Praefatio

Preface

Through ten times five years now, unless I am mistaken, I have lived; and besides, the seventh hinge wheels round the year, while I enjoy the rolling sun. The end presses on, and God now joins the day that is neighbour to old age. What useful thing have I done in so great a span of time? My first age wept beneath the crackling rods. Soon the toga taught me, stained with vices, to speak falsehoods, not without crime. Then wanton insolence and petulant luxury — alas, the shame and grief! — defiled my youth with the filth and mire of wickedness. Then quarrels armed my turbid spirit, and an ill-stubborn zeal for winning lay subject to harsh mishaps. Twice, by the governance of the laws, I held the reins of noble cities, gave civil right to the good, and terrified the guilty. At last the emperor's favour exalted me, raised to the rank of service, bidding me, taken up, stand nearer in the next degree. While this flying life ran on, grey hairs suddenly crept upon the old man, charging me that I had forgotten the old consulship of Salia, under whom my first day — how many winters it has rolled for me, and given back the roses to the meadows after the frost — the snow of my head proves. Will such things profit anything after the death of the flesh, whether goods or evils, when now death shall have abolished whatever it is that I had been? It must be said to me: "Whoever you are, the world, which it courted, your mind has lost. Those things are not God's, which it pursued, whose you shall be held." And yet, beneath the final end, let the sinful soul put off its folly: at least let it celebrate God with its voice, if it cannot by its merits. Let it carry the days through with hymns, nor let any night be free but that it sing the Lord; let it fight against heresies, expound the catholic faith, let it trample the rites of the nations, bring ruin, O Rome, upon your idols, devote a song to the martyrs, praise the apostles. While I write or speak these things, O may I flash forth from the bonds of the body, free, whither the nimble tongue shall have borne me with its last sound!