Alethia

A Poem of Claudius Marius Victor Interpolated by Ioannes Gagneius. Claudius Marius Victor, Orator of Massilia, in his Commentaries on Genesis: Preface to the Best and Greatest God. Highest and holy God, origin of all power, Almighty, whom it is not lawful for human minds to comprehend by the subtle investigation of things, And not to know is impious (for by deep reason we believe you to be God in three, but three we believe one, As a single substance renders the persons three, preserving the undivided covenant in a pious bond), You, without beginning, likewise without end, everlasting, You alone are and are the same, subject to no time. You exceed the space of things, whatever recesses of the mind Are stretched out; you are bounded by no space. There is no place that contains you, for you are immense. Nor is it lawful for the human mind to touch what your image is, unknown to be seen by eyes, * Unless it offers itself to be seen by a special divine power: nor indeed is there anyone who, by created power, Might quicken the motion by which we exist and are moved. You are mind and the deep substance of mind: You are reason, and the fully prudent origin of reason, You are power, the apex of power, and indeed you yourself You are life, and the begetter of life, and of profound light: You are the true light, God; you are the cause and vigor of things: From you took its beginning whatever suddenly Shone forth from nothing, and, filled by so great an author, Either has the force of measure or received form into its members. Nature, preserved in its perishable Parts, proves you lord; and the order given confesses the commanded sequence.

You distinguish docile numbers, you balance weights, you vary measures, you govern rhythms and motion, you command alternating servitudes to serve, and the perpetual recurrence of things to stand still, and you roll the world, full of the image of the mind, to produce ages already known to you. Not content to endow created things with a single gift, whatever you do you lavish upon various uses. Indeed, you make nothing that is not the cause, O nurturing God, of your own things: although the reason and manner of your deeds may be unknown to us—for the clever idleness of the human mind thinks that contraries, while they contend, have more peace—thus the rich Creator binds even opposing elements together and fills them with powers poured forth from you. And yet, although these things are in the majesty of creating, you lack none of those things which you generate; and of the completed world and the stable structure of things remaining through you, you are in no way in need; nor is your glory only in this, that as a good author you do what must be done, but also that you do not disdain to enable secondary causes to provide what they can. Whoever feels your gifts is himself your gift, so that man alone can and ought to refer all things back to you alone as acceptable. For your goodness alone, O God, was the reason why you would command all things to be born: when you first gave living spirits to live and to enjoy the world which you held in your mind, and to know all the causes of things in you, and you gave them to flit over lands and waters.

You distinguish docile numbers, you balance weights, you vary measures, you govern rhythms and motion, you command alternating servitudes to serve, and the perpetual recurrence of things to stand still, and you roll the Certain seats for which is heaven, to which free hearts And free will you have granted to all: so that now They could turn themselves into either part as they wished: So that you might become reward for the just, and for the merits of the pious, You also conferred this by providing, that you would be a debtor. For what from the first created in the heavenly seat One (while he envies the lord of light, of life, and his own Author, and seeks this title) preferred To be the author of evil, and to introduce the first death, Cast down from high Olympus with his accomplices in crime: You prejudice nothing from that for virtue: that For which it is enough to have done good: but this is the highest sum Of your praise: that when it would be a crime to raise oneself above The power of the divine summit, and a vast No religion whatsoever, utterly indestructible by wave: Yet you did not deny life and feeling to the ungrateful: You even granted them to rejoice in the freedom of the mind. Nor does the nature of free will, powerful in either direction, Come to be accused by us: for that it was 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's worthy Rewards of the saints would double the punishment of the wicked. Moreover (if it is permissible for me to say this, saving Your peace, Father) perhaps it is a greater good before you Not to have sinned, through the slippery times of life, Than for the wretched to have sinned evil: but you seem to see how This stands: you to whom we entrust all causes.

Meanwhile, it is enough for us that the base weights of the earth, while you inspire them with your sacred reason, you inform with your power, and you shape to your likeness, making them nobler in countenance: while you raised man with broad face to the stars, whom the savage tyrant’s deceit snatched into the snares of death and to impious Tartarus, you redeem with the poured-out blood of your only-begotten son; and from the depths of Erebus, sought for greater gifts, you restore him more exalted than he was made: and you give him back to eternal life, and you bear him into heaven, the dread enemy subdued. Now, now let no rash man accuse father Adam that, by violating the law, he loosened the light precept and opened the way to death: for the parent’s fault is sufficiently compensated, because it is greater to conquer death than not to have known how to die. Now from the happy hall of heaven he looks down upon the ethereal axes, and treads upon the stars; and he calls his descendants, whom the rich wisdom of the eternal father has formed again with waters and taught to be reborn, into the coming kingdom. Therefore I beseech you, kindly god, who with inclined nod grant feeling to minds, and you, most dear son of your father, grant your honey-sweet word into our hearts: and pour eloquent tongues into us, as we prepare to shape tender souls and hearts for the path of true virtue in youthful years. Now unroll the famous scrolls of law-giving Moses: what is the origin of the sky, or what the beginnings of the world, and what secret faith has shaken throughout the whole world.

With ambiguous minds: whence the growing plague drew its strength, and ancient customs yielded to vice. Grant, eternal God, that I may describe the mysteries of life: Grant also a mind, grant fitting times to the mind, Grant zeal, that care may not be lacking for such a task, And a good outcome for the zeal: for which all prayers Rightly surpass (a candid mind is the writer’s) — Do not condemn the gift I, a guilty one, now dare to offer: And be lenient, benignly, with my crimes. But if by the law of meter the order should err in any way, If the speech should err in impropriety, and the sense waver: Let no measure of faith suffer danger from this. Through the Lord Christ, who, born with you in the same Majesty, thrives, equally as the nourishing Spirit Lives, incomprehensible to minds, through endless ages. Claudius Marius Victor, Orator of Massilia, First Book of Commentaries on Genesis. Before the poles, and the day of the sky, and the darkness of the world, Before the forms of works, and things, and the seeds of things, Eternally, without past, without end of future, There subsists: to whom there was always one God: with whom Lived the begotten Word, God, and his nourishing Spirit, the vital sum of hidden vigor. One substance of three, joining in concordant bond, Blessed the eternal highest with power.

He was reigning, powerful in the majesty of creating, Already seeing things, the causes of things, and future outcomes, And what was to be done, and what was to be born, with a capacious mind, Surveying the ages, and whatever times roll forth, Always having it present: with a blessed mass, His own kingdom was immense: nor did the triple power of God Lack a witness to the kingdom: who first, with no seed, Giving bodies to things, while he compels things to exist, Already made our gift, which he alone possessed. And so that this world might be made rich by Wisdom, He generated all things at once: but afterwards, the seeds of things He adorned with forms superimposed upon the formless. And order, well established, reduced the times into a series. For it was not, as the tongue of sacrilegious madness felt, That a mindless chance rolled the unknowing seeds. So prudently did he twist the work: nor is it right to say it was made Before time, because what is born in time is moved. Nor further is it right to believe the eternal world, and equal to the heavens, Always held a stable vigor: For what consists of bodies must be admitted to have begun. For a body, which wear wears down, which times dissolve, And which the very end, stretching to the ultimate, abolishes, Shows a beginning: that which is proven to have been allotted, It is equally right to believe this was made, or to think it was born.

Therefore the world is known to be made, which each person, subdued, Assents, and, convinced by true teaching, believes, You will grant that God made it: He who, by the power of the Word And by might, whatever is thought to be nature Arranged, commanded, warned, and the created gift He sustains through successive cycles (always reforming the fleeting), And, drawing back the swift orbit, he whirls it around. If he should even prefer to dissolve everything swiftly, He will immediately return them into similar forms, restored. So great is the Father’s power, so great is the glory of the Word. But to touch upon the true beginnings of things: The lofty vault of the sky and the lying lands— The first part of the work—but the wave covered the lands, And the air, dripping in a foul cloud in the middle, And the vast abyss veiled itself in black darkness, And the sacred spirit, hanging over the extended waves, Was animating the life-giving waters, and was giving the seeds of things, Not yet composed, to be poured into the sprouting lands, To be insinuated: when light, sent from above, Shone forth as God spoke; and, separated, the black Shadow, drawing back its veil, departed from high Olympus. Then divine prudence, calling the light day, Gave the name of dark night to the shadows, Thus one day was made from the first morning and evening: Again, a new morning, the first evening now driven away, The restored light made: when the most solid mass, Rising from the midst of the waves, yielding with a concrete body, Lifted itself; and, hardened with rigid firmness far and wide, Suspended the divided waters; and cast the cold deep Against the hot axes; and, enclosed by the sea, It rested, poured over the things which it surrounds with a vast circuit.

It covers the aetherial heaven with a cloud drawn down from here. Perhaps someone here, skilled in error, might argue with himself thus: that the pastures for the ethereal flames may not be lacking, and that excessive heat, seeking the depths by following its fuel, might burn up the mortal race, and that the earthly realm cannot endure the glittering sky, subjected below is the firm machine of the pole, which protects us with its shadow; meanwhile, it grows cold from the waves placed above. But to seek the causes of the divine power, flee far from us: it is better for you always to believe that God can do whatever is thought impossible. And that the great sea is borne above the stars and constellations, prove by the reasoning of those who refuse to believe, and who wish the world to hang, which the Creator himself carries and rolls, constant in its immense weight. The third day saw the swollen waves recede: when God, with the waves of the already driven-back flood, opened up a great void in the airy spaces: then for the first time the lowest part of the world, the dry land, showed its uncovered face; and, shaken by the power of the Word, the blue seas surrounded the bared lands. These lands, quickly ordered to sprout with varied offspring, the luxuriant twin mud covered with new growth. And the rough, from the tender sod bursting forth, the joyful forest tossed its locks: and each tree and greening herb brought forth its own form according to its kind, and fruit and seed: and the earth was clothed with grass. Now, with three days completed, kindled by swift motion, it was ordered to compress itself into a sphere of flame and fire: the first day of the sun: and the sown seeds of light scattered their rosy tresses from a purple tinder.

Luna, the honor of night, shines with borrowed light, Hanging below the sun on a lower path, subject to it: *From it she receives the rays she has taken up, and, struck, reflects them back. The stars, painting the heaven with distinct zones, Shimmer with ethereal flowers, vibrating various colors, And the dark night marveled that it gleamed more adorned, while darts of ruddy flames, Poured forth, glitter, and the swift new stars press their throws, Which veil the solar radiance with open rays. The fourfold seasons, measured by the four parts of the year. The sun, too, since the moon’s course is monthly, Content with one course, completes the revolving year, And declares the sacred craftsman by its wondrous structure. The fifth day stirred breathing bodies in the sea, Which the moistening liquid generated, and scattered the deep’s Delights: which nature formed in wondrous ways with varied seed, Commanded to bring forth parts from the whole, and forms from empty body. Moreover, it gave a soul to go into brute shapes: And those which, in the swollen salt’s scaly depths, Huge whales raise up, packed with soft fat, It produced; and that which preserves their bodies, for ours

Liquor itself harms bodies: the nursling of generation Harms fish: and also the shoots which the earth nourishes, *) Hence birds also have drawn a soft kind from vigor: For it forms liquid waters, and life, sent into the sea, Enters; the swollen seas seethe with much offspring: Nor is it enough that the fish kind arises: and that The scaly crowd escapes into the highest waves of the brine: Unless, fluttering in the waters, it gradually swims in pure ether, Having learned to touch the ethereal retreats of the bird: Therefore the material is one for birds and (6) fish. Now twice six days shone with clear Olympus: The third after the warm generative gifts of the sun: And already the warming earth had loosened its pregnant limbs: When, stirring greater things, God ordered the earth to bring forth Every animal which reason alone, moving, animates: - To which it is given to serve where the use of things demands. Nor does delay delay: the vital offspring burst forth from the fertile lands, Offspring which have received forms allotted to their own kind. 2) Here now let it be permitted for me to touch upon something, to Transmit with a trembling course deeply anxious: To report, having transmitted, a certain changed series. After the whole order, given generically, brought forth 3) Spring full of goods, and endowed with much dowry: Which God would foster, to endure in a long series: Then the machine seemed very beautiful to its author. But what is it that the world was, that the stars, and the risings, And the ether, and the glassy sea, and the green lands, If a spectator is not present, whom the glory of such a great mass Fills: and leads, eager with eyes, through each thing? To what purpose such wide boundaries, and ample possession, If the possessor of things is absent?

The ruler of Olympus, Turning these things over in his mind and weighing them with the balance of the Word, Said: "The sum given to the work is fixed; all that I have created is good. Now let us make man," he says, "who will rule in the world, And be the image of God: it is fitting that the one who is like the creator, Free in will, should enjoy what the mind has created." He had said these things, and man was made, whether in his whole body Or in soul and form, perhaps in the manner by which future things Are made as they are to be made, by which he always had what was made as already done: Although past time had not yet come into being. Therefore he ordered this one, set over things, with a spouse, To increase through offspring, and to fill the empty lands. Then nature, once granted to created things, Especially those which a moving life seems to animate, Multiplies whatever was first brought forth in its own forms. The seventh day saw that the great parent had ceased, But that only the numbers of kinds had stopped creating, And that he had held his rest; then it was rightly consecrated, Because it saw the perfect work: for this too is full Of virtue, that God ceased, that he laid down his labors, For the form of the father, which his right hand was to prepare, It is enough that he accomplished in twice three days as master. The seventh day taught the examples of venerable rest Which we are all commanded to hope for in the heavenly hall, If only the good deeds of the pious are not lacking. This day also marks that day on which Christ Loosed the underworld, and, having conquered Avernus, opened the way of return. While he, once victorious, about to return to his father's hall, And now free from evils, rests in human flesh.

Thus God knows how to rest, thus to take leisure, So that by resting he does more, while ceaselessly at peace And ceaselessly at work, you mingle series and times, By resting he completes the work which he had created. But what sort of Adam God formed, and from what sort Of matter, it is right to take up briefly with Moses. For the first man in merits, last in the whole order, Was made: so that he might know himself to surpass created things, And from this pay equal praises to both. Therefore, for man, the best hand of the highest Creator, With easy handling and well-skilled, yields clay, And takes up clay that follows bending and shape wherever the art leads, (Just as the mind already bore within itself a human form) Unfolds it into a shape: then with vapor sent in by breath, Life watered the soil: the softened earth, moistened with liquid, Turns into flesh: and blood, a slippery humor, Stretches soft veins through known channels. Then, already full of mind, man, leaving the earth, Leaps up, and, prudent, adores the lord of reason. Not otherwise, when bodies, laid out in opened tombs, Rise again, when Christ’s majesty, fallen from the open sky, Unseals the pregnant viscera of the earth, They will leap forth, and worship the lord of earth and sky. For what he did not have, when from base dust A body was compacted into human form, is an honor.

It is very easy for it to be restored whole again, so that from dust it returns What the earth had held for many years, engraved. Thus from ancient tombs will come forth Bodies, each reassuming its own parts. Thus there is nothing of the past which is not a form of the future. But to open the seat and dwelling of the first man, Where, for the whole, a wound was received in place of seed. The East opens its happy recesses, where a land Of a loftier globe, the Paradise of a pleasant grove, Lies open: and it is distinguished by the order of a rounded wood. Here where, already, the boundary is marked by equal spaces Of the sun, and eternal spring tempers the hours with equal seasons. There each tree stands rich with its own fruits, And mellow fruits are driven out by succeeding fruits: Which, pleasing to the eyes and full of wondrous vigor, Fosters limbs and spirits, and nourishes with flavor and scent. Here the earth, distinct, vibrates sidereal heats, Always budding with new flower, and with fresh fruit: Here, animated by vigor, fragile reeds release The breathing odors of ambrosial cinnamon. But neither what the Mede smells of, or the Achaemenian with hair unbound Fragrant, what the wealthy Assyrian with soft amomum, And the Mareotic harvest red with nard, What the Tartessian shrubs, what the branch of the Sabaean, And what the Palestinian branch weeps from a wounded wound: You would think all these, vying, were heaped into this garden, For God has brought together here, equally, all things which individually Nature received in certain places, and has packed them together. And while the grove vibrates with a gentle breeze in its motion, One nectar from diverse sources mingles its odor: And a new gift arises which no single tree claims for itself.

And while the whole tree trembles, gently shaken by a soft rustling, its leaves quiver, and the entire forest resounds with a hymn to God, and the modulated breeze whistles songs, nor does an empty motion beat the air in vain. For it is fitting to believe that nothing happens by chance or in vain with the Author, who, holding everything together under one mass, binds things to things by an alternating law and holds them back. Moreover, the beautiful grove, the forest, and the gleaming woods are proofs of His works and plantings of things. Nor is there doubt that before the first parent's sin, they would have pitched their tents here as well: glory, simplicity, zeal, wisdom, tenacious of truth, prudence, grace, honor, and salvation, and the renowned affections of the soul, and illustrious virtue, and whatever beauty the world holds—in short, what many gifts I would wish to enumerate in few words. This is already enough for faith: that from a joyful seed rising here, the tree of life seeks the air with its lofty fruits; there, a different knowledge, harmful with its fruit, hangs the knowledge of things from the tree of the law. At the lap of the sacred grove, which the forest crowns, a spring gushes forth and marries its offspring to virtue with wealth, swelling with a fourfold stream, joyfully releasing its head, richer than the eternal ocean, for with its downward current it gives its waters, while the other receives all.

Nor does it swell, however: the one that grows by poured-in waves is smaller than the one that knows not how to diminish by poured-out rivers. Among these, in the first rank, Phison leaps forth exulting, a fourth part of the blessed fountain, producing the gifts of nature that prudence bestows, and fills the peoples of the Ganges and the Indian realms, spreads itself with silt, rolling lands and seeds, which it sows in the fields, where the bare sands lie parched, amid gleaming golden nuggets. Here, where the carbunculus glows with lightning-like fire, and the smaragdus shines with a radiant green light. Nor is Geon lesser thereafter, but gentler with its placid waves, it raises the Nile's waters, and with a pious flood covers the fields about to burn far and wide, and, resisting the sky, tempers the Ethiopian waters with refluent pools. Third, the Tigris runs through with its swift whirlpool, a companion to the Euphrates, joined together, they rush with such mass that the conquered earth, opened by a hollow chasm, swallows them, until in the glades of Armenia and the Tempe of Media, which it could no longer sustain nor now contain, it spews forth the rivers. But the Tigris, as if indignant at black Avernus, leaps forth into the ethereal breezes with a greater motion, and again enters caves, and, plunged into caverns, stirs up roars within; and, made stronger by the barrier, is multiplied by waters, and, swifter from the hollow cave, exits, and cuts through the Assyrian plains with a swift column. The Euphrates is more just, which, with its rich whirlpool generous, irrigates the parched fields of subject Persia, drawn out by gentle channels, and serves all equally, and offers itself entirely for human uses.

Until the land, dry of waters, and likewise the prodigal river itself, consumes what the sea owed to the waves. This whole abundance of nature, therefore, these dominions, and these delights so filled with a dowry of virtues, is the first possession of the first man, into which he was led, commanded to be a dweller exulting in perpetual life. Thus placed among such delights—far from rich Tempe—while still worthy and learning to earn by labor, he lived free from grief and ignorant of care. So great is the merit of having deserved some evil at the hands of the highest author, merely by his name. What, then, do we think the Father can grant for a life that will return to the times? For among his servants, even then, was Paradise not a pure largesse, not a reward? And that decree of the severe Law, and the danger to freedom, he undertook, and, preserving life, received the commands he obeyed. He still promises greater things to the good, and keeps rewards; he who established the cause for merits, when he said to eat from all trees, but to shun this one alone. This tree, bearing swarms of diverse things, carries under its bark the knowledge of right and wrong. For transgressors, raw death will follow direly. With such a law given, the best reason teaches that God did not make the first man mortal in the earliest time; rather, he himself brought death upon himself voluntarily. For in this, too, is the great indulgence of the highest God: while he grants to his servants not by merits but solely by his own benign will, he wishes it 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 seek in narrow confines what closed permission within boundaries has left deprived of its own part: nothing has been cut off from you by this law. Before, you had only the power of land and sea; now you also possess the realm of life and eternity, and further, of death. As if the pious, untaught inhabitant of the world believed that it had indulged itself to make all things obey. Every animal which the earth, now ordered, had created, pouring forth seed from its vernal body in silence, God commanded to be present and to obey its own master: namely, that it might impose fitting names upon all things, and call each thing made by its own name, according to the nature that is born to move of itself. Without delay, every kind of living thing, not ignorant of obedience, stands still before God by nature: at whatever part of the new world they are called, animals gather in that very moment of brief time—whether they had been accustomed to move with a soft, slow step, or with the swiftest speed, or to glide through the air by sudden impulse, or to swim in the waves, or to slide along by weight on slippery ground. To these, the omnipotent God, with Adam present, having called them, gave each its own gift bountifully. And he armed them with hand, horn, foot, tooth, venom, and with other means by which an animal, lacking skill and of lesser mind and lacking reason, may protect itself and keep itself safe from adverse things. But no living creature flourished with a form, face, and bearing equal to man; rather, to man he added honors nearly divine. And among so many creatures illuminating life with a double sex, only he was unequal, who long ago had in himself the suitable material for generating offspring, ignorant of it.

Therefore, God undertakes the work with a nod: swiftly, the sluggish hearts of the man, so languid with sleep, are dissolved, so that He might draw out the deepest rib from his mind, now aware. From this, flesh is made to follow the command: for the skin, spontaneously receding, offered a smooth path for the rib as it went forth, with the limbs and body entirely unharmed. This, arranged by the working God through various members, received its form, and, animated by warm marrow, was turned into a living work, now pleasing in the second sex. Thus Eve was formed, granted to her husband. Now, O most foolish crowd, cease at last to torment your mind with vain inquiries here: do not ask why woman was made from man’s limbs, when from the beginning she could have been fashioned from soft dust or from nothing. (Cease to scrutinize hidden causes, even if it is permitted to conjecture.) Woman was made from man, a certain kinship, so that mutual and alternating love might mingle between them, compelling each to recognize themselves in the other’s limbs. Hence Adam immediately sensed that Eve was part of himself, as, exulting, new grace touched his mind; affection, received into familiar vitals, rushed in and penetrated into his bones with such heat,

So that he might now know what a wife and a spouse are, what sweet children are, and parents to be set aside for spouses, what it means for two to remain in one flesh, living an eternal life together. Moreover, while they were free from the vices and corruption of the world, they flourished with divine spirits, lacking nothing: since the substance of the world and all the wealth the orb gave were in their possession; nor did their bodies bear any liability to disease; hunger, ignorant of respite, did not compel them to eat. If they had kept the commands of the supreme God intact, they would never have known the cruel commands of death and dreadful pains. But the cunning serpent, breaking the Lord's law, deceived the incautious Eve with such tricks. O race lacking a better life and good things, ignorant of man: nor is he considered to know good things, who, ignorant of evil, does not know how to distinguish by what limit diverse things differ from good things among themselves. And therefore God did not want it to be lawful for man to pluck the august fruits: lest, with the cloud of the mind removed, they lift their eyes to heaven and know the best things, and be like the gods. Here now let it be permitted to digress a little and lament the foul ruins of the ancients. Ah, too wretched the pagans, whom madness drove to fashion various rites and many names of gods, and to add a plural voice to the sole God.

The first impious voice of the serpent sounded this, who was the cause of death for you: for after credulous Eve broke the prescribed rule with sacrilegious bites, now taught by the evil she had experienced, she seeks a partner in guilt; and, ill-knowing of deceit, she asks her incautious husband by what art she perished first: thus, overcome by the enemy, wretched Adam yields to a double crime: and he tastes the apples, most full of sacred juice. But because the severe prescriptions of the law were present in these, bringing death more than a viper's poison, as soon as they violated their mouths with the forbidden flavor, they immediately felt the crime, and the accomplished deed grew, and struck their breasts with an ignorant sense. Hence fear, then shame, first took their origin. For while the hearts of men, conscious of high things and bearing themselves intent only on heaven and the right, would carry their turned breasts to the high parent: while they would note the miracles of divine secrets with the clear splendor of the incorporeal mind, the care of their own limbs had not yet touched them. When that eternal vigor of life deserted those already affected by death, then finally cold and heat, the aerial changes, succeeded: and men first felt themselves needy of clothing: and they silently blushed at their own sex with a pitiable lament. Therefore, from the leaves of the shady fig tree, they weave new coverings, plucked after the fault, which, with the mind recovered, will denude the shame veiled by the body.

Nor is that enough: they do not know what they do, where the brand of crime is seared; they flee from themselves; if the abyss should by chance lie open, they would wish to hide themselves in it; so much does the penalty border on its own guilt, that now the wretched, fearing mortal death, are helped by the image of death; forests and shady lairs offer vain consolations, false shadows. For where is it lawful for you, timid one, to withdraw your body? In yourself, indeed, which the living power of the father soon made from base dust, he hides the world, he fills it present, and spreads out, diffused, into hidden recesses. Can you then, fleeing, escape the Lord? Could you then hope to hide from the one who sees all, so that you might lie in vast darkness? You will never be concealed. Therefore, when shame for the sin committed touched Adam, seeking hiding places, he soon heard, "Hey, where are you, Adam?" What indeed is this, that God seeks you? Does he perhaps ask unknowingly, he to whom not even death itself can withdraw the one whom you, with fragile mind, have submitted? Why does he ask where you are, unless he confesses that you, fallen by your own will through the pain of death, are not with him, and have fallen from sacred heaven? But the holy piety of the parent forbids despair; whose clemency (may it be right for me to have said, and may it be right also to have approved what was said?) exceeds justice; nor does it terrify me so much with a severe voice, asking where you are, what you seek in your trembling heart, as it revives me that after crimes, the fallen one, immersed in fear and hiding places, and almost buried, he calls out and calls back; and lest examples be sought too far, he shows the gentleness of forgiving guilt. After the cause, having shaken out the guilty, reveals the parents.

God began to speak, and heaven, sea, and earth trembled, and the vast recesses, shaken, opened up. While the sentence punishes the guilty, it hides them in Tartarus. Since it has seemed good to depart from our commands, now a just judgment will strike new offenders with penalties. First among all the living things of the whole world, you will be accursed: and worse than what you hide within, envious serpent, you who cast men into the enclosures of heaven, and by your fraud drove them to touch the forbidden fruits—you are the origin of harsh death. Therefore, so that a fitting measure of punishment may follow the crime, from the moment you sank into the earth of man, you, stretched out on the unjust ground, will furrow the hard earth with your breast. And because you made them attempt forbidden foods, from now on you will always eat the foul entrails of the earth. And because it pleased you, unworthy as you are, to be the first inventor of death, you will die by a perpetual penalty. And I will give you the hatred of the human race, and specifically against you and your whole kind I will wage war with mighty power. And I will give you perpetual fear, so that death for you, as long as you are, will be a long one: you will crawl on your feet and with your breast prone; and a woman will kill you along with your seed, whose feet alone you will cunningly ambush, so that even trembling she may set her footsteps on your head. He spoke, and thus began against Eve, pale. And you, who were not content to destroy yourself alone with the smallest fruit, but rashly dragged your husband into similar daring acts, you will be like a slave: subjected, you will endure harsh labors under the judgment of a man. And because you were the first to dare to multiply the crime, you will always be tossed about by many misfortunes.

And, bearing many offspring, you will be so tormented by your numerous children that the mortals whom your fault will cause to be created will sometimes be the cause of death for their parent. You also, who dared to set aside our warnings and the first bonds of salvation for feminine deceits, and chose to die willingly, receive this fate as guilty. The land which you will furrow with your plow shall be cursed because of your crimes: though cultivated, it shall bear thorns and menacing thistles, and your shameless hope shall deceive your prayer. Nor shall the earth keep faith with you. You refused to live joyfully in these delights and to live through all ages willingly; now live in harsh labor, and live perpetually in misery, until slow old age restores you to the earth and the earth hides you away. He spoke, and, pitying them, lest the injury of heaven harm the ignorant, he covers them with the skins of beasts, and teaches them to protect their life; and lest he again venture into similar audacities, he strikes Adam with the dread of ill-omened death. But lest they prolong eternal life from the tree of life, and the wretched guilty ones be subject to heavier punishments, spending overlong times in such great dangers and liable to dire penalties, immediately the winds, which the deep forest of the grove stirs up, are ordered to depart from the sacred groves, and, carried by a breeze, they drive them, bound in a balancing whirlwind, from the seat of Paradise. Therefore, the young men, cast out from here and brought back to the lands, dismissed from the lost light, sigh for the joys they have lost, sharing neither in such great space nor in such great danger, but not sharing in the sorrow that stirs their hearts.

They turn over in silent grief what they have fallen from, what they have lost, what life follows, what life was. Moreover, they are anxiously fixed on what will be at the final end: whether heavier things remain for them, whether any hope survives for the wretched, whether by eternal death they lose what remains, or whether, since the bitter path of death came upon the world and future peoples through a tree, life can still return through some tree. End of the first book. Claudius Marius Victor, Orator of Massilia, Commentary on Genesis, Book Two. Thus far I have run through the secret sequence, the beginnings of the world, as sincere faith taught, without deceit, while the earth lacked worthy vices and mortal things. Now I approach in verse the habits of men and already mortal things; almighty God, add strength to the poet. After each was ordered to depart from the sacred abodes and realms, they reached the fields of their birth. And he stood on his own soil, stripped of it—wondrous with what kind of mouth rude colonists are amazed at such wild fields, which do not flourish with fruit-bearing trees or with distinct foliage. Nor does any type of soil please, for a confused heap of compressed weight is placed in a mass; steep rocks are rigid; lowlands, pressed down by forests, labor and lack grass; high places bristle with thorns. Alas, with what eyes, with what heart do they see this, whose minds once beheld Paradise?

One cause of grief lies beneath, while the countenance of all evils, already full, unfolds itself, far most sorrowful, after so many of your delights, Paradise: the joys of fertile places, most vain, are always present, and the image wearies sad minds. Now that glory of the sacred grove shines with greater serenity, now the wealth of your blessed forest, now the sweeter use of the fruit, the nectarous taste, now the earth breathing with living flowers saddens the absent with its scent. O how (he exclaims) do you not repay Paradise: or rather, do you make these gifts worse than those blessed delights? Thus for those sad ones the nourishing love of life already perishes, scarcity of things insinuates that it is sweet to die: lest greater need meet with a heavier evil: for mad hunger compels them to search the bowels of the earth and to seek what the barren forest gives as food: to the point that it helps to explore doubtful foods everywhere from the roots of malignant herbs, and to fill the barking belly. Finally, the ultimate lot taught them, needy and lacking in things, to hope for the help of the highest father: then each, prostrate on the ground with limbs, with tears and silent grief, which cannot be expressed in words, seek solace in prayers: while shame withdraws words from internal complaints. Therefore, when he knew that the gifts of speech had been returned to him, Adam, rising, prays with such a prayer.

Almighty author of the world, and creator of things, whom I, with the stain of evil and with daring deeds, once made hostile to myself, while a happy life remained, and it was granted to follow swift minds with my sight beyond the stars, poured out far and wide through all things: Why do I now have these eyes, which behold your hidden things, either not at all, or for the most part diminished, and shut within the dark cave of an earthly prison, so that now nothing true is given to see except certain mortal, fleeting things, and the world slipping into worse? And therefore, omnipotent one, who are always wholly everywhere, we flee to you, we pray with trembling mind, hear us wretches, whom you always see and hear. When once that head of crimes, the most hostile enemy of the world, wished to attach me to the condemned party: he, not conquered, dared nothing by himself alone, but taking on the form of a serpent, and with those arms of my wife, he made a hard wound: thus the unforeseen deceit of the craftsman of crimes subdued us. And when I was condemned with a just penalty for my crime, my mind, struck with such great grief, acknowledged the guilt: so that I thought the punishment was provided to me from myself. Therefore I denied groans and tears to the punishment, and embraced in my mind the sweet consolations of punishment, afterwards placing this very thing among the sacred gifts for pardon of the crime: I no longer shirk any labors you might add: yet in the meantime, best judge, if it helps, hear us who pray for nothing contrary to your commands. Nor do we pray this with tears and sad voice, that the judgment of your censure be dissolved: but that the whole sentence may hold its full force.

You ordered me, moved, to seek sustenance from the clod, and said that barren thorns and tribulus were to be removed for the sake of the crop, so the field is sown to deceive my hopes, the crop sought by labor. Grant me to know what the crops are, in what manner they are to be sown, which are the fruitful herbs, what the form of labor is. Give, father, help to the wretched, and imbue my senses. Then, when I am master of things and certain of salvation, let Eve serve me, and, having experienced the savage punishment of the parent, let her bear peoples so that they may be punished for our crime, and let the succession of descendants purify the sins of the fathers by their deaths, making the punishment eternal. Meanwhile, while they pray thus, the image of the serpent, seen by a fearful sign, was carrying itself along a silent path, gently with crawling coils to the soft grasses, turned the trembling ones towards itself, and, shaken by the hatred of dire grief, drew them into kindred angers. And Eve first to her husband: "If the supreme cause of evils moves you, seize rocks with your hand; the opportunity is given to give the author of death to death. Let that cunning one learn by his own punishments and bloody death how sad it is to die, who ruined me and you." She spoke, and followed him, slipped from his course, with missiles; indeed, both hurl hard rocks through the oaks and crags, where the cunning snake was hiding itself by crawling. One of these, released by a rigid arm, rebounded onto a bare flint by chance, and struck a spark; which, born from dry tinder, burst into flame, and, extending its crested fires widely, the whole forest now burned, seized. Here they shudder, and seek hiding places with trembling step.

But fear itself holds the timid: it instills a keen concern for the unfamiliar flame: they wish to see it again and to behold the swelling. Therefore, a little removed, they marvel at the barren earth's back, that the shady tresses of the groves have flowed down, that the ashes bristle, that the day grows dark, that whole lands shine, and that there is a new light beneath the sun: nor do they accept with a calm mind the crackling from the hissing woods on all sides, the surging globes of flames broad into the stars, nor that the devouring fire, once sunk in, stretches its roots into the deep: with the heat thus taken up, the conquered earth opens its veins to its generous gifts. When it had been completely dried of all moisture, it soon began to become liquid: and to pour forth metals in streams, each with its own: here the highest honor of gold flashes in a tawny torrent: silver flows forth gleaming with white milk, the slippery hardness of bronze wanders: and it coalesces into a soft mass with its body dissolved. Do you wish to grasp the form of the burning forest in brief? Sulphurous sparks flit through the dark of the grove, no differently than when dry Aetna, with its ruptured furnaces, spews forth hissing sulphur mixed with flames. Then the very rich earth, with its clods boiled down, stirred itself into various offspring, which, with a husband's rain, the crumbling passage of the dissolved soil, parturient,

When the swollen folds burst, the crop stood forth, raised up, and, with its moving ears, waved and trembled: so that the new inhabitant might learn the appearance of cultivated grain. Yet long use claims nothing for itself here, nor does chance, devoid of virtue; God gave all knowledge of what is good together with the light: and he willed that whatever the greater world has should become known in the lesser world through sacred sense, and that the mind should follow through these things. For if the mind, as given to man, remained untouched and subject to no fault, then no appearance, no bodily forms, no pattern of stars, no number of soft sand, nor the vast spaces over which the earth is stretched with the deep sea, nor what measure the completed mass has, nor what the vocal melody of sevenfold harmony sounds in its motion, would deceive it: now it is learned by use and given by constant study; whatever we grasp by art or use, we always hold as a gift from the Lord. And so that our lyre may recount the first parents as they departed, now, I ask, listen briefly: Adam, driven from the august seats of Paradise, had no prior experience of the duty of a spouse, and all his labor was to beget children. Therefore, where the first home was already full of two children, amid such varied labors, it brought many comforts: and each saw himself as a new parent. Multiplied cares lightened heavy sorrows: and hope now arose to rejoice in their own servants in the work of the fields: among whom the eldest in age, Cain, was turning the rich fields with hard rakes.

Abel, most worthy to rejoice in living gain, on bare hills and in the dry sprouting of the field, fed his harmless sheep and his parents with milk. But when they felt the hoped-for fruits, their own vows surpassed by divine favor, each soon decided to dedicate the first fruits of his own produce to God: the one first blocked the sacred altars with new grain; the other, more purely, sacrifices a snow-white lamb. First forms of priests, then the impious sacrifice of a brother, yet long before prefiguring Christ. For the perpetual priest of the highest, Melchisedech, would be from his order: immediately envy was kindled against him, and from the jealousy of his brothers, while the saving victim hangs from the tree, so once before the blameless Abel foresaw his brother's envy: for when the one had sacrificed from his grain, the other with a snow-white lamb, soon the smoke from the lamb ascended straight to high heaven; but on the other hand, the smoke from those grains, flying through the void, returned to earth, fleeing from heaven: either because he had consecrated worse things than the Lord, or because that is not pleasing to a mind which a greedy spirit produces. Then Cain, however, is inflamed with insane anger, drawing poison from that source of envy, whence the serpent had offered it, and, unsuspecting of his brother's caution, he slaughters him with a savage murder. Alas, a crime which mad lust, which fresh hatred, which wicked force does not drive the wretched! What had the harmless brother done? Was that holier one, who was, worthy to be killed?

Abel, most worthy to rejoice in living gain, on bare hills and in the dry sprouting of the field, fed his harmless sheep and his parents with milk. But when they felt the hoped-for fruits, their own vows surpassed by divine gifts, they were not content; they added crime to crime. And now there is no posterity that can accuse us of anything, and we ourselves have added to the disgrace: now there is something that the cunning serpent can object, if by chance we wish to accuse him, because we die: and that offspring added nothing to the heap of crime, but death: and the guilt of the parents, introduced into the world (it is horrible to say this), impiety made a new crime, so impiously, so cruelly, O Cain, you first stain the world with a new slaughter: for which, already released by death, you will give eternal punishments, and you are far worse than the abominable serpent, if we measure your crimes, for he brought death to us, he did not inflict it, but we began what was brought: but you first inflict this: you are so much worse than him, a public enemy who could be avoided: you, a private one, could not be guarded against by any art: for who would fear a beloved brother? But truly there is no crime of a man so dire and abominable that God does not forgive with a forgiving mind, if only he repents of the deed: which we accept with Cain as witness: whom, when he was dripping with fratricidal blood, God did not deem unworthy (such is his clemency) of a rebuke, but with a gentle voice asked where his brother was, and when he denied the crime, God accused him, and lightly punished him for so great a crime.

The fugitive, so great and exiled from both parents, is sent farther away and banished to vast shores, and is ordered to depart immediately from his ancestral lands. In this matter, even far off, the wretch is happily favored: it is a much heavier punishment to be seen among the happy and the pure-minded blessed, about to live after punishment and the shame of the deed. And so that exile might be lighter, a faithful wife is added as a companion to the guilty man, lest despair perhaps seize him alone; she, who would soothe the harsh cares of a sick heart, and with her embrace steady the broken body in motion, and, guilty of no fault, by the vows of her lord and by cultivating him with a pure mind, would draw forth whatever could be enough for two. Thus great grace accompanies the exiles: whose offspring the omnipotent God increased, multiplying through a thousand names of descendants, and gave Cain to be king over peoples, whom he taught to surround cities with walls, seeing them born for very long ages. Meanwhile, heavy Eve again to her sad husband made up for the first gift with a holy pledge: and, with offspring already born, she returned to the parent manifold cares of the mind, and joys mixed with labor. They made the name Seth for the boy, in place of Abel, whom the omnipotent God gave to them: from which followed posterity, from whose seed came Enos, who first, chosen for silent virtue as a priest, hoped and merited to be able to move the powerful one with pious prayers and a vow, and taught the following people to keep the worship of the eternal parent. From whose line, Enoch, powerful in virtues, descending, was not unequal to his ancestors in merits.

Restored to his ancestral seat and the blessed world, he still lives, and already holds the realms of a future life. This man is the just forefather Noah, in whose time repeated fault infected the whole world with like pursuits, and a following posterity added ancestral vice to vice. Therefore, for about a thousand years, or near it, when their ancestors had been accustomed to live, lest the perverse morals of men should increase with advancing years, and so that vice might have an end, the maximum human life was reduced to twelve lustra. For when the youth of Cain's line, prone to worse, had condemned itself by joining with profane marriages, it leaped forth, deserted by the favor of the heavens, into various crimes, and headlong rushed into every fall. Then God, with face averted from a world guilty of many crimes, immediately burst forth in these words: "Never again will that spirit of mine remain in the human race, nor will it extend life further. The guilty life of men, content to live for ten times twelve years, since they follow earthly things and have more of flesh than of mind, thus a severe and fixed sentence of the unmoved judge established a certain span of life, lest the times of a long life be able to provide a cause for increasing crime.

What wicked deed, indeed, would an impious man not dare? The impious race of men, like huge giants, monstrous horrors born of varied seed, dared anything: their one and greatest virtue was not to be virtuous to the end. A dread lust, drawing crime into all things, allowed them to spend no nights without blood, no days without slaughter. Forgetful of divine law, of human law, of their own selves, of pious affection, of their own mothers and fathers, and of God the Author, they had advanced so far in the utmost crimes that it would have wearied the Lord to have formed men. So perverse had it become that God, on account of the sins of the guilty, wished to overwhelm even innocent souls and to drown the lands with overflowing waters, the world returning to its ancient form. There was one just man, Noah, on whose account God delayed to come forth in his wrath; a faithful life had already led him through five hundred years free from crime, and had proved him living under holy law. To him God, opening his sacred secrets, reveals: "Now that the whole air and lands, infected by the base vices of men, have relapsed into worse, it has seemed good to wash them away and to submerge them under the swollen sea; so that, while everything falls in ruin and, at my command, settles in a headlong flood, it may cleanse the polluted world.

The entangled men, and whatever was bidden to live for the sake of man, the swollen ruin of the deep shall engulf. But because you alone, to whom our will is dear, have devoted your life to holy laws, always opposing perverse men with a better purpose, I shall so moderate the decrees of my laws that the impious race may pay me the just penalties it owes, and the filth of the world be cleansed; then, more worthily, the mortal race shall begin from you, and the peoples who will live in later times shall count you as their highest parent. Therefore, let a chest be prepared for you, woven from squared beams, three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide, rising thirty cubits into the air, adorned with a window of one cubit. Moreover, let a door be placed in the upper part. Then, with hot, porous pitch binding the joints, let it explore the thin cracks and clothe them all around. And when a triple space has divided the double area, let the living creatures be separated in their own nests, so that they may not violate the species by mixing, nor fight when confined together, nor confuse the food, which it is fitting for you to store up only as material: for it is mine to provide that the distributed supplies do not fail the recipients. Conceive this faithfully, Noah (for you administer the mind and sense, and you gave the servant the will and power for whatever he undertook). He sets about the commanded work, beginning to fell the dense forests and to split the aged oaks. The groves admit the rays of light, the plain is lightened of shadows, and the valleys are stripped of their age-old timber.

But when the work begun has been hastened with so much labor, the completion of the undertaking is deferred for a hundred years, so that a good life following may amend the sins of a prior life, and the impious people may change their savage ways. Wretched ones, whom such a just delay of punishment makes more guilty: they will be punished not only for their past crime, but far more severely for the very space of time granted, and the neglected pardon: since the master would testify that he preferred to spare those who returned, when time was deferred. Already the structure was completed, the vessel stood firm with its capacious side-joinings, which the father himself had prepared as the final refuge for your shipwrecks, O Nature, and your swift floods. Then God from high Olympus deigned to address his servant with a voice, warning Noah that the final time had come, to hide himself in the shelter, to snatch his sons with his wife and daughters-in-law from the imminent destruction and the darkness of death, and to restore all living creatures to the life-giving enclosures: whether the earth nurtures them, or the clear air sustains them, seven each of the clean kinds, and two each of those which are called less suitable, unclean. No delay occurs. Whatever is born under the vaulted hinge of the sky, unknown in different parts of the world—what the Easterner marvels at, what the pale Iberian shudders at, what the hot sands of southern Libya nourish, what cleaves the Hyperborean nights with wondrous light—hastens trembling, and is plunged into the open ark. You would say that the flood had already been foreseen, and that the beasts lacking reason obey their own Author, God, more than imprudent men prevail with reason, even if they know nothing.

Therefore, as the first ark, pregnant with every seed of life, God orders to be closed, night falls, and sudden darkness overshadows the sky, and a rain-cloud, falling, strikes the earth with poured-out air. And it rages, and rages equally throughout the whole world. Nor is the rain that flows from the clouds enough for destruction: the ancient waters are loosened, and now, with the sky opened, it rains into empty clouds; and the celestial world, unsealed, flows down into the waters of the abyss; and it opens new springs equal to torrents. And while, swiftly mingled in one whirlpool, what the sky, what the earth vomits, what the clouds have poured, it envelops submerged fields with their mixed cultivators, and flocks entangled in their stalls, with cities and their citizens, it buries amid the waters; peoples swim in the ruin; no form of things remains; the river covers everything; and, growing, even the rivers lose their name. Soon even the ocean, never satiable by any rivers, already feels the waters rushing with such great mass; it drives them, increased by the whirlpool, greater, and forces them, returning, to rise into a heap. Until, with the deep swelling the tide, contracted from all sides, the wave joins itself to the highest circle, and the seas, having overwhelmed the lands, rush together.

And now the ark was borne higher than all things by thrice five cubits; for this measure had exceeded the highest mountains, when the fury of a single rain and a single death had lasted forty days. Then for thrice fifty days in clear weather, a similar condition and measure of the sea remained. While the all-powerful father, pitying the enclosed peoples long held in prison, gradually ordered the great sea to depart from the lands and slowly to recede: lest, fleeing hastily, it overturn all lands; and so that the earth might proceed to a stable seat when dry. Finally, with the air spread out, a flat summit soon began to show itself; gradually the highest ridges could be seen, and the waves to subside from the flat rocks; and, as it settled, forests gradually burst forth from the sea, and hidden hills slowly rose. And now a black scout, sent from the ark, had found the air calm, and, having found prey, no longer cared to return to its accustomed enclosure: therefore, once released from the life-giving seat, the dove, bringing back nothing certain, when sent out again brings back a small offering of the peace-bearing olive branch.

Such great weeping of the captive, by which they reveal themselves to rejoice, arises at the praise of the great parent of this judgment: as great as when a bitter victor insults the suddenly besieged within the walls, if help should chance to be brought; as great as when a sentence sent by a merciful judge returns the condemned to life again; as great as the weeping amid the tears and joys of the mourners when life returns to an ambiguous funeral. Afterwards, when the lookout again announces that the fields lie open, by this very fact that what was sent to the lands, once received, did not return, it wearies of enduring sluggish hiding-places; and it helps to breathe in the open winds of the sky, and to feed the soul, freed, on ethereal sensation. But it is not permitted for any enclosure to go out into the open, until the one who had ordered the world's remnants to enter there should enter, and command them to depart from the sacred enclosures—Noah, admonished from heaven, with his faithful wife, and with his house, and with his sons and likewise modest daughters-in-law; and to give again new, rare colonists to the led-out people, and to preserve all the living creatures for the succeeding offspring.

Now the captives, long confined, are released from the opened enclosures which the good craftsman had preserved for human uses. And after the gate is opened, they rush forth: some take to the air on wings, some seek the glades and forests, some are buried in hollow caves, some in the open fields, rejoicing in the dry ground, and the meadow blooms in the open. But Noah, having been allotted the kingdoms of the second world, surveys all with his eyes and with his capacious mind, and, wishing to satisfy his spirit by filling it, he drinks in everything, scanning all with swift gaze. And he marvels at the new world, brighter than usual; then the sun shines more ruddy; the joyful face of the sky smiles with greater serenity; and the fields, once despaired of, grow green with new fruits. But still the image of such great ruin, always to be remembered, turns before his eyes—what they endured amid the waters, and what they did not endure by sacred gift, while the sea raged with its savage lash and the ark scorned the storms that dashed against it. And with his own, Noah, prompt and broad, revolves within himself how great a gift of the supreme father was granted. He ponders, and those astonished wonder and turn over in their minds, whence so much food sufficed for all the souls for a whole year; what drink—for this is certain, that even if the other necessities of life were supplied, those shut up while the ark tossed on the waves could have perished from thirst amid the waters, had not the ruler of Olympus sustained them, lacking all human aid and gifts, by that nod with which he created all things.

Now the captives, long confined, are released from the opened enclosures which the good craftsman had preserved for human uses. And after the gate is opened, they rush forth: some take to the air on wings, some seek the For He, indeed, was about to destroy them far off in the prison of night, stripping them of the love of light, and filled them with virtue, so that they might endure such sluggish quiet; He poured in the placid love of sluggish torpor. For what now cannot His all-powerful right hand accomplish, He who makes those suddenly plunged under the waves of a freezing whirlpool burn when He wishes, and those brought under the flames themselves to be cold? And He who in a short time taught men that they could perish by drowning waves will show that they can be reborn by flames and waves. End of the second book. Claudius Marius Victor, Orator of Marseille, Commentaries on Genesis, third book. Bearing such things in mind and foreseeing future ages, Noah determined to undertake no duty of his office before he had rendered sacred praise to God and offered thanks for his escape from danger. Soon, snow-white altars rise from sacred stone; and this first new altar the world recognized. For before, the whole world was a temple under the vaulted path of the sky. Then, from the sevenfold herds, a victim was at hand, ready for the sacred rites: whether from the species of birds, which the soft air sustains, or from those which the earth produces. Every seventh animal, devoted to the sacred rites, is laid upon the altars. Then, soon, fire sent down from ethereal Olympus tastes the fragrant offspring at the sacred altars; and the holocausts burn with ambrosial vapor for God.

And although that one, the lord and God of the whole world, has no need of any gift of ours, yet he rejoices in being honored by the dutiful services and gifts of his own. Finally, when the waters were removed, he thus addresses Noah: "Even if the penalty was small for so great a crime, to have condemned the guilty of so many crimes by avenging rains and a poured-out sky, and to have purged the guilty seat of the lands by a more widely spread abyss, yet we will not strike the mortal race further with such a lash. Although I see human minds and profane nations about to fall again through various crimes and former offenses, nevertheless the avenging right hand will not cease to render punishments to the unjust and rewards to the just. Therefore, you whom life proves most just, increase secure, and fill the fields with fruitful offspring, and stretch new herds over the long lands. The elements will keep their turns, and on all days the due harvest will be returned for the scattered seeds. The work of the world will run on, matched by discordant seasons; winter will vie with summer, and the year, balancing the seasons, will be repeated, fleeing spring and autumn. And you (to whom we have entrusted the solid rule of the orb), the whole substance of the world will tremble and fear.

I give you, behold, all things without exception: and among the species of things that move of their own accord, I grant you the flesh of animals for your use. Although I wish it to be forbidden to you from the blood of wine: and if anyone should eat it, the sentence of my judgment will punish him no differently than if he had drunk the fluid from human slaughter, which I, the avenger, will always demand back, and I will seek it so thoroughly that not only will he alone pay the penalty, abundant in reason, but even the brute beasts; human blood shall be equally sacred to all. But so that afterwards no one may fear the flood, let him be safe under such a covenant. When the light moisture has turned into clouds, and has gathered the black waters into hollow clouds, I will pour forth rays, and the beautiful image of the sun will form for me a curved arch at the highest point, joining the connected poles, which will display various colors of light and scatter the rains into the air. This sign posterity can safely take as a foretoken of what is to come: so that under such a covenant, after this, they may believe the flood is not to be feared. Attentive to such commands, Noah and his wife, after offering thanks and praises to the Lord, eagerly, from the mud and the sweet, fertile moisture, the father and his sons, whose age was more steadfast, soon subdue the fields with rakes and wed the countryside with seed. Then, with the fields widely drenched, the green grass, which would have hardened into golden ears, yields, due to the sun's heat, a manifold harvest with accumulated interest, turning into grain from frozen milk.

And the vine, already heavy with new growth, luxuriates in rich fruit, and the twisted tree gives birth to nectar, producing cups from hard wood. By chance, Noah was celebrating joyful honors to God, indulging in sacred feasts and pouring wine for the first time from the new vine. When he had drunk rather freely of it, heavy with deep sleep and with his limbs relaxed, he lay down with his garment not properly arranged, and, stretched out on the ground, he exposed his genitals to the sight of his sons. To you alone, Ham, the origin of your own self moved you to laugh, the worst of you; and not content that you alone had sinned, believing that you were not guilty enough, you strive to stain your brother with the sprinkling of your own fault. Those whom a much better judgment, a better mind, had taught to conceal the exposed virility of their parent with a cloak—for turning away their hands, they covered their father’s shame—Shem and Japheth, at the same time, offspring most worthy of such a father, whom for that reason the father, loosened by sleep and wine, gave as masters to their younger brother by right. Soon, waking from his sons’ good deeds and Ham’s unworthy deed, he repaid such a reward. “Ham,” he said, “you will be cursed, and you will become a slave of your brothers forever in the ages to come. But Shem will be blessed, and he will make his younger brother a sharer with him in a common seat of goods, whose possession will run far and wide.” Having spoken thus, the elder, when he had run through a thousand years less ten times five, rested in peace.

Meanwhile, while the holy law of the Lord flourished, the posterity, already increased by many descendants, entrusted itself alone to the Lord of the heavens and the earth. Then all things obeyed the holy commands of men: the heavy earth, the liquid sea, the life-giving air. They had no need of art, for they learned everything from the heavenly teacher. But after the world fell into crimes and hid itself deep in vices, this remarkable gift was lost by the condemned race. And it was not shameful for them, forgetful of God, to fashion many gods: so great is the oblivion of the supreme father. Then the grave inventor of deceit did not allow the material capable of fraud to remain idle; he subjected everything to his evil will, by which he would introduce fate into the world and persuade that God either no longer exists or scorns these lower duties of this world. Therefore, he cunningly persuaded that all human affairs and outcomes, which ought to have been assigned to the supreme Lord, be assigned to the wandering stars; and to examine the fibers of birds, the movements of flying creatures, and with great zeal he introduced the crime of the magic art. And he persuaded that many gods be created, and mute idols, or even himself lurking in the idols, be worshipped: he is much more worthy of being burned. And Nimrod descended first into unspeakable crimes.

The pinnacle of impiety, Cham, born from the seed of the servant, a giant in stature and might, you govern the kingdoms of Babylon. This wicked hunter, seizing the spirits of the Persians, led them away from the true sacred rites of the Lord to fire. Nor did that cunning head of crimes, that most hostile enemy of the world, deceive men's cares more than was right with this art, but rushed into their very minds: and descended deeply into all their senses. Soon also into their affections: for when the only offspring of his father had dragged the hope of the race with him into bitter death, unhappy Nemroth, continuing lamentations night and day and dragging out complaints with dull wailing, rages, and seeks his snatched-away son through every single thing. He consoles his mournful grief with a crafted image: and, having fashioned the form of his son from Parian marble, the unhappy man believed that life was enclosed within the sense: and that it heard its own complaints. Then, with altars consecrated and erected, he soon adds divine honors: and orders it to be God in that place. Then immediately all the peoples, having embraced this crime and wickedness, held dear their own parents as their gods. Later, kings were also placed in similar honor and were called gods: under whose false name, Greece, while it labors to insinuate false things among the true, added obscure shadows with empty reasonings, excusing tombs and names placed upon burial mounds: until madness, through all forms, would weave itself, and the empty name of God would be given, with the world laughing, to the smallest things and shameful members.

To such rough places of error, about to give fuel, the inventor of ambiguous responses stirred up oracles: he used for his snares either fire, or a hot spring, or earth breathing talkative winds from caves, and he falsely imposed on himself the empty name of Apollo. That savage man caught with his snares the peoples far removed from the Lord, leading them wherever he wished: so great a thing it is to depart from the holy worship of the Lord. But let us return from where we set out, to that line of ancestors: which, increased over a few years, grew so much that, soon leaving the East behind, they were compelled to seek new homes elsewhere. They arrive at the open plain (the ancients called it Sennaar); and when they too are forced to depart from these lands, the youth being scattered into various parts, he began these most sad words of complaint. Alas, how uncertain a state of life, once begun, carries men! And how it deceives the ignorant, even with favorable fortunes through various chances! How the sum of a sought vow tends to the opposite! Now we (if it is right to say so) regret that the hoped-for crowd of numerous grandchildren has grown through the prayers of our fathers: that now a hand, scattered through the world, heaped up with exile, and about to perish far from ancestral borders: shall we then, at last, worn out by long poverty, give our dishonored limbs to be buried in unknown tombs, here and there? Shall we not even, wretched, be enclosed in ancestral tombs? Will there be no fame of us surviving after death?

Therefore, go on, O youths, whom a double strength supplies, and the throng that remains for you, which knows no final wave: send forth your faces to eternal glory, a distinguished one. Let us found a city, beneath whose walls let us raise a tower until it touches the painted stars of heaven and the vaults of high Olympus. Let future ages think that we, having left the world behind, migrated from here into heaven. Thus stirred, the youth scorn the rocks and whatever flows down from the cut mountain; and they bind together bricks, shaped from the conquered earth's womb, with fire, and they prefer that the material of the future work owe itself to their own labor. Bitumen binds this interlaid structure on both sides, so that the surrounding walls simulate solid cliffs. Soon the tower, hastened, rises; soon it leaps over the clouds at its peak and enjoys the nearer clear sky. Then the all-powerful Father, with a heavenly voice, gathers the angelic senate; and, amazed at the insane, proud deeds of the throng, he begins thus to the sharers of his realm: "Do you see where the earthly phalanx now rashly goes, on how many reckless attempts it stretches? It believes that a structure built by mortal hand can touch the high poles and lead our realm to the heavens. No one clothed in an earthly body ascends to heaven unless he has descended from high heaven. But because the race is one, the same form of speech...

In building the tower they persist, nor will they desist before mutual agreement finishes the work begun: so great is the madness of the human mind. Therefore, let us go (so that they may know that what is forbidden is denied them), and let us now depart, and with varied voices of speech let us disturb their swollen hearts, swollen with proud consensus: so that what they sinned by the crime of concordant measure, a better discord of tongue may condemn, confused. He spoke, and into those intent on the work and lifting the mass, oblivion first enters their astonished minds, and a perfect but unknown tongue steals in. The masters chide their hesitating comrades as zeal for the work slackens, but no one returns a voice; if anyone tries, he hisses emptily, or gasps with the roar of broken speech. Thus vain labor, undertaken by a perverse mind, deserted by a frustrated hand: now no one follows his neighbor, no one his father; each one, as he understands, adds and accumulates for himself, and takes care to join a comrade. And while the kinship of this people perishes divided, language makes the people: they scatter in equal divisions and seek separated lands under different skies.

Not otherwise do birds of the plain over the soft levels, which a carefree day has persuaded to wander and seek food in mingled flocks, when night draws near seek the leafy coverts: with the flock removed, each crowd follows its own kind, and in swift flight mingles with whatever color or voice has led them: so then the one people divides itself into factions: and each species becomes a kind, and they settle in lands far removed, and fill the world with nations. Yet this is not devoid of the sacred gift (though its own penalty harms them): for although this was a just punishment for those whom reverence for heaven did not touch, which is the proper seat of the parent of the world and of things, so that they do not recognize themselves, speaking unaccustomed words: *AttamS id multu quod rapto hoc foedere cantu est* lest the guilt which the persuasion of a few had brought about should again touch all by the assent of everyone: and should make a common crime: lest harsh wars and death to be summoned by raging madness should be civil war for them: thus it benefited them

Meanwhile, the division of the first language was turned to good. Nor was the Hebrew manner of speaking entirely abolished: for the sound of the Hebrew tongue, the ancient speech, remained in those who, being innocent of guilt, were not an unjust portion of the offspring whom Shem begot, whom the observance of righteousness and reverence for the supreme lord held. But after madness, stirred throughout the whole world (to say nothing of the intolerable crime of the magic monster), drove the mortal race to fix upon trunks and stones and even hollow shapes of hard metal, empty figures devoid of light, and shattered minds intent on higher things, and bound them to inert earth, and rolled them together in the foul contagion of defilement—not otherwise than clouds, roused from the burning lands of the Ethiopians by a corrupted path of the sky, while they run, whoever groaned struck by the deadly thunderbolt fell himself at the same time, whoever saw the one falling fell, and the dire plague strewed heaped-up corpses everywhere, and left the fields full of shades. Thus then, in the headlong mass of madness, so that it might leave nothing untouched throughout the whole world, error, retracing its steps, seized those whom it had already let go. Until from the seed of the Chaldean race, of Thare, a just man, fearing God, with the stock of his own people, seeking another city, new customs, and a dwelling, settled anew in Assyrian Carrhae as a new inhabitant. When he had lived there for forty-one lustra, he redeemed this unhappy life by a blessed death. To him, equaling or far surpassing his father in merits and holy virtues, succeeded his son Abram.

A man worthy of heaven, for from the first light of life he venerated the true God in his mind, and had turned away from pagan rites. After the death of his parent, when it was clear that he could now follow God’s commands without deceit, the Lord, deigning to approach this servant on account of his merits, said: “Since in the whole world we have found you alone, whom sincere faith and reverence for us aids, leave far behind your ancestral seats, the guilty land, and the polluted house. The whole kinship is profane and must be shunned by you. Under my guidance you will reach the fields of a better land. Do not be part of an unjust people, you who can be the head of a holy one. Then I will consecrate sacred things that will remain blessed for you, and I will make your name magnificent among all peoples. You will recover all goods, and blessed will be he who blesses you. But he who heaps curses and insults upon you will immediately be cursed. Blessing will be spread through you to all tribes and to the future age.

He spoke, and instilled in his mind what commands to obey, and to trust in the pious promises; no delay intervened immediately at the master's word. But straightaway Abram, with flocks of various kinds, with his father's servants, with his faithful wife, with the dear child of his brother, whose name was Lot, departed, and on a straight path took a road unknown to him. The soft fields offer easy ways, and with favoring south winds smiling, the air is disturbed by no motions. Until, arriving in the lands of Canaan and the most fertile kingdoms of Shechem, he learned that these were to pass to him and his offspring as a future inheritance. There, suppliant to God, he builds devoted altars, and, a new worshiper, he recalls and increases the ancient honors. Then he seeks Bethel, the chosen seat blessed by the hospitality of God, a land that surpassed all others in its proud merits, to be counted second after heaven: for this place, more worthy of God, which was seen to receive the pledge of salvation sent into the world, with the law, while the world marveled at such a preparation, and to send the man back to the stars. Here too, father Abram builds solemn altars, and places dwellings to be left behind in new fields. For compelled again by famine to change his abode, he moves camp, and drives with him his whole household, servants, and flocks; and, paying just prices for goods, he enters Egypt. And he prefers to call Sarai his sister rather than his wife, lest the barbarous hearts of his holy host be goaded into murder by mad lust.

Soon after, Pharaoh, struck by the radiant image of her form, burns with desire and prepares marriage and sure covenants by law, to last for long years, had not the Author of marriage arranged otherwise, to whom those things were less pleasing. Behold, a fear mixed with dread overwhelms the king, and a sudden tumult shakes his wicked heart; black horror terrifies his spirit and binds his limbs. As the king of a sacrilegious people felt that God had condemned such grievous vows, who indeed instilled this counsel into his servants, so that the barbarian enemy would know that Abram was a secure husband of Sarai, since he had learned that it was not permitted to the profane to seek her with the sword, nor even to deprive him of her. Therefore, of his own accord, he returns her to her husband, untouched by any stain, and sends her back heaped with great bounty, to Sichem and his own Bethlehem: where, thereafter received with his flocks and household, his father, with his wife safe, they work the fields, and the fat pastures far and wide are grazed by mingled herds, while frequent quarrels arise between the shepherds of the uncle and the nephew. While the fields, too narrow for the herds of the two, would not suffice for their taking, therefore Abram, full of justice and most observant of equity, to settle disputes and remove greedy quarrels, as the elder by birth, divides the granted lands: the younger chose those lands which, everywhere watered by sweet flowing streams, marry the countryside, and between shading banks a river glides, and beautifies the smooth groves of the Jordan. Therefore, to flee the shepherds' quarrels from Abram, you, Lot, turn aside and migrate into the fields of Sodom.

When God strengthens your heart, saddened by this hope, Abraham, "Do not be moved," He says. "Although you now seem to yourself alone, your brother's offspring having been left behind, you will be to me alone an innumerable multitude, and likewise the author of a friendly people. Look up at the fourfold parts of the world, intent; now look southward, and the seven northern stars, where the sun rises, where it sets deep in the evening—these lands, for you and your offspring and the peoples of your own, I will grant, to be inhabited by them through eternal years. You yourself shall also enjoy these lands far and wide. Arise, and survey with a stranger's step what lies open before you." So He spoke. He willingly obeys, and leaving his abode, he migrates, enters Hebron, and under a black ilex at the oak grove of Mamre the father pitches his tents. Here too he builds and tends solemn altars for the Lord. Meanwhile, with a great tumult swirling around, the enemy is at hand, eager, whom the earth, richly laden with diverse wealth, entices; the hoof, dashed against the fields, resounds, and the plunderer roams with loosened reins against Sodom, the richest pasture of the people. But Lot bursts forth from the open gates with the king, and a nearby band of kings bearing allied arms; horsemen and footmen follow, the line stretches out. The battle lines clash equally, they strike and fall. But the youth of Sodom, softened by shameful luxury, as the renewed shout blazes again into anger, turn their backs in fear: some seek the walls in swift flight, some the mountains and woods, some, crowded in bands, stretch out cowardly hands for wretched chains. But when his uncle Abraham heard that Lot had been captured, he did not weep—for what would empty weeping bring?

But he prepares to rescue his captured brother by force. Therefore he selects three hundred trained servants from the entire flock, twice nine thousand men, whom he follows slowly as they go ahead, where the sluggish enemy had revealed himself, burdened with heavy booty. In the silent night, when their bodies, already languid from hard conflict, are moistened and sweet sleep binds their weary limbs, he attacks them, suspecting nothing of the sort would happen to them: just as when the raging madness of a hungry lion has swiftly penetrated the enclosures of cattle in a pasture, and with tooth and claw it kills, and its angry hunger overcomes its eager desire to devour, until the final limit of bitter grief has already made the pens empty of sheep. Not otherwise does he slaughter the leaders buried in sleep and wine, the snoring peoples of Abram, and the kings, yet so that no uproar confuses the camp. No one perceives a step, except that their mind and voice fail. No one hears the sound of the slaughter, except that which the dying man hears. Everything is wet with blood: the earth, loosened by the clear dry weather, congeals with gore, and the slippery footprints stagger on the field, with the blood delaying the step. Nor do all fall to open swords; the booty is preserved: so great is the moderation of the just victor. The rest were scattered by shameful flight, and pursuing fear followed them as far as the fields of Damascus. But the victor, unmoved by the praise of such a triumph, among the herds of horses and cattle, the people taken or captured, and the treasures (which the conquered had eagerly sought)

The victors are moved; he, the Magnificent, desires none of these things at all, but amid such great joys he is gentle, and considering the various fates of men in his heart, he reserves all the plunder and prizes of war, seized from peoples everywhere, for the king: teaching that he did not fight for himself, he offers a tenth of the spoils shaken from the enemy, which is a true sacrifice, Melchisedech, and wine and bread, returning from the slaughter. Melchisedech, that king of Salem, who by such a gift prefigured the mystic libations of highest Christ: from whose hands the church takes the life-giving bread, the body, and is drunk with heavenly blood. But when he returns weary from the hostile slaughter, the Almighty comforts Abram with such words: Since no desire for booty has subdued you with allurements, the price of faith and the reward of your labors is full for you with me: I will protect you and all your possessions, to be preserved for your heir, whom you will beget late in your line, and whom, as a more pious author, you will love much more. There is nothing to fear that your heir will be that Damascus; you yourself will see him born from your seed, whose infancy will kindle your paternal feelings. Look up at the vaulted sky, how it sparkles with dense light in the painted night: how many stars are pressed together, heaped upon stars, which refuse number when set before them: hold this as an example of your future seed and stock, the form of a manifold progeny. So he spoke and finished: but he believed, and the mere consent of naked faith alone was counted as a crown of full merit for righteousness.

And so here we are taught by Abraham at what great price we learn how much merit there is in believing the divine Word, and conversely, how much demerit in not believing. For believing, he again deserves to be consoled by this divine voice, as the Almighty begins with these words: "I am that God and Lord who carried you and yours from the Chaldean people, and finally, rescued from ancestral vices, placed you in a better land, so that my people, born from you, might inhabit the blessed fields and spread their line far and wide, after expelling the nations which, by the foul error of their parents, once made sacrilegious rites profane. Because you are too hesitant and delay in believing, take for me a three-year-old heifer with a triple brow, together with a goat chosen from the gentle flock, and a ram of the same age, to be sacrificed in my honor. Also a chaste turtle-dove joined with a dove. But let the victim not feel the iron of the bird; only take care to cut apart the intermediate victims. Separate them thus on clean sands, so that the limbs may join together, each matching the other from opposite sides." He spoke. And that man, accustomed to willingly keep God's warnings, hastens quickly to carry out the commands. But when he had laid out the series on the ground in the order commanded, suddenly a dark band of importunate birds swoops in, preying on the offering. Lest they violate the sacred things with profane contact, Abraham, anxious, guards and looks around on all sides.

But with what work could such a stunned man, not even with the setting sun, overcome the great burden of the task so vast that he had undertaken? Behold, black terror, horrid trembling, and deep sleep, bearing a commanded message, shaping the ages to come. I believe he seemed to see before him the Nile of the Hebrew people, and their late descendants, and to recognize the immense crowds beyond number: then fierce movements, the drawn-up camps of his own people, the crossing of the sea, but the ranks swallowed in the deep whirlpool, with no fleet following the shipwreck; and the Hebrews snatched from the sea, then the whole blessed kingdom of Palestine opened to the returning people. To him, stunned by such visions, a kindly interpreter was not lacking: "Foresee your own, and the offspring of your own," he says, "in foreign fields for four centuries, about to endure the commands of a cruel tyrant of that Nile. But when those many foreign years are fulfilled, I will snatch them from servitude and avenge the wicked people. And I will restore to the lands which the Nile and Euphrates encircle with their gentle stream. But when the sins of the guilty Amorite people and the people holding these kingdoms have filled the sum of crimes, and they have been judged worthy of being expelled from their ancestral seats, yet you, before that, happy, departing from the long limit of life, mourned by your children, with peace and our gift, will migrate to your holy ancestors." So he spoke, and when already night was drawing dense shadows over the lands...

From the mountain he gave a sign; immediately a smoking oven appears there, and a fiery lamp is seen. Then, the sacred feast and the prepared centerpiece having been brought in, a flame, touching it in a headlong course, sprinkled it with dew. Meanwhile, Abram, certain of the kingdom and future offspring, desires to approach his father with a gift. But his chaste wife refused the duty, because barren old age had already made her womb empty. But believing that the sweet pledge and hope of her husband, poured forth from any concubine, would be her own, she substituted a handmaid (whose name was Agar, younger in age, of Nilotic origin) into the marriage bed, and, having approached her husband with prayers, she persuaded him to entrust his seed to a servant's womb. But as soon as the soul, once received, sensed it was alive, Agar, swollen with the burden of her womb, puffed up with pride, despised her mistress. And the mistress to whom she owed a mother's love and the cause of her own mad swelling. Rightly, therefore, the most just man Abram condemned this woman to the lashes of his wife. Driven more by shame, she hides herself, indignant, in the remote and secret lairs of wild beasts, where she does not cease to despise and reject. But again, she contemns the obedience she owed to that woman in whatever way she can, and prefers to endure the dangers of a deserted road. But an angel, sent from Olympus, meets her, and restores the handmaid to her former fields, to her gentle mistress, and, having refreshed her with kind exhortation, bids her, having returned, to hope for better things. And he teaches the name of the child to be born, and the customs, and the hands, and the countless flocks that will come from such a line. By which greater vow she returns, now certain of the future, and, by her birth, she herself, the prior parent, made her master. When.

Having traversed the happy spaces of a life that had already excluded six years beyond eighty, when he would add twice six summers and one more besides, the kindly father again deigned to address him with his usual speech and commanded his old age to be led happily; at the same time he unfolded the promises and what reward he might expect. Then, with prone body, Abram suppliantly prostrates himself, adoring the Lord. From him he soon hears, with confirmed voice, that he would be the father of a countless people and a broad parentage, and that kings would also come from his seed. Yet he was commanded to distinguish the Hebrew people from other nations by this sign: that they should voluntarily cut off superfluous flesh, circumcising every male offspring, both present and future; he was commanded, while the boy is fresh from his mother and new to life, when the mind is ignorant of sorrow, to consecrate them on the eighth day, stripped of the foreskin. Whoever would dare to corrupt this sacred testament, ceasing to serve the law that was asked for, would become an exile from the kingdom and from future life. But at the same time, so that he might believe by a true argument that countless peoples would one day come from his seed, the Lord changes the name of both. "Not Sarai," he says to you, "but Sarra will your wife be called, and you not Abram, but with a name increased by a greater one, you will hereafter be called Abraham by the coming people.

What is common to you, therefore, with your true wife is this: because of the promise (and nothing is more certain than that), she will be the mother of your race, and when the sun has completed its yearly circuit, she will make you a father, however laughable you may think the promises of my power. Nor will your old age prevent the sentence of divine law from remaining forever established through eternal years. But still I will pardon your doubts, and to the future boy I will impose a name that will convict this fault: Isaac. He, without doubt, if the covenant of our pact is kept, will be the certain heir, together with all his offspring. Yet Ishmael, born from the seed of Hagar, will not be without a share of the dowry: for, supported by my gift, he will create many thousands of mighty men to come from him, and will bring forth twelve leaders equally to rule over them. He spoke, and the other, eager to hasten the accepted pact—now pressing upon a hundred years, now upon a son already of age—first marks himself, then his wife, then all his clients and servants with the sign as commanded, and makes them a new people and a font of the pious. By one and the same path—so great is the devotion—he both receives and fulfills the law in faith. What, then, does such present and swift faith not deserve? For that is not fear, but sincere love and the proof of a just servant. To undergo any command with such a placid mind...

How did she earn God for you? Surely before, he was only heard of; after such a service, the merit of the minister is now allowed to be seen. And although righteous indignation goads the Avenger, he does not, however, reject mortal sight: for when he was preparing to condemn the crimes of the earth and to destroy the guilty with flames, either truly or as he knew he could be seen, he himself revealed the name and number of Abraham. For to him, sitting at home in the valley of Mamre, three suddenly appear, gleaming with a narrow light. Abraham, spurred by the image of such a vision, runs out and, prostrate on the ground, worships the Lord; and he venerates the three suppliant forms in one, praying that he may be permitted to serve them with a pious mind, and that they not disdain to be refreshed in the hours tending toward midday with the servant's table and food. So much did his sight and senses waver, while he was in his prime, doubting whether it was a human substance that his mind knew to be God; yet he assented, and the pious foster-son, not spurning the duty, hallowed the offered foods and friendly tables. But when the feasts were removed and the tables cleared away, and it was time for the guests to depart from there, then soon he moves his steps from there.

a companion clings to the side of those going, a guest exulting: to the sad one; shaken by fear, it strikes the breasts, and by astonishment a venerable horror draws them, for he sees silent faces and severe looks, that the Lord in Sodom brandished joined Gomorrah, and the servants sent forth of peace and ministers of wrath: and when he learns what great thing he was accomplishing by such a mass, with God revealing the secret and teaching the cause, he dares to scrutinize the Lord on his own, whether he would destroy the city, guilty through all the crimes of the erring people, if it nourished fifty men of proven righteousness in morals; and when he himself said to them, if I find such a number, it is certain that you will be spared by me. What if there are five fewer, he then added? and what if only forty? what if perhaps less than that number by ten? What if twice five are given as innocent? will you not, best God, spare the city? Whatever number he said he would pardon such a one, he left his servant in the middle of his speech, as he was proceeding further, and withdrew into his own realms. Meanwhile, the dismissed citizens from the high seat, angelic, into the lands of Sodom, find Lot, by chance sitting before the gates of the city, the sun already near the lands; who, when he sees the angelic men radiating with wondrous splendor, thinking them descended from high heaven, prostrate on the ground he adores. He invites them home, and by prayers he prevails upon them to turn aside the night under his roof, and at the same time persuades them to be his guests. He serves innocent foods and sparing cups.

And when, after the feast was taken, he was preparing to indulge in sleep, behold, toward the setting of the light and the return of night, a foul mob—if it is right to have said it—of men, and of youths, boys, and old men raging, leaps forth; they burn with fires; they compel Lot to hand over his guests to them for abuse: what does mad lust not dare? But he, wishing to soften the madness of the raging people, offers his daughters, whose virginity remained untouched, for whatever uses they might desire. But the unbridled band, having slipped into worse evil, considers it base to mingle with a lesser vice unless it also entangles itself in the greatest. Therefore, so that Lot might commit an unspeakable crime, they oppress him; and now by a greater force they drive him than human virtue can repel. Then immediately both guests, with their angelic powers laid bare from their feigned bodies, and with the mind of the raging people leveled, draw Lot back; and they urge him to depart forthwith from the earth, which is to be destroyed, into the secret refuge of the house itself. Who they are, why they come, and what precepts they bear, they no longer dissemble with open speech: they say that he has been able to escape safe from this disaster, and they order him to gather his household and his sons-in-law and his relatives, and to lead them away with him. But those touched by a similar crime with the common crowd, a similar sentence envelops, since they are unwilling to believe the one who warns sanely. And it is not to be wondered at much that Lot, when he was unwilling to believe, would depart; and that which he would have thought ridiculous to advise. Seeing that the other, dragging out slow and lazy delays without end, both guests, with hands and with the seizure of his wife,

He leads his own daughters far outside the walls, beyond the city, and orders them to hurry and escape into the high mountains, imposing this condition: that no one, ill-advised, should look back behind himself at the cities blazing with heavenly fire. But Lot, fearing that the high mountains might be reached too slowly, and that the swift wrath of heaven would overtake him, seeks with tears the secure recesses of his cave at Zoar. Yet he did not perceive that his tears were in vain; the special gift of safety granted to him he shares with many, and from the gift he made a merit.

And already, not with the usual clouds, but with those which Aetna whirls, which Inarime vomits, and which the hot springs of Aponus exalt, which the shaken Vesuvius belches from the nearby earth, which the savage Chimaera of Lycia breathes from the vast hollow of its triple furnace, and wherever swift spirit, pouring through a narrow channel, inflames deceptive sulphurs and flows out into the light, vaporizing through the broken earth, the sky was rapidly covered, the clouds thickened and gathered, forced by the mingled virtue of God with the fatherland. Not that He could not also turn rains into fires, He who was able to create the whole world from nothing; but the good judge prefers to condemn with a greater preparation those whom, pitying the city and the ruin of its morals, He punishes as an example. Soon the elements threaten harshly; they shake with a surging globe; each, packed together by its own blast, the fuels of flame unite into one body, and a curved roof of sulphurous metal covers the unspeakable earth and guilty cities. Through this, the swift spirit, taking strength in the narrow channel, driven, compelled to crackle with such a great crash, and, agitated by frequent thunder and lightning, to terrify the minds of all who behold such spectacles. Then Lot's wife, alas, miserable woman, whether so stupefied by great fear, or whether it was that foolish desire, innate in female minds, to rise up against the forbidden pact, whatever the cause was, looking back at Sodoma with a guilty mind, she immediately underwent the penalties of the violated law, turned into a statue of salt, stripped of light, and thus the unhappy soul lost the body entirely, so that no corpse remained, the form alone surviving.

Faster than that, Segor, with grief prevented by fear and by the horrible evil, stunned, soon enters Lot. Then the sun rises, more burning with all its fire, flashing with angry brilliance, and directs harsh rays upon Sodoma; which, after they have wrapped the lights in their flames and the loosened sulphurs, hurl the fires down with themselves, bound together, and with a dry liquid the scattered conflagrations drip from their own Medes. A lightning-like cloudburst falls headlong from the dense air, envelops the cities, and rages throughout all the fields. It thunders with a mingled roar, and overcomes the laments, a fiery tempest; which, after it has found fuel in the burning lands and has settled even on the sands themselves, raises up an immense pyre with joined kindling, and the flames return from the earth to the stars, until the rocks and the resounding earth pass into ashes, and the sands, deeply submerged, are dissolved. And with the hollow fields, the turf consumed, the plains open up their bosoms, and the moisture which had skimmed the lands, flowing out through opened veins and joining forces, generates a private sea. What are we to think that this is, that a lake was suddenly filled with wondrous power, which before was a pyre? Thus the omnipotence of the supreme judge can turn fire into icy waters, and again waters into burning fire.

Yet here the hidden mysteries are not idle: that waters are where flame once was, that the flames, quenched by waters sent from above, perhaps signified that the hot fires of luxury, the incitements contracted from the first father’s sin, would one day be extinguished by celestial waters; and that in place of the harsh fires of justice, by which that stern law once prevailed, they would be cleansed by the salvific, lustral waters. End of the third book.