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'Preparing to succour the affairs of earth, given over to the vices of men and prone to crimes, virtue cast aside, by an end of things, I have resolved, when foreseeing to chastise all faults and to wipe out the guilty too lightly, to submerge the earth again with the sea brought in upon it — so that, while in its rushing it covers all and at command subsides, it may with its headlong flood wash away the polluted world, and roll together men entangled in it, and whatever was bidden to live for man's sake, in the foul ruin of the swelling deep.'
'But because you alone, to whom Our will is dear, leading a life devoted under sacred laws, ever in this one thing — and by the better desert — resist the rest, thus shall I temper the decrees of My ordinances: that, when they have paid the just penalty of their evil, then more worthily shall the mortal race begin again from you, and the peoples that shall enjoy Our light shall reckon you their supreme father. Let an ark, then, be prepared for you, framed of squared timbers, which shall be stretched to three hundred cubits and lie open fifty wide, and rise aloft to thrice ten only; and let it be brought to a single [point] above. But in the side let a door be kept, where the structure, gathered together, shall taper to a sloping roof. Then let it, breathing through its absorbent joinery, try the warm bitumen and clothe the fine cracks on every side, poured out after the manner of a skin.'
'From here let the greatest labour call you within: let the broad sides be joined on either hand by vast posts, and let the inner chambers of the completed enclosure be laid out; and when the double area has divided a threefold space, so let the living creatures be distinguished in their own nests, lest, mingled, they violate their kind, and, set together, fight, and confound their foods — of which it is fitting that you store up only the material; for that it should not be wanting when dispensed to those received, that is My charge to provide.' Receiving these things with a faithful mind — for He Himself, ministering both soul and senses, gave the servant both the will and the power for whatever He commanded — he, together with his sons and the gathered host of the common people, set about to lay low with the iron the dense forests that had grown up for this very purpose.
They lose the beams of light; the field is lightened of its shadows, the valleys are stripped of their age-old oaks, and the groves — destined to enfold the likeness of a smaller world. But when the sum of the begun work had been hastened on with so great toil, it is deferred a hundred years, that the peoples might repent of their wickedness and strive against God's wrath. O wretched beyond measure, whom the delay of so just a penalty makes more guilty: now they shall be punished not for the crime alone, for which there is abundant store of pardon to be sought, but because they shall be punished, and how many of them shall sink into dread Tartarus through the span of time granted them — when God testifies that He would rather spare them all.
Now, the mass completed, the rescue stood framed of sides in capacious joinery — the rescue which the Father Himself had prepared as the last remedy for thy shipwrecks, O Nature, and was pleading thy cause — when God deigned from high Olympus to warn His servant Noah by His voice that now the supreme hour was at hand to hide himself in shelters and to snatch his mother, his sons and his daughters-in-law from the threatening destruction and the darkness of death, into the prison of life — and with himself all living creatures: whatever its own land nourishes, whatever the air sustains that is not its own, by sevens of each sex, the creatures God had approved as clean, two by two equally, but of the unclean kind one only of each sex. Nor is there delay:
Whatever is born unknown beneath the vaulted hinge of heaven in the diverse quarters of the globe — what the Dawn-land marvels at, what the pale Iberian dreads, what rages in the hot sands of southern Libya, what cleaves the Hyperborean nights with wondrous light — all rush trembling in one throng and plunge into the opened ark. You would think they had foreseen the flood; for though God the Author gives to brutes a sense by which to bear witness to His nurslings, the herds have more of reason here — they who, moved by His power, understand nothing of themselves.
Therefore, as soon as God commands the ark, heavy-laden with every seed of life, to be closed, night rushes on, and sudden darkness shrouds the sky; and the headlong storm, falling, strikes the earth with poured-out air, brief in manner, yet about to keep its course; thus it rages and rains down savagely upon the whole world alike, as much as it is wont upon a part, when, driven by a swift whirlwind, the tempest follows fierce fires or announces the lightning's bolt, and at the thunder both heaven and earth cry back. Nor is the rain that streams from the clouds enough for destruction: the ancient waters are loosed, and now, the upper air thrown open, the sky rains into empty clouds, and the breath of the inmost earth, expanding — which feeds the rivers — fills them and opens new springs to match the torrents.
And while in one whirlpool there mingles and joins in headlong haste what the sky and what the earth disgorge, what the clouds pour forth, it engulfs the sunken fields together with their tillers, and the flocks entangled in their stalls, and overwhelms the cities with their citizens: amid the waters the peoples perish in the ruins. No face of things remains; the flood covers all, and by growing the very rivers lose their name, and soon their course as well. The ocean, never to be sated by any rivers, now feels the waters rushing in so great a mass, and, swollen with its increased gulf, drives them and forces them, returning, to rise into a heap, until, the shores drawn together and the deep heaving up its swell, the flood joins itself on every side at the topmost circle, and the seas rush together over the earth they have crushed. And now the ark was borne aloft, fifteen cubits higher than all things;
for this measure surpassed the highest mountains, when for forty days there had been the fury of every kind of rain and one unbroken night. Then, after thrice fifty days under a clear sky, when the like measure and bulk of a sea still remained, the Almighty, taking pity, bade the great deep retire by little and little of the imprisoned ones — whether to spare the lands which, fleeing, it could swiftly have overthrown, or because He willed that the wave, gently flowing back and drawn down, should set the enclosed ones more safely upon stable ground. At length a mountain, level with its broad summit, the air being spread abroad, took up the burden it was to bear. Now the highest ridges could be seen, and the level waves marked off by crags; and, the sea subsiding little by little, the woods broke forth and the hidden hills rose gradually.
And now the black watcher, sent forth from the wide ark, had announced the air to be calm, and, having found its prey, was held back; but the weary dove reports that there is still need to wait in the cell and behind the bars, and, sent forth again, brings back a little offering of the peace-bringing fruit, the olive. So great a weeping of the enclosed ones arises at this token, with praise of the great Father — whereby they too joyfully are revealed — as great as the weeping when a bitter conqueror insults the walls, if perchance sudden aid be borne to the besieged; as great as when a sentence, sent by a merciful judge, restores the condemned again to life; as great as when, in a doubtful death, life comes running back amid the tears of mourners and their joys, the weeping that arises.
After the spying bird, sent forth a third time, announces by this very fact that the fields lie open — that, the lands being recovered and taken in, it did not return — they weary of enduring the sluggish hiding-places, where the hope of breathing the open sky is nearer to heaven, and of feeding the soul, loosed, with the air's ethereal sense. But it is lawful for none to go forth into the regions of light — as it is forbidden to be born and to undergo sky and day — without God calling; who with His own voice warned trembling Noah by His command to depart from the sacred enclosures, with his faithful wife, his sons and his chaste daughters-in-law, and to give the new fields once more to the husbandmen led out, and all things which, likewise preserved for the offspring to come, the mighty Maker had fashioned for human uses. These, when the door is given, rush forth:
some seek the air on wings, some the glades and woods, some, plunging, are buried in the wide caverns of the earth, some leap free over the dry plains and grow green in the open meadow. But the lord, allotted the realms of a second world, joyfully receives all things with his eyes and his capacious mind, and cannot sate his soul by filling it, and, ranging swiftly over all with eager gaze, marvels as at new things. Brighter than its familiar rising, and more ruddy, the sun; the glad face of the sky smiles with a greater serenity, and the despaired-of fields grow green with new growth. But still there hovers before his eyes the image, ever to be remembered, of so great a ruin: what they suffered amid the waters, what — by sacred grace — they did not suffer, when the sea raged with savage scourging and the ark scorned the dashing storms:
And he ponders with his own how widely the holy bounty of the supreme Father, pouring itself around them, stands fast; and he teaches the astonished, and those ready to learn the truth, whence food sufficed for so many through the whole year, and what drink; for this is certain: that, though the other things of life might have been supplied, the enclosed, while the ark was tossing, could have been slain amid the waters by thirst, had not the Ruler of Olympus sustained those laid up within — fearing now no extreme — by that nod with which He founded all things. He, despoiling of the love of light the souls that were to perish in the prison of a long night, filled them with strength:
He, that they might be able to endure so sluggish a rest, infused a calm love of drowsy torpor; He, the mighty One, to whom, if it pleased Him, it is lawful by His stern power to compel the wicked, plunged beneath the icy whirlpool, swiftly to burn and be borne into the flames to come, and the good, plunged in, to freeze — He who, in a little time, as now He has taught the peoples that they can thus be slain, will Himself teach that the peoples can thus by waters be reborn. BOOK THREE. Bearing such things in mind, and discerning the ages to come, ancient Noah resolved to enter upon no part of his mortal duty before he should pay to God the sacred rites and thanks. Altars rise of snowy stone, around which, when he would surround himself with no enclosing house, the world, spread on every side by the vaulted path of heaven, was a temple.
The victim flocks in headlong from the sevens of the herds, which the soft air sustains, which the earth brings forth... they are laid low [or hunted] in the eastern lands or the woods of the Arabs. Fire, sent down from Olympus, tastes the fragrant honours which it consumes with its locks, and the burnt offerings exhale to God an ambrosial vapour. He, who is gentle and ever good, receiving in place of our gift whatever He receives, and rejoicing in the dutiful service of godly men — of whose use He has no need, but of those by whom we are redeemed — thus speaks with serene power:
'Though the vengeance was a small penalty for so great a Name — to have condemned the guilty of so many crimes by avenging rains and a gentle flood, and rather to have renewed the seat of the guilty, the lands, by the spreading deep — yet, though offended, We shall not smite the mortal race with such a scourge any further, even though I see human minds and profane peoples again about to fall through manifold wickedness, through their former crimes. For because mortals will never cease to commit what must be punished, it befits Us ever to cease from repaying what they deserve. Glad and prosperous, increase, O nurslings; increase secure, and fill with fruitful offspring the new fields, and stretch new flocks over all the lands. The elements shall keep their turns, and on every day the due harvest shall be rendered to its own seeds. The work of the world shall run on, equal-matched amid its discordant seasons:
winter shall vie with summer, and the year, balancing the seasons of spring and autumn, shall fleetingly fold itself back again. And you, to whom We have entrusted the kingdom of the whole solid globe, whom every kind of living creature dreads and feels as its lords, We bid to keep this in the place of law, and ever to remember, bound by the prescriptions of a stern right: that, among so many kinds of things which, of their own accord moving their limbs, We now a second time grant for your use, let no one make foul food of livid limbs with the blood mingled in — which crime the sentence of My keen judgement shall one day punish no otherwise than if anyone, a savage, should drink human gore with the sword; which I shall ever, as avenger, demand and so exact, that not to Me alone shall he pay an ample penalty of the reckoning, but the brutes too:
let human blood be equally sacred to all, to those who enjoy Our light. And let there be signs by which, with a radiant sky, We may testify that the waters of the flood are remitted:
'For when, the air being dense, the light moisture is suspended in thin mists and the hollow cloud now gathers the black waters into its concavity, I shall pour forth rays, and at the topmost circle the curved image of the sun shall adorn for Me a beautiful bow, painting the vaults of heaven — which, warming with its light, shall dry up the rains and scatter the showers into air, even so far that the other part of the world may take to itself this token of a coming penalty: that it has more of fire, glowing red, and now less of rain.' Astonished at such commands, at which all things tremble, and eager at the holy promises, in which all rejoice, Noah and his sons together — those of firmer age — vie to cleave with mattocks the joyful fields, rich with mud and sweet ooze, and to wed the lands with seed; and now in spring the densest herb of food, poured out far and wide over the open plains, from its stalks, the milk congealed into grain, renders a manifold harvest with heaped-up interest:
And now the new vineyard, with its heavily-laden shoots, luxuriates in rich fruit, which, swelling with sweet nectar, it brings forth, and from the hard wood are born the cups [of wine]. By chance, while glad Noah celebrates the honours of the Lord, indulging in feasts and tasting the sweet cups, he felt the living juices, and, overcome by drowsiness, laid his limbs upon his couch, neglected by the faithful one; and the garment, rolled back, at once uncovered the secret parts of his body and moved your laughter, O most vile Ham, fount and origin of yourself; and you prepared to mingle your brothers, Shem firstborn and supreme Japheth, with the sprinkling of your guilt. Learn what it demands, that which... you alone... laughed at with a guffaw: the better judgement of the brothers deemed it a place worthy of dutiful service;
for, the covering snatched up and cast behind their backs, with a slow and hastening retreat, turning away, they covered their father's shame with their hands; and each of the two carried off the palm of piety, taken up between them. For after Noah's heart, freed from sleep, regains the tidings of the divine sense, he repaid his sons' desert with such a recompense:
'Cursed Ham, in doubt, you shall be a slave serving your father, a slave of your brothers; but you, Shem, greatest by birth, blessed of holy God, shall live, and as lord shall extend your younger brother — already by his seed — widely over the world, until in his brother's dwellings the numerous offspring sets up its seat, and, mingled with neighbouring peoples, fills the cities joined to it and those it shall have built.' Having said these things, the old man, when now he had run through a thousand years less ten times fifty — which the supreme [decree] refuses — his heart conscious of what was to come, dissolved in death, yielded, and left this world and its cares to his sons:
For it was granted to those void of guilt and removed from vice, and after sin — which is expiated by the first death — when God had inwardly filled the sanctuaries of the chosen mind with the Spirit and watered the friendly breast, to know all things at once and to behold present before them the things laid open, which fleeting time has snatched away, and which it is, and which one day it shall bring — the age to be plucked by descendants to come — and what the heavy earth, conceived for men's various uses, pours forth, and the liquid sea, and the lively air, and greedy fire too, which it begets from excessive tinder.
But after the condemned offspring lost so great a gift, and to the wretched nothing remained but to have known — their ancestors knew the mysteries — each one, mindful, recalling to himself the parents' admonitions and revolving all things, what was fitting to what by what means, in what part of things they might profit, [resolved] to store these things up of old in fixed elements of speech or in signs, committing solid words to a figure. Hence the arts drew their origin, which the letter, preserving the things of the ancients, sent down as records to the dull descendants; and, mingling the inventions of the new with the studies of the old, it gave hope to the astonished, and, moving men stirred by vain desire, drew them headlong into the unlawful searching out of the future:
Whether He gave it to the world — which some, in fleeting error, called a corporeal god — that which the omnipotent Founder alone possessed, and scattered through all the members of things, setting signs in motion as harbingers of the coming age, so that He might testify Himself to His nurslings through the whole mass, and the image of His mind might confess its Author, and it might be plainly set before things, what the abounding Ruler can grant to peoples and what He can take away, and at what time He forbids His servants to know whatever concerns His own, for whom the kingdoms of heaven are prepared — which the truthful agate-stone, the gem of Pyrrhus, proves, brought forth with the Muses and Apollo shut within it together with the world — what may we not suppose that God signified through all things, since He both betrayed the lies of the world by anticipation and marked beforehand the things to be feigned: or whether, rather, a single motion of the world bears all things on:
Or whether the grave inventor of death, not suffering the abundant material of fraud to lie idle, subjected all things to a malign judgement, by which he might bring fate upon the world. For while he reckons up the courses and varied returns of the stars, and enjoys the wondrous distinction of the heavens, he thus set for himself fixed times of doubtful favour, and the ready faculty and limits of harming, bringing it forth by varied effect at varied conjunctions, that he might scatter envy upon the stars and lay crimes upon the sacred heaven and the stars that adorn the world, while he feigns to the peoples that whatever he himself does is to come. Hence comes the art: that the fibre quivers, that the wing flashes, that the lightnings, with the clouds dashed together, mark out their tidings. For because, embracing with sagacious zeal the headlong motions and all chances, he who is the public enemy beforehand...
may render it, he remembers; he persuaded the peoples to deem divine the fabrications of his false poison. Not otherwise among the Ethiopians is freedom ruled by dogs as kings, by tyrants: when a verdict, agreeing with certain things, is sought from the motion of a body unaware of itself, and they reckon chance to be precepts. Nor does opinion, with its strong sense, presume these to be lesser signs on its own behalf; for Fortune refutes the gem of Pyrrhus for Galba: he indeed who could fashion a statue through so many lustres can also counterfeit a stone.
Using these frauds, he deluded those caught by the ardour of knowing the future and, thereupon, of conquering fate; with goading fear he brought the crime of the magic art upon men anxious in their zeal, whereby they should rather worship himself and, upon dedicated altars, offer impious incense, when the throng was betrayed by its parent. And soon Nimrod, born of a stock too little sane, a giant in bulk and in mind, set over the court of Babylon, a wicked hunter capturing the hearts of the Persians, led them away from the rites of the true Lord to fire. Nor only thus, with sagacious art, did he, the head of crimes, the world's culprit and his own enemy, delude with cares the minds of men too greedy for these things, but he rushed upon their very minds and descended deep into all their senses, and soon into their affections too.
For when a father's only child had dragged down with itself in bitter death the hope of his line, the unhappy father, prolonging his tears night and day and drawing out his complaints with dull lamentation — while he raves and seeks his snatched-away son in every thing, and holds the sweet spoils of his boyish years, or, devout, consoles his grief beyond fate with an image — so fed the love kindled by his longings, that, setting up the whole form in Parian marble, he believed in his madness that it lived with an enclosed sense and heard his complaints; and, on dedicated altars, transferred to the shades the worship of the supreme Author. That man, graver than all the guilty, surpasses even the teacher of crimes who founded the magic arts: that one is openly guilty, with frenzy and a profane mind; this one is harmful through piety.
This crime defiles all the more because it bears the appearance of virtue; for at once all the peoples that embraced it, offering this wickedness as endless funeral sacrifices to the dead, as the Alani now bear witness, held their dear parents each as their gods, and afterward their kings as well; under whose name lying Greece, while it labored to insinuate falsehoods among truths, added obscure shadows to its empty reasonings, excusing the tombs and the names buried in the sepulchres, until madness extended itself through all forms and fashioned gods even out of the meanest things and shameful members. Indeed there stood upon such shores, fostering errors and stirring up oracles, the inventor of death, in the wondrous regions of the world, employing for his ambushes either fire or boiling spring or caverns.
When earth breathed forth, Themis of old beguiled men with babbling winds, and afterward false Apollo imposed himself upon the peoples and, then compelled to change his seats, became the physician of the Leuci, and now, a fugitive crossing the Gallic countryside, with harmful deceit stirs up the Germanic nations and deceives barbarian hearts. But I return to the main theme from which I digressed, to that succession of the forefathers. When all the offspring of Noah, multiplying as they engendered, had filled the eastern lands, and Shinar saw its narrow fields shrink, the youth, who were to be scattered through the various parts of the world, broke forth into these saddest words of mournful complaint: «Alas, how uncertain is the state of life, which, once the appointed order has begun, carries men along, and thus does prosperity betray the trust once given, through varied courses, so that the sum of the prayer we sought turns out to our hurt.
Now it grieves us, if it is permitted to say so, that the numerous throng of grandchildren, hoped for through the prayers of our fathers, has grown; for a band born only to be scattered through the world in exile must perish among its kindred and likewise destroy them—what is more bitter to grief, it carries back its own dead by a living death; for we wretches are condemned to a sorrowful end, since with old age hastening on, we who in the ancient age would have passed beyond a hundred and ten years now, weary, scarcely reach three hundred and thirty—lest, exiles from our fatherland, we yield our naked and nameless limbs to be buried here and there in unknown graves. Therefore come, O young men, while the multitude supplies us strength, build up an everlasting fame by your deeds, a fame that may outlast you and know no harsh end.
Let us found a city, and beneath its name let us raise a tower so high that it may burst through the stars that paint the world and the vault of lofty Olympus, so that posterity, when we have left these lands, may think we have migrated into heaven.» Thus stirred, the youth despise the crags and whatever is cut from the hewn mountain: from the bowels of the subdued earth they bind with fire the molded bricks, and prefer to owe the material of their future work to their own labor. Bitumen, spread between, so binds each side that the surrounding walls imitate solid rock. Now the hastened tower rises, now it leaps with its summit over the clouds and enjoys the nearer brightness of the sky, when the Father thus begins to the partners of His own kingdom:
«Behold, what would the earthly phalanx in its fury not unbar—a host built by mortal hand, which believes it can touch the lofty heights and lead our heaven up to the ether. No one clothed in an earthly body has ascended to heaven, except Him who descended from heaven on high. But because—they are one race, and likewise one form of speech—the eager throng, following those who urge what is wicked by their consent, has not shaken it off; daring lofty things which nature would forbid to be done by itself, let them bear unpunished the losses of so vain a labor.
Yet, that they may learn that what they thought possible was forbidden them, let us now descend and confound with the voices of varied speech their hearts swollen with proud agreement, so that what the harmonious crowd has sinned in their crimes, the discord of a confused tongue, the better discord, may condemn.» He spoke; and as they were intent on the work and were raising the mass with astonished minds, oblivion first stole over them and crept in, and the perfecting of an unknown tongue came upon them. The masters, while their zeal for the work ceased, chide their hesitating companions: but no one returns a word that is understood, and if anyone tries to open his mouth, he hisses or pants with the snarling of broken speech, or shrieks, and imitates threats with a sharp groan. Thus a hand frustrated abandoned the vain labor undertaken with a perverse mind: now no one follows his neighbor, no one his father:
each one attaches and gathers to himself whomever he understands: all kinship perished, language makes the nation; they are scattered in equal companies and seek out separated lands under a different star. Not otherwise do the birds across the soft level plains of the field, whom the carefree day has persuaded to wander in mingled flocks and seek their food, when night draws near seek their leafy shelters; at once, in a gathered throng, each crowd follows its own and they mingle in rapid flight, where like color or like voice has led them: so then the one people scatters itself into parties, and each species becomes a nation, and they settle on far-removed lands and fill the world with peoples. Nor yet is this empty of a sacred gift, though it is the punishment of the guilty;
for although this vengeance was just—that those whom no reverence for heaven, which is the proper seat of the world and of the Father of things, has touched, should not even know themselves—yet greater is what such a punishment grants to the guilty offspring: that what the persuasion of a few men's guilt brought in may not again contaminate all and make the wickedness common; that bloody wars and death summoned upon peoples by raging madness may not be forever; and that it may be grievous to leave kindred behind when fellow-citizens are driven into exile with their offspring. For that the exiled crowd may never long for their own, it is needful—and that they may even of their own accord hate them: and therefore the variety of tongues procures this, that none may wish to remember his own.
Yet the sound of the Hebrew tongue and the ancient speech remained in those who, free from the guilt, were a not unjust portion of the sons whom Shem begot, whom the holy care of their forefather aids and whom reverence for the true God touches. But after madness, stirred up throughout the whole world—to say nothing of the abominable crime of the magic monster—drove the mortal race against trunks and stones and even into shapes hollowed by art from hard metal, and figures empty of light, and shattered the minds that looked toward things above and consigned them to the inert earth, the contagion of foul corruption involved these also.
Not otherwise than when the clouds of diseases, stirred up from the burning lands of the Ethiopians, with the heaven's path corrupted, have entangled the hollows of the air, greedy with the plague of the conqueror, when whoever has groaned at being struck by the swift lightning of death, at the same time falls himself, and whoever beheld another falling, fell, and the dire pestilence everywhere laid low the heaped-up dead in the fields and waged war: so then, the error, embracing with headlong mass of frenzy, returning to seize even those it had passed by, had seized them, until the offspring, run down through declining steps—the offspring to which Shem furnished an illustrious origin—came forth into Terah, who, having left his high seat of the Chaldean race, seeking another city and new customs and a dwelling-place, with all the stock of his own, at last remained a new settler among the Assyrians at Carrhae.
And when he had completed two hundred and five years, he passed away after the manner of the fathers. But his son Abram, a man worthy of heaven, even from the first threshold of life venerating the true God in his mind, had turned away from the rites of the heathen. After it was permitted to him, at his father's death, now to follow the commands of God without deceit, the Lord deigned to approach His servant with these admonitions: «Since in the whole world We have found you alone, whom sincere faith aids and reverence for Us, leave far behind your ancestral seats and the guilty lands and your polluted home: your whole kindred is profane and must be fled by you. To the fields of a better land you shall come with Me as your guide, that you may not be part of an unjust nation, you who can be the head of a holy one.
Then I will dedicate sacred blessings that shall abide for you, O blessed one, and I will render your name magnificent among all peoples, repaying all good things, or evils according to their deserts, to those whose differing will shall have been around you, through whom the blessing, poured out, shall be scattered to all the tribes and through an age renewed.» He spoke, and by His commands implanted in him a mind by which to serve, and made him trust His pious promises. No delay holds him back: with flocks of various kind and his father's servants, with his faithful wife, with the dear pledge of a brother whose name was Lot, departing by a straight path he takes up a journey unknown to himself. The softest fields offer glad ways, and the air, smiling upon the favoring south winds, is disturbed by no commotions, until he should enter the lands of Canaan, which the peoples whom Ham begot brought forth, and the most fertile country of Shechem.