Carmen De Deo

DRACONTIUS’ POEM ON GOD.

BOOK ONE.

Let those who desire with their minds to learn of the calm Thunderer read this poem before their mind, while they recite it with their voice. They will recognize that the temple of heaven, that the walls of the sky reverently adore their Maker, confessing Him; the five zones and the seven poles, the sun, the moon, and the stars, the constellations, the signs, snow, rain, hail, frosts, lightning, storm-cloud, winter, thunder, fire, gales, heaven, earth, radiance, chaos, the axis, rivers, the sea, or whatever nature has given to create according to its laws. This it does, and follows under various chances; and the pious vows of God from here for the wretched, from there for the blessed according to the merits of their conduct, according to the sure path of life.

Poverty, death, life, health, wealth, sickness, weariness, sorrows, splendor, gains, loss, joys, nobility, virtue, prudence, praises, affections, grief, groans, success, want, the anger of rulers, the fierce indignation of kings—all things that come, good things, joys, sad things, bitter things—descend from the citadel of God, from the seat of the Thunderer, for whom eternal piety remains, light, spirit, ardor, and to whom praises are sung without end through everlasting years; and rightly, because He, lacking an end, knows no beginnings. God, the cause of things, dissolving foul chaos with fire, fosters what He created with fire; for flame consumes all things, and flames are fed by waters, by which all things consist, feeding on clouds and on the rays of the sun, breathless. Thence the creative nature remains powerful to generate, holding within itself whatever it pours forth through the ages.

But because holy piety is modest through the virtue of God, it never assumes to punish the guilty with sudden disaster; it restrains punishment, and threatens punishment, so that our mind, conscious of itself, may be able to pray to the Lord, and, being unharmed, to merit forgiveness of sins. Thus the guilty were permitted to sin with impunity by confessing.

Formerly future things lay open through the sayings of the prophets, but after Christ descended from the heavens, dissolving our guilt, so that the race of men might not be ignorant, it is helped; nature teaches whatever things are near, lest the mortal race lie hidden—because God in his goodness forewarns all things that are threatened, and wearies the elements with prodigies and signs, so that wonders may create fear. For often even the four-footed beasts themselves have been terrified by offspring unlike themselves; a more fertile vapor kindles the barren limbs, and the womb of a mule about to give birth. Nor is it only four-footed beasts: the woman who has brought forth dreads it, and the unhappy woman in childbirth fears the offspring she has borne. Thus sins prepare to bring on sinister misfortunes. What those who sin may now deserve by their iniquitous life, human nature signifies, condemning the guilt of man.

What have the wild beasts, what have the flocks, what have the birds sinned? What have heaven, what has earth, the pole, what has the sea and the stars, what have the rays of the sun, what has the cold orb of the moon? Are they not wearied, giving their signs through the seasons? For the raven, the betrayer, warns of things to come through so many presages, and the crow declares what will be after fixed times; beasts and birds speak, which man's evil tongue does not, while the savage brute is silent; the fish foresee how to preserve the figures of their own kind, while shameful limbs rebel against nature.

Now whatever comet comes flashing from the sky, it creates deaths and monsters; from it the wave infects with blood, and the channel flows out redder with foam; from it the rain showers warm waters, and the dewy Sirius brings forth purple ears of grain with blood, and the violet has falsely imitated the rose, its pallor put to flight, and unhappy redness and the white lily have stained it. The third lot of Erebus bursts open the gap of the earth, and learns to endure the day, dares to violate the clear sky, and to bring forth bloodless shades to heaven, mingling living faces with deathly buried plagues, falsely imitating the frenzies of Hercules for the world; when the black army of shadows comes and seeks the globe, invading the moist seasons of the moon. Who would deny that the ground was heard to bellow, and the darknesses of the sun, and stars seen at an alien time, the day blue with pallor, or rosy in color, and the lunar globe covered with a darkened lamp, and the sea purple and dry with the shore laid bare, while the fish of Ocean thirst for their own waters?

The faithful nature of created things, knowing not how to lie, keeps faith with the affection of a parent, sharing in whatever things shall come to be and threatening the world. Foretelling what is to come by signs, so that with joyful heart, if good things are coming, we may enjoy the good things beforehand; if they portend evil, it may be allowed to appease the God of nature and of heaven, who remains after the ages, by praying. No one who wishes to strike warns beforehand that he is to be guarded against; but he who terrifies, loves. Thus indulgence forestalls punishment, and torments desire no accusations. The Almighty denies forgiveness to no one who asks. Since he often refuses punishment, though he threatens from it to all, and the censure of the Thunderer strikes no one unless the vice of the sinner, persisting in malice, causes it. Whomever he strikes, he tempers the blow with moderation, corrects the erring one, and does not punish with sudden death, if any impious man refrains from sinning for a long time. But when a man persists always in following after sins, he shall feel his wrath when punishment exacts his fury.

No one feels God to be angry at anyone, as often as he is angry, he indulges and restrains his threats out of love of mercy, until vengeance comes from on high, restraining; with terrible force heavy wrath rushes suddenly; gradually again he is present with no terror aiding, and whoever does not acknowledge the Lord when he rages, until, as the ruin falls back into final groans, it weighs down the unwary one, breaking him with a heavier weight. But not every hand of the guilty is to be uprooted; for he kills only those whom he sees to be unwilling to return, but adds harsh charges to grievous sins.

For soon the time is at hand, coming, when their prayers may run once more toward better things, but never to return a second time, and they may cast off their sin with tears, and their guilt with the heart.

Who does not know that the human race is willing to serve its Author and Lord, God? To him he brought the world, because God made it through so many acts on the sixth light: for the first day was of light, one death was of darkness: light is given before the poles, the cause of that bright day, the light, the ethereal splendor, the light of night, and of shadows, light the maker of all things, and light for the elements, light the warmth for things born and made, light the grace of the sun, light the beauty of the stars, light the golden horns of the moon, light the brightness of heaven, and light the first beginnings of the world, light the splendor of flame, the light, the sign of great time, the light the first work of the Author, the hinge of modesty, light the honor of farmers, the rest for all the sick, light the boundary of the age, light which gives times to boundaries, by which the first beginnings of the world, well constructed, shine. God is clear everywhere, the Author never stainable, whom darkness does not obscure from any part, nor are hidden from him whatever things are done in obscurity. The beginning of the work, the light of light gives Orion. How great a hope of the world was sent before by the first light? Which preceded the whole work that contains the world, which came before the path of the sun, and the gleaming light. By whose command he ordered all created things to grow bright.

For indeed the day of heaven wins the vaulted heights of the sky. And above the heaven mighty powers are given, and the nurturing water rules with its gathered fountains, placed in the heavenly seat among the ethereal fires. The water is blessed beyond measure, which has deserved the dwellings of the poles, raised high by the favor of God, suspended by the command of the Thunderer. The elements stay within their own bounds, nor does water extinguish the flames, nor does it warm the ice. The fiery fire belongs to the water. Under the law of order they keep their own [warmth], uncorrupted, not assailed in turn: nor indeed are they separated, but neither do they remain mingled. The third light brought forth the dark-blue plain of the sea; with vast waves the glaucous straits of the deep dissolve, and the ship-bearing sea is shaken with foaming waves. That same day the earth, drawn out from the waves, won its place. The earth is brought forth, sunk deep in the vast abyss. And growing solid, heavier through the void it hung, with the axis bearing the ground; the waters serve as its roots: the soft liquids bear it as foundations, the dry matter is drawn from the heart of the East. Not yet was the earth a mother, of which one part loosens into sand, one part binds its members into clods, one part rises as rock, and the peak of a mountain stands as crags, one part plunges rivers, one part lies stretched out in a plain, one part curves the shores, one part is given over to hills, one part bristles rough with rocks, one part stiffens into crags, one part is girded by a deep valley, and swelling hills lift up their lofty ridges, and they fit the low plains with equal spaces.

A portion of the field, given over to the sweet-flowing fountains of the swelling waters, puts forth green grass; every shoot rises into the breezes, and the olive, ever clothed in leaves, grows green with foliage. It brings forth all fruits in green, nor does the tree labor in birth; the laurel, the honor of the tongue, loosens its gifts to be given to poets. The twisted vine goes through slanting circles into clusters, and the branch strikes the boughs with its flowing lash; the vineyard, drunken, rustles beneath the vine-shoots through the leafy fields, promising the gifts of gladness with its hanging grapes, and the flowering countryside is fragrant with varied fruits. One mother earth pours forth not one scent, but as many as there are herbs, so many scents are mingled. India then first, generating dyes through its herbs, brought them forth under a new sun, and with raw clusters.

There is a place on earth that spreads abroad four rivers, adorned with ambrosial flowers on a gem-like turf, full of fragrant herbs that never wither, a garden in the world of God happier than all gardens. The fruit within it is eternal, since it knows not the seasons of the year. There the garden blooms forever under an everlasting spring; on this side and that it is clothed with tree-tops in lovely fashion; with interwoven foliage the shady wall of branches is drawn together, and from every tree fruits hang, and here and there they lie upon the meadows; it is not set aflame by the rays of the panting sun, nor shaken by any winds, nor does a whirlwind rage there with conspiring storms. No ice, hard-bound, subdues it, nor does the stroke of hail beat it, nor do the meadows grow white with chilly frosts. But there are the gentle breezes of the garden, which a softer air, rising from the shining fountains of the garden, has brought forth.

That power stirs the leaves on the trees, and from a gentle breeze, with foliage driven, the motionless shadow wanders; the whole grove undulates, and the hanging apples sway. There eternal spring tempers the common airs, so that it harms not the flowers and so that all the apples ripen. For the bees there is no toil to shape hemlock into wax: from the tree they sweat honey of ethereal nectar, and there hang on the leaves the sweet cups already destined to be, and there hangs also the living medicine of health, eager to be plucked; the rest Nature paints with varied hues.

Already the fourth day had sent the dawn ahead of the waves, and with its ruddy glow had pressed the stars down from the reddening sky. Soon it bids the orb of the sun shine with the fire of health: a health-bringing breath floods the world with light, all the elements smile with health-bearing warmth; by whose own fire it bids the moon go second, to break the black hours of the night's darkness and to bring forth the trembling day with quiet as its companion: with sleep-bringing horns it illumines the white poles, a moon that is short when its number grows, but full when it is less. The flaming adornment of the sky shone forth through the stars: it appointed to the stars their duties, their numbers, and their names, distributed the seasons, assigned their places, drove them with fires, fixed them with boundaries, clothed them with radiance, rotated them on their axis, fitted them to their courses, and added them to the regions of the sky. Nor do the flaming stars of the countless host forsake the sky at any time of day, but they are overwhelmed by the light poured from the immense radiance of the summit. Nor is it strange that the bright stars lie hidden beneath the gleaming sun, by which the measure shows the world to be lesser, the sun that favors with holy fire the sky, the sea, and the stars.

the lands, conceived by the power of God, whom the sphere of the poles sustains, and who feels its lord thundering through all things, from whose command come whatever things minister, all things: at his command the whole world acts, the soldier of God himself labors under his own law, when he displays the moon and all the stars, under new spring, under the first season, under the untried day, prepared for the ages. The fifth day saw all the animals of the deep. Waters are solidified into body, and sinews are bound together. The muscle was moisture, the wave hardens into bones, and eyes are gemmed from the waters by watery moisture: and as many as are the waves, so many perhaps in the sea are the fish that played with fluid swimming through the vast blue, and with the sea rippling they breathed the waves through their nostrils, about to make food for the earth-born creatures to be created afterward.

Then leaps forth the winged race, joyful, flying through the breezes, shaking the air with its wings in crackling flight: and they pour out various voices in sweet modulation, and, with their beak, they praise the Lord that they have deserved to be created. These shine with snowy whiteness, these purple clothes, for these the saffron color of the feather is, these golden adorns, for others white feathers are made solid with little eyes, and the hyacinth is present, gleaming through necks and breasts. On these a crested peak stands out, these the tongue adorns, and the shortness of their form is compensated by their melodious voice. Green feathers render these, for these a many-colored plumage adorns, a painting running through countless birds: and with their untried feathers they weave the thin air beneath them. The day itself spews forth leaf on the branches, and grass with flowers, and every field sharpens itself into ears of grain.

The forest, clothed in leaves, grows green and displays chattering nests, and, garrulous, sings forth varied voices. When the wandering bird flies with beating wings, settling on the branches, it is moved together with the leaf by the wind, clinging fast with tenacious claws fixed into the branches. A warm vapor urges the feathered grove to bloom for the uses of offspring, and the eggs harden in the soft warmth: they are given feathers, formed into rounded shapes, are given life, breathe, are broken open, and, cracked, they resound; once nourished, they attempt flight, and with untried wings they are poised in the air. But when the elements, brought together, are at odds among themselves, once the offspring are brought forth, water and fire are in harmony. Water creates birds, flame brings forth birds. The pastures of the mountain were there, but there was no one to graze the grasses: the grasses would have grown old untouched in their flowers, had not the earth given herds to be grazed throughout the fields. The sixth day had advanced with the ruddy rising of the sun, when nature brings forth living things equal to the lands. Young bulls burst forth with horns, their foreheads armed. And through the wandering fields his heifer follows her bull. The swift deer wanders in the fields with spreading horns, and the swift horse bursts forth, a beast useful for wars. The impious earth brings forth terrible lions. The simplicity of sheep, destined to suffer the deceits of wolves, and the running doe feared the hoarse, sluggish ones. The boar foams, threatening deaths with his crescent tooth, and, turning his flank, fierce, he meditates battles. Nor let Massylian hunger descend into his hard shoulders, or let another boar go to stir up foaming wars. Every kind of herd animal is born, every kind of wild beast, wandering among the meadows through the grasses with no guardian.

The beast advances with the bulk of a mountain. The gaping serpent is brought forth, shaking venom beneath its tooth, and the spotted one creeps with its scales through the entrails of the earth, baleful, about to send forth black poisons from its jaws, and suddenly to scatter grievous deaths through its hissings, and the same creature to impart remedies to the limbs.

But lest all things at once and everywhere should have been present through all things, God distributed fixed places and appointed times. Not at one time do those things that are called savage come forth. The lion does not always move its jaws, nor does the scorpion always have its sting, nor does the viper always drive its bites, nor do the cerastae always lift their necks to wound, nor does the serpent always rage, nor does the heat of the sun burn everywhere; it tempers its fires according to the season, according to the region of the clime, it tempers the waves according to the season, and now the warring floods will lie still in the sluggish sea. The pole itself, which thunders greatly, now is silent, serene without a cloud, and its lights return in the clear sky.

Many things have been given, scattered through various places across the world. The dry sand has received the viperous snakes, the moist earth receives the fierce necks of lions, India threatens with gems and ivory monsters. The beast is born among divine fragrances, and the beast, badly crushing them, seizes the ambrosial harvests, and the tiger of uncertain color comes through a thousand colors in the Hyrcanian mountains, and, bereft of her mate, is sent forth so that, deprived, she may outrun the storms in running. Africa has obtained the gazelles with uplifted horns, and the hollow rocks throughout the mountains receive the dragons.

He distributed the rest of the seeds among different lands; he joined very many together, but separated many by a clod of earth.

Moreover, gifts of rich gold are poured out; wealthier India brought forth choice gems, and the red shores produce snow-white stones; Babylon bore flaming and green crusts, the shores of Persia ennoble themselves with precious gems, and the cold carbuncle burns with rosy honor; the Seres draw threads not drawn under any thumb, the balsam shrubs weep through the fields of Caesar, and their tears give a gift of fragrance too ambrosial. The inner land beneath Phoenicia brings forth cinnamon, greatly friendly to the sun; for this portion, not scorched by the sun, pours forth flowers of nard, this portion pours forth amomum.

When all these were begotten, O soul, the friend of reason is formed by the virtue of God, is filed into limbs, so that one, more moderate, may rule over all things as lord, by the command of Nature, which first brought forth all things. But man is not brought forth by the earth, not by the deep sea, not by heaven, not by the stars, not by the purer air; but the Lord, who is to rule over all things, and the Author, fashioned a man made from dust through his limbs. The clay was still formless, and is shaped into bodily limbs, the appearance of a man, the heavenly image. A new form of man is beheld, whether in the mind for a little while; the spirit poured in suddenly ran through the limbs, and the warmed blood, growing red, took hold of the heart.

Soon his cheeks blushed red, redness stains all his limbs; what was dust is now skin, now the earth encloses the marrow within his bones; hair rises on him, his eyes gleam like jewels with a twin orb of sight, and the frame gave him a voice—a new machine rising to praise its Maker, rejoicing that it exists.

Then he casts his eyes over all things and marvels that the place so blooms with beauty, that four rivers pure from their springs run with sounding flood between their banks through wooded glades and green fields; he marvels. But what man is, and for what uses he was made, he wishes to know in his simplicity, and has no one from whom to seek it: by what merit the world was given to him as his possession, and the kindly grove prepared as a home through the flowering kingdoms; and far off he watches the herds through the green fields, and silently asks himself what all these things are, and ponders why these very things are not with him; for lacking a companion, he had no one with whom to compare.

The Almighty had seen him stirring these things in his heart, and in mercy said: Let us give aids to the one made, a sharer of his kind—as if the Author were saying: It is not fitting that man be alone; gentle companionship shall move him; she shall be a wife, while he is a husband; let each call it marriage; let sweetness flow back into innocent hearts, and let each be a pledge to the other: to will the same and not will the same, one will standing firm, of one mind in concord, to run together with equal steps; let both be a rest to each other's heart, let both be faithful, and whatever chance is given, let it be the cause of both.

No delay: deep rest now comes, and Sleep closes his eyes, and his limbs are loosened into sweet slumber. But since God, with no one hindering, had the right to take away a small part, from which he himself in his piety had made the garment, lest by force taken away the rib should give the young man pain, and lest the thief-craftsman suddenly return him sad, whom he did not wish to harm, he wished to be his own thief: for he could also have formed that girl from similar dust as a prince. But so that full love might come from the whole heart, he wished the husband to know his own limbs in his wife. The woven skin is divided, one rib is drawn out gradually from the man, but soon to be returned to the husband. For from a small part the young girl is formed into an adult, beautiful, new, mature with swelling years, capable of marriage and offspring, for which she is proved fit, and without pious milk her infancy grows into youth.

The young man is shaken from sleep, he himself sees the girl standing before his eyes, first a father, then a husband, yet not a begetter by intercourse, but the author of a wife. Sleep was the birth, conception without seed, hushed rest produced the material of love, and gentle slumbers begot new affections. She stood before his eyes, covered by no veil, naked in body at once snow-white, like a nymph of the deep. Her hair unshorn with locks, her cheek beautiful with redness. Bearing all things beautiful—eyes, mouth, neck, hands—or such as the fingers of the Thunderer could form.

Their minds did not know what had come to be. Then God joined both, the man and the first woman, into one, and his rib returns to the man; he receives back his own members, and takes the increase, though no one is a debtor. To these is given all the earth, and whatever He created at His command, the air, and the offspring of the sea; the elements of the two remain entrusted to their will. To these the Almighty said, "Increase, fill the earth from your seed, nourish the sons born of unbegotten blood as descendants, and again join new spouses from your offspring, and while the earth bears up the sea, while the air bears up the sky, while the sun's radiance gleams on its axis, while the moon scatters the darkness, and my stars shine in the pure heaven, it shall be permitted to take whatever my orchards hold: for all that the earth creates, all that the sea and the air have brought forth, shall remain by its own right assigned to you, and delights shall flow for you, and honorable pleasure: only the taste of one tree you must not know."

So God had spoken: nature ratified what the Almighty had ordained. The earthly offspring marvels at the day, thinks the sun departs and the light does not return; and they solace the heavy darkness with the moon's light, and mark all the stars shining in the eternal heaven. But when they perceive Lucifer rising purple from the sea and flashing his radiance and stirring his flames, and the day returning above the stars as the sun rises, soon their minds, recalled, are warmed into yesterday's joys, knowing that these are the turns of time. With the daylight they began to hope for days, to laugh at the darkness.

God does not ever forget so many good deeds which he did for man and ordained to remain. The Lord does not wish to withdraw the help of his loving-kindness from him, nor to cast away his own handiwork. The Creator knows that he alone must be asked for everything everywhere, and that unless he comes to aid, no one will be a helper. Hence God is good to man even in evil, the author of all things. Hope, craftsman, lord, ruler, guide, arbiter, judge, pious with continual goodness, modest in virtue, good in simplicity, and higher than every height. The two walked through flowers and through all the rose gardens, among fragrant harvests and green groves, simply in the manner of cattle or the custom of wild beasts, with bodies naked, but their hearts knew no blush as to which part of the members should be held more private. How could the untrained know what was honorable in conduct? What they think of as fingers and eyes, each of these they think shameful. They joined public kisses to their affections everywhere, and there was no blush, since the origin of shame still stood, and they thought nothing at all illicit for themselves. And they believed well, for whom he commanded all things for use, with the fruit of one tree forbidden by law.

The earth is not ordered to be subdued by the plough, nor by the mattock, nor is sweat compelled by any toil to seek fruits, or to irrigate the fields from some spring, since the fertile turf, with rain-bearing showers always absent, grows by the will of its husband. Moreover, that place was given as a dwelling to the two alone, built as a shady delight for mankind only. It does not sustain pleasant birds, nor does it know how to endure birds bloody of mouth, armed with talons; it knows no kind of cattle, no kind of wild beasts. There alone the serpent with scaly body crept in, steeped in the deceits of death, the head of every evil, preparing honeyed poison from his viperous breast, from his mouth, beneath his deadly tooth, with foaming palate. Therefore there the gnawing envy, having the poison of biting envy bruised by the tooth beneath a modest brow, seeks aid for its crime, by which honesty may be deceived and simplicity fall, or credulous hearts may incur guilt not by their own fraud, but by everlasting ruin.

The man's fierce heart is not to be conquered through the serpent; present but devoid of piety, he attacks the wife's ears with a pious voice, and with malignant speech the insidious one approaches—alas!—the soft heart of the girl, and with cruel mouth he thrusts in foods full of deadly death. Once these are taken, the eyes of the heart are unsealed, and the teaching of evils, mixed with goods, lay open. She repented of not having known the feast, and the losses are reckoned as spans of time passed by; worse, indeed, is it to dare to proceed further. Seduced, she tries her husband, and the now harmful woman captures the innocent man as her conquered victim. Surrounded, she perishes, but having been circumvented by her own deceit, nor does the circumventing serpent triumph with impunity. For after the youth, with violated mind, ate the death-bearing foods without law, destined to be in death, soon the unhappy one knows what is base, what is honorable: simplicity is recognized, but soon it is put to flight from the heart. He thinks the shameful members are that part which is the origin of offspring, and that through which the digestion of the belly took place is held to be foul. Of all the members, that part is thought cleaner, which alone in the whole body had been more harmful—the mouth, the entrance of death, which brought forth and received the tongue persuasive of evil; but also the ears, the thresholds of death. The Almighty had seen that men had learned shame, whom they had lost by savage fraud, and with the foods eaten, wandering as guilty through the meadows and covering their fruitful limbs with leaves: the members once known give proof of guilt. What was unlawful they think lawful before, and what is lawful is believed, in truth, to be unlawful.

He rebukes with thunderous voice those sacrilegious men who profane God's laws by trampling them underfoot, while they seek some hiding place in leaves or in rock; then all the more dulled, when they believe they can hide from God everything that is theirs—God, to whom all things lie open, and rightly so, because he makes all things and strikes them by his command. The craftsman is not hidden from the mass of steel that sustains the carbuncles, nor the rust lurking that corrodes the inmost parts of iron, nor that which, once cast into the furnace, melts. Here metal does not come forth from buried earth; he promises gems from rocks, and not from dust. He knows into which waters to cast the biting hooks, or how to deceive fish with nets, the searcher of the waters; and the sailor hopes for storms that will turn out badly for him, if wintry rain or rocky downpour presses on. The farmer is not unaware. Beneath the earth the foreseeing one promises springs of water, designating the taste beforehand, having inspected the ground for himself. Without any blasts, while the hissings are silent and the serpent not yet marked, the Psyllus foretells the power of whatever poison. The physician sees the signs of Mars, and either denies or promises the return of health, with his sight as judge whether the man will live, imparting weariness to joy or grief to mourning. Why do we give examples that men foreknow the future, when, by God's testimony, they are taught to know what is at hand? The viper's brood, crying out, says to mortals: You know the signs of the sky and foretell them: rain is imminent, and it will come, nor does winter deceive, nor does it delay to arrive. Behold, the race of men is proved to know things to come. Nor is it strange if the image of Christ perceives what is to come, since many living creatures warn us of what is to come.

The heifer, the frog, the cranes, the ants. The curved swallow foretells the rains, and now its presages do not fail. Why speak of lifeless things? It is a witness that, when the lamp burns, the oil sparkles, and when mushrooms grow from the rain. Or could God Almighty be unable to know the hiding places of the rock, and that a garment woven from frail leaves could stand in the way of God as he looks on? Then, refuted by the voice, the unhappy husband confesses that he sinned through the crime of the woman; the deed done in the wife redounds upon the wife, and the guilty man accuses her, but he was acting as one not to be cleansed. And so, conscious, he took in the partner of his disaster as a companion for solace; as if a woman could, for a horrendous crime or savage expiations of death, with punishment joining the two, lighten the guilt. The unhappy man believed it: but an equal sentence condemns those whom an equal fault holds; there is only a difference of rank in that time, for a common cause binds both.

The judgment of God rises up with severe mercy, and the sentence of life and death alike is pronounced. The unhappy punishment is that by which death is given and denied; the vengeance of life is held back at the threshold of death. The penalty of dying was cruel, but to live was worse. They lose their ease and delights, and learn labors, who had the fruit of the earth with God as cultivator, which the farmer lord had not yet ever turned. He himself was waterer, sower, nourisher, reaper, plowman. Both offend this pious one: they are thrust from the garden, nor are the flowers of perpetual life under the right of the guilty, and the end of life is given as the goal of evils with their end. Great is the mercy of God, who tempers his anger with a vein.

The heavy life of mortals is withdrawn by the onset of death, which, rising again, urges more upon those whose hearts are turned to wrath. The death of worldly labors is a sure rest, and to one who lives badly, salvation is granted by the end. Whatever continues harms, both evil and good. God alone is ruler and author for eternity, the threefold Power, God threefold, God of all and one, from whom every hoped-for kindness is granted, and whatever he commands, no presumption has deceived, nor is the effect lacking at the very time of doing. In his presence even mute hearts speak with understanding, and though the tongue be silent, the word resounds above the heavens, and a pure mind prays to God rather than the tongue. Therefore God himself, mindful of his own work, commands both to come forth from their peaceful seats, that they may rule the world, and hold under their authority all that the world contains; and whatever blooms in the soil, whatever the green grass sprouts, whatever the harvest ripens into ears, whatever the tree brings forth in its branches, whatever the vines gem, whatever pleasant things grow green with foliage, whatever the rivers send from their fountains, whatever the sea surges, whatever the wave of the deep draws, whatever the strait churns against the shores, whatever the blowing winds wrinkle with their murmuring over the wandering seas, whatever the lands, the rivers, the sea, and the air produce—all these things are given to come to human uses. So that he who was made from dust like Christ might rule over all these created things under the flesh; all bodies, made subject, might serve bodies.

Meanwhile the spirit serves without the body, as wind; the wind drives the clouds, and the thicker air is gathered into cloud: hence rains come, and calm fair weather. Wind nourishes fruits, and wind ripens the ears of grain, which a gentler breeze winnows with its summer breath; it ripens the fruits and shakes the flowers from the tree; with its blasts it kindles flames and tempers the heat; by alternating blasts the commerce of life returns. It goes and returns, the spirit repeating its own draughts. And when the wind returns, the fibers of the lung pant, and the breath running out from throat and nostrils in turn animates the vital senses through the warming limbs, and now with cold, now with warm blasts the face is illumined and thrives, and the breezes touch the palate. Nor are these breathings given to human limbs alone, but the air runs back to all living things. That Spirit of God, by which all bodies are moved, embracing all things, drives, fosters, implants, urges, whence diverse kinds draw both the seeds of things and their vast masses, to be sent forth from the perennial fountain. Formed and set in order by the hand of the Artisan, all things are poured forth, each in its own order: the gift remains irrevocable, nor yet do perishing things perish by the law of the day. Who would deny that wave-flowing rivers proceed from fountains whose return their source never hopes for? Though it ceaselessly pours out waters with full force, the wave nevertheless refuses to feel the loss of its stream. This is the custom in all things: to take flames from flames, and the fire drawn off from fires diminishes nothing. Another's losses are wont to prepare others' gains. For whom do these losses prepare gain?

From the tinder of flame, from which perchance the brightness is cut away and the fire is cut off, nor does the fleshly kind diminish its offspring by begetting. Behold, God the king and author gave to man more than to himself. By the power of God one male and one female are formed, and one man begets many, a progeny destined to endure; the greatest race is made from a very small origin. It was a small thing for God that children should succeed the dead, unless, once consumed, he granted them to rise again to life after ages.

But lest it be fixed in the hearts of those who profane the holy things of the law that there is no return for the buried, let them see the yearly grain reborn in the fields, dead through the furrows of the plough that splits the earth. And a tree rises greater from its cut trunks and roots, and, clothed in leaves, it grows green as the years return. The vine-shoot reclothes the branches of the grape-bearing vine, and the budding shrubs return with the red of roses. The fruits burst forth, returning with ambrosial bark, for which life is fleeting, and old age is equal to the flower. The grass becomes green again, revived with renewed hair. All the woods grow young again under returning bud: what now was grass lies as wood, soon to be grass.

The scaly serpent strips off its starry covering, its skin renewed with returning youth; the snake glides along, gaping, opening its hissing throat. Stags lose their horns from their tree-like brows, but with their snakes taken up, the palmated [antlers] rise again. The bird sheds its old feathers in the air, and new plumage clothes the restored birds. Moreover, the dead eyes of the blind, long darkened, with the cloud of darkness scattered and light received, return to their sight, and the buried face, having endured nights of darkness, is looked upon as an image. However often the mortal part of a man lay dead while the living part remained, bearing living funerals, a living corpse in death, and yet without death in the living death of life. And renewed health is born as warmth returns through the limbs, and the warm sense of life seeks again, holding the bones, stirring the veins, and moistening the marrow.

God renews the Phoenix's youth, worn out, by fire, and the aged bird comes forth from the tomb renewed. The consuming pyre gives it limbs without the lot of a tomb; the flames are extinguished, and now the dead flame rises again; the devouring fire is restored, gleaming with revived light, and a flying spark brings back vast conflagrations; and what was smoke hisses with the gleam of panting fire. With wandering fire the crest glows red, the rest of the torch licks, and the extinguished ash, with its cold ember dying, is lifted up, seeking the heights, wandering with upright hair. The dead light falls beneath the light, the golden moon perishes, and through its ascents it gathers its fires and horns, and while it lies hidden in darkness, it shines with restored light, and the cold light feigns the day, an image of the sun.

When Lucifer returns to the sky, the stars too die. The herald of dawn, Lucifer, withdrawn by daytime death, rekindles its extinguished flames through the stars, and the night-rider gleams with flashing fire. The rosy dawn, scattering red blush, leads the day everywhere, the day that will perish from the shadows of night; and yet this too perishes from the sun, by which, when sent forth, it was reddening. The sun is the eye of heaven, the servant of the Thunderer above the stars, at whose immense flames the stars grow faint, unless it is refreshed by the cold waters through the blue of the sea. The day sets, with the sun falling upon the waters; sunk in the sea it dies, and rises new from the sea. In the night-time evening, with radiant light it hides the reddening sun in purple waters, and nature returns its daytime deposit, buried under night, to rise in the morning, with the world restored from the waves.

Warned by so many examples at once, let us believe that things dead are reborn by the power of God, by which he created all things, and that created things flourish under the Thunderer as their nourisher: he who, while he holds the kingdoms of the starry heaven and of the high air, encloses the air, lifts the earth, releases the seas; and one hand contains the whole that his word created. One God is everywhere, since one command burst forth, who is as greatly merciful as befits the almighty, and in no power less, except in the rod, and in all things, for willingly by the love of piety. Him a pure mind of men pleases, not a suppliant victim, so that the evil wills of the wicked may repent of their crime, and new hearts of the pious may succeed.

For he is God, whom no origin delays; at whose aspect mountains and rocks melt into ashes, and what was hard and rigid becomes dust; who, as soon as he has looked upon the earth, shakes the weights of the world and shows sudden trembling to the wandering earth, and reveals dreaded motions as it hangs poised. The torrent's channel feared with violent whirl, when it felt the returning waters and stayed its stream at the face of God, and he put to flight the grey-blue marbles of the watery gulf with which the whole world is encircled, and the spreading sea with its straits, and the surge of the deep. He who sends forth the blasts of wind from his treasuries, and bridles the swift storms in the tempest of hail and snow, who knows what their origin is. He who gives the lightning fires when clouds have clashed, who hides the loose waters and holds back the rains, who knows in what womb the shining crystal is created—a white substance, hardened from the waters into ice.

He who lengthens the night of winter with a lesser sun, and extends the sun's course in the flaming hours; who has fixed the moon's leaps and the sun's labors; who commands the starry grove with roses, or the fields with flowers; who gives sweet savor to the autumn's apples, and variegates the fragile grapes on the vines with gems, so that the sweet breasts of must may be food and drink; who gives food to the young of the cones, and makes the vulture know in what region a carcass lies—odor its guide, and the keen-scented one whom custom invites to the meal—or to renew the youth of the swift eagle in its old age, which was enduring hunger with its growing hooked beak: he who feeds.

Whatever he creates, with loving-kindness as their equal, sure salvation of life through a thousand dangers you guard, strength to the weak, greater wealth to the needy, help to the wretched, hope and defense to the oppressed, strength of the weary, giving nourishment of salvation.

He makes mortal limbs be covered by an eternal law in hidden wise, while the spirit breathes with a speaking wind. He commands the seas to swell as the moon's orb waxes, with waves added on; the rivers to swell with their springs; and every kind of brain enclosed in the head to grow; and the flowing waters to diminish as the moon wanes, and to decrease by an everlasting law as she decreases. He subdues kings and kingdoms, and lays low the powerful; he casts down the proud, and plunges the arrogant from their citadel; and God oppresses the oppressors, and as a loving avenger he raises up the crushed, and consoles those driven by griefs and losses, and those grieving savage wounds.

Our salvation, though assailed, you, holy one, bestow your remedy by your loving-kindness, by no medicine that earthly appearance prepares for the heats of sickness. Looking upon the hope of mankind, and fulfilling their praying vows, behold the despised, lift up the cast-down for a little while, and help the confounded, because it repents him to have been guilty, so that I may be able to recall your praises in this song, as I shall be able; for no created being can recount even a little of the work of the Maker, for which my mind cries out, weeping with a bruised heart, and with faithful voice. Your word is held as a pledge in our heart, by which you promise yourself a father with exceeding loving-kindness.

BOOK TWO.

Almighty eternal God, sole hope of the world, inventor, begetter, nurturer, ruler, lover of all things that the world holds, that the heights of the poles hold, that the secrets of heaven conceal and reveal but briefly; what the starry globe rolls above the stars from the celestial axis; what stars quiver and flash flames with trembling torch; and the stars that lie hidden in the light and shine again in the night; what the burning Lucifer, herald of dawn, flashes forth, to put the stars of the sky to flight, himself soon to flee the reins of light; what is the heat of the sun, by which the cold moon shines, dividing with her brother their allotted turns, traversing her own seasons, lest darkness with no light invade the world at once, and chaos be believed to be at hand in the span of night—all this you bound fast by your power when you made the world.

You, God, inspire men to call the sun a charioteer, not because he is borne by four horses as the axle turns, but because the perfect sun, skilled in his office, alternates four colors from the four elements; at your command the sun changes the four seasons of the year, not daring to pass beyond the turns fixed by eternal law under your dominion; he does not of his own will increase the vapors nor temper the middle fires, nor does he by chance give a chill shower, unless the commands of your empire, enduring without end through the ages, lead the way. With his host serving him, he is proved faithful to serve the ocean, the world, or heaven as witness. Thus all your work was seen and does not lie hidden from the world.

You, God, as author, all things know as father, you equally as lord, who give beginnings to things and prepare an end without end, you know no beginnings: hope of humankind, first principle of things, and presiding over the world, your holy prince, everywhere present, embraces all things—the Spirit immense, penetrating the vast mass through the ages: as diffused air, so it covers and fills all things, each in its parts, and nourishes all things universally, wholly everywhere helping and wholly everywhere ministering. Whatever nature, vibrating, has given, whatever things are created or, once generated, have power, the nurturing Spirit brings these in; it cherishes bodily limbs, raises, urges, and increases them. Things that must continue remain, and things that must be cut down totter. It settles into minds, penetrates the head, bones, marrows, breasts, heart, senses, soul, inner parts, mind. It illuminates the veins, the eyes, and fills the inward organs.

Why should I be harmed, I whom all things carry, by whom all things are governed, whom every spirit and fire praise, and all things venerate as the eternal parent? Nor are the secrets of heaven empty, which the Spirit, the author, does not hold by your power—secrets which, embracing the orb of the sun and the lunar globes, it rules and drives whatever has a work of piety, filling the ether with its bosom.

Nothing exists unless it is preserved by your law forever; the circle will cling [to its course] unless you command it to go as it travels; and the starry honor soon halts on the turning sphere. And the elements would exchange their turns, lingering through cycles, and the lofty fabric of things would fall before its day: but you hold them back by your law, by which you constrain all things. For who could stand resisting your commands? Or who could reckon to you, if you command the world to perish—the world which you yourself suddenly created by a mere word when you commanded, by which it pleased you to beget God, Christ, before all these things, whom, conceived by the word in the heart, you carried as seed, without whom the holy mind of the parent had never been—many, deep, powerful, skilled, pious, provident, eternal, simple, lofty, light, vibrant, immense, serene, vivid, all-pervading mind, innumerable, one. Therefore God is born from God, light from light. The sacred offspring, begotten, at once stood before the parent in the heart. And remaining a sharer with the Father, and one Spirit. God in threefold mind, God the author, devoid of time, powerful in manifold virtue, modest in piety, bestowing countless things on the heavens, the elements, the waves, the stars, so that they may stand, serve, and adore, singing prayers without end in angelic fashion.

He grants to all these things to remain with their end deferred, so that men, fish, herds, birds, and cattle, and wild beasts may thrive, and whatever nature has created, and whatever the countless offspring of diverse blood [have brought forth]. He who deigned to be born as man, being formed into limbs, the nurturing spirit congealed with his surpassing blood, and after the temples of heaven God is made under the flesh, a passible form, a mortal man but everlasting without end: and the subtle vapor, now a softer fire, has crept through all things, and prepares a tender body through the vitals. God is clothed in a frame, is bound in structure by bones, and the marrow grows fat within; hence blood, hence moisture, every muscle is made solid, and flesh is formed. What the Holy Spirit accomplished there, the Almighty himself knows, who created all things; how God, with the word making fruitful the husband, deigns to enter the virginal bosom and the womb. He who is capable of the earth and of heaven, and of the panting fire, of the air and of the sea, yet not to be contained by them, suffered the enclosures of childbirth under the law of creation, or whatever age of diverse time he undergoes.

By this, frail human nature lying low merits from His piety, by which He does not wish to lose the world that He made, and He ordained and established that it remain through the ages. Therefore when the Lord and Author put on bodily limbs, He did not leave heaven to serve the Father. For whoever is wise knows that He so took up limbs and was on earth that the Almighty did not leave the heavenly tribunal: never was the Son approved without the Father, and the Father was never named without the offspring, the immeasurable Spirit, holy, good, arbiter, judge, third and the same one, first and eternal middle. But when He took up the earthly weight with the body, the immortal race underwent mortal hardships: these things could not be seen except in bodily form. For whatever miracles the Prince gave to the flesh, men would think these were done by holy events. Add to this, that it is a general vice of human crowds to believe this, which sight holds, and to despise what is reported.

We believe from this that God came to be seen by the world, so that He might perform a work of power. Through a thousand chains, for minds besieged by the insane ruin of madness, every spirit that was impatient and weighed down upon souls, every skin that flowed with wasting and grew wet and red, with flesh dissolved and bones and sinews laid bare, health is granted from that ruin: He knows how to restore the buried, and to recall the lifeless to health again. He Himself heals the eyes of the blind: they marvel to know the use of light and the day unknown to them, which nature denied them even from their mother's womb. One part of the man lay dead, the other part alive, and as he was seen by God, afterward he is restored sound and whole, and vital warmth ran into his bones. What He did for a part of the man, He did for the whole body: He provided for the bereaved parent when she wept over her son's funeral. Nor did He give only these things, for, so that the virgin might survive, He commands, and Lazarus rises, buried before, exempted after the light of four days had passed. The accustomed flow of unusual blood that used to run from the woman perishes, with the year of blood at once removed. He seizes fevers, He restrains the winds upon the waters, through which Christ, as Peter came, completed His journey (nature constrained the liquid, while it marveled), the waves of the sea conquered beneath the Lord's weight. He turns water so that wine flows: a wondrous gift, the cups are water, and the wave of the river makes drunk. The supply of bread is absent, and the supply of bread abounds.

A thousand mighty works are to be marveled at; but why should we marvel that the Lord of the heavens alone could do so much, when his disciples and servants are read to have done so many great things throughout the world among countless nations? And at the same time he warned the unlearned and the learned to listen: the great punishment of the cross, and the return of the heavenly light to the ethereal regions, and the thrones of the heavenly Father. When the Spirit, your kindly fire, coming, poured out tongues, infusing into our world harmonious fellowship with a different speech for the blessed. You are God, whom the earth trembles before, whom the world adores; at your command the clouds rain, and they flash with fire. You command the winds to rise and the storms to grow, so that swift gales may throw all things into confusion, and the dark clouds snatch the blue sea up above the heavens. You again restrain the blasts, as the east winds fall back, and you stretch out the purple sea in a calm expanse of marble, so that afterward the fish may sport together over the plains of the sea, the horrid monsters swim, and the huge beast exult.

This is surely the sea that divided itself and held apart into two parts on either side: the Hebrew race fled the impious kingdoms with Moses as prince of the people; again the waters, flowing back, return to their former places. When the fugitive band had come through from the waves entirely, then the people was drowned and perished, who was preparing savage things for the people of the Israelites, who were made survivors by the avenging shipwreck: by such a disaster is destroyed the one who was fear before, soon the free multitude of the Thunderer marvels at the changed path: the former way of salvation was a path of death, nor did it keep its members in the tomb. Meanwhile the African wind, moved by the power of the one commanding, comes near to do harm, with no storm accompanying it; a new shower rushes in preparing to carry delights; the cloud gives countless birds, the food of the heavens is given, food from the angelic side. But to those thirsting the rock gave rivers, with no one digging with a hoe.

And lest I say more, whatever things are seen are yours, and whatever no one sees. All things owe to you that they are; yet you yourself are approved to owe to no one what you are, and as if you owed, so you render all things to all. You have care, O God, for whatever you created everywhere, lest so great a burden succumb; care for lesser things stands, and you command the special to be guarded as if it were general. Thus the earth becomes a mother, by which all seeds are created; thus the merchant sails the sea in a sail-winged ship, and the tireless traveler looks around a new land, and the unknown stranger, having embraced them, loves the citizens.

By a harmonious covenant, because of your power, the elements are held together, connected through so long a duration, and so joined are they bound that, though separate, they are nevertheless proved by a harmonious strife: if they were to become separate, the machinery of the world would be dissolved; if they were to be joined together, all nature would perish.

You, God omnipotent, know with what seed you made the world, with what seed you created the heavens, the sun, and the moon from nothing at once; yet we think them to be diverse. All things will return again to nothing when you command it to be chaos; you alone will remain, surviving, to be revered by the holy hosts of angels and of men. Just as therefore there was no labor before, when you commanded, when all things were being made, so neither will there be any labor when you have now commanded that the end come, though many ages know it. The Seraphim and Cherubim pray to you as God and Lord; the angelic choir praises you, the host entreats you; the Throne on high beseeches you with humble voice; the ranks of stars praise you, the signs and constellations, confessing you their Author; the thunderbolt adores you; the thunder, the storms, the hail, the gales tremble before you; the ice and the clouds fear you; the spirit of all things sounds forth to you—the rain, winter, the sea, nothing, the cold and the breeze. The fruitful earth calls upon you; the air looks up to you; the wave above the heavens supplicates you, and all the pole; the rivers fear you, and the springs, pools, and marshes praise you with their voice; the thick clouds flash for you; the white light of day, the dark night with its shadows, the good tempering of the air, all the seasons pray to you—spring, summer, autumn, winter, as the years return.

Through you the earth brings forth. Through you, God, the grass grows green, the woods leaf out, the flower breathes, the tree buds. Through you the harvest sharpens its grain-tipped crops along the heights, and after the budding shoot the vine-tender brings the grapes to the tendril. And the olive, never to lack its leaves, grows leafy. You the earth, you the fish, the flocks, the herds, the birds, the swarm of creeping things praise; every kind of venom hisses with savage mouth, with vibrating three-forked tongue, and confesses that whatever it has it owes to you. The very substance of death rejoices with a threatening hiss to praise the author of life, and you, Creator, could have refused to let serpents, let every harmful thing be born, so that a single death would have taken away the lives of men. But we know why all these things were made to be given: they were given because of our sins, because we all everywhere despise the precepts of God, because so many thousands of chains of sins hold us fast.

Nor has sin only now crept into our ways; long ago, long ago the first man transgressed the commands of the Thunderer. Ungrateful, because he had been made in the heavenly image, alone retaining the rights of power over all things, and always—unless he boldly despised the commands of God—as soon as he was made, created with no one sinning, he sinned. What of us, wretched men born of crime? In the beginning the author of our sinning, the origin of our race, is condemned under the law of death, or by everlasting ruin. It happened, alas, that a penalty like ours remained for us, nor does a like guilt hold us: he fell once, guilty under one law; us, wandering under many laws, with those laws despised, it holds captive by the lot of guilt.

I pass over this, which we all count of little worth: that compared with heaven, earth, seas, and the whole air, with the ethereal fires and the orb of the moon, man is the more worthy—man, whom it pleased the Thunderer to form by himself. For other things are created by God's word alone; those he creates by voice, but us more laboriously by hand. Why ought we, guilty, not to have deserved worse things? I add that countless plagues, threatening mortal kind, often yield healing from a part of their own body. What the viper provides, its tail and neck cut off, what the spotted serpent helps with, medicine will tell. What the fatty limbs of the twisting asp cure, the shapeless bear, the tawny lion, what the bold wolf—and whatever evil nature, as avenger, has created, it has mingled a health to be desired with dread death.

What of the fact that the Author has clothed death-dealing animals with sense, so that they can feel and return anger to those who pursue them? And indeed they are not enemies to those who do not vex them. Men are not ashamed of this: we are proved a troublesome race, while the wild beast keeps justice. Alas, a huge disgrace: the snake acts for biting, we, an impious crowd, though knowing justice, scorn it in a punishable deed; and ignorance by right deserves pardon. Perhaps this excuse too is sure for us. So that they may not harm by stealth, snakes are sought in the grass; we seek savage lions through the deserts, lest, fed on the flocks, they lay waste the farmers' fields. The hunter pursues the boar, for which he sets his nets, lest the vineyard perish under the bite of its hooked tusk. So that the stag may fall, medicine seeks its marrow. What harm did the hare, about to suffer, do? What the roe, or the goat?

What does medicine command to be caught for these uses? Is it so that they may fall by the fraud of hunters or by the point of steel? What harm have the fishes of the sea done? What harm the flock of birds? Our race has spread over the sea, and the air is crossed, so that birds, harmful in no way, may be caught. The elements that nature denies are sought by us: a journey is made famous across the sea; cut off from the waves, he sails, striking bold oars upon the waters.

Men think it a small thing to cross the harmful waves; besides, they advance into the middle of the sea with a net; he harasses the grey sea with bloody sword-point, and a hand, a stranger, carries war to unknown lands. Was it not enough that lands endure bloody wars, so that at least a neighboring foe should be brought forth? Why does the armed hand, impatient, entangle weapons among kin and carry through—a crime—civil wars? Nor is civil war alone enough: they seek fathers-in-law and fathers, and brothers with savage strife. Nor is it only newly attempted; the first beginnings of the world grieved at the horrible crime, and the pious saw the second man drenched in his brother's blood. Impiety did this when the world was first founded, and as if it were a law, so it has come into wretched use.

The traveler falls to the bandit with his throat stopped up. What is the night thief, masked in his wicked deed, to do so as not to be caught, with steel accompanying his shadows? The savage examples of many men of old teach us. What of the fact that adulterated honey comes into sweet use for evil ends? And does incestuous lust drive the abomination of forbidden acts? Many invade the fields of another's turf, and join houses to houses without lawful restraint, and the pledged faith is not kept for a friend. Many clients of noblemen are deceived by fraud, the hoary head of old men combed out, and parents injured. Would that the savage right hand had struck only those already born, and that guilt had made a crime only for the little ones. And they hasten to make away with the not-yet-born in the womb; the impious mother rages to condemn both foreign and her own offspring alike, nor is there any care for her own peril. What cruel woman drinks poisons with impunity? Who has discovered this great abomination, that whoever drinks this should not drain death for herself? Less does the stepmother dare against foreign-born children than the mother does. The stepmother's right hand now sends the born to the shades; that mother compels her offspring to die rather than to be born. Lest evils should suffice, the harmful make them worse.

Even the dead, who leave their limbs to quiet, they disturb souls already at rest under the law of death with ill-omened songs, with herbs, and with accursed art, and they seek answers from the voice of the dark [underworld], as unhappy Saul, driving on his soul in the python [of the prophet], sang. Why ought we not to grieve over all things more heavily, we who thus sin unjustly?

The sun, the light, the bright day, the moon, and the shining stars, or whatever constellations serve great God, the glorious host of heaven, or the sea and the air, and the earth, keep the commandments they have received from God, and devotedly abide in piety through a thousand ages, nor does the long span of changing time so move them that they should refuse to keep the law or change the seasons against the laws of God, against the commandments of the Thunderer. The day shines with the sun, Cynthia [the moon] illumines the nights, and the stars, as if bejewelled, adorn the sky; the billowing sea seethes, as though it attacked the stars with its waves and threatened to cover the earth with foam. Yet it does not go beyond its appointed boundary: raging within its own realms it is broken, and the surge and wave of the sea return into themselves, though a strong wind may rouse the deep and mad waves beat beneath the shores; the hanging earth does not dare to cleave the dark-blue deep to make a passage, but, content with so much, it abides joined to its own path, while the sea marvels at its shores, seeing the waves rise into heaps and mountains: nor does it fear, and it invades, nor is it invaded by the waves.

Man is a great evil, a transgressor of the law, and bold, an inventor of crime, a deviser and author of wicked deeds, unmindful of his Author, a leader of death, offspring of Eve, and forgetful of his own father, an enemy and foe to all, and to himself; alone in a brief time he transgresses the precepts of God: a wicked race is born, from the fountain of wickedness we all trace our kind, we who were first created and are so even now; neither age nor any wrath of God restrains us. Because the ages that had passed up to the times of Noah, and the world kept adding ceaseless crime and savage expiations, and no man held to what was honorable, yet no punishment of the guilty came forth at the same time, thence the giant mass, presuming, rebels. Yet with sacrilegious neck, whatever it could or was able, the fool in his stupidity arrogates to himself with rash daring, reckoning God as nothing, through whom all that exists has its power.

The earthborn offspring, as though unconquerable in its boldness, despised the Lord, and the monstrous race deserved to suffer a terrestrial shipwreck, while the shores were no more than land—though spread wide—so that the sea overwhelmed the rivers, and the harmful rain hid the sea, when all the woodland creatures were swimming, dying, in the waves, and the race that feeds in the sea was on the high mountains, and the sea likewise yearned into the vast breezes, when the wave slew the flocks of birds that it brought forth. With the herd the wolf swims through the fields, the hunter and the bear are drowned, and the herds fear no lions. For there was one fear, the lot of death for all.

[...] there was no one to weep, and a single delay held them all. And emerging alone by divine command, the ark floats among the waters, built up, with the citizens of the world, about to give birth in one conception to young and old alike, and to boys and pious mothers and tender girls. One day brought forth the grandfather and the late-born grandsons. The earth received together the sons and the fathers, and the births of different times make them of equal age.

Not only men does the more fertile ark pour forth. Indeed the earth was enriched with peace for a modest time, for after the swelling of the sea fell and the wave subsided, and the harmful flood was taken up by the deep abyss, the shores are laid bare—mountains, sea, rivers, woods—the springs appear, and gradually the dry earth is restored, and anger and fear return to all, now that the land is covered again for the wild beasts and the flocks and the birds. Soon the impious race of men resumes the path of crimes and desires to renew its wicked deed; lest the flood destroy the use of crime, and as if it should suffer loss, so do sins cling to the wicked as the tide rages, so everywhere do their customs return to savage expiations, and the leader [of the race] endured the course of wandering unpunished, so that we might be recalled, joined together in much crime.

But after he saw the wicked vows of men advance toward worse, lest he again destroy the world, or let all the guilty go unpunished everywhere, he chose from the assembly those whom he saw sin more, his censure compelled by punishment above the stars. And because the flood's wave will not come a second time, he pours out sulphurous waters upon them, and rains down black bitumen, and the fiery rain scorched them with flames, burning five cities, condemning peoples and walls, with the turf cut away and baked by heavenly fires. The rich soil rots away into crumbling ash.

We are the authors of our own disasters, alas, all of us; poverty, groans, death, torments, griefs—we make these for ourselves by sinning willingly and wickedly. The Almighty separates men according to the measure of the world's deserts; punishments do not join those whom guilt did not unite. Just Lot, servant of God, without deceit, faithful, alone pious and innocent amid so many crowds of crimes, is snatched from cruel death, seen to be without guilt. And saved he departs, a lover of a better life, just as Noah was saved when snatched away in the ark, nor did the more special guest feel the general evil.

Our whole race, not yet corrected by evils, still dares to wash its doors with crimes without the brow of shame, and does not condemn the depraved punishments of wicked deeds, but increases them. Hence come obscene hunger, diseases, death, grief, want, sloth, wars, plague, disasters, loss, and toils. For man had been made thus, our first beginnings, like the birds; he was to be fed without the ruin of labor, not to cut the earth with the plowshare or with the mattock, nor, wandering, to demand foreign shores with swift waves, entrusting his life to the winds and, bold, to the floods, of his own accord preparing fruit, and wine from the springs of the grape after the manner of river water; the long-lived olive, ever green, would bear its liquids not at a fixed season, brambles would give honey, the thorn would sweat amomum, every field would give pigments with its greening herbs, and winter would bring forth little roses, and summer would preserve purple lilies, every grove would stand in fragrance, nor would the honor of the violet wither with its seemly pallor, nor would color be only black or white in the lambs. But precious sandyx would give ruddy fleeces, and the purple of the murex would clothe the wool-bearing sheep, the gold of the Phrixean fleece would be a sure tale, a truthful narration would carry the fame of the stage through the peoples, and sure faith without such great crime. Not only would precious metal keep its hidden entrails in the earth, nor would the gem lie hidden too much; but the earth would have all things everywhere, and she would reign in all lands, not in need of trade; she would be cheaper to the peoples, who bear their cares.

But now the punishable habits of the human mind everywhere seduce our morals and serve us bitter things.

Perhaps men may object by confessing their sins, that the angelic race sinned, which held the purer air and the pole above the stars, or the kingdoms of heaven. They were before the tribunal, where all, pure and holy, were seen without the body and free from earthly weight; and yet error held them, and unspeakable crime. What of wretched men, held captive under the fragile covering of the flesh, whom their limbs and the body's use constrain? To you I shall give this answer: Why is another's guilt thrown in our teeth? Can that which the wicked man did purge him? Whatever crime belongs to another? Every wicked deed looks to its author, implicates his companions and all his ministers, and presses only those whom it defiles. Hence our mind is the more guilty, because punishment followed the heavenly servants, and his heavy wrath did not spare them. A third part of the countless star fell from heaven, when its leader was driven from his place; the vengeance of the gods restrains the hosts of heaven-dwellers, perishing in everlasting ruin. So great a part of the soldiery of heaven, stripped of its office, ought by example to have corrected our morals; and yet no moisture of shame ever arose in us.

What dog barks when the lion's jaws, Gulla, bring stripes and head, and they grow tawny with blood? Or, when the sun fails at the dying day, if you cast earth in its path, would the stars despise the shadow by which all things are read, and think that thick darkness can overcome the slender light? Or when the sea is silent, would a river boast that it drives it back, when the great floods of the ocean's gulf cannot quench thirst, though the whole stream should swell? But because heavenly mercy threatens pardon, and flashes more lightning-bolts than flames, or this one holds the thunderbolt, and touches the mountains and the heights, and the tops of trees, the cedars and lofty cypresses, so that by terror rather than by slaughter it may subdue the impious, our contempt is fierce, and our mind is set on harming all: yet the kindly mercy of the Father, willing to spare sooner than ready to punish, sent from the citadel of heaven through the stars the holy Christ, who by his power would break the serpent's arts, laying waste the enemy's cohorts by the banners of the cross, which by a headlong cast the lofty palaces of heaven thrust down into grievous ruin under everlasting guilt.

Judaea was terrified of God, who after the womb's travail gives mighty Christ, working wonders for so many peoples. Straightaway the livid woman, about to harm herself, sacrilegiously with the art of iniquitous envy guards the profane path, and, doomed to perish, she seeks deceits by which, wicked, she might destroy the innocent—guilty, harmful, cunning, deceitful. And the crowd gives the price: dealings are made for God. With His disciple selling Him, deadly for two. The seller is wretched, but the buyer no happier: one party loses the price, the other loses the merchandise. He profits in us, who did not contract the purchase: the seller and the buyer are stained by the blood that was sold, by which our mind shall be cleansed with the drop of Macrian blood. But what a crime and abomination! The crowd of guilty men afflicts the innocent with punishment—the cross, the scourge, the sword—of which it was itself worthy, and brings upon the eternal one the ways of death and the thresholds of death, for whom from the beginning of the world there was neither a beginning to be born nor an end to die.

Therefore, because the saving passion pierced His limbs, it made the day depart, with the hours of the sun remaining, and gave night beneath the light; the darkness returned, but not in its usual manner, the law of the heavens being violated. Then the black axis was covered by a lurid pall; the shining moon showed a bloody redness; under the twin hinge an importunate night hung, and nature lamented God; the tombs of the pious, closed, lie open, and many buried returned to the world, and death itself gave life; while eternal life approaches the thresholds of death, the ministers of Styx trembled, the torments flee the guilty, the dreaded hand of the torturers, unwilling, spared them, light is poured upon the shadows.

The unhappy Tartarus, never healable by shadows, and rejoicing in the death of one alone, is thrown into confusion by love, and as a suppliant grieves at the increase, for these losses were bringing gains; he rages that the souls which the bars of the eternal prison held were to return to the uses of light, and he laments that the law of Avernus is violated. Impatient of the light, he begs the Lord, the king of the heavens, that Christ not burden all Hecate with his insuperable radiance, or despoil the black fires together with their whole host, recalling souls to the upper world by the power of the Father.

Meanwhile the third morning star advanced from the stars over the gleaming Ocean, and the nurturing King returned from the shadows with life restored, accompanied by a great throng; the disciples joyfully saw their returning master. Then, having returned, he seeks in triumph to possess his kingdoms, sitting at the right hand on high, beloved sharer of the Father's throne; he will come to judgment after the ages, in the future, to render to all the reward which each one merits, bidding the hosts stand at the right hand and the left, choosing each according to the merit of a wicked life and a good one.

If it is a crime, and a great wrong to have despised the powerful one, what crime is it held to be to have outraged one's own Maker? And would that the forgiver had remained after the death of the flesh, if perchance he hears penitent the guilty more mercifully, and in his goodness grants pardon at once, and the Lord's own Son—if the wretched man of Judah had even hoped for pardon, he would have had it. But mindful of his unspeakable and nameless crime, the unhappy man believed that he no longer deserved anything forgivable, and, withdrawn from pardon by his own judgment, he departed. The silver is returned; it hung upon his accursed neck, at last a just man, for he did not remain greedy; hanged, he died, soon by the severe avenger himself. The bonds are broken, he fell, and the corpse burst asunder, the poured-out entrails flow, hence the cruel heart lies open, and he defiles the day with rotting gore from his body.

We read that countless guilty bands from the Jewish people merited pardon, and that the ministers of death took up these, the best gifts of eternal life, of whom Paul was the great head standing forth for many evils; and yet he himself was a teacher of the law after his crimes; he who had made martyrdom for Stephen, from that received it, and merited the full crown which he conferred on Stephen, proving in himself the true words of God: that a man shall suffer what anyone has done to another.

But the good one received what the wicked man then did badly, in that by teaching he turned peoples and nations as he went through sea and lands, so that they might worship the name of Christ and drive the gentile gods and idols from their hearts: let Mars fall from the mind, let Saturn perish, and Arcadian Jupiter, and Venus, Titanian, Juno, Cupid, and whatever false gods by ancient speech are said to be able to do nothing and truly to be nothing.

God alone is everywhere, the fount of things, founder and hope; you will always be what you are and what you were before, adding nothing to yourself nor diminishing as the years grow. Let times change; the ages never change you. Such as the first day knew you, such will the last also know. Since the heavens and the earth and the sea did not contain you, nor the space of air, you place yourself in the modest heart of a human breast, conceived in a faithful mind. You hear what the tongue is silent about, speaking beneath the talkative heart; you see future things beforehand, and with you no future things exist, though they may be, Almighty One; all things are seen as present, or past things are made future for us by wondrous means. Thus, holy Spirit, author, foreseeing sinful men beforehand, you prepared the first medicine before you made man: ready indulgence forestalls guilt, and pardon precedes the wicked deed.

For Christ has been given to us, the hope, the grape-cluster of salvation, so that in his loving-kindness he might wash away our sins here in the stream of his blood; and though he himself bears our stains and crimes, yet he comes as the spotless Lamb, and the only heir of the ever-living One, and he himself will live forever. He grants sins to the guilty when asked without a word, by the affection of the heart, in secret mind, by faith, by hope—since God is everywhere, always ready to bestow, we alas receive too slowly in our heart with delay. Pious vows hate delays; he hastens to adopt them, so as to grant them, if only the cause that keeps us lingering may cleanse us.

In three ways the foolish man has set all things before us: the mind of men is free to sin, or truly to live holily; vows are free, when we wish to hope; if it pleases to believe, it is easy, for to be able to merit is easy. Abraham believed, and was made a friend of the Lord. Worn out with old age, in the years of his remembered prime, he was among grandfathers and great-grandfathers, but childless, (not so was Ishmael his offspring) and a husband in vain, sluggish in the duty of a father; with its warmth grown cold, the fire of his seed was quenched and fell away from his generative parts, and fruitful love, which had already withdrawn its wings. Nor did he alone keep his barren, withered limbs. His wife dragged her half-dead members more wretchedly; the hope of their line was cut back, and the maternal power was spent. Faith alone increased hope, a simple presumption. Cold nature had denied offspring to the old. They bore the mournful, empty name of marriage; there was only the hope of youth, as the years increased. He was present to them, promising offspring with a race of descendants.

Certain faith and no uncertain hope did not deceive them. A fertile warmth ran through the limbs of both, and a flame sweeter than honey crept into their chilled marrow, and the old people marvel at how their veins grew warm again with renewed fuel for their offspring: the quickened child breathes. Within the limbs the boy is bound by the narrow framework of the womb. The hollows of the belly swelled as the wrinkles perished, since so great a prophet was to be born from an aged mother; and the barren woman, now a fruitful parent, marvels and is at a loss that her womb has thus grown, and holding the girls she consults them, and trembling like a new bride she asks. Often new joys make their modest faces so. The fruit of honor was given from the womb of purity. Thus, though he was the begetter of one child created after the ages, yet for the nations and peoples he is the one father and origin. All the sand of the sea, or the fiery stars of heaven, are fitly equaled in number by the blessed offspring. For to whom the earth is given, and the holy things of heaven are prepared, it is more rightly so with the two elements equaled on either side.

Sara, and her husband together, sought the Lord with prayers: she merited a husband made steadfast after seven deaths, he merited sight when the darkness fled with poverty, and he receives the day in a twofold orb, and they return with their serene light, shining like rams after thick clouds.

David committed the crime of adultery and murder, but recognizing his wickedness he confesses his faults and goes unpunished; thus, guilty, he earns pardon for his crime by his word of faith, and afterward becomes a servant of the Lord and faithful, with God as witness, called by a heavenly voice, so greatly that after his crimes he made a king born from the same woman, a man to whom at the time of birth he granted all things by the merit of his beloved father.

Hezekiah had wept: within the span of a single moment, and by his first prayer he merits life and three five-year periods.

Anna had lamented her barrenness in silent murmuring, her matter; she returns fruitful through her former vows, and a second voice is no longer awaited.

These poured out only prayers, no fasts, for there was not even a long time in which they might fulfill their vows, since not even a full hour was granted to all who asked, when they merited their vow by the loving-kindness of the Thunderer, which the old and new Testaments both speak of: so many thousands of the guilty suddenly merited pardon, for whom there was one prayer once, or none. You have demanded what full faith and believing means, I have said. It remains to say what those who do not believe may merit.

That father, holy John, incurs blame, holding the sacred places of the pontiff and great as priest, for he hesitated to believe the promises of the Lord of thunder, the old man warned by an angelic word while he was lukewarm. Soon punishment is given through long silence of the tongue, until, with twice five months completed, the child, the Founder, comes from the womb under a blessed lot.

You, God omnipotent, heavenly origin of things, You are held to be pious and merciful and a consoler, a greater defense for the oppressed in time of sadness. Your right hand raises the cast down, lifts up the fallen, cherishes the abject, and always feeds the needy, preparing abundant cups and kindly ministering to the thirsty. Ignorant of wrath at warnings, You do not check sin by disaster; more merciful, You hear the guilty without disaster before their prayers and help with pardon; no anger stirs up fury, so that You would command even the guilty to be justly killed. You are more pious than just: therefore You do not act severely; You punish the erring, but as a gentle one You correct all in goodness under Your mercy, with the scourge of punishment ceasing. Whenever You have been moved, You remain most calm, commanding nothing cruel; the sentence of heaven is light: pious King, You are said to make punishment revocable for all, so that, if sinners acknowledge their guilt in heart and condemn their former offenses with a better mind, there may be those whom You may forgive—but You do not relax these things once only, often indulging, showing the thresholds of death, and recalling from cruel death those whom guilt was pressing, snatched to bring their forms into the jaws of hell.

These alone perish, all whom it is established are forever profane, willing to sin without end in evil. One single boundary of crime and punishment is held. And you, being merciful, could have preserved the wicked even to old age, so that they might condemn together their horrible sins and hope for your pardon; but this reason is held the greater: for if license to sin with impunity were long permitted to the harmful, suddenly the mind of the innocent will be thrown into confusion, and soon he repents of having been modest, and wickedness is desired, and the pious crowd is harmed more by shameless frenzy, and shameless vows weary them. What of the fact that for one who errs the delay is proved not brief, and pardon is preserved for a long time, if he ceases boldly to attempt forbidden wickedness? For every guilty man, when converted, gives joys to heaven; let each man judge his own sins, and he leaves his faults behind at the word.

When your voice is silent, your sentence still cries out. You raise up the oppressed and humble, and you lay low the proud; you, by your command, loose the bound necks of captives, you lift up necks worn down by the yoke, the servile neck released, and you make the nobles serve and the servants command. By poverty, you order it, the wealthy are pressed by shameful want, and the man generously rich in resources makes the needy rich. You lift up the lowest and press down the lofty; you restrain the presumptuous, and you strengthen the weak by adding strength, retaining the laws of power under the true name—for he alone is Lord who has no Lord, or to whom all things lie open, through whom are all things, as many as exist, and things past together with things that will one day be future.

He who gave the just their heavenly rewards and Tartarus to the wicked, who bids the sun come forth for the gentle and the savage alike, and the moon, the wandering stars, and all the constellations, and commands the rains to pour with no distinction. Nor is that single, universal mercy devoid of reason. He bestows reward on the just and gifts on us the unjust, so that even thus we might be converted to him. He changes those allured by gifts, not those compelled by punishments.

God awaits pious vows; he does not seek incense; the only victim that pleases him is the honesty of a purified mind. Yet he is not to be appeased by expenditures, but with a pure heart. Those crushed in heart, bowed at the knees together with the breast, and suppliantly opening their deeds with tears, he hears. For if anyone will have shown mercy to the needy, and covered the naked, and defended the poor, blameless, and content with his own, has not coveted another's goods, if he wishes to obtain favor, he deserves, as it were, to obtain it; a pure prayer brings back easy results, which no one's sorrowful petition opposes. Perhaps the poor man helps, and he who has been fed and clothed releases sins—the widow, the orphan, and the sick, and the poor man defended, can seek for more than you know.

With clothing, expenses, and banquets, Tabitha customarily spent her wealth, supplying food to the wretched. Did she, modest in any way, add to the number of her years and prolong her life into long old age? And yet she herself, lying after death, deserved to restore her lost life, with those as witnesses to whom, moved with compassion, she poured out her own wealth at their entreaties. For Peter had been the physician, and the medicines of the poor crowd were his; poverty wrung from the heavens what it wished. We, a rapacious mob, trample on the needy and confer nothing; perhaps as misers we despoil the poor man, if by chance he bear anything comely, and we wait further for the poor man to give us gentle gifts, and rather to bring us plunder. Now the noble poor man is in need, while the rich man is wealthy, for whom the needy right hand brings together what it adds to the rich man's uses, begging not for itself.

Whatever we do in addition to these things—of crime, fraud, and deceit—worthy of punishment, the kindly one postpones to punish, so that, if we repent, he is more ready to pardon; he who makes the angelic hosts crackle with flame. For all the pious company of God are fiery spirits: although God himself revealed himself in speaking fire, when the Hebrew people had the fiery radiance of the Lord, and God said that the tears of the people groaning for freedom had ascended before his tribunal. Yet the nurturing power declared that it had descended from the sublime heavens, so that the people who lay captive might be free, destined to live on as survivors of their master.

Soon the faithful Promiser fulfilled his words, and, once the yoke was shaken off, led them through the Red Sea. A shining cloud had been their guide, and a column of flame; with the sea's waves bound in pairs on either side, the waters no longer roaring against the reef of the deep, they had crossed the salt floods of the sea without a rower, and the naval journey was accomplished with dry feet. The people praised God for the death of those who swam; both sexes, in great choirs of praise to God, resound in rivalry, and beat timbrels with their palms, and celebrate the triumph, with God conquering. Not by swords, javelins given, or arrows shot does the oppressed nation perish; but the elements alone, commanded by God to rise as weapons, are to shed no blood; and yet they bring countless deaths without blood. The same giver of wealth to two peoples—behold—both raging wrath and mercy at once: without any clouds they perished in a heavy deluge, while the sky shone clear. The sentence of the Lord, once pronounced, showed to all what sins bring forth, what the life of the just deserves, what good simplicity, what harmful vows bring back, what the pious man, or the humble, and what the impious and proud, what the fierce, or the gentle, what the merciful, what the bloodthirsty, the lavish and generous man, or the robber and greedy plunderer. Their companies condemn their customs, and the same companies purify them.

BOOK THREE.

Light of eternal light, sun of the moon, source of light, ornament of the world and of the stars, radiance of the ether, author of the air, peace of the elements, founder and fount of nature, who know the number of every countless star, who give names to the stars and fit the stars to their courses, and command the seven Oxen to stand unmoved: though the axis turns the poles, the stars stand fast. You who know all the sands that the shore spreads forth, all that the whole expanse of the sea holds throughout all its straits—who would doubt that God knows all things, since he alone created all things? What you bid us know, the heavenly beings know; what you would have us know, all things in heaven are ignorant of. Hurled missiles fall, and they stir up winters with attendant crash; the scourges of an unknown blow fly through the void, and the red-glowing, hair-trailing missile of flame, herald of justice but more a lover of piety, higher than the stars, yet fairer than all beauty, virtue of virtues, sweeter than all sweetness, brighter than light, or clearer than all radiance, almighty Giver, yet given by none, who give gentle showers when the rains descend.

Thus food is given to all living creatures as sustenance, and mother Nature supplies it through all the ages. Thus the bird is carried on feathers, the grass on leaves; thus the reed is nourished and the standing law is armed with stalks, and Ceres, clothed in her husks, ripens into maturity. Thus the green field turns yellow without seed being sown: the creditor extorts interest from the furrow of the plowman, devouring usury is furnished, the great hundredfold is repaid, and the parent, believing in the vows of the greedy, desires as debtor to return a thousandfold profit. No shame infects the exactor, nor does any grief afflict the one exacted; the contrary prayers of the two meet, and only the wicked man is grieved who is hunted for his grain, greedy for price, an enemy to his friends, opposed to all, a foe to all peoples. For he calls the fair gains of the world his losses, when his own wealth is diminished in any part. He grieves that hunger has been extinguished; though rich, he is a needy beggar; always the miser is poor, the pauper seethes beneath a rich coin, both a guardian of another's field and of the income. Punished by its own judgment, the ever-greedy mind pays the penalties, a mind that does not know how to love the seat of its soul: it cherishes the heir to whom it faithfully preserves all things.

Nor does it fall to the wretched here to lose only the goods of the present life: they lose all goods that are to come. Will you not then be merciful, kind God, now that death has been destroyed—to that man, surely, who is shown to be impious against himself, and who denied all comfort both to himself and to all others? The examples of the rich man who was condemned and of the poor man's great rest teach us this—the poor man who, after his limbs, blessed, rests in Abraham's bosom through the ages. The want of the rich man, now extinguished, awaits torments, and repays his cruel ways with an alternating lot. He whom thin silk and soft linen weighed down, who was wont to demand summer's purple for his sweating limbs, now crushed, his dense murex laid aside, whose fingers no thicker gold sat upon, and who, though he wore no weight of tiny gem, among the panting flames of avenging torment, paying a cruel penalty, burns hot, and endures, and asks in prayer, with burning palate, that his tongue may earn a cool drop by his finger. But the monstrous chaos, the cruel deep, denies this. It divides between the waters and the savage fires of death, which remain without end and stand under perpetual doom. And this wretch, who was rich, did not live in want; clothed in Tyrian garments he came forth, in purple, a glutton he heaped up delights, and was therefore called guilty because, cruel, he denied food to the poor and wretched. For the rich man was a guest unto himself, filled with feasts.

If it is right to condemn such men to everlasting punishment—men who take care to pour out their own wealth on themselves, not on others—what will he suffer, who never provided even for himself, or who, rash and bold for plunder, seizes what belongs to others, whose deeds the despoiled beggar bewails with groans? For those are the men whom only banquets of plunder delight, who bear the care of throat and belly without honor, ignorant that whoever is a lover of the present life does not love his own soul, but hates it. Rather is the despiser of life held to be its preserver.

There is no need to set anything before God: the ancient sentence stands, that it is the highest sin to set the soul before its maker. How great a sin it is to set the soul before the giver, when it is permitted to take away whatever he gave, and to whom does he give? Therefore let hearts worship God, and let the mind revere him. There is no need to set anything before God. Let God be all love before the soul, and at the same time let the mind, pure for God, postpone the love of the present life, and cast away its whole salvation, despise wealth, condemn inheritances, and be secure as a lover of a better life—a life given without end of times, everlasting without limit. Whatever looks to an end is fragile, and all of it is fleeting.

How right it is to wish to scorn the everlasting and to have sought in brief time for things that will perish suddenly, let the examples of our father Abraham now teach us—he who, late in years, when he had received his one son, soon scorned him, and when commanded led him forth to the altar, and with excessive devotion, cruel, made him ready for death. With sword bared, the father, that fierce priest, stood at his office, already about to slay his beloved, and dutiful yet ungentle, not with a triple-fronted show of grief, not with tears flooding his cheeks, not tearing his face with nails: his laments are silent, and his blows cease. To his son, the devotion of sin, free from care, threatens exile: without cruel death, in place of his son’s funeral, thus, with him alone displayed, an immense offspring was born. The pleasing victim lying there, and the sacrifice with a quiet mind, displeased and pleased at once, because with a faithful heart both the father had offered and the son did not refuse the vows. Soon the almighty father substitutes a ram for the altars; a victim is provided, the parents are not bereaved. If there ever was any god, Saturn the sickle-bearer, he would do this, and would withdraw all his children from the sacrifices which the yearly devotion of wretched parents made. Alas! he would not bereave fathers of their beloved pledge—he who, when asked, makes lamentations and deaths through vows. Is he a true God, who by his hand took away a greater thing than he could bestow? To whom did he ever provide children?

For God almighty, the true God, who provides all things, does not desire the unusual deaths and lives of the guilty, nor does he swiftly consume them, while he reserves all things for pardon. For in that he commanded Isaac to bow his neck to the knife, he was not cruel in allowing the parent to take him away through so great a crime of the father, nor did he judge it right to test the rights of both; he is not to be considered a tempter, nor was he ignorant, whom the human mind could not hide from. He commands with reason whatever he shall command. But God wished to show with what mind he is to be asked, and how the almighty wishes himself to be, and he commanded that he be loved. He showed to all that nothing should ever be preferred to the eternal Lord, who created all things, for love of whom dangers are to be despised, and whatever pleases the mind, and whatever is loved.

If there be loss, the damage brings gain; if there be expense of brief time of life, yet always the profits of eternal life shall be given. Nor is it fitting to promise such things in bare speech. What are father Abraham and Isaac read to have merited? Their posterity filled the world with nations. Nor is barbarism alone given from the righteous stock, and the Roman hand is poured forth from this blood. The brother gives a greater gentile race, and the enemy, and the lesser brought forth those who would love the ways of peace. Let anyone submit. The true offspring of the saints, lovers of peace by merit, and from this one he created. Surely he ought not also to have brought forth the savage, who rejoice in shed blood, cruel in their ferocity?

Let these answers subdue her and make her silent. The sluggish man, devoid of reason in his mind, does not recognize that the times of the world are held fast by two things: either there is peace, or wars rage; whichever of the two, the time soon holds one or the other, nor is there a third thing for the times to hold. Therefore the Prince gave all times more manifestly to the perpetual race of Isaac. The origin, holding the age of the world, descended and, continuing, remains ruling through the ages of the world. Nor does it hold time only, but it ranges over the globe, where the sun, the indicator of light, brings forth and takes away the day, where it hastens to illumine the poles, where it burns with flame, and it commands the sea; the holy origin of the prophets possessed heaven, and it holds the great places of the pious. The broad offspring of the blessed possessed all things. But he was not alone, whom secure hope of the future made to despise the present life excellently. The burning furnace of fire had received the three boys for the name of the Lord; but soon the heats grew tepid, the fire was cold, they marvel at the conflagrations having fallen into cold flames, and at the same time the hot breath does not pant, nor did the flame lick the inner chamber of the furnace. Famine, disdained, refuses the fasting nourishment of the hairs with fire, with the fat burnt offering rejected; the fire was not devouring: the spirit of dew, breathing upon it, quenched it, the most gentle angel entering, whose likeness is that of the divine offspring. Their clothing was not burned for the men, nor was their hair scorched, nor did the flame harm the traces of the outermost foot, though it was trodden so many times by them as they walked.

The Persian tyrant was terrified by the boys who had fallen into his power: "Let them go forth," he said, having confessed their Lord more fully, and he, the Parthian, commands that his own throne be adored by all, subject to the rule of the king and of the court. Savage rage did not touch pious Daniel, nor the mouths of the lions, for whom the great mercy of God moreover appoints food, with both lions fasting. Who seeks, and has lived, a hunter unarmed in the arena? Who did not tremble at the amphitheatral terrors, when, brought forth with crackling sound, he beats the air, standing farther off, having played upon the Massyli by skill, dragging loose linen cloths: long hunting spears are held beneath the bent knee, with a hard hide on the sturdy arm, with groins drawn tight, with chest bared upward? When, seated in the cages amid the festive spectacles, the people make vows that the beast, with a mighty bite, drenched in the gore of human blood, may not grow weak. When the arena has received two lions together, if a door, more spacious for flight, stands closed as a protection, and open at the same time, turned on its twice-six hinge, a man comes forth, and then the beast, standing [ready] for one purpose. On this side an armed hand with steel, on that side a face with teeth. And yet with aid another looms above his head, lest the beast, having sunk its bites, harass the limbs of the fallen man, and make horror a beloved pleasure.

Who, I ask, did the armed man presume to devour with such savage rage? That most renowned Alcides, whom they say subdued monstrous deeds, who by his valor is said to have earned the heavens and the stars, scarcely destroyed one lion seized by the neck, if indeed truth-speaking fame has spoken this through the ages. But here the full faith of the man, devoted in piety to so great a God, performed a work of power—the greatest of miracles. That one was a servant of God, not by the lot of Diana, who is wont to rejoice in shed innocent blood, never sated with human gore, dripping with human gore from slaughtered hosts of guests, through the Colchian land of the cruel Taurian maiden's altar.

Peter, supported by the honor of apostolic rank, disciple of the Lord, standard-bearer of the saving cross and leader set over countless nations under the faithful law, after the nets of the fish-filled sea—most lowly—a skilled herald of God and declarer of true doctrine, heavenly doorkeeper, or the first priest in the world, in our times, while Christ the thunderer reigns, how great miracles did he perform, teaching the peoples, bestowing health on the crowds of Asia without any payment, and at the same time, relying on the power of the Master, on Europe? And lest Rome remain long ignorant of the gifts of Christ, he sets out with Paul as his companion, following pious commands. By his prayers he lays low the great Simon, the magician flying through the heights, while Nero looks on. The false offspring of God has fallen in utter ruin. Thus the imitator—but not of the inimitable fire—the sacrilegious king Simon, struck down by true lightning, they say fell, as he mimicked the thunderbolt.

Behold, what nurturing faith has demanded from the citadel of the Thunderer: that by faithful speech it grant both lives and deaths. Swift death, returning life—at the word's command—runs back. The service of nature stands ready to obey; it complies and knows the offices of its Lord as he acts. Simple hope, pious speech, and faithful vows demand this. For it is established that all things can swiftly be obtained by prayers—that those whom it pleased to live under such a path of life may live.

But if I wished to run through all the miracles, the span of a mortal life would not suffice me, though many remain under any long limit. But lest perhaps some profane person read these our songs—one to whom the holy law of God lies hidden, and who does not stand as a believer—let him consider what pure faith, what simple presumption, expends; yet let him not seek the eternal in exchange for a brief time, and let him not deny that Abraham alone made blessed, or whatever faithful ones holy Scripture teaches. Let the histories of the Danaans and of the Quirine race run on. For what praise of their own, or for what foreign kingdom, with minds infected by love of fierce slaughter, did all dare to defile their hands with the death of their own, or surely with the slaughter of their own? Statius shows Meneceus, son of Creon, who, when his blood was poured out of his own will, so that the bereaved father might hold the kingdoms of the Furies, drenched the Theban walls with his own blood. If it is a crime to slay kindred and kinsmen, it is a mad frenzy to turn the sword against oneself. This deed has not even a name, but surely no one among men marvels at such savage expiations of a people. Not otherwise could the profane scepter pass to successors, which Oedipus had once borne.

Now fierce Creon himself, heir nearest to the place, and he was genuine: as if it were a law of his own court to dedicate his kingdoms to crimes and to the tears of leaders.

Codrus seeks the responses of the Apollonian tripod: the unhappy man receives them, for the sake of another's triumph; clothed in a servant's garments he seeks the arms of the tyrant, for those whom wars deny, quarrels have made death: to feign poverty before a doubtful tyrant is death.

Let the daring deeds of Leonidas and his night battles be read. Seeking the enemy camp, he invaded in silent night, and one cohort alone was fortified by darkness. There was no shield-boss for the men; this hand was confused amid dangers, but the presumption of death was its own; who, with light driven back, by scorning safety sought a thousand men. They invade the peoples, they stain with dark slaughter, while each man does not know whom he strikes, whom he fights against; he cuts down a comrade, lays low a dear friend, unknowingly amputates a brother, and slaughters a kinsman. While a father is thought to be defended by the dark night, so there he fell, slain by the piety of his son. He would have lived, to prolong life through long ages, had the father not had a son of excessive piety: for by the bond he is punished, guilty by a holy crime. Nor do I think it is a sin for Persians to slay fathers, whom their own laws approve for taking mothers into their chambers.

The altar of the Phileni possessed the Libyan sands. A portion of the earth was granted to the brothers' frenzy, scorched by the wheels of the Sun, infected with black poisons, besieged by heavenly fires, and by cold serpents; amid the ice of snakes and the heat of the air, the region knows not how to change its alternations through the seasons, retaining its Phoenician redness from the sun of its nature. There the chelydri wander about everywhere in safety, whom the harmful flame defends, whom the burnt land of so many deserts defends, under whose law they are held. What would the brothers do, if they had sought flowering fields, if the land were too fertile with the richness of its soil? Or if the land were not harmful with viperous breathings, and no hissings brought deaths to them? Would they not have wandered where the flaming axis extends the poles, where the zone glows red with color, or where the ice of winter, grim with eternal cold, grows numb, ignorant of ever-breathing vapor? This region would never have kept the brothers from going, but with the boundary set, the measure would have pierced the snowy frosts, and a tract would have held them back at the Scythian marshes.

What Roman love compelled the fathers to fulfill, I shall attempt to tell, and I shall prove it in my speech, if I am able. For the best examples are the avenger, and the worst is Brutus—a horror and a strange love, a dutiful citizen, an undutiful author, by right the father of his country, a foe to his sons and to kings, and the most chaste avenger of violated chastity after the royal outrage that the chaste man's adulterer committed, the invader of the marriage bed, the plunderer of modesty. What crime did he commit after he expelled the savage kingdoms of the tyrant and restrained Rome with twin consuls, arranging the yearly deeds with festal fasces? Waging royal wars, he waged wars against nature; the consul, returning from the enemy, drenched his own limbs with his own blood, and turned against his offspring the pious neck, axes suited to enemies, profane through deadly fraud, hostile to citizens, and bereaving him of his own. A detestable old age went to the funerals of the young; one man was the seer of his sons and the author of the funeral. Was this crime committed with such savage guilt? Sweet love of country, which made a father bitter, or made him no longer a father now that his offspring was destroyed. For what things did he bear arms? Does he deprive himself of this pledge? Another was the elder, who struck down his daughter, when the grieving father made lamentation for his child. Affection came first, lest lust, to be suppressed in the heart, carry off modesty with immense freedom. The cause of chastity severed the laws of nature; love of liberty conquered the love of duty. Hence, forgetful of his kindred, not forgetful of the city, forgetful of blood, he made a stepmother out of a father.

The wicked father refuses to be the parent of an extraordinary virgin, lest he be the grandfather of a slave; his dignity feared the burden of authority. Lawless pleasure was his dread, and he shuddered in anger at illicit beds caught in obscene crime. In his grief, with pain prevailing, the fierce heir of a maiden's death poured forth groans. The work of freedom he performed with lamentations. That the grief of an armed soldier could have such power, the peoples wonder; because, captured by love of honor, he was an enemy to his own line—death to offspring, a drinker of blood.

What of the Torquatan hand? He brought danger upon his son for the sake of praise, showing what a father's censure is. For there was no fault. By fighting he gave a triumph to his country through wounds, by which, with the enemy slain, it fell to him to be extinguished, as if his youth had been overcome. Although no one laid low his own cohorts after wars, with the sword striking he killed the remnants of the disaster. I add that he snatched the unconquered man, who was giving trophies even from the enemy, from the ruin of war for the walls of his country. Who, I ask, of commanders ever dared to inflict punishment on victors? Or who, with the people praising him through the cities, after wars amid the victorious cohorts and after dread battles before triumphal chariots, would dare to strike that lofty head, to join lamentations to triumphs, and to mingle sorrowful things with joyful? Grief overwhelmed his vows, festive things recede, public joys are thrown into confusion by funeral mourning. The commander repented of having conquered, for whom glory brought death, and the soldier wept over the prosperities of wars.

While the victor paid the penalties of honorable virtue, a great victory prepared a mighty judgment; the fierce hand of the hostile parent avenges his groans; a loyalty hostile to him brought grief upon his blood, which barbarian rage had driven with the enemy's spear. The nobles of Pullus—there would have been no pledges—the illustrious matron, grieving, would have torn her breast with streaming hair and her palms, while the common crowd, cutting her arms and scoring her modest face with her nails, would have wept. As once the Trojan mothers wept for Hector, as the troop of nymphs then lamented its own Achilles, as the senate with the mournful people lamented Brutus, there was no age, no sex, that did not groan, in reckoning up its own bitter funeral: so the Torquatus lineage was long lamented, laid low by the crime of a parent.

Scaevola, mighty in flame, deemed his right hand worthy to be punished, though he himself deceived—not the hand, but bold spirits; the error profited more, so that so great a man of praise might be held without the death of the leader. No Roman woman grieved for her husband through wars, no father lamented his son, no daughter her parent, no bereaved mother wept over the funeral of her son, no sisters wept the deaths of the Germans. Nor does any peace bind war, nor did any ransom redeem it: one unarmed hand so great a war suppressed.

What of the Roman knight Curtius, who, with a vast gaping chasm, by a headlong leap plunged of his own will through the shadows and groaned, when the earth swallowed the living corpse, warding off the shades with his armed burial? Brave and unharmed, while the people marveled, the helmeted man was buried, still seen in his iron-clad body, and so seemed to have descended among the Tartarean darkness. The pale race of Erebus, the sad portion of punishments, the third lot, which, deprived of light, labors condemned, believed that Alcides had sought a second prey, or that some other prophet had been recalled by sinister fates—yours, Amphiaraus, whom a treacherous wife sold.

What of Roman faith? The Punic embassy, with a consul sent, bears witness. Regulus fulfilled his promises by a faithful return, a lover of horrible death, despising ease; the wretched man compelled the great senate along with the people to an inexorable pact, a law given to the captives, that they should bear the chains of punishment. Unmindful of his wife, he scorned his children and the City, nor did iron chains hold back the help of liberty. Then by chance the captive leader, now free, was moving among the patricians, praetors, and tribunes of the adorable plebs, to the house! which by his strength [the world]. He pressed for his own killing, lest after the wars he should survive as an enemy of Elissa, whom equal fortune held with the leader of the Trojan-born: he, having returned to the agreed light, creeping into his own limbs, brought his body to torments, wakeful, rejoicing that his bare light be extinguished, so that he might terrify the Tyrians more by the threat of death than by swords, when he gave wars and stirred up battle: soon Menia, having completed her service, feared the dead body.

Unblemished faith compelled Saguntum to fierce wars and to hunger, and to savage fires of death, with Hannibal besieging them, no guilt arising on their part except that they had been friends of the human race, counting friendship a crime, and for the sake of praise brought danger upon itself, and exacted punishments from the faithful city, which the faithless crowd, to atone for them under a just avenger, endured once, unbearable, for eight months, a city that neither of its own will violates faith nor, forced by disaster: yet the defeated multitude, so that it might conquer the swords of the enemy, set fire to the people of its fatherland together with the walls of the city, and gives torches to itself along with death, secure of a tomb, it demands deaths from the fire, wondrously withdrawing its neck from the enemy's triumph and from the yoke: one pyre for all, the walls of the fatherland are their tomb, and the same ashes for all, the great might of the standards, the monuments of the leaders dissolved into their own ashes lay with the walls of the world. Nor were the yokes of the Roman senate to be feared: the victor loves to spare, but he presses on to subdue the proud, and urges them to seek pardon, accustomed to bear alike the triumphs of peace and of arms: to have found rather those to whom they may grant safety after wars, than to punish them by wars as they wish. Thus that city nevertheless burned all its own with civil flames, fearing not the anger of the renowned senate after wars, but pardon: he who was free refuses to serve, and it is a terror to submit one's neck to an African ruler. Nor then were promises open to noble minds, which we hope for as the gifts of eternal life.

But lest these words be thought to have been given to men only, and as though the weak female sex, soft in a fragile body, fearing the work of praise, lest its fame survive its torments, should refuse the life that follows—eternal life—and the many gifts of God, an evil woman can supply the material for the highest praise; nothing is more daring than those women who have been caught, they arm their minds from the very charge, and it gives women far too great a fury. So then, from the same source whence they can take up a frenzied wrong, let them snatch up pious motions of the mind within their breast, and let them do what is honorable, what fame and shame demand, and what profits life under the praise that is to come.

Judith, most chaste, feigned love for Holofernes, a virago entering the camp of the commander dreaded by men. Amid the clash of war and bloody weapons, amid sword-bearing troops under savage Mars, she enters clothed in faith, clothed in modesty, and what so great a band of men did not attempt, a woman alone accomplished under dark night, and, having cut off the commander, she widowed the tyrant's camp. She carried the head, hung up, to the city of the leaders; she alone gave a triumph to the citizens together with liberty. By a woman's blade perished the strong and bold commander, whom wars could not subdue—promised pleasure subdued him. Though this lust was hoped for, it was not consummated, and the adulterer paid the penalties of the appointed night, still unstained by any crime of the deed.

Semiramis, widowed of her sweet husband Ninus, invaded the marriage bed and the kingdom of her offspring. The wretched woman displays a mother in her unchaste heart, and she was her own son's mother-in-law, a most shameful wife to her child: she long waged wars, feigning a young man under arms.

Who would deny the cruel wars of angry Tomyris, waged with Cyrus, leader of the Persians, to her praise? Made an avenger of herself after the sad funeral of her son, when the royal head, sent down with much blood, she shut the gore in a skin, which her mind, maddened by grief, had poured out, the necks of countless youths cut off.

What chaste Evadne, wife of Capaneus, did—when after the fiery bolts of the hurled thunderbolt the bones of her husband burned with fires set beneath, she soon climbed the pyre alive, lest she be called a widow, she who at once came down to the infernal shades with her husband?

Wealthy Dido, fugitive, avenger of her slain husband, when the walls of the city of Elissa were completed, herself built the pyre with her own hands, and the altar which, maddened, she climbed with her feet, and burned; whether the love of Aeneas, or the terror of the coming Iarbas, drove her to rush into the flames with her husband still alive.

What did the chaste Lucretia, the bride so lately formed, accomplish before the watching people after the stain upon her marriage bed—she whom the unhappy woman bore as the penalty of another's shame? She fell as a guilty woman, though no charge arose against her; she perished by her own sword, and the adulterer survived, who alone deserved to be struck down as the recompense of her chastity.

Thousands of examples of crimes, or of slight praise for the love of it, are counted everywhere among troops of women. Or surely they acted piously on behalf of a vain deity, a God fashioned by speech, whom fable raised up in error and compelled wretched men to pray to in vain, from which they carried away no profit but the losses of life, since there is no God except our God, everywhere to be feared; all things are created by the command of His word alone, through whom all things exist throughout the ages. Behold the true God, of whom nothing is feigned, into whom no fable falls, whom the words of the eloquent never adorn nor mark with sordidness, to whom times give nothing nor restore, as the day runs on; who punishes sin, and yet the ages do not change Him, because what He was, that He is, and that He will be eternally; who stands present everywhere, since though fleeting time takes away and diminishes all things, God refuses increase or decrease; He will always be the same, never changeable by age, who though He is Lord, yet wills to be a Father. He shows, bestows, grants, testifies, and adopts us, born as we are, to be called His own; therefore we who are faithful ought to live as the image of our Maker, as befits the workmanship of God, with piety as our teacher.

Pious King, the power of warriors accompanies your suppliant Son; whatever you command, he fulfills: the effects follow your orders. The nature made of elements stands ready, serving God, not knowing what you may command, until it suddenly hears your precepts, and it strives to obey its Lord more swiftly; exulting that he has commanded it, rejoicing it ministers, it carries out what is enjoined by the calm speech of the one commanding. And the nature of things, obedient as a parent, trembles before him through whom the heights of heaven, the earth, the sea, and the stars hold together, and it eagerly fears to serve. How small a portion of things are we, so bold as to scorn harshly the heavenly command in our fierceness? Let our precepts follow, and at the same time God's—he who wills that his vows come to pass.

Since we of our own accord scorn the commands of God to be done, and are not ignorant of what is right and what is forbidden, we are a wicked race, deserving nothing in the way of piety. Of these I must be reckoned the first, more than a sinner. For when shall I confess that my heart and flesh are at the same time guilty of crimes? Not if I had an iron voice, not if as many mouths rose up in me as teeth whiten in my bones, or if I had as many tongues as the whole head combs hairs, would I faithfully complete the count without deceit. But it is enough to have said that I am accused under every charge. What your commands forbid, I alone will confess to have sinned; everything that you shudder at, I will not deny that I have done. What does it profit anyone to conceal a crime committed, when you stand present as judge and witness, the one and same God? As if with sacrilegious mind I should think that God does not know all things, or is ignorant of something.

My own mind will harm itself by its concealment, since, if simple confession were to disclose the offense, the hoped-for pardon would follow. Whoever denies it has already, of his own will, denied pardon to himself.

Therefore I confess with a wretched mind a guilt that is full, a great evil, equal to no single crime. For my every wickedness will outnumber the sands of the shore, and our evils will surpass the waters of the sea. I do not think the flood punished so many offenses as I myself bear, pressed down by the weight of my faults. Rivers of crimes sweep me away, and storms shake me, and the torrent of sins overwhelms me with its wave at once; the streams of my transgressions have plunged me into their floods, the wave has reached even my soul, the heavy dread of waters. Woe is me! because the deed was not committed in a single time, so that I might atone for my deeds, the time has gathered into one. Now where is piety, where is the mercy of old, or where has your clemency, known to all, O Lord, withdrawn? Have you forgotten me? I pray, do not forget me, Almighty, but forget my deeds; I am weighed down, pressed on every side, chains bind me, torments subdue me, want consumes me; I have become a laughingstock to my kind, a grief to all, and an enemy, and stripped of a great part of my goods, unshorn in my hair, clad in filthy rags; known and unknown alike are absent, my parents have departed, those on whom I spent my nourishment, and soon my kinsmen have unlearned me, and whoever was a friend suddenly departed. Bands of servants flee, clients have despised me, nor did they grieve for my ruin as I fell beneath a safe disaster: with God angered, all consolations are denied.

This alone remains, that my life should fall, unless you, gentle one, order that the afflicted be spared, whom sorrows have thus broken. You have punished the one who erred; now at last have mercy on the one who confesses. Behold, he repents that he sinned too greatly; now spare the scourge, for I, wretched, cannot endure being driven by so many disasters. Look, I pray, look enough; do not close your ears, holy one, to our prayers, you who give precepts kindly. Let the anger of the raging man fall from his heart with the sun, and let the very night bring pardon. You who command that it be so, and that it be done—what you yourself also order—have mercy on the one who asks, and attend to my tears, which I, sad, pour out by day, and prostrate with body stretched out I beat my breast. Wretched me! who bear such great things, for whom you have prepared such great punishments for my crimes. Though I deserve to be burned more fiercely, by the gift of the Lord, with favor returning, I shall receive whatever the bitter day and hard times have borne. Restore the light, I pray, you who withdraw the harsh times of Job, restoring whatever the evil enemy has taken away; you who repair the dry bones from ancient deaths, which have returned to their own limbs, as the prophet cries out, and you command that men be made to creep again, so that the moisture of blood may enter the consumed marrow beforehand. Veins are born, now the limbs are bound with sinews, now skin covers the bones, stretched through many joints; necks seek a head, the neck binds the throat, and the bones of the lofty crown are filled with the brain; then the leading eyes flash with jeweled light, and the eyelids cover the lights and cleanse the windows; the scene of hair, pouring a crown from the forehead.

Time, and every head he clothes with the hair of the gods, and the brow rises above the twin orbs. From the withdrawn nostrils a double path is given to the wind, and twin cheeks grow red, the jaws are wrinkled with the down of one still greening after the bones—[the flesh] joined, dead for many ages, and long since buried. In order the teeth, walled, encircled the palate, so that words may sound well, with the lips themselves serving as guards; and the close-set bars give the besieged tongue [a way], and there lies hidden what will make the guilty one, the interpreter of the mind amid the words of the mouth, the index of the secret heart, and the image of the silent will, which scatters distinct voices through murmurs with a stroke, about to speak every wrong and every good in speech. To the teeth are added the lips with a ruddy fan. To the shoulders, in the manner of branches, the arms are added; the forearms are joined, the palm is born, and the whole hand. The fingers are armed with nails under a differing form; the spine of the face, curved, embraces the rough [sides] with the ribs; the breastworks stand around the breast, and are bound at the throat. The rest of the members runs on as offspring through the limbs; all things are fitted as servants for uses and duties; the fragments of a long ruin build up the man. Yet before the members were bound in their joining, already the ear was there first, which heard the words of the Thunderer.

The lord of the Persians feared after his kingdoms, a herdsman among the meadows, who afterward reigned in the citadel. Restore me now, I pray, released under liberty, O Clade, pressed by the iron weight of chains. Let there be rest for my life, let there be leisure for my weary soul, let there be secure quiet, let there be night with the gift of night, let fortune return, let virtue last even to old age, let honor be revered, and whatever life prays for or grieves as lost, reform it all in your loving-kindness. I know what you are when angered, and what you are when most gentle, O God, father: I perceive it; there is no fear of safety, but it is permitted to hope for pardon. The matter itself has proved it, in that I am alive: destitute of death, I am preserved by your loving-kindness, not in it. For if the Lord's anger had been heavy, you would not have deferred me, but would have killed me with sudden death, lest I seek pardon, which you, holy one, have never denied, or that I might not exist at all, whom you could spare. Command that I, preserved, be restored in your accustomed loving-kindness, that I may deserve to sing your praises through songs. Although no one has spoken praises fitting for you, nor ever will: for the formula of praise is wont to go through three times, but you are without time. Do you, God, have anything before yours? Or does anything after fall to you? If a praiser is absent, yet a narrator would be full: but who will be able to narrate your work in speech?

It is enough to have looked up to God with a trembling heart, and to approach Him reverently with tears and pious prayers. Let my strength be restored, a sound mind in a sound body; let there be for me a long life along a happy path, a secure home, a blessed and numerous offspring; let there be after the body a life to come without torments, and rest for the soul, which, once purified, may then be at peace. From Your judgment, kind God, let triumph then be granted to me; among fragrant flowers and pleasant green places I shall come to the ethereal grove and the blessed seats, and, received there, I shall give thanks for these evils, added to the innocent people under the lot of the pious.