Poems ascribed to Cyprian (Sodom, Jonah, To a Senator, On Easter, To Flavius Felix)

Already God almighty had blotted out the crimes of the primeval age with the avenging flood, with all the waters that the sky scatters, the earth vomits up, the sea spits out; and, having covenanted from then on not to decree punishments by a liquid destruction, whenever the air should gather a storm, he had appointed the varied bow for restraining the rains, marking the clouds with a hem of purple and green, under the name of Iris, which is the clasp proper to the clouds. But the impiety of men, springing up again together with the second race, and a new age of evil sprouts once more, allotted now for punishment not rains but fires: so the land of Sodom deserved to be burned by blazing dews and to foreshow the signs of the end to come. There savage luxury, the enemy of modesty, was as good as law; a forewarned guest would flee it, preferring at the Scythian altars or at the altars of Busiris to seek death through sacrifice, and with the boxing glove to yield his blood to the Bebrycian, or to glut the Libyan wrestling grounds, preferring even, through Circe's cups, to take on new shapes, rather than lose his violated sex in Sodom. Unions (monstrosities!) beat upon heaven with ill will; with like incest, nature rebelled against its own kind, against itself, and the name of man was violated along with his body.

But at a fixed time God, who had foreseen all things, judges the unjust in patience, when the age of crime had frustrated the space given for ceasing and had compelled his anger. And now the avenging day was at hand: two sent from the host, youths in angelic form, both of them spirits, on divine service, as the Lord's commands enjoined, come up to Sodom. There, of the stock of the pious, Lot, a newcomer, wise in equity and a dweller in justice, was the one man to remember God: so a fruitful tree is wont to lie hidden in wild woods, its fruit a guest there. He then, sitting before the gate (the heaven-dwellers were scarcely reaching the walls), though unaware that they were divine, of his own accord calls to them, addresses them, honors them with a father's reverence, and invites them to lodge, though they meant to put up far off; prevailing by long entreaties, he discharges with friendly zeal the holy pledges of the table and the honest duty of a host. Night had given rest, the next light had dissolved the night, and Sodom clamors at the doors with its shameful law. Lot, facing them, a suppliant: “Let not ill-fed lust inflame you young men to defile this youth: to what end a lust in which begetting is void? to what end seed in vain? To such no living creatures are wed: not those that haunt the lairs, not those that come back to the stalls, not those that gape beneath the waves, nor those that hang near the clouds with the measured beat of wings, nor those that flow over the earth with their bodies stretched out.

Every kind has brought forth by its striving; the female is the mate of all, and never is anyone's mother other than a female. Now if youthful passion is eager to lay waste to modesty, I have two daughters inside, of marriageable age, their virginity swelling in flower, already due for the harvest, a desire worthy of men; take them wherever your will may lead: I, their father, give them up, and for my guests I will bear the grief.” At this the crazed crowd: “Who are you, how great, and from where, to lord it over our minds and lay down laws? A newcomer, not a ruler, you weigh out the acres of Sodom. Now therefore you yourself shall pay for what our desire is, in place of daughters and guests: one is enough for all.” Said and done at once: no delay in the raging mob. As a torrent rolls on in a wintry onrush and carries countless streams of brooks in one course: if any tree there is struck by the rushing waters, not to stand for long, so far as its root will allow its hairy fibers to hold out in delay, when, the ground eaten away beneath, it loses its soil and hangs with its trunk now dug around, this way and that, unsteady, it puts off its certain fall: just so Lot in the midst of the mob's whirl was tottering, almost overcome now; but divine power came to help: the angelic youths snatch him from the threshold and bring him back inside; and the crazed crowd, right there, as a first omen of punishment, they strike with loss of sight.

Then they unlock God's decrees: a fitting punishment would come from heaven upon Sodom; he himself had deserved salvation by right of justice: “Why then do you not gird yourself to hasten your flight from here, and bring out with you any of your family you have? We are now bringing destruction on the city.” Lot quickly speaks to his sons-in-law, but the hard mind of men scorned to believe the warning and laughed at his fear. Soon, at the time when light already tries to cleave the darkness and the face of the sky is two-colored, of night and of day, the youths pressed to lead the Chaldean family out of Sodom and to grant the just household salvation: “Come now, Lot, rise up, take your wife and your two daughters, and go from here an exile, getting ahead of Sodom's punishment.” And with friendly hands they lead out the trembling ones and there give them the rest of their orders: “Save your life, Lot, and do not choose to turn your gaze backward, or halt the step you have begun: to the mountain; hurry.” Lot feared to clamber up the heights with his slow step, lest heaven's anger overtake them first: he sets about asking for another haven, a small city that he had seen over against them. “Let our flight be here,” he says, “it surely scarcely stands out by its walls, not far, and not great for me.” They favored the frightened man and granted salvation to the city itself as well: hence the barbarian tongue knew the place by the name Segor.

Then Lot enters Segor, and at once the sun rises, the last indeed for Sodom, already glowing with fires; in anger it had armed its rays with all its flame. A rival gloom creeps in beneath, attempting to shut in the light and to weave masses into the confused sky. Smoking clouds gather, a new rain rushes down, sulphur with flames; chaos blazes, the upper air seethes, the scorched air crackles with liquid burnings. From this the fable has its false report drawn from the truth, that the Sun's offspring desired his father's chariot and that the gentle boy could not rein the proud horses of the Sun, that the world burned; that then the charioteer was snatched away by lightning, and his sisters changed their forbidden lament. Let the Eridanus see to it, if any poplar grows white there, if any more tuneful bird grows its plumes there in old age. Here the marvels of another changed form mourn. For his companion and wife, alas, ill then too with the law, a woman, hearing the divine rumblings of heaven, in vain turned her bold eyes behind, never to speak of what she had seen; and at once there, changed into fragile salt, she stood, herself her own tomb and herself her own image, keeping her shape without a body: for she endures still, in her bare station under the open sky, neither dissolved by rains through decay nor torn down by winds;

indeed, if any stranger mutilates her form, at once, welling up from herself, she fills up the wounds. It is even said that, living now in another body, her sex still discharges its customary months with bountiful blood. And now nowhere are the cities of Sodom, nowhere the impious people; the whole region is a pyre: here with the black horror of ash, there with the hoary rust of cinders they mark the burning. No one ploughs, in vain, the clods pitchy with soot. That former beauty has perished which Lot, looking out, when he parted from his uncle, had chosen as rich fields. Even if some half-destroyed acres there attempt the glad wealth of autumn, they readily promise the eyes that pears, peaches and all apples are of the best, until one longs to pluck them: for at once, at the betraying touch, the deceit of the empty fruit dissolves into ash. Thus then, heaven and earth buried alike, not even the sea lives there; death is the sea's very peace: by it the sea stirs no waves in panting rolls, by it the sea never sighs from its native south wind, by it the sea lacks the power to bring forth any race from its depths, scaly-skinned or smooth-skinned or enclosed in a shell, or the crinkled conch, or that shut within a double fastening. Only bitumen is harvested there as its own crop, the soot of the burnt sea, which a lively heat, cooking it beneath the pools from the heat of sulphur and salt, tempers, and gives the lands to have a pitch from the sea:

at its own season the rich venom of the burnt water is carried in, and a skin of black foam over the waters is woven. Those whose trade is that catch call it in, and tilt their light boats with a balancing of their sides, so as to teach the vein, once laid on, to climb aboard: for, raising itself now of its own accord, it will give itself to the idle boat and will sink it to the bottom with its large bounty, unless that cloth touches it with which a woman clothes her months. Lo, another wonder of the sea is noted from the disaster: everything there floats against its will; the nature fixed for sinking bodies has withdrawn. If, finally, you set a light-bearing lamp to float, where the breath of the fire is the tip of the flame will sail; if the flame is put out, the shipwrecked wreck of light will go beneath the waters. These punishments of Sodom and Gomorrah, marked out for the ages, will teach the unjust nations, from whose hard hearts the fear of God has departed, to revere heaven's laws and to hope in the one Lord of all things.

After Sodom and Gomorrah, funerals living through the ages, and burnings of punishment marked by the hoariness of ashes, and fruits that spring up in vain for the eyes alone, and likewise the death of the sea, and the salt that was made there, if a human being is something that keeps its punishment in a changed body: the fire of a rain from above had almost struck down another, Nineveh, a city that had transgressed the way of equity and justice. For what fear has a perverted mind? To the crowd all lessons of punishment are empty where error holds possession. But the good Lord almighty, patient with us and slow to strike, will hurl no anger unless he first warns and beats upon hardened hearts, stirring up prophets, foreknowing, by his august mind. And now the Lord had commanded Jonah to foretell destruction to the Ninevites for their deserts; but he, knowing that the Lord spares the submissive and remits punishment owed to suppliants and is easily moved to goodness, delayed to go, lest he sing in vain, the threats giving way to peace. Soon flight was his plan, if that is indeed in any way possible, to avoid God and escape the Lord's right hand, beneath which the whole trembling world is held in check. Or is there reason in what the prophet does from his holy heart? On the lip of the shore, most famous for its trusty harbor, facing the coasts of the Cilicians, lies the city Joppa.

From there, then, Jonah in haste seeks Tarsus by ship, over the waters of the same God; and indeed no wonder if, fleeing the Lord on land, he found him in the waves. For suddenly a tiny cloud had stained the air, roused from a sulphurous seed by the fleece of the wind, and little by little, bringing forth a mass, it closed with the sun and shut in the deceived day with a column of darkness. The sea becomes a mirror of the sky; a black circuit stains the waves; the upper air rushes into darkness and the sea rises: nor is there anything between, as the wave touches the clouds, the halls of the winds, all of which it mingles in a whirlwind. Varied fury gnashed against the fugitive Jonah. The one ship was the contest of sky and sea; it is beaten this way and that; all its timber trembles under the wave-breaking blow; below, the spine of the shaken keel throbs; the screeching toil of the yard shudders from on high; the mast itself, uncertain whether to break, is bent. Meanwhile the sailors' groaning fear tries everything for the ship and for life: to pay out the coils of the cable, to unlace the girding band, to tighten the strain of the tillers, to haul at the struggling ropes, to push the capstan round with their chests: some, in turn, vigorously bail out the well of the inner sea, heavy with stench, then they hurl overboard the wares and all the cargo and strive to overcome the perils by their losses. Then wretched voices at each crash of the sea,

and they spread out their hands to the powers of gods that are nothing, whom the force of sea and sky does not fear, drowning them no less in angry whirlwind, hidden away as they are in the sterns. Unaware of this, the guilty one himself, under the hollow vault of the stern, was sounding out a snoring sleep with puffed-out nose, already then in sleep forming a figure of the Lord. Him, slumbering in calm peace, proud in his rest, the one who directs the duties of the wave-cutting prow pressed upon, nudging him: “What,” he says, “in this peril do you sing dreams through your nose? And in such a whirlwind do you alone have a harbor? Look, it is overwhelming us; the one hope is in the gods. You too, whoever your god is, speak vows and prayers, and, calling on him, bend your ancestral deity as a suppliant.” Then they decide to learn by lot who is nearer the guilt, who is the cause of the storm; and the lot does not lie about Jonah. Then they ask: “Who are you, and from where among men, what in short is your business, of what people, from what home are you called?” He confesses himself the servant who deeply fears God, who raised the heavens on high, who set the earth in place, who poured out the whole mass of things, and he reveals that he is His fugitive, and why. They stiffened with fear: “What fault of yours, then, is ours? What will happen now? By what pact shall we calm the waters?” For the cruel straits were swelling more and much more. Then the Lord's prophet, at the prompting of the spirit, begins:

“Look, I am the storm, I am the whole madness of the world; because of me,” he says, “the upper air falls upon you and the sea rises, because of me land is far off, death very near, no hope from God. Rather, throw the cause headlong, and, lightening the ship, cast this one great burden into the willing sea.” But they strive in vain to turn their course back toward return, for the tiller would not let itself be turned, nor would the hard balance of the yards be changed. At last, to the Lord: “Do not give us into the gaping jaws of death for the sake of one soul, nor will that we be spattered with righteous blood, if your right hand leads thus.” And now there, rising from the deepest abyss, a sea-monster, rolling out the scaly column of its body with its shells, was pressing nearer on the waves, the marble surface shaken, seizing at God's will the prey which, rolled down from the height of the stern, it swallowed with its slimy jaws, and it hurried the living feast down into its long belly, and with the man it devoured the rage of sky and sea. The wave of the sea is laid flat, the shadow of the sky dispersed. On this side the waves, on that the winds are made friendly again, and as the keel marks out a safe path in the calm, white tracks bloom in the blue furrow. Then the sailor, glad, sacrifices to the Lord his reverent fear and his thanks, then enters friendly harbors. And the prophet Jonah sails too, taken up by another vessel, and cuts the waves beneath the lowest waves, sailing in entrails, a beast's breath breathing for him, shut in and not wetted by the waters, inmost in the sea and outside it, among half-eaten fleets and bodies dissolved by putrid digestion, now learning his own funeral. But as a sign of the Lord who was one day to come, he was not for destruction, but a witness of death driven off.

When I saw you once more in the service of diverse and empty rites, and held fast by the ancient error, I was struck with dismay. Because you have always loved poetry, answering in a poem I have hastened to write verses to rebuke you: for who would bear darkness being preferred to light, your believing that the Great Mother can be called a goddess, and your thinking her again to be worshipped, whose worshippers foul infamy brands? For her priests in women's tunics confess by their outward dress the same inner vice, and think that lawful which is not lawful: hence through the city they walk softly, speaking in a softened voice, and hold their weary loins with outstretched thumb, and change their own sex by a crime made public. And when they celebrate their rites, on those days they say they are chaste: but if they are chaste only then, as they claim, what are they the rest of the time? But because they are forced to be modest at least once, they rage in mind, lacerate their body and pour out blood. What kind of sacred rite is it that truly goes by the name of blood? Now too I have learned that it was not age that made you bald but your religion, and that, your boot set aside, a Gallic sandal is on your feet, bound with soft papyrus. A thing marvelous enough, and cast down from the highest summit:

if a consul came out of a temple of Isis into the city, he would be the laughing stock of every mouth: but who would not laugh at you, who were a consul, to be now a minister of Isis? And what shames a man the first time, you are not ashamed to be a second time, and to condemn your talent by foul hymns, the crowd answering you and the senate tearing you to pieces, and you, once painted in your own house with the fasces, now also carrying a dog's face with the sistrum. Is this humility? It is an image of humility. These monuments will always remain in your house. And public rumor has reached even our ears that you said: “Goddess, I erred, forgive me, I have come back.” Tell me, if you can: when you often asked such things and sought pardon, what words did she speak with you? Truly you lack a mind, you who follow those who lack a mind. These things you repeat again and do not feel that you are sinning. See what you deserve: perhaps you would be less to be censured if you knew only this and remained in this error: but when you had entered the doors of the truth-worshipping law and it was granted you in a few years to know God, why do you hold what should be left, or leave what should be held? And you worship nothing, while you worship everything; nor do you consider in your heart how true differs from false, light from shadows. You play the philosopher, while your opinion keeps changing you:

for if popular anger stirs your stomach, you will be a Jew too, and be held wholly unstable. Indulge my words: lofty wisdom does not please. Everything that is too much falls the opposite way: heat and cold work one thing: this one, that one, both burn. So darkness takes away sight, so does the sun, its opposite, and cold and hot baths alike do harm: the body is nourished by food, the body is corrupted by food, and it lessens its own force if anything is stretched beyond measure. Then, if you sit, it is a great rest from labor: if you sit much, it is labor. For Maro the poet set it down as a punishment: “he sits and for ever will sit, unhappy Theseus.” What is useful always harms when long: long lunches harm, long fasts weary. So too much wisdom makes a fool. “The sect is shameless; the goddess so taught me, she said moderation is lovable…” But you care neither for a sect nor for moderation. But a stable mind is overturned by no surge, and simplicity itself never thinks any evil. Hence sincere faith will enjoy an eternal seat, and guile, on the contrary, will be tormented by long fire. Choose what you will, so as to avoid the penalties due. Yet, I say, let a believer deserve this pardon: that it will be a light crime if you do not wish to know the truth; it will not be a light crime if you abandon truths once known.

But perhaps ripe old age, having corrected you, calls you back to the better, sated with these errors: for time changes evils, time sets all things in order. Then, therefore, when well-counseled age has led you back, learn to keep faith with God, lest you happen twice to incur the one fall, because this is truly said: he who does not know how to avoid a second time the stone his foot struck and, unwary, bruises his limbs again, let him blame himself and not blame any chance. Correct your offense by faithfulness, correct your mind. It was enough to have sinned once; stop fearing: he will not be at fault who repents of what he was before.

There is a place which we believe to be the middle of the whole world; the Jews call it Golgotha in their ancestral speech: here I remember that a tree, cut from a barren trunk, was planted and bore saving fruits; yet it did not offer them to those settlers who planted it; outsiders had the blessed fruits. This is the tree's appearance: it rises from one stem and soon stretches out its arms into twin branches, as yards stretch heavy, full sails, or like yokes when the oxen are unyoked from the plough. What it bore first, fallen with ripe seed, the earth conceived: soon from it (wonderful to tell) the third light had again brought up, dreadful to earth and those above, a branch blessed with life-giving fruit. But after twice twenty days, firmly established in it, it grew to an immense height and touched the sky with its topmost crown, and at last hid its holy head on high, while yet it put forth twice six branches of great weight and, spreading them, extended them through the whole world, that they might offer to all nations food and life everlasting and teach that death itself can die. And soon, when fifty days had been completed, from the very summit the heavenly breath of the Spirit brought down a draught of divine nectar into the branches: the leaves dripped everywhere, heavy with sweet dew.

Look: under the shade of the huge covering of branches there was a spring: here, clear, with nothing by chance troubling it, with translucent, unmuddied waters; and the grasses around poured out glad colors from varied flowers. Around it countless nations and peoples gathered, how varied in kind, sex, age, rank: unmarried and married women, widows and young brides, infants and boys, men, youths and old men: here, when they saw the branches bent and leaning with fruits of many kinds, they rejoiced to touch with eager right hands the fruits moist with heavenly nectar. Yet they could not pluck them with desirous palms until they had wiped off the muddy, foul tracks of their former road and washed their body in the holy spring. So, walking around a long while on the soft grass, they look up at the fruits hanging from the high tree: then, if any husks fell from those branches and sweet fruits dripping with much nectar, they feed on them, longing to take the true fruits: so, when their mouths had taken the heavenly taste, they change their dispositions and begin to lose their greedy minds and with a sweet sense to recognize what a human being is. We have seen the unaccustomed taste stir the stomach of many, and the venom of gall, disturbed by the honey, reject good tastes with a troubled mind, or, having taken it eagerly, not love it for long, and, having drunk it badly, at last vomit up the taste.

Often indeed many, with renewed minds, have restored their sick souls, and endured what they said they could not, and reaped the fruit of their labor. Many too who dared to touch the holy springs went away again suddenly and, falling backward, wallow in the same filth and mire. Many, carrying the truth in a good heart, receive it with their whole souls and store it deep within. So all who are able to come to the sacred springs, the seventh light sets them at the waters they longed for; they dip their fasting limbs in the liquid springs: so at last they put off the filth of mind and the stain of their former life, and bring back from death pure, shining souls that will go to the light of heaven. Hence the way to the branches and the sweet fruits of salvation, thence the way to heaven through the branches of the high tree. This is the tree of life for all who believe. Amen.

I who wished for country Muses in my song, and inscribed the rosy breezes with spring flowers and the heavy summer ears of the harvest, cut the swelling grapes from the vines of autumn, and always praised the peaceful olives of winter, and drew out tuneful waters from the springs, and sang of the leafy woods from the wandering grass: now at once I will sing of the ethereal shores of light; now let me reach the light-bearing Muses, unfold the secret nymphs from the river's source and the glad woods set beneath another star, and at the same time tell in song of the eternal flames, whence the immense sea surges into swelling waves, what power warns the solid earth to tremble, and whence golden light first shone on the new world, who could have fashioned man from the glad clay, whence the race could grow in the empty age, and what desire of living the people has in their variety, what lineage of dying was first created by evil, whence comes the good scent and blush of rosy crowns, what makes the vine seethe with glad grapes, and how new barley turns milky in tender stalks, how the tree ripens toward winter with black olives, who gives increase of vigor to varied seeds and protects the mother of offspring with soft shade.

It is good to know all things, what the beginnings of things are, so that through all things one may recognize the true God, who prepared light, seas, sky and earth, and adorned the new world with varied stars, and bade the cattle and the birds come forth first, and gave the sea waves to be filled with fish and drove living creatures over the fruitful sands. Such songs will I bring forth with the Muses set in order, and set forth the healthful wave from new springs and the glad rain coming from peaceful clouds, flowing deep and freely into the souls of men; I will receive it in full streams into our fallow fields. Come now, touch the secure and living nymph and swiftly draw the easy liquor of life. If anyone wishes to escape the punishments of the eternal flame, ignorant of the day and unaware of the age to come, and rather to gain the rewards of a just life, let him remember this one God and pray to him alone, who set the whole world in the balance beneath its threshold, and, abiding eternally and ever to be through the ages, holding all ages, and alone before the ages, unbegotten God without end, alone holding the divine throne, ever towers over high heaven, alone almighty, whom all things obey,

who formed man, pleasing to himself, for the ages, gave him to be shepherd of the cattle and lord of the wild beasts, and gave him rule over the birds, and the sea and the land to govern; who by speech alone could stretch out the sky, and by a word bade the solid earth hang, and quicker than said separated the sea's wave; this form, dear to him, he loved to fashion with his hands, and willed his own comely likeness to be in it; by his Spirit he breathed a life-giving breath into his face. He, unmindful of God, rashly committed so great a thing, though warned to touch nothing beyond: one thing, whence he would know evil and whence discern the right, the forbidden fruit, God at once forbade him to touch. How great were the gifts of the world God granted to man, and marked them as a most sweet pledge of his love, gave him useful and dear commands for his salvation, gave the lands under his dominion and every living soul, the winged race, the cattle, every kind of wild beast, and the race of the sea, all creatures that swim. But because, having first transgressed the law by a crime, the first man now was altering the Lord's commands, his wife urging all evils, he was perishing in death. For the woman first committed the evil of sin and betrayed her husband and deceived him from the law.

Eve, wickedly persuaded, opened the doors to death and created funerals for herself together with her whole race. Hence (unhallowed misfortune!) death flowed out through the ages. Thence crime spread more easily and deeply, and the farmer's labor drove the year more harshly. The cunning serpent cast this in with wicked envy. Thence all the more did the peoples commit many evils, and abominable seeds brought forth evil deeds. And therefore God alone, who has the highest power, and holds the highest summits above the lofty sky, dwelling on high in inaccessible light through the ages, mindful of the past and knowing the future beforehand, keeps for ever the decree of desert for the race: all souls that slowly govern bodies and move the human being by reason wandering through the limbs, as soon as they lay down the weight of the limbs and depart, and go light, released from earthly bonds, and seek again their own shores in different parts, forthwith some are shut in hidden darkness, but others are at once called back to glad breezes, kept wholly for the rewards decreed by the law, until … bodies rise again with their limbs restored: then men will weigh the interest of their first life, and stand before God their judge, mindful of the past, each to await his own punishment for his own crime.

or wholly, like cattle, without a name … breath, or in vain … to pour out God's breath by ending. Can God almighty, by whose nod all things are ruled, be unable to give back life after death, or does the Lord seem unable to do anything? If he could shut out bright light from darkness, and could compose the whole mass by a word, make all things from nothing by his mighty voice, why could he not, out of something, fashion the known shape that once was, the form that lived before, and bid it rise again like its own shape? Since all things are God's, the earth will all the more give back all, when commanded; she will call back whatever she once covered. If the flame perhaps consumed someone laid asleep on the pyre, or the sea threw someone down into its blind waves, if anyone has fed the hunger of a fish's belly, or wild beasts have pierced his limbs with a cruel death, or his blood has lain for the birds, his body snatched away: not even the last of deaths will refuse anyone to the Lord; men must appear living before God from death and stand with their own shapes taken back. So seeds are entrusted dry to the turned earth and, fixed deep in the furrows, rot dead; then the stalk is quickened with ears renewed, and again they grow golden, strong, with living grains, and new harvests rise with varied interest.

All the stars will set, and will shine again reborn, and day dies with its light into thick night; night sets into day as things are uncovered by light, and high day rises again among its stars. The splendor-bearing sun sets from on high with clear light, the light perishes as evening comes and shades the world, and it returns and renews joy for the whole age: so the phoenix, burned, lives from its own funeral, and at once the bird rises from its own pyre. And the tree stripped of its leaves puts out shoots in its season and again bends its branches from the bud of fruit. So, when at the divine voice, the world trembling and the powers of the high air deeply shaken, then an unaccustomed crash and the greatest rumblings of the sky, God advancing, the judge of the world coming: at once countless ministers rush together to go, and surround God with heavenly majesty; angelic hosts descend far and wide in throngs, all the messengers of God, who have divine power pre-eminent, and beauty, all the powers of spirit. Their vigor is fiery, their bodies glowing; heaven's divine force flashes: hence the whole upper air thunders, hence the trembling earth bellows back from its depths, entire, in labor with the men whom, by command, she must give back.

His companions marvel, the clouds at last are troubled, the stars, amazed, quake at once at the power from on high, God commanding, easily, with the voice of the Mighty One. At once, the tombs burst open through all the kingdoms, all the ground pours out bones from wide chasms, and the sand, opening, belches forth living peoples. Limbs cling together, bones are knit with marrow, and interlaced sinews govern the breathing bodies, and at the same time veins, filled again, move with blood, and the souls that had been sent away are given back to the opened hollows, and all the organs, rising, seek again each its own. (O faith to be marveled at!) hence every age sprouts forth, the ancient crowd of the dead sprouts from the dust. Mothers and husbands rise with light restored, great-hearted youths, boys and unmarried girls, and old men long dead stand by with living souls, and the world resounds, groaning with the wailing of infants. Varied nations come together from the lowest seats, and the bands of the East, and those whom the farthest land sees, those who inhabit the middle zones in the sloping clime and hold the Riphaean heights under the frosty star: every settler of every border is present, afraid, the peasant and the soldier, kings with their crowns laid aside, the rich man mingled with the poor in one even column.

Deep trembling everywhere; now the world groans in prayer, and the peoples, stretching out their hands, marvel with shouting. The Lord himself, seated, bright with surpassing light, and all-powerful, flashes like fire among all the powers, and gleams on a lofty throne in the heavenly seat, hedged about by martyrs, a shining number of men, and he stands accompanied by his blessed prophets, whose temples shine with snowy fillets. And now priests are present in gleaming garments, carrying glowing crowns, the rewards of life, and all, bowing down with bent knees, adore: “Holy, holy, God alone” is the one voice of all. Then the Lord will bid the twofold people stand: he commands the just to be separated from the number of the wicked, and bids them, clothed with strength, death conquered, have for ever the unquenched breath of light, go through the ancient, ever-flowering kingdoms, through rich groves, ever pleasant green places, and spend everlasting life in a glorious body. There is a place on the Aeolian shores, beloved by the Lord, where clear light shines and a healthier air breathes, and eternal day and unchangeable time, and a region set apart for God, very rich in fields, and a seat exceedingly blessed in a serene quarter, the air ever glad and ever to be in light, and a gentle wind breathing life-giving gusts.

the very rich land bears all things equally from its all-bearing soil: flowery purple blazes in the level meadows. All things, very bright, mingle their light without envy; one glad flower clothes another's mantle with its own light. Here rosy fields are varied with snowy seed, and snowy fields are curled with rosy flowers. You would not know with which flowers the fields are more beautifully sweet, or with which they breathe more happily in the heavenly air, which is better in appearance or which excels in honor. Never are such lilies born in flower-bearing gardens, nor have such flowered in our fields, nor does the familiar rose blush so, or the white one open, nor is purple so steeped in Tyrian red. The gem shines, beautiful with colored stones, the prase gleams on this side, the carbuncle burns on that, and the emerald stone pours out flashing lights. Here too cinnamon grows on fragrant twigs, and glad amomum is fragrant with green leaf. Here lies gold, inborn, of radiant light, and high groves that hold the sky with flowering top, and the richest buds weigh down the green branches. No India has put forth groves like these, nor does the green pine raise its tops so thick, nor does the cypress so curl its high, quivering foliage, nor does a branch flower better in springtime.

Here, otherwise, the … flourish on the top, and the woods alone, without hail, are green for ever. No leaves fall, no flower fails in its season: the tops are green, compacted with strength; the tree is purple. But I think that flower is the rose, the even blush in it, so does it breathe such beauty of fragrances into its leaves. The fairest tree stands with flower and with new fruits, and the happy trunks thicken with life-giving fruit. Rich honey is fragrant on the greening branches, milk too flows drinkable in full streams. Whatever the holy land greens forth breathes life there, whatever flowers from the bud continually blesses, and the soil smells of beautiful, healing chalk. A spring there floods the fields with its calm stream; from it four rivers water the divided land. I think the upper air, clothed with flowers, keeps ever spring. Cold does not vary the breezes with a winter star, nor does summer flash, rayed with pressing heat; the sky with its own light tempers the serene breezes and refreshes the fruitful earth with a better breath. There is no night there; the stars keep away their darkness, and anger and plots are absent, and dread desire, and fear is shut out and cares driven from the threshold. Thence the wicked man is banished, an exile, to the farthest shores, and toil is forbidden to touch the blessed borders.

Here ancient faith rests in the chosen seat, Justice, rejoicing, lives in an eternal covenant, and secure salvation is glad in peaceful fields, ever to live and ever to be in light. Here whoever was a pious tiller of equity and goodness, and who feared God the Thunderer with innocent mind, and honored his parents with holy devotion, and lived a holy life always without crime, or whenever he consoled the needy with friendly wealth and came to the aid of the overburdened poor, helper of the poor man, accustomed to save orphans, and rescued the injured, and came to the aid of those pressed by false charges, gave guests the dear pledges of his table, did all his duties by divine commands, harmed no one, coveted nothing of another's: all these, exulting in divine praises and praying together, raise their voices to the stars, psalming to the Lord they give thanks with joy, and will go the blessed way with messengers accompanying them. After the Lord has accomplished these happy gifts and has sent the just together into the eternal kingdoms: lo, the wretched crowd comes, lamenting its crimes: groaning arises, all mourn with burning tears and bear witness to their deeds with constant howling; they tremble at the fiery darts pressing upon them for their deserts.

Angels now seize them and forbid them to pray, and forbid them to pour out late cries of repentance, and now pardon for prayers is denied as the flame comes on. “O wretched ones, how often did divine power make itself known to you, how often was the majesty of the truth known? You heard the sounds, you saw the lightnings of heaven, you constantly experienced rains, the angers of winds and hail, so often nights and serene days: the fruitful seasons gave you the gifts of God, spring gave roses in abundance, nor did summer lack crops, autumn offered varied mellow fruits, icy winter always broke the glad olives. God gave all things, nor was any goodness lacking, yet through all these things the whole human race did not know God. The earth trembled at God, the sea hung at God's nod, and the river, trembling, flowed back over dry sands, and creation, glad, confesses God in all things. Yet you denied this Lord of heaven and earth, and killed the just instead with cruel slaughter, and many of you often put the heralds of God to flight. The truth always clung to you as if it were a crime. And therefore you will reap the fruit of an unjust sowing: you do not know: behold, the day you are accustomed to laugh at. You will go into the deep darkness of fire and sulphur, to suffer, burning, cruel wrath with pains.”

These the Lord commands to depart to eternal punishment, to go under the burnings of Gehenna ever without end, to be pressed down, a mass, through the torrent pools of flame. He commands the threatening elements to be turned into flames, and all the fire of heaven to descend from the clouds. Then greedy Tartarus shuts out its swift fires, and the seas will surge with stormy flames, and the whole earth will confound the living with ashes, and the angry air will brandish fiery furrows, and the burning world will be armed with every torch; with a Tartarean onrush the fires will seize the world. They, driven headlong, are lifted into the surge; they flee this way, and are carried back that way in sharp course. The fierce wrath of the flame meets them as they flee, and now they recognize their punishment for their crime. And now, where the earth is possessed by no settler, and pressed beneath the farthest bounds of the deep sea, where the sun, its ray having run its course, ends Olympus, and the risen stars are hidden when the world has passed, the air grows thick with darkness, its light hidden, the last pools flaming with secret streams. The nature of the place is fiery, marked out for punishments, and the swamp of the underworld, glowing in its depths with burnings, thunders horribly, a strait of punishment; the furnace seethes, and, flaming, is churned with a rapid whirl, a river rushing into torments with surging flood; the scorched sand, all of it, is mixed with the mire.

Hither the captive, groaning crowd of the wicked will be sent, and (unhallowed!) the column of the criminal body, to burn. Great lamentation there, weeping joined with clamor, and quick gnashing; the howling of those in pain will rise from the flame afar, and the fire, deep and resounding, and the groaning of the burning will rise into the air. Then the human race pays for the evil it committed, and they will begin to stretch late prayers to heaven, and will now wish to know God, whom they would not know. There each will confess the savage things of his life, the guilty hands and minds savage in crime, and will testify to the unspeakable things of his savage life. First whoever had thought ill of God before and worshipped wandering stones with a false deity and had consecrated bloody altars to images and feared painted figures without voice and adored the thin shades of a false deity, and whomever evil error at once led astray; if anyone was an adulterer, whoever had killed his children, if anyone lived with a conscience guilty of any evil, or had marauded by robbery or by defrauding a client, if anyone stained his palms with human blood and mixed poisons with lurking death, then if anyone hid thefts in an empty breast, or rejoiced in the unjust gain of another's misfortune, whoever committed any wickedness of the wicked.

Deep burning will torture them with bitter fire, and all will pay the penalty in a living death, thus … the whole crowd of men, mourning. Have not the holy prophets so often sung these things, often warned by the Spirit of God, and foretold what was to come? Thus God almighty willed his rewards to be known and the threats of the law laid down *** by such things, sending many to cry out heavenly words. Then, at God's command, the prophet put bones together, and was astonished at the tombs suddenly moved, not of themselves, that bodies … had lain in scattered ashes; he marveled that then they rose living as the soul came, and with their voice stretched their palms toward heaven. They indeed went back to their silent tombs and yielded to the future day of God, to be kept for it: he bade them be held for a little while in their deepest beds, until that great day, its time completed, should come. All of you, know the true Lord, who alone can make the soul strive toward the light, and can likewise thrust it into the Tartarus of punishment, and to whom all power of life and death lies open. For God, to will is enough to be able, and it is done by speaking: he alone is to be feared by me in my inmost senses.

And since every course is concluded by death, whoever lives today will carry his life with him. And therefore, while life remains, while you may enjoy the light, while you may repent, before the end of time seizes you unawares, and that last day of death, which is held by law, closes your unknowing eyes: what remains first, watch over your dear salvation, and, ready and sure, turn your course toward the good. After errors, and after sins checked by holy rites, and after the storms that have harried you, wandering, too long, take the right ways and hold to the glad breezes. Hence with glad souls first drive away crime, and let the long-hardened guilt be washed from your breast, then, gentle, abolish the unspeakable evils you have committed, and appease the dreadful God with unceasing prayers. Let all the worst things yield to the good, mortal things to the living. Keep now the new life without crime, and keep your minds pious and in the true name. And as suppliants ask pardon for your former offenses. Now let pure hearts ripen in pious tillers, and lift innocent hands in just prayers, and render voices ready for divine praises. And let your minds begin to grow used to things good and true, and let the gifts of the divine law be celebrated the more, and remember good things and at once take hold of good deeds. Let the sordid evils once committed grow worthless, and all better things will blaze for you, the pious, and at once life is freed from dreadful perils and will come, by its prayers, to the eternal rewards.