Alethia (Genesis in verse, with a prayer) 2.1–3.25

So far I have run without deceit through the hidden sequence, the beginnings of the world, as sincere faith has made them plain, while earthly things were still free of the vices that deserve death. Now let the poet, having entered upon the ways of men and upon mortal things, be permitted to mingle them with truth in verse. After both, bidden to depart from the hallowed seats and kingdoms, reached the fields of their birth and stood as exiles on their own soil (pitiable!), with what looks the inexperienced settlers then stare at the wild countryside, which does not bloom, set off with fruitful trees. No beauty of the soil delights them, but brute heaps of compacted weight lie there, set in no chosen order. The heights are stiff with rock, the hollows labor under woods, the plains lie hidden in grass, the uplands bristle with brambles. Alas, with what eyes they look on these things, with what heart they see them, they in whose minds paradise lives! Nor is there only one cause of grief, that the face of all evils now lies open in its fullness, but that they remember the good. Now that glory of the sacred grove shines with greater brightness, now the blessed wood brings forth its riches more abundantly, now the enjoyment of its fruits is sweeter and their taste like nectar, now the earth breathes with living flowers and touches the sad pair with a fragrance that is absent. O paradise, how unlike their deserts is what you now repay them!

The comparison with worse things exalts you the more, and you make worse the things that alone remain to the wretched. Here the kindly love of life perishes; the lack of all things already whispers that it is sweet to die, unless a greater want comes to the rescue with a heavier evil; for, kindling their bowels with the madness of eating, hunger leads them through all the voracious feasts that the barren forest gives, and forces them to try here and there doubtful foods among the harmful roots of plants, and hunger itself, which made them wish it, makes them unable to escape such a life. At last the final extremity taught them, in need of everything that use requires and destitute of all things, to hope for the help of the highest Father: both lay prostrate, their limbs on the ground, capable only of tears and mute grief, while shame withdraws words from unjust complaints, and they waste away in torpor. But after his mind returned, Adam, rising at last, prays with this petition: “Almighty author of the world and creator of things, woe is me for the stain of evil! While happy life remained and it was given to follow with swift spirit above the stars by sight, I saw with these eyes (as though they beheld the secrets of the mind) you, spread far around and through all things always, and veiling sight with the splendor poured upon it: to say it properly, I saw that you cannot be seen.

Now too, after the guilt, robbed of sacred light, though the better mind, free to range through the whole, has fled, and, in the closed cave of the earthly prison, nothing of truth remains to know except mortal things, this alone remains: to feel that all things are full of you. And therefore, Almighty, who are always wholly everywhere, we flee to you, praying with trembling mind: hear the wretched, whom you always see and hear. When he wished to bind me to the condemned side, he, the head of crimes, guilty before the world and his own enemy, dared nothing by himself alone, lest he be defeated and yield; the unforeseen fraud of the craftsman of crimes subdued the wretched woman, whose mind was incautious, by the serpent's art, and me by the affection which both sexes feel; and when I was condemned with just punishment for the crime, I so repented of the guilt, my mind, struck with such grief, was so indignant with itself, that I thought that you, most gentle judge, were then granting me vengeance on myself. Therefore I denied myself groans and tears in my cause, because I, the guilty one, judged myself unworthy of pardon; and, embracing in my mind the sweet consolations of punishment, placing this very thing hereafter among your sacred gifts, I will count it as pardon for my crime that I was condemned.

It is not, then, dire. But may you, with serene majesty, be willing to hear those who pray for nothing against your commands and who no longer ask with tears that, of your kindly will, you grant your servants that the sentence be relaxed, but that the whole sentence keep its full force. You commanded me to seek my food by moving the clod: so tools must be given for moving the condemned fields (they are to give barren brambles and clinging thorns instead of fruit: so pure seed must first be sown by me, so that the crop sought with labor may cheat my hopes); I must weave bread from the constant seed of plants: grant my mind to know which are the plants, what the form of labor, grant help, Father, in your pity, and instruct our senses. Then it will be that Eve, mistress of things and sure of salvation, will serve me and, having endured the cruel punishment of begetting, bear peoples who will be punished for our crime, and the succession of descendants, by their deaths, will purge the sins of the fathers, making the punishment eternal.” As they prayed thus, the image of the false serpent, seen (fear was the informer) carrying itself by a silent path gently toward soft tracts with quivering grass, turned the frightened pair toward itself and, roused from the torpor of sluggish grief, drew them into a rage against their kin.

And Eve first, to her husband: “If the supreme cause of our evils moves you, seize stones in your hand; look, the chance is given to give the author of death to death. She ought first to teach, by her own punishment and a bloody death, how sad it is to die, she who ruined me, and you, so badly.” She spoke, and as it slips away they pursue it at a run with missile weapons and hurl rocks, one of which, the arm drawn back higher for the effort, sure to give an easy throw, obeys their wishes, following their eyes and their will, and, with the serpent between, bounces onto bare flint and strikes a spark, which, fed on dry tinder, soon was flame, spreading its burning tresses far and wide, and now blooms, bright, with dry smoke. They shuddered and sought hiding places with trembling step, but stupor itself holds the frightened pair and reveals the inquisitive care of human weakness, that, though timid, they wish to see again what is to be feared, and, a little withdrawn on the ridge of the barren earth, they marvel that the shady foliage of the groves has fallen, that it is foul with ashes, that the day is darkened, that all the lands are shining and that there is a new light under the sun. Nor do they hear with a quiet mind the crackling as the woods hiss everywhere and the surging globes of flame are carried to the stars, while the devouring fire, sunk deep, stretches itself down to the lowest roots, and, overcome by the heat it has taken in,

the raw earth opens its veins for noble gifts and, when it has been dried of all its moisture, itself begins to become liquid and to pour out metals in streams, each its own. With tawny torrent flashes gold, the highest glory; gleaming like white milk silver flows out; the stiffness of copper wanders, slippery, and gathers, its body melted, into a soft mass, and iron, a livid clod. So Etna, its furnaces burst open, belches out hissing sulphur mingled with flames, while they seethe, slippery; but when they feel the coolness of breathable air, they stiffen, and swiftly the dry liquid, its fire frozen, is turned into a gleaming clod and becomes an inert body. So they marvel to see the various streams stop their courses, which, where the heat fails, they now watch with eager eyes, and they take the alluring color into their hands and pursue what they had feared. They felt God's help and rejoice that the first prayers of the guilty, though no virtue had followed their guilt, had been granted, and they give thanks to the highest Parent both for what the fire gave and for the fire, and for the mind to which he revealed what use there was. Both things I hold certain: that our parents explored the sacred gift, eagerly measuring all with their eyes, but that first they put their hands to the rich gold, which already strikes minds like lightning and subdues them with the gleam of a precious poison,

and does not satisfy them, until it overcomes them as they marvel at its great weight, and, slipping from their hands, wounds them as if with the edge of a hard rock, and teaches that it can easily take a blow and its body be marred. A new concern suddenly came upon the astonished pair and sharpened their minds, and admonished them to follow by art what chance had taught. Then with the weight of a hard stone they strike in turn and bend and draw out into various shapes the mass that yields to the blows. No labor shaped it lastingly, but, overcome, it quickly lost its shape, because the material, unequal to great efforts, receives their zeal but disappoints their use. So they look for something harder; but even so gold pleases, since it taught that a rigid metal is more useful. Then they pass to silver, whose beauty is next and whose vein is second, which, firmer than alluring gold, bears service better. But copper is stronger, though it is less conspicuous. Soon, with copper as teacher, their use passed to rigid iron and settled there. Perhaps our lyre could also run through in verse all the chances which opinion imagines as the supreme craftsmen of works: how, opened by silent heat, the richest earth, its clods baked, moved into varied offspring, which, giving birth with the rain as husband, it loosed through the fields in a crumbling course, by which the swelling furrows crackled and the harvest rose and stood up, and, surging, trembled with waving ears of grain, so that the new settler might learn what a cultivated crop looks like:

and how, running down eagerly from all sides to so rich a prey, the race of birds and of cattle and the black cohort of the smaller throng, thrusting the larger seeds into their bodies as food, taught them foods friendly to life from nearer material, and all the work that followed, which the care of teachable study took up. Meditation, always drawn from examples as teachers, would then have made the work of art. But the generous glory of the Father, well known, cries out against such falsehoods: let use claim nothing for itself in this, nor chance, lacking power: “I gave created beings, with the light, to know what things are good, and willed that whatever the greater world has should become known to the lesser by a holy sense, and that I should be known through these things.” And would that the mind had remained unimpaired as it was given to man, and liable to no guilt: neither the appearance nor the bodies of things, nor the measure of the stars, nor the number of the grains of sand would have deceived it. But by what great spaces the earth is stretched together with the great deep, what is the measure of the finished mass, what melodious harmony sounds from the motion of the sevenfold axis, these are now learned by practice and gained by constant study, and what remains inborn is thought to come from art. Nor does the mind, made dull by the cloud of evils, perceive that whatever each one believes he first comes to know, he is recognizing again. So let it cleave to this highest limit of truth. When Adam was driven from the august seats, he did no other duty before that which was worthy of a husband, and he spent loves he had not known before upon his children.

To one who, amid so many cares, was pleased to beget, it was sweet to live. He who found living sweet lived with God as guide: nor did the nurslings lack what would furnish life and equip them with the use of things. And the house, now full of children, had brought wonderful comfort to the inexperienced pair, and care, multiplied in the tender heart of the parents, relieved their heavy labors, and there was hope already of rejoicing in their own helpers in the work of the countryside; of these the eldest, Cain, was turning the rich fields with hard hoes; but Abel, most worthy to rejoice in a living gain, on bare hills or on the growth of the dry plain pastured innocent sheep, and his parents with their milk. After the joys of the awaited produce had satisfied them, and they were amazed that their hopes were crowned with sacred favor, justice reminded their minds to dedicate the first offerings of their works to God. The one loads the sacred altars first with new fruits, the other sacrifices more acceptably with a snowy lamb, the first image of priests, soon the impious victim of his brother, but already then imbued with a sign of what was to come and a token of piety. For when Cain noticed that his brother's sacrifice had been received, and that no approval was given to him when he sacrificed with fruits, whether because he had tasted beforehand the dedicated food and polluted it, or because, to One who sees all in one time, he who will one day be guilty in mind is guilty now, he drank (dread!) the poison from the spring from which the serpent and his mother drank, and slaughters in savage murder his brother, who did not know he needed to beware.

Alas the crime! What would raging lust, what fresh anger, old hatred, what the wicked contests of crimes that vex the nations not drive the wretched to, if he committed so great a crime who grieved only because his brother was holier than he? Now the parents' guilt is nothing. And lest anyone think that at least some complaint remains against the serpent because we die, we began to be killed before that. O how much the first offspring added to crime! It is hardly fitting to say that death was brought into the world under the name of punishment: impiety made it a new crime. The parents will pay for their sins only by death: you will pay penalties from which death is no release, and in place of death, worse than the unspeakable serpent. For he urged death, he did not inflict it: but you will be the first author of slaughter. You the public enemy, you the private robber follow, for you the armed will punish crimes with spears, with swords and avenging steel. All crime is your soldiery, and that future peoples will perish less by the death that was decreed than by slaughter returns in the end to you. Nor is this example wholly unfitting for morals, that human blood first began to be shed in a brother's blood, so that whoever commits an equal crime should feel that it is such, since it is agreed that whoever by such a crime has renewed the fratricidal wickedness, reason teaching that every death of a human being, slain not by the first sentence,

was a brother's murder. Then, as he was wet with such slaughter, God (so great is his clemency) does not disdain to count him worthy of address, and convicts him as he denies the crime, and punishes him lightly for so great a crime, taking the measure of the punishment from a part of the deed, so that, because, though forewarned, he did not fear to commit the dire crime, he should tremble: what he had refused to see as his desert should become his punishment; what his mind, refusing to take it in, had thought light, his violently shaken limbs would prove heavy; and, his mind struck (that deep torturer by which every wickedness avenges itself), the horror of the crime would break his body too and rush violently out into all his limbs, and his shaken limbs would be swept in headlong whirling, as when water enclosed by a rim catches the rays and breaks them, throwing back the light; a slippery gleam enters the halls, and, ranging through the whole, is nowhere and everywhere; and when it trembles, a line of dark blue shadow, woven in with the dim gleam, flickers without end. It was not the motion that cold moisture strikes into tightened nerves, when it so stiffens those filled with half a death that they cannot lose life entirely: but such as the wrath of God stirs, when a conscious force masters the mind and hearts are tortured with a sane madness.

… yet what, and how often, does such a sentence do? The whole of it is vengeance (now) for the crime against the murdered man, the most just punishment of the savage culprit, a terror to the race, an example set before future peoples, a present purging of guilt, and, as the sign promised, a protection of his life: so that no one should kill him and labor to destroy with iron one whom he sees to have paid the penalty. Nor is it enough … to mix severity with mildness in this punishment: he sends him far away and banishes him to vast regions. This too serves a purpose: that he may not pollute the fields of the pious; that his punishment may not stand as a witness proving to peoples yet to be born that such a crime could be done; that the condemned race may never mingle with the rest, may never come near the grieving parents; that it may not forever heap bitter griefs on the good, and that the unequal case of the brothers may not torture the bereaved with grief, as their eyes look for the one and see the other, in whom they must mourn even this, that he remains. The greatest evil is in the death of a son, of whatever kind he is; but in so great a crime, those afflicted with such a punishment are destroyed alive, worse than under any judge. And is it not more fitting for the condemned man himself to go far away from his father's lands, one who likes hidden places, and for whom the heavier punishment is to be seen among the happy and the blessed of pure mind?

To one who was to live on after punishment and shame for his deed, exile is a mercy. And that a faithful wife is given as companion to the guilty man, and that God's gift does not abandon the condemned, becomes a sure hope. Look, one is given who would soften the cares of his sick heart, who with her body would steady the broken man in her embrace, and, liable to no guilt, alone, by prayers and by worshipping God with a pure mind, would draw down whatever might be enough for two. O good Majesty, what may we not hope for! You yourself provide silent ways of pardon and a reason by which you may benefit the guilty man, whom, increasing him with offspring that follow, you multiply through a thousand names of descendants, and soon make him king of his own people, from the highest father. For he first taught how to gird cities with walls, which no one can do unless a people is gathered. And, confessing in fear what he deserved from his own race, he warned the Syrian avenger, and taught him to perish while he fears to be killed; by which slaughter, perhaps expiated, he washed away his deed, since he paid it back by a like death; and death itself is gain, since it became vengeance for the crime. Meanwhile Eve, pregnant again, had made up to her sad husband for the first loss with a holy pledge, and had again restored cares and hopes to the father.

The boy's name was Seth, whom the Almighty with favoring will granted to fill Abel's place, his virtues aided; and that gift the joy of the glad father did not keep silent, and the line that followed proved it. For from the seed of this man Enosh was born, who, first chosen as priest for his quiet virtue, hoped and deserved to be able to call upon God with pious prayers and by his true name, and taught the people who followed to keep the worship of the eternal Parent and to use his sacred help as life required, confessing what the Almighty bestowed by his majesty; and he gave them mind and merit, and for many years allowed the punishment of the ancient crime to be put off, so much so that Enoch, strong in all virtues, from the line of those whom this kindly lineage contains, was brought back to his father's seats and to the blessed world and lives still and already holds the kingdoms of the life to come. Indeed, for a world as yet wholly without the new worship, there was a contest among the living, who should prolong his years beyond thrice three hundred, filling out the number of a thousand, the sum of the tenth reckoning. But after crimes infected minds, and the guilt of the fathers was born in the stock that followed, and the offspring, worse than its elder, always added to vices something in which the heir might surpass him, the shortness of life came to the rescue, since the one way to set a limit to the growth of crime was to set a limit to life.

For when the young men of the better line, joined in profane marriages with the daughters of Cain's race, had condemned themselves, they fell into every kind of crime, deserted by sacred favor, and, laid open, let the enemy in by his ambushes, as God spoke thus: “Our Spirit will not always remain in these peoples, nor will guilty life put off any longer than twice six tens of years the times given for late death, since, following earthly things, they have more of flesh than of mind.” Whether, then, the severe sentence of the kindly Judge broke their nature, so as to convict each guilty one of having more of the brute mother from whom he was born, or whether, so that the generous grace of divine power, which in the first gift he had given to the servants he created with sacred power, might show that it had passed from the whole to the body alone, drawn down by the sins of the fathers, suddenly there were born monsters of men, giants of towering bulk of limb, fierce and swollen in mind. How much power dire souls have through their bodies, and how much they are bound to will, oppressed by the unjust servitude of so great a bulk! Nothing unlawful was profane to them to violate, nor anything lawful to their liking: their lust was kindled the more fiercely by forbidden things, and not beauty but crime set the price on things to be sought. No nights without blood, no days without slaughter; it was sweet to take food amid a kinsman's tears,

and to violate kinsmen themselves for food, unmindful of the law of fellowship, of humanity and of themselves, of sacred affection and of their own mothers and fathers and of the Author of the sky; and they advanced so far into the worst crimes that it grieved God to have formed all those to whom he had given life and light, and, because of the guilty, he preferred to overwhelm souls free of crime rather than not to sink the lands in a headlong sea, the world returning again to its ancient (shape). … … faithful had now spent five hundred years free of crime, and he had proved him living under the law laid down. To him God, opening his holy secrets, reveals them thus: since the lands were full of vices and men prone to crimes, virtue cast aside, he was preparing to remedy the evils by an end of things; since he foresaw that it would be cruel to punish every fault one by one, and lighter to blot out the guilty, he had resolved to sink the lands again by bringing in the sea, so that, as it rushes in and covers all and then, at his command, subsides, it may wash the polluted world with headlong flood and engulf in the ruin of the swelling deep the men and whatever had been bidden to live for men's sake.

“But since you alone, to whom our will is dear, spending your life devoted under sacred laws, always resist this evil with better merit, I will so moderate the rights of my decrees that, when the wicked have paid what is just, then the mortal race may begin more worthily from you, and the peoples who will enjoy our light may count you their highest parent. So let an ark be prepared for you, built of squared beams, to stretch three hundred cubits and open fifty in breadth, and rise in height only thirty; through … … let it be finished into one from above. But let a door be kept in the side, where the gathered structure rises to a peak with its slanting roof. Then let hot bitumen, breathing into the absorbent joints, search out and clothe on every side the thin cracks, poured on like a skin. Then let the greatest labor call you within: let the side be joined on either side with immense posts, and the frames of the finished stalls be laid down: and when a double floor has divided a threefold space, let the animals be kept apart in their own nests, lest, mixed together, they harm their kinds and, put together, fight and confuse their foods; of these it is fitting for you to store only the material; for that what is given out to those you take in should not fail, it is mine to provide.” These things he received with faithful mind (for God himself, supplying mind and senses, gave his servant both to will and to be able to do whatever he commanded), and sets about felling with iron the dense forests, grown for this purpose, with his sons and a gathered crowd of people.

The groves let in the sun's rays, the plain is relieved of shade, and the valleys are stripped of oaks as old as themselves, and the forests that will enclose the image of a lesser world. But when the whole of the work begun had been hastened with so much labor, it is put off for a hundred years, so that the peoples might repent of their crime and wrath be held back. O too wretched, whom the delay of so just a punishment makes more guilty! Now they will be punished not only for their crime, they who have abundant opportunity to seek pardon, but because they will be punished, as many as will enter dire Tartarus in the space of time granted, when God bears witness that he prefers to spare all. Now, the mass completed, there stood, framed with its capacious sides, the help which the Father himself had prepared as the last resort for your shipwrecks, Nature, and was calling up the cause, when God from high Olympus deigns to warn his servant Noah by his voice that the last moment is at hand to hide himself in his refuge, to snatch his wife, sons and daughters-in-law from imminent destruction and the darkness of death into a life-giving prison, and with himself all the animals which the earth nourishes as its own, which the air bears though they are not its own: seven of each sex, those which God approved as clean, in pairs, but of the unclean kind one of each sex.

No delay: whatever is born under the curving vault of heaven, unknown in the various parts of the world, what the East marvels at, what the pale Iberian shudders at, what rages in the hot sands of southern Libya, what cleaves the Hyperborean nights with wondrous light, rushes together trembling and plunges into the open ark. You would think they had sensed the flood; for since God the Author gives sense to brutes by which to bear witness to himself among his creatures, the beasts, moved by his will, have more reason, though they know nothing of themselves. So, as soon as God commands the ark, heavy with every seed of life, to be closed, night rushes in and sudden darkness covered the sky, and a storm, falling with the air poured out, strikes the lands headlong, like a brief one, but about to keep its course, and it rages and storms over the whole world alike as it usually does in one place, when a tempest, moved by a rapid whirlwind, follows or announces the savage fires of lightning, and heaven and earth cry back with thunder. Nor is the rain that flows from the clouds enough for the destruction: the ancient waters are loosed, and now, the heavens opened, the sky rains into empty clouds; the inmost parts of the earth, stretching out the breath that supplies the rivers, fill and open new springs equal to torrents.

And while all that the sky, that the earth vomits out, that the clouds pour down, mingled, swiftly joins in one flood, it engulfs the submerged fields together with their tillers and the flocks caught in their stalls; it overwhelms cities with their citizens: amid the waters peoples perished in ruins. No face of things remains, the wave covers all, and the rivers, as they grow, lose their names, soon their courses too. The ocean, never satisfied by any rivers, now feels the waters rushing in such a mass, and, greater with its increased flood, drives them back and forces them, returning, to rise into a heap, until, as the deep raises its tide and the shores are contracted on every side, the wave joins itself in one highest circle and the seas meet over the overwhelmed lands. And now the ark was carried fifteen cubits higher above all things; for this measure exceeded the highest mountains, when the fury of the rain had lasted forty days and a single night. After thrice fifty suns, the air now clear, when the level and measure of the sea remained the same, the Almighty, pitying those shut in, commanded the great sea to recede little by little, whether he wished to spare all the lands, which it could have overturned in a rapid flight, or those shut in, whom the wave, sliding back gently, would set down more safely on firm ground as it withdrew.

At last a mountain … level with its spreading summit, received the burden it was to carry. Now the highest ridges could be seen, and crags could mark off the level waves, and, as the sea subsided, the forest gradually broke forth and the hidden hills little by little rose. And now the black scout, sent from the wide ark, had betrayed that the air was calm, and, finding prey, was held back; but that they must still stay in the cell and enclosure the tired dove reports, which, sent again, brings back a small offering of the peace-bearing fruit of the olive. At this sign, with praise of the great Parent, there arises such weeping among those shut in (joy too shows itself in tears) as when a bitter victor insults the walls, if by chance sudden help is brought to the besieged; as when a sentence sent by a merciful judge restores the condemned to life again; as the weeping when life returns to one thought dead amid the tears and joys of the mourners. After the scout, sent a third time, announces that the fields lie open by the very fact that, captivated by the recovered lands, she did not return, they grow weary of enduring their idle hiding place, the nearer their hope is to breathe beneath the open sky and feed their freed souls with the sense of heaven.

But no one may go out into the shores of light, as no one may be born and come under sky and day, unless God calls; and he with his own voice commanded the trembling Noah to leave the sacred enclosure with his faithful wife, his sons and his chaste daughters-in-law, and to give new fields again to the settlers he led out, and all the creatures preserved together for future offspring, which the mighty Craftsman formed for human use. These, when the door is opened, rush out: some seek the air on wings, some the glades and woods, some, sinking into caverns, burrow into the open earth, some, free on the dry plains, exult and flourish in the open meadow. But their lord, allotted the kingdom of a second world, Noah, takes in all with rejoicing eyes and capacious mind, and cannot sate his spirit with filling it, and, quickly surveying all with eager gaze, marvels at them as new. The sun is brighter than at its familiar rising, and redder, the glad face of the sky smiles with greater serenity, and the fields once despaired of grow green with new offspring. But still the image of so great a ruin, ever to be remembered, turns before his eyes: what they endured amid the waters, what by sacred gift they did not endure, when the sea roared with savage blows and the ark scorned the storms dashed against it:

and with his family he reckons how widely the holy bounty of the highest Parent is shown, pouring itself around them, and he teaches them, astonished and ready to learn the truth, how food sufficed for so many through a whole year, and what drink; for this is certain: even if the other needs of life were supplied, those shut in could have died of thirst amid the waters while the ark floated, unless the ruler of Olympus had sustained them, laid low as they were and no longer fearing any extremity, by the same nod by which he founded all things. He, taking from souls that would have perished in the prison of the long night the longing for light, filled them with strength: he, so that they could endure such sluggish rest, poured in a calm love of sluggish torpor; he the Mighty One, who, if he pleases, by his severe power may swiftly make the wicked, plunged under an icy flood, burn, and the good, carried into the flames to come, feel cold; he who, as he has now taught the peoples that they can be killed in this way, will himself in a short time teach the peoples that they can be reborn by water.

Bearing such things in mind and discerning the ages to come, ancient Noah resolved to undertake no mortal task until he had paid sacred rites and thanks to God. Altars of snowy stone rise up: since no temple surrounded them with its walls, the world, with the curving path of heaven spread out on every side, was the temple. Victims stream headlong from the sevenfold flocks, those whom the soft air sustains, those whom the earth begets … … are strewn, from the East or from the woods of the Arabs. Fire, sent down from Olympus, tastes the fragrant honors which it devours with its tresses, and the burnt offerings breathe an ambrosial vapor to God. He, gentle and always good, accepting whatever he receives as our gift, and rejoicing in the services of pious men, of which he has no need, but by which he may redeem us, speaks thus with calm will: “Although it was a small vengeance for the name of so great a punishment to have condemned the guilty of so many crimes with avenging rains and a gentle flood, and rather to have renewed the lands, the seat of the guilty, with the deep poured out over them, yet we will not strike the mortal race again with such a blow, however offended, though I see human minds and profane nations about to rush again through every kind of wickedness and the old crimes.

For since mortals will never cease to commit what deserves punishment, it befits us to cease from always repaying them as they deserve. Grow, my glad nurslings, grow secure, and fill the fields with fruitful offspring and spread new flocks over all lands. The elements will keep their turns, and on all days the due harvest will be returned to its own seeds. The work of the world will run on, balanced in its discordant seasons: winter will contend with summer, and, balancing the seasons of spring and autumn, the fleeing year will turn round again. And you, to whom we have entrusted the kingdom of the solid world, before whom every kind of living creature trembles and knows you as lords, we bid you keep this point of law and always remember that you are bound by the precepts of a severe right: among so many kinds of creatures, which, moving their limbs freely with their souls, we now grant for your use a second time, let no one make livid limbs, with the blood mixed in, into foul food; this crime the sentence of a sharp judgment will one day punish no less than if some savage drains human blood with the sword, blood which I will always require as avenger, and require so strictly that not only the creature rich in reason shall pay me the penalty, but brute beasts as well: let human blood be equally sacred to all who enjoy our light.