all and then recedes, the swirling abyss may wash away the polluted world and sweep up entangled men and whatever lives for the sake of men in the swelling depths of the abyss. But because you alone, to whom our will is dear, leading a life devoted to sacred laws, always resist this by your better merit, I will so moderate the laws of my decrees that, when the wicked have paid their just penalty, then the mortal race may begin more worthily from you, and the peoples who will enjoy our light may count you as their highest parent. Therefore, prepare for yourself an ark built of squared beams, which stretches three hundred cubits, opens through fifteen, and rises in height

thirty years only; through ... it will be completed into one from above. But at the side a door shall be kept, through which the gathered structure may rise to a sloping roof. Then let hot, thirsty pitch, breathing through the joint, explore the thin cracks and cover all the chinks— poured like skin. Here the greatest labor shall call you within: immense posts shall be joined on both sides, and the completed chambers' limbs shall be set in place. And when the triple space has been divided by a double area, so shall the living creatures be separated into their own nests, lest mingled they violate their kind, and those joined together fight, and confuse their foods, which it is fitting for you to store only as material; for their distribution to the recipients, lest it be lacking, is mine to provide." Accepting these words with faithful mind— for He Himself, supplying mind and senses, gave the servant the will and the power for whatever He commanded— he sets about felling the dense forests, born for this people and populace, with iron. The groves let in the light, and the plain is relieved of shadows, and the valleys are stripped of their age-old oak, and the woods, which will form the appearance of a smaller world.

But when the work begun has been hastened with so much labor, it is deferred for a hundred years, so that peoples may be weary of the crime and resist the wrath. O too wretched ones, whom the delay of such just punishment makes more guilty: you will be punished not only for the crime, for whom a large supply of pardon is to be sought, but also for what you will be punished, how many dire Tartara you will undergo in the space of the time granted, since the god testifies that he prefers to spare all. Now, with the mass completed, the structure stood woven with a capacious joining of sides—the aid which the father himself had prepared as the highest for your shipwrecks, O Nature—and it was summoning the cause, when from high Olympus the god deigns to warn his servant Noe with his voice that the time has now come to hide himself in hiding-places, to snatch his mother, sons, and daughters-in-law from the imminent destruction and the shadows of death, from the life-imprisoning prison, and with him all living creatures which the earth sustains, which the air supports, not its own—through seven pairs of each sex, the god has approved as pure, but of the unclean kind, single of each sex. No delay occurs: whatever is born under the vaulted hinge of the sky, unknown in diverse parts of the world—what the Easterner marvels at, what the pale Hiberus shudders at, what rages in the hot sands of southern Libya, what splits the Hyperborean nights with wondrous light—

One rushes trembling and is plunged into the opened ark. You would think the flood had been felt; for when the divine author grants to beasts a sense by which he declares himself to his nurslings, cattle have more reason, moved by the divinity—they know nothing of themselves. Therefore, as soon as God commands the ark, pregnant with every seed of life, to be closed, night falls and sudden darkness overspreads the sky, and a cloudburst, poured out, strikes the lands with falling rain, headlong, brief in duration, yet about to maintain its course; it rages thus and rages equally over the whole world as it is wont to do in a part when a storm, stirred by a swift whirlwind, follows or announces savage fires of lightning, and the sky and earth re-echo with thunder. Nor is the rain that flows from the clouds enough for destruction: ancient waters are loosened, and now, with the ether opened, the sky rains into empty clouds; the inner breath of the earth, which supplies the rivers, expands, fills, and opens new springs equal to torrents. And while what the sky, what the earth vomits, and what the clouds pour forth, hastily mingled in one flood, join together, it overwhelms fields with mixed cultivators submerged, and flocks entangled in their stalls, and buries cities with their citizens: peoples perished amid the waters in ruins. No form of things remains; the wave covers everything, and the rivers, growing, lose their name, and soon even their course. The ocean, never satiable by any rivers, with so great a mass rushing down...

Already it senses the waters, which a greater flood drives on, swelling, and forces them to rise back into a heap, until, with the deep heaving the tide, the wave joins the highest circle from all sides on the contracted shores, and the seas rush together over the overwhelmed lands. And already the ark was borne higher than all things by thrice fifteen cubits; for this measure exceeded the highest mountains, when the fury of rain and a single night had lasted forty days. After thrice fifty suns in clear weather, when the sea’s mode and measure remained similar, the Almighty, pitying the enclosed, gradually ordered the great sea to recede, whether to spare all the lands which it could have swiftly overturned in flight, or because he wished the enclosed to be placed more safely in a stable abode, as the receding wave gradually withdrew them. Finally, a mountain, flat with a spread-out summit, received the burden that was to be carried. Now the highest ridges could be seen, and the waves could distinguish the flat rocks, and as the sea gradually subsided, forests began to break forth, and hidden hills slowly rose. And now a black scout, sent from the ark, had betrayed the calm air, detained by found prey; but the weary dove reports that one must still wait in the cell and enclosures; sent again, it brings back a small offering of the peace-bearing olive’s fruit.

So great a weeping of the enclosed arises, as a sign of the great parent with praise, and the joyful reveal what follows, as great as when a bitter victor insults the walls, if sudden aid is brought to the besieged; as great as when, with a modest judge sent, a sentence returns those condemned back to life; as great as, when life returns to an uncertain funeral between the tears of mourners and joys, weeping. After the scout, sent three times, announces that the fields lie open, by this very thing, that the captive, once the lands are recovered, did not return, it wearies of enduring the sluggish hiding places, where hope is nearer to breathe in the open sky and to feed the soul, released, on ethereal sense. But it is not lawful for anyone to go out into the shores of light, just as it is forbidden to be born and to enter the sky and the day without God calling, who with his own voice warned the trembling Noah to depart from the sacred enclosures with his faithful wife, sons, and modest daughters-in-law, and to give again new fields to the led-out colonists, and all things which the powerful craftsman formed for human use, equally preserved for future offspring. Which, after the gate is given, they rush: some into the air on wings, some seek the glades and forests, some are buried in the open caverns of the earth, some exult in the dry fields and flourish in the open meadow. But the master, having obtained the second kingdom of the world, receives all things, Noah rejoicing with his eyes and capacious mind, and cannot satiate his mind by filling it, and eagerly surveying all things with hurried gaze.

As the new thing is wondered at. Brighter than a known rising and more radiant than the sun, the joyful face of the sky laughs with greater calm, and the despairing fields grow green with new offspring. But the image of such a great ruin, always to be remembered, still turns before the eyes: what they endured amid the waters, what by sacred gift they did not endure, when the sea roared with savage lash and the ark scorned the dashed storms. And with his own he reckons how widely the holy parent's bounty, pouring itself around the highest, extends, and he teaches the astonished, prompt to learn the truth, whence food sufficed for so many for a whole year, what drink; for this is certain: if the other necessities of life were supplied, the enclosed could have perished amid the waters by thirst while the ark tossed, had not the ruler of Olympus sustained those deeply set aside and no longer fearing any extremes by that nod with which he founded all things. He, stripping souls that would perish in the prison of long night of the desire for light, filled them with virtue; he, so that they could endure such sluggish quiet, poured in the placid love of sluggish torpor; he, the powerful one, for whom, if it has pleased, it is right by severe virtue to compel the wicked, swiftly plunged under the icy flood, to burn, and the good, carried into the waves, to freeze with future flames; he who in a short time, as he has now taught peoples that they can be killed thus, will himself teach peoples that they can be reborn thus in the waters.

Carrying such thoughts in his mind and foreseeing the ages to come, ancient Noah determined that no mortal should enter upon any duty before he had rendered sacred thanks and gratitude to God. Altars rise from white stone: there was no building with enclosures to surround them; the temple was the world, with the vault of the sky spread out on all sides as a curved path. A victim flows forth from sevenfold flocks, which the soft air sustains, which the earth generates... ... are strewn from the East or from the woods of the Arabs. Fire sent down from Olympus tastes the fragrant honors which the hair consumes, and the burnt offerings give off an ambrosial vapor to God. He, always gentle and good, accepting whatever is offered as our gift, and rejoicing in the pious services of men—services of which He has no need, but which redeem us—speaks thus with a calm divine will: "Although the punishment was small for so great a name, to have condemned the guilty with avenging rains and a soft flood, and to have renewed the lands, the seat of the wicked, with a spreading deep, yet I will not strike the mortal race further with such a lash, although they are about to fall

Through various wicked deeds, through former crimes, again I see human minds and profane peoples. For because mortals will never cease to commit acts deserving punishment, it is fitting that we never cease to render back to them what their merits deserve. Grow, O happy offspring, grow secure and fill the fields with fruitful progeny, and spread new flocks throughout all lands. The elements will keep their cycles, and on every day the due harvest will be returned to its own seeds. The world's work will run on with its discordant seasons: winter will vie with summer, and the year, balancing the times of spring and autumn, will be repeated in its flight. And you, to whom we have entrusted the rule of the solid globe, whom every kind of living creature trembles at and feels as masters, we command you to keep this law in this place and always to remember yourselves bound by the prescriptions of strict justice: among so many species of things, which we now grant for your uses, moving their limbs by their own spirits, let no one make foul meals of limbs mixed with blood—a crime which the sentence of a harsh judgment will punish no differently than if someone, savage with a sword, were to drain human blood, which I will always pursue as an avenger and seek out so thoroughly that not only will the man himself pay the abundant penalty, but the brute beasts as well: blood equally for all.

Let human life be sacred, and let our signs, which enjoy the light of heaven, exist. And let there be signs by which, when the sky shines, we may testify to the waters released from the flood: indeed, when light moisture is suspended in thin mists in the dense air and already gathers black waters into hollow clouds, I will pour out rays, and the beautiful image of the sun will adorn for me at the highest summit a curved arch, painting the convex vault of the sky, which, warming with light, will dry up the rains and disperse the showers into the air, to such an extent that the other part of the world can take this as a token of a future sign of punishment, because it has more glowing fire and already less rain.' Stunned by such commands, at which all things tremble, and cheerful at the pious promises, in which all things rejoice, Noah and his sons together, whose age is more steadfast, eagerly split the fields with rakes and wed the plowlands with seed in the sweet damp mire, and now in spring, with the fields widely sown, the thickest grass from the stalks yields food into a crop of curdled milk, returning a manifold harvest with accumulated interest: and the vine, already luxuriant with a heavy new shoot, revels in rich fruit, which, stretching out with sweet nectar, it brings forth, and cups are born from the hard wood. By chance, while Noah joyfully celebrates the honors of the Lord

indulging in feasts and sipping sweet cups, he perceived the living waters, and, overcome by heavy sleep, placed his limbs on a faithful couch; and at the same time, the rolled-back garment uncovered the body’s secrets and provoked laughter in you, most wicked Cham, the source and origin of your line, and you prepared to involve your brothers Sem and the eldest Iaphet in the sprinkling of guilt. Learn what that laughter of yours demands—you alone: the better judgment of your brothers deems the place of duty worthy; for, with the covering snatched away and placed behind their backs, in a hasty retreat they turned away, covering their father’s shame with their hands, and each snatched from the other the palm of piety, raised in the middle. For after Noe’s mind, freed by sleep, regains the messenger of divine sense, he repays his sons’ merit with such a reward: “Accursed Cham, you will be the slave of your brothers, doubtful in serving your parent; you, Sem, blessed by God, will live as the eldest, and you will be lord over your younger brother (already from the seed) in a wide world, until a numerous progeny, mingled with kindred peoples, establishes a seat in the houses of your brother as well, and fills the cities you have built and those joined to them.” Thus spoke the elder, when he had already run through a thousand years less ten times five, which the total refuses,

Conscious of the future, he relaxed into a fatal sleep and departed from this world, leaving his cares to his children. For indeed, after the fault was given, with emptiness and vice removed, and after the sin which is atoned for by the first death, when the spirit had filled the chosen sanctuary of the mind and had irrigated the friendly breast, he was able to know all things simultaneously and to gaze upon what was offered before him: what fleeing time has snatched away, what exists, and what future ages will bring to be plucked by coming generations, and what the heavy earth, the liquid sea, the life-giving air, and the greedy fire, which generates by excessive fuel, pour forth in various uses for men. But after that great gift was lost by the condemned offspring, and nothing remained for the wretched except to have known the greater secrets of their ancestors, each one, remembering and pondering with himself, recalling the warnings of his parents and reviewing all things—what things were suited to which modes, in what part of the world they would be of use—began to store them in fixed elements of speech or in signs, entrusting words to solid form. Hence the arts took their origin, which writing, preserving the discoveries of the ancients, sent down to slow posterity, and mixing the inventions of the new with the studies of the old, gave hope to the astonished and, moved by vain desire, dragged them headlong into the forbidden investigation of the future: or gave to the world, which some in their fleeting error called a corporeal god, what the almighty creator alone possessed, and scattered through all the members signs of things, moving heralds of a future age.

so that through the whole mass he might always attest himself to his offspring, and the image of the mind might acknowledge its author, and it might be openly placed before things, what the abundant ruler can grant to peoples, what he can take away, what at times to his own, what realms of heaven are prepared, he forbids servants to know—what the true witness, the agate, the gem of Pyrrhus, proves, with the Muses and Apollo shut away, published with the world—what should we not think that God signified through all things, when he also betrayed the falsehoods of the world, anticipating and noting what would later be fabricated? Or rather, does the simple motion of the world bear everything? Or did the heavy inventor of death not allow capable matter of deceit to cease, and subjected everything to a malignant will, by which he would introduce fate to the world? For while he counts the courses and various returns of the stars and enjoys the wondrous distinction of the sky, he thus placed for himself certain times of doubtful favor and prone capacity and limits of harming, producing with varying effect in varying gatherings, so that he scatters envy among the stars and assigns crimes to the sacred sky and to the stars that adorn the world, while he fashions for peoples whatever he himself makes to be future. Hence comes the art: that the fiber trembles, that the feather flashes, that signs of thunderbolts mark when clouds are shattered. For because he remembers the headlong motions and all cases embraced with cunning study—he who, as a public enemy, renders before...—he thinks them divine.

He persuaded the peoples with the fabrications of false poison. Not otherwise than the dogs of the Ethiopians, whose kingdoms are ruled by tyrants, is liberty governed: when a judgment ignorant of the body is sought by a motion consistent with certain things, they consider precepts to be chance. Nor does opinion assume lesser signs for itself by a strong sense; for the Fortune of Galba refutes the gem of Pyrrhus: for he who could indeed fashion a whole statue over many lustra can also counterfeit a gem. Using these frauds, he deceived those captivated by the ardor of knowing the future and by the goading fear of fate thereafter, and in their anxiety he inflicted the crime of magic art through their zeal, whereby they would rather worship themselves and give impious incense on dedicated altars, when the crowd was betrayed by its parent. And soon Nembrod, born from an unsound lineage, a giant in bulk and mind, endowed with the court of Babylon, a wicked hunter seizing the spirits of the Persians, transferred them from the sacred rites of the true lord to fire. Nor did he, the head of crimes, the accused of the world and his own enemy, only so greatly deceive the too-greedy cares of men by such cunning art, but he rushed into their very minds and descended deeply into all their senses, and soon into their affections. For when the only child of a father had dragged the hope of his line with him into bitter death, the unhappy parent, continuing nights and days with tears and dragging out complaints in dull lamentation, while he rages and seeks his snatched-away son through every detail,

He also keeps the sweet spoils of boyhood years, or, pious beyond fate, consoles his grief with an image. Thus he fed his love, kindled by longing, so that, setting up the whole form in Parian marble, he madly believed a living sense was enclosed within it, and that it heard his laments, and transferred the worship of the supreme author to the shades at dedicated altars. This man surpasses all the guilty, and is more grievous than that teacher of crimes who founded the magic arts. That one is openly guilty of furies and a profane mind; this one is harmful through piety. That crime defiles more which has the appearance of virtue; for immediately all the embracing nations, without end, offered sacrifices to the shades, as the Alans now testify, each holding their own dear parents as gods, and later also kings, under whose false name Greece, while laboring to insinuate falsehoods among truths, added obscure shades to vain reasonings, excusing tombs and names buried in graves, until madness extended through all forms and even fashioned gods from the least things and shameful limbs. Indeed, such an inventor of death stood by in these regions, fostering errors and stirring up oracles, using either fire, or a hot spring, or caves for his snares. The earth, breathing forth winds, deceived the talkative, and before Themis, and later false Apollo, deceived the peoples.

He placed them, and then, forced to change his abode, he became a physician among the Leuci; now, passing through the Gallic countryside as a fugitive, he stirs up the German tribes with harmful deceit and deceives barbarian hearts. But I return to the main thread from which I digressed, to that line of ancestors. When the multiplied offspring of Noah, by procreating, had filled all the eastern lands, and Sennaar saw the fields growing too narrow, the youth, to be scattered through the various parts of the world, broke forth into these most sorrowful words of complaint: "Alas, how uncertain the state of life, once the order is begun, carries men, and how prosperity thus deceives the faith once made, through various courses, so that the goal of the sought-for prayer turns to the opposite. Now we—if it is right to say so—regret what the hoped-for, numerous progeny, increased by the prayers of our fathers, has become; for the hand that is generated must be scattered through the world by exile: it will perish for its kin and likewise destroy them, and what is more bitter to grief, it will bring back its own by a living death, while we, wretched ones, are condemned to a sad funeral, so that with hastening old age we barely reach three hundred years, weary, whereas the ancient age exceeded ten and a hundred; and we, exiles from our homeland, give our naked and nameless limbs to be buried here and there in unknown tombs. So act, O youths, while the crowd provides strength that can outlast you and a stern end.

Let them not know; extend your eternal fame through deeds. Let us found a city, beneath whose name we raise a tower so high that it bursts through the world-painting stars and the vaults of high Olympus, so that posterity, when we leave these lands, may think we have migrated into heaven. Thus stirred, the youth scorns the cliffs and whatever is cut from the hewn mountain: they bind the tamed bricks, shaped from the earth’s innards, with fire, and prefer that the material of the future work owe itself to their own labor. Bitumen binds the interlaid structure on both sides so strongly that the surrounding walls simulate solid rock. Already the tower rises in haste, already its peak leaps over the clouds and enjoys the nearer calm of the sky, when the father begins to speak thus to the partners of his own realm: “O earthly phalanx, what does it not reveal in its fury, that a structure built by mortal hand believes it can touch the high poles and lead our work to the heavens? No one clothed in an earthly body ascends to heaven, unless he has descended from high heaven. But because—one race, and likewise one form of speech—the crowd, with eager assent, has followed the wicked persuaders and has not examined what right permits, daring the arduous things which nature by itself would forbid, let them bear the vain losses of such labor unpunished. Yet so that they may also know the forbidden, that which is denied to be possible, let us now descend and, with the varied voices of our mouth, disturb their swollen hearts and proud agreement, so that the crowd, which sinned in concord,

Let a better discord condemn the confused tongue. He spoke, and into minds stunned by the work and the mass they were raising, oblivion first crept, and the perfection of an unknown tongue came over them. The masters, with their zeal for the work ceasing, chide their hesitating comrades: but no one returns a voice not understood, and if anyone tries to open his mouth, he hisses or pants with the roar of broken speech, or shrieks and with a shrill groan imitates threats. Thus vain labor, undertaken with a perverse mind, deserted the frustrated hand: now no one follows his neighbor, no one his father: each understands and joins to himself what he grasps: the whole kinship perished, language makes a people: they scatter in equal divisions and seek lands drawn apart under different stars. Not otherwise do birds over the soft plains of the field, which a carefree day persuaded to wander in mixed flocks and seek food, when with night approaching they seek leafy coverts, immediately the crowd gathers, each following its own kind, and with swift flight they mingle, where a similar color or voice has led: so then the one people scatters itself into parts, and each kind becomes a species, and they settle in far-distant lands and fill the world with nations.

Nor is this sacred gift empty, though it carries its own punishment for the guilty; for although this was a just vengeance—that those whom reverence for heaven, which is the proper seat of the world's and all things' parent, did not touch, should not even know themselves—what this punishment grants to its recipients is greater: that the persuasion of a few men's guilt should not again contaminate all and make a common crime, that bloody wars and death summoned by raging madness should not always befall peoples, and that it should not be grievous for citizens to leave behind kinsmen and drive out their own offspring. For the exiled crowd must never long for its own, and must even hate them of its own accord; and for this reason the varied tongue procures that no one wishes to remember his own. Yet the sound of Hebrew and the ancient speech remained among those who, being guiltless, were not an unjust portion—the children whom Sem begot, whom the sacred care of a parent and reverence for the true God touches. But after madness, stirred throughout the whole world—to say nothing of the unspeakable crime of the magician monster—drove the mortal race to fasten images onto trunks and stones and even hollow shapes of hard metal, empty of light, and broke minds that looked upon the heavens, binding them to inert earth,

These too the foul contagion of the stain enveloped. Just as, stirred from the burning lands of the Ethiopians, clouds of disease, along a corrupted path of the sky, entangled the greedy pools of a conqueror with pestilence, when whoever groaned, struck by the swift thunderbolt of death, fell at the same time himself, and whoever beheld the falling one fell, and the dread plague, heaping up corpses everywhere, strewed the fields and completed the war: so then, with the mass of fury rushing headlong, the error, retracing those it had passed over, had seized them, until, run through by successive steps, the lineage, whose clear origin the famous Shem provided as its source and beginning, issued into Terah, who, leaving the highest seat behind, seeking another city, new customs, and a new abode with all the stock of his Chaldean race, finally settled in Assyrian Carrhae as a new inhabitant. And when he had completed two hundred and five years, he passed away in the manner of his fathers. His son was Abram, a man worthy of heaven, who from the very threshold of life, venerating the true God in his mind, had abhorred the ancestral rites. After, with his father's death, it was permitted to follow the commands of God without deceit, the Lord deigned to approach his servant with these admonitions: 'Since we find you alone in the whole world, whom sincere faith and reverence for us aids, leave far off your ancestral seats, the guilty lands, and the polluted house: the whole kinship is profane and must be shunned by you. Into the fields of a better land

Under my leadership you will arrive; do not be part of an unjust people, you who can be the head of a holy one. Then I will consecrate sacred things, which will remain for you, O blessed one, and I will render your name magnificent through all peoples, repaying all good things or evil according to merits, whose diverse will has surrounded you, through whom blessing poured forth will be scattered among all tribes and in a renewed age. He spoke, and he instills in the mind a spirit to serve his commands and to believe in his pious promises. No delay holds back: with flocks of various kinds and his father’s servants, with his faithful wife, with the dear pledge of his brother, whose name was Lot, he departs on a straight path and takes up a journey unknown to him. The most gentle fields offer pleasant roads, and with favoring south winds the smiling air is disturbed by no motions, until he enters the lands of the peoples whom Ham begot, the Chanaanites, and the very rich fields of Sichem. After he hears by the voice of God that these have been granted to him and his future offspring, he kindles devoted altars and, a new cultivator recalling the old, increases the honors. Then he seeks Bethlem, a seat which, chosen and consecrated by the hospitality of a blessed man, has surpassed all lands in its proud merits, to be mentioned in second place after the heavenly seat, when, in a later time, this one will be more worthy, which, as a pledge of salvation sent into the world by God’s law, the whole world marvels at as it is prepared.

would receive her, she was seen, and would send the man back to the stars. Here too father Abram sets up solemn altars and places dwellings to be left behind in new fields. For, compelled by famine to change his abode again, he moves camp and drives his entire household, servants, and flocks with him, and, paying just prices for goods, enters Egypt. But his wife is protected by the beautiful name of sister, lest barbarian hearts be goaded by mad lust into murdering their holy guest. Finally, soon Pharaoh, led by the image of her radiant form, burns with desire and prepares marriage and fixed terms by law; but total terror, steeped in dread, suddenly falls upon them, shakes their wicked hearts with uproar, frightens their spirits with black horror, and entangles their limbs, so that the king of that sacrilegious people realized that God had condemned such grievous wishes, who indeed instilled this counsel in his servants, that the barbarian enemy then knew Abram to be safer as Sara's husband, when he had experienced it, than that he could with impunity seek with profane sword the man whom it was not permitted even to bereave. Therefore, of his own accord, he restores the wife, unstained by any defilement, to her husband, and reports the fault, and sends him back safe with a frequent guard and much heaped-up grain.

in Sichem and his own Bethlehem: joyfully they occupy the received fields and graze on rich pastures far and wide with mingled herds. But frequent quarrels arose among the shepherds, for the field lay open to anyone with no boundary marked. Therefore Abram, very full of the future and most observant of equitable right, in order to settle disputes and remove greedy quarrels, being the elder, divided the granted fields. The younger chose where the countryside is wedded by sweet waters poured out on all sides, and rivers glide with shading banks, and the Jordan beautifies the smooth groves. Captivated by this, Loth, avoiding his uncle's house and just severity, migrates to the fields joined to Sodom. Then God, strengthening Abram's sad heart with this hope, says: 'Do not complain that you, left behind by your brother's offspring, have suffered the losses of a holy father. You alone will be to me an innumerable multitude, you who will hold the kingdoms of peoples which you see with the first sun, which you look upon turned toward the north, and which you behold subject to the warm south wind, and which are enclosed by the shore of the poured-out sea. These I will grant to you and your offspring and the peoples of yours an eternal age always living. So that you may now enjoy the lands far and wide, arise and survey with a guest's step what lands lie open.' Thus he spoke; he willingly obeys and, leaving his home,

He moves from Sichem and goes under Chebron, and under the dark foliage of the oaks he pitches the allotted tents of Mambre, and the shrewd leader, to add support to his new camp, also builds here solemn altars for the Lord, that he may worship him. Meanwhile, with a great tumult swirling around, a greedy enemy is at hand, whom the land, richly endowed with various wealth, entices: the hoof, struck against the fields, resounds, and the plunderer roams with loosened reins. Lot, together with the king, bursts out through the opened gates, and a neighboring band, bearing allied arms with the kings: they drag with them horsemen and foot-soldiers, the column stretches out, the battle lines clash, they alike lay low and fall. For these there is enough help, that those preparing to wage war suddenly anticipated they would fall in disaster: those are held only by the image of a better cause. But the youth, softened by the luxury of foul Sodom, as soon as the renewed shout blazed up into anger, turn their backs in fear: part in swift course seek the walls, part seek the mountains and forests, part, hemmed in by bands, stretch out cowardly hands for sad chains. As soon as Abram, his uncle, learned that Lot was captured, not with weeping—for what would empty weeping contribute?—,

But pious in purpose, he chooses three hundred from the entire flock and twice nine servants, whom he equips with arms, and follows slowly, where the enemy, slowed by heavy booty, revealed his course, and he ensures that he arrives on the first night of rest, when sweet sleep already bathes weary hearts and binds tired limbs. Thus, when the mad rage of a hungry lion has penetrated the swift enclosures of the flocks in the pasture, it kills all with tooth and claw, and the anger postpones its greedy hunger for devouring, and the amazing patience of fear closes off the groan of the oppressed from bitter pain: such was the leader's plan. Overwhelmed by sleep and wine, they slaughter the people and kings with silent wounds, laying them low. No uproar disturbs the camp, no one feels the step of anyone whose mind and voice have already fled, no one hears the sound of slaughter except the one whom death rouses. Everything is wet with blood; the dry earth, loosened by clear skies, clumps together with gore, and footsteps, slowed by the clinging blood, falter on the marked field. Yet not all the age is cut down at once by swords: the booty is preserved—such is the moderation of the just victor—those whom it was already permitted to capture without any deceit: the rest were scattered by shameful flight, and fear, pressing on, pursued them all the way to the Chobarren fields.

But the victor, unmoved by such praise of triumph, among the horses and herds of cattle and the recovered or captured people, and the treasures which by their greedy weight burden both the conquered and the conquerors, in the midst of such great joys, gentle and pondering the vicissitudes of human fortune in his heart, almost as the price of victory, he returns the booty and the spoils of war, restoring them to the scattered peoples and to the king, teaching that he did not fight for himself; yet he offers a tenth of the plunder shaken from the enemy—which is the true sacrifice— to Melchisedech, to whom then the pious care of the supreme parent, having testified that he conquered by God, he merited, and of the future mystically forewarned, even then to receive the sacred libations. And having accepted this, hastening to greater rewards at the voice of such a priest praying for all good things, the Lord also grants this servant this gift of address: “Since no booty has subdued you with its allurements, the reward of faith and the recompense of your labors is full with me; I will protect you and all that is yours, to be preserved for your heir, whom, born late from your seed, you, a pious author, will love more, born from your own womb, whom you already desire in your mind, for whom this Damascus is pleasing, summoned from the servant flock, while the sweet pupil kindles paternal feelings, stimulating infant senses, and deceives the hastening love of children. Look up at the vaulted sky, how it gleams with dense light in the painted night, how many stars are heaped and pressed upon stars, refusing to be counted: hold this as a pattern of your seed and future lineage, and from this keep the form and merit.” So he spoke; and that one believed, and the mere consent of naked faith was for him as virtue and adorned with the merit of labor.

full of justice, he awarded a crown of repute. And so here the virtue of holy Abraham, so noble, reveals that it is good to believe in the divine Christ, who, the living voice of the Father, spoke thus again to Abraham: 'I am the omnipotent Lord, who brought you and yours from the Chaldean people and at last, freed from ancestral vices, settled you in a better land, so that through you my people, once born, may inhabit the blessed fields and spread the line far and wide, driving out the nations whom the foul error of their parents once made profane with sacrilegious rites. Because you hesitate and sin by doubting thus to believe, take for me a three-year-old heifer with a grim brow, together with a she-goat of equal age chosen from the gentle flock, and a ram of the same age, to be sacrificed in my honor; and when a sacred dove, joined with a chaste turtle-dove, has closed the rite and the order of sacrifice has completed the sum, let the victim of the birds feel no iron further. But the cattle in the middle of the womb shall be split open, and the three bodies shall go into two parts only, which, thus separated, you will set apart on clean sands, so that a double fourfold order may bring together rival limbs from opposite sides. Then what you are bidden to hope for will come into view of its own accord, and you will prove it with your eyes:

He spoke; and he, willingly accustomed to serve the divine commands, hastens swiftly to accomplish the orders. But when he had laid out the series of the earth as ordered, where it was commanded, suddenly a black cloud of importunate birds rushed in, invited by the prey. Lest they violate the sacred things with profane contact, Abraham, anxious, guards and looks about on all sides. But when, astonished at such a great work, and with the sun not yet setting, the burden of the great task he had undertaken did not overcome him, lo, black terror, horrid trembling, and sleep enter, bearing the commanded tidings and shaping the ages to come. I believe he seemed to see the Nile fenced off for himself, the late descendants of the Hebrew people, and the multitudes who count themselves to the highest, and from there the fierce movements and the drawn-out camps of his own people, the sea crossed with dry foot, the hosts sunk in the deep, a shipwreck that followed with no fleet, that a land force had made: then the whole blessed kingdoms of Palestine opened to the returning people. Stunned by such visions, a kindly interpreter was not lacking: "Foresee your own offspring and the offspring of your people, who will grow in foreign lands, born after you in lands that will feel the servile yoke of the Niliac tyrant, whom, when she has fulfilled four hundred years in hard servitude, I will snatch away and avenge the unjust masters.

and I will restore to the lands, which the Nile and the Euphrates encircle with their gentle flood, but only when the sins of the guilty people of the Amorite race holding these realms have filled the sum of their crimes and they have been deemed worthy to be driven from their ancestral seats. Yet you, before that, departing from the long threshold of a happy life, praised by your children, with peace and my gift, will migrate to your holy ancestors.' So he spoke: and from on high, when night was already drawing dense shadows over the lands, he gave a sign from the mountain; for a clear oven blazed with fire, flashed up swiftly, twisted its mane forward, and, divided, sought the middle, and, borne into the prepared place, with a headlong course, the flame, skimming, consecrated. Not otherwise, in the thick air, vibrating bodies, through the oblique void, fly and undulate with nocturnal splendor, torches, and a false star draws a reddening mane, and clouds shaken by winds cast forth a prone fire that beats the earth. Meanwhile, desiring to hasten the father for the sake of a certain kingdom and future offspring, Abram, but his chaste wife refused the duty, which empty old age, with the sign now ceasing, proves vain: but the sweet pledge of her husband and new hope, poured from whatever concubine, she believes to be her own servant, whose younger age—

Agar was her name, the land of the Nile her origin— she insinuated herself into the marriage bed and, assailing her husband with entreaties, she forced him to entrust his offspring to her worthless womb. O servile crime! As soon as she felt the burden of her womb living, Agar, puffed up with proud arrogance, scorned her mistress—and the mistress to whom she owed a mother's love, and the cause of her own mad swelling. Rightly, therefore, did the most just man Abram subject this woman to the lashes of his wife, by whose act more driven by shame she hides herself far off in the remote and secret lairs of wild beasts, indignant: not because she shuns what she has suffered, but again she despises her mistress, feigning excessive fears, in whatever way she can, and prefers to endure the perils of a secret journey, had not an angel, sent from Olympus, met the servant woman and restored her to the gentle rule of her mistress, and, refreshed by great exhortation, bade her, returning, to hope for better things, and taught her the name of her son, and his character, and his hands, and the countless flocks of people from the line of his descendants. With how much greater a vow does she return, now certain of the future, and by her childbirth she made her master a parent first herself, when he, having traversed the spans of a happy life, was already closing eighty plus twice six years. And when he had added twice six summers, one after the other, in the established order, the kindly father again deemed him worthy of his usual address and approached him, and commanded him, trembling,

He lives happily: and at the same time he turns over in his mind the promises, which were the reward of virtue—then, with body prone, Abram suppliantly adores the Lord, prostrate—and after many things, by which the faithful servant's vows were relaxed, he ordered all peoples to be distinguished by a silent sign, so that, with superfluous flesh voluntarily cut away, it might readily and clearly be evident that the Lord had commanded, with bodily vices cut off, a new progeny and a future offspring to be preserved. The thing itself, though silent, speaks: that God thus advised to cut off the shameful parts, and that boys, fresh from their mother and from their new life, while the mind is ignorant of pain, should be stripped of the foreskin on the eighth day and consecrated by light; and that whoever would dare to corrupt this sacred testament, ceasing to serve the requested law, would become an exile from the kingdom of future life. And at the same time, so that he might believe by a true argument that countless nations were to be created from his own stock, He said, changing the names so that they might echo this very thing: 'Let the letter renew you, let the full syllable reshape you, so that your wife may be called not Sara but Sarra, and you not Abram but, with a more illustrious name increased, Abraham, to be called by future peoples. This name is common to you and your true wife because of the promise, since, as the ages roll on, she will be the mother of the race, and you, when the year has come full circle, will be the father. Although you may think the promises of my virtue laughable, which your old age

prescribes what will be the glory of divine law, so that it may be thought possible that I have accomplished what was promised. But still I will forgive the doubtful and will impose on the future boy a name that will convict this fault, Isaac, who alone of ours, together with all his offspring, will be the certain heir under the preserved terms of the covenant. Yet this Ishmael, whom alone you embrace, will not be without a share of the sacred dowry; for, supported by my gift, he will create many thousands of men, peoples with a strong lineage, to be ruled by twelve leaders equally.' He spoke: but the other, eager to hasten the accepted covenant, now striking a hundred years, now with his son grown up, first removes himself, his own pledge, all his clients and servants from the age by the sign that was commanded, and makes them a new people and a font of the pious, receiving and fulfilling the law by one and the same path—so great is the devotion. What would such a present and swift faith not deserve? This is no longer fear, but sincere love and full proof of service, to undergo any command with such a placid mind that it pleases God to have commanded. Indeed, before, he was only accustomed to be heard; after such service of the minister, he now allows himself to be seen, nor, when just indignation spurs the avenger, does he reject mortal aspects with gentle divinity. For when he was preparing to condemn the crimes of the lands and to destroy the guilty with flames,

either true or such as it knew it could appear to be, and having confessed its own divinity and its own number to the disciple, although it approached accompanied by heavenly servants, it presented itself to his sight. For as he sat near the dwellings, three suddenly stood before him, gleaming with august light. Abraham, stirred by the image of such a vision, ran forward and, prostrate on the ground, adored the one lord, while marveling at the three, and eager to please, prays that he may be allowed to serve with pious mind, and that the servants, in the midst of the heat for those pressing on, may not disdain to refresh themselves with table and food. So far did his sight wander between his senses and his alert mind, doubting that the form bore a man, whom his mind knew to be a god. Yet he nodded with his mouth, and the almighty does not spurn the service of the pious disciple, and the vision consecrates the foods and tables, so that the devoted attendant may believe what is granted to him. The pure and clear image of a priest appears, again a true man in face and entire body, to be taken up at some time by God, and for Christ to come it would give proofs, and, unraveling the promised marvels, would bring them forth, and, being present, would forbid the servant to doubt. Then, moving his steps, the companion clings to the side of those going, the guest rejoicing, and shakes their astonished breasts with sweet fear, and a venerable horror draws them in.

Indeed, he saw the silent faces and stern gazes which God had directed upon Sodom and Gomorrah at the same time, and the servants sent forth, ministers of peace and of wrath. And when he learned what great thing was being prepared by such means, with God revealing the secret and teaching the reason for his coming, as one who had learned what rewards of life await the elect, and also would beware of what is to be feared, he boldly dared to ask the Lord whether he would destroy the city of an erring people through all the crimes of the guilty, if he should chance to have taken fifty righteous citizens. "I will not destroy it," he said. Then a gentle questioning, gradually reducing the number and humbly soliciting pardon, and with the highest number itself diminishing by retreat, he earned the response to take away from the parent, and, lest the whole of the Lord's gentle mercy betray itself, he left the servant in the midst of his speech, still pressing further, and withdrew into his own realm. Meanwhile, the messengers sent to Sodom find Lot, who happened to be sitting before the city gates, with the sun already near the earth. When he saw the angelic men shining with a wondrous radiance, thinking them to be from heaven—for God himself was giving him understanding—he prostrated himself in adoration, invited them to his house, and prevailed upon them by his entreaties to turn aside the night under his roof, and also persuaded them to share a meal, and served them innocent foods and modest cups.

Behold, at the setting of the light and the return of night, a foul band of the common crowd—if it is right to have said it, of men—leaps forth, and the furies of youths, boys, and old men alike sharpen them in rivalry: they shout for the clear name of Lot, demanding that the guests be handed over. Shame, alas, and it is indeed better to keep silent about how great a wrong than to betray it in words, or even while it is condemned, which even then, by a sinister custom, was the law of that unspeakable city. Desiring to soften the raging men, Lot offers his daughters, to whom virginity remained intact, for whatever use the people might have wished: a lesser crime through their sex. But the profane hearts consider vile whatever is permitted, and rejoice in being forbidden, so that they may have what they desire. Therefore they strive to afflict Lot himself, the author of faith, the teacher of morals and justice. When the force was already greater than human effort could repel by virtue, then both the guests, angels, lay bare their angelic powers from their feigned bodies, and snatch away Lot, who had been seized, and blind the raging men. The sentence of right justice preserved the custom: it closed the eyes of those to be condemned before the punishment came. Then to holy Lot, trembling and scarcely having recovered his mind, they confess, with the condition of their ministry not concealed, that he himself had already sensed in his spirit what he too feared: who they are, why they come, what the commands are, what they wish to grant. If he deems them worthy of belief, he is to announce the destruction of the race; Lot, indeed, is ordered to escape.

a house mixed together, whose name is known through many places, and gathers together the well-born: but a base origin did not deserve to feel the fear of God. Yet let no one think these men of doubtful faith, when even Lot dissembles in leaving his abode. Whom, after the near light sees him hesitating and drawing out sluggish delays without end, each of the two guests, seizing him with his wife and his own virgin daughters, leads them far outside the walls and orders them to hasten and escape into the high mountains, on this condition given, that no one who passes beyond should look back cautiously, lest ill. But fearing Lot, lest a swift wrath of punishment overtake the slow, he himself sought Segor with tears and pleased by begging, that which forced the Lord to save many equally, and the special gift of safety granted to him he shared with many, and made merit from the gift. And now, not the usual clouds quickly covering the sky, forced by the divine power of the father mixing, had thickened mists, but those which Aetna whirls, which Inarime vomits, which the warm waters of Aponus exhale, which the earth shaken by nearby Vesuvius belches forth, which the savage mouth of the Lycian Chimaera, with its vast cavern of a triple furnace, breathes out, and wherever in a place deceptive sulphurs, with swift spirit inflaming, poured out in a narrow channel, flow out into the light, steaming, having burst the earth. Not that it could not also turn rains into fires, for whom it was permitted to establish the whole world from nothing:

but a good judge prefers to condemn with greater preparation those whom a pitying world and the ruin of morals punishes as an example. Therefore from every shore all things rush together in a surging mass, and each thing, packed together by its own breath, comes together as fuel for flames into one body, and like a solid body a curved shell of sulphurous metal covers guilty lands and cities, which a swift spirit, gathering strength in a narrow path, drove with such a crash that it thundered with repeated thunderbolts and terrified minds, just as wretched Lot's wife, trembling, turned back her eyes to what was forbidden and quickly suffered punishment for violating the law, turned into a pillar of salt: deprived of light, the unhappy soul thus lost everything together with the body, so that no corpse remained with the form surviving. Then Lot, swifter than Segor, driven by fear and stunned by the horrific evil, enters. And the sun rises, more burning than all fire, flashing with angry gleam and directing severe rays toward Sodom. After it envelops the lights in its flames and the loosened sulphurs hurl down the bound fires together with themselves in a dry liquid, the fires drip from their own beds, a lightning-like cloud falls headlong in a dense shower and envelops the cities and rages throughout all the fields, and with a mixed roar it thunders and overcomes the laments.

A fiery storm, which, after it found fuel in the oppressed lands and settled on the very sands, raises an immense pyre with its gathered tinder, and flames return from the earth to the stars, until the crags and the resounding earth pass into ashes and the sunken sands are dissolved deep down, and the hollow fields, with the turf consumed, open their furrowed expanses, and the moisture which had seared the lands, poured out through opened veins and joining forces, gives birth to a private sea. What are we to think this is—that a lake was suddenly filled with wondrous power, which before was a pyre? Did the good judge wish to destroy the condemned by abolishing all the elements, or does the mild clemency of the punishment rather designate a silent end, because it quenched the flames with waters, and perhaps the contrary nature of the material reveals a rest from a future judgment, and the holy Jordan, flooding the lake, which first among men deserved to wash away sins?