Psychomachia

Preface

The faithful old man, the first way of believing, Abraham, late father of a blessed seed, whose name an added syllable enlarged — called Abram by his parent, Abraham by God — who dedicated the pledge of his old age as a victim, teaching that, when one would offer at the altar, what is sweet to the heart, what is pious, what is sole, must be freely offered to the God we trust, persuaded us to fight against the profane nations, and the persuader gave his own example, nor to beget conjugal offspring before pleasing to God, born of Virtue the mother, than when, with much slaughter, the warlike spirit has conquered the monsters of the enslaved heart. By chance the fierce kings had taken Lot captive, him lingering in the criminal cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, which he cherished as a sojourner, mighty in the honour of his uncle's glory. Abram, roused by sinister tidings, hears that his kinsman, taken by the lot of war, serves in the harsh chains of the barbarians: he arms three hundred and thrice-six home-born slaves, that they may go to cut down the rear of the departing foe, whom rich treasure and a noble triumph held burdened, hampered by the captured forces. Nay, he himself draws the sword and, full of God, the proud kings, heavy with the mass of plunder, drives them put to flight, tramples the wounded, breaks the chains and frees the spoil: gold, girls, little children, necklaces, herds of mares, vessels, raiment, heifers. Lot himself, freed, the bonds broken, lifts his neck, free, chafed by the chains. Abram, the scatterer of the enemy's triumph, returns glorious, his brother's offspring recovered, lest the force of the worst princes should possess any lineage of the faithful blood. The priest gives the man, still fresh from so great a slaughter, heavenly viands, the priest of God, and the same a most powerful king, whose origin, from an unutterable source, hidden, reveals no author of himself, Melchizedek, of what stock, of what forefathers unknown, known to one God alone. Soon too the threefold trinity of angels revisits the huts of their aged host, and now Sarah, fertile in her withered womb, the bloodless mother, marvels at the gift of youth, rejoicing in an heir, and repenting of her laughter. This line was foremarked as a figure, which our life should re-carve with right step: that we must keep watch in the arms of faithful hearts, and that every portion of our body, which, captured, may serve foul lust, must be freed by forces gathered at home; that we are richly wealthy in home-born slaves, if we have known what three hundred, with twice nine added, can do in mystic figure. Soon Christ himself, who is the true priest, sprung from an unutterable and one parent, offering food to the blessed victors, will enter the little cottage of the chaste heart, showing the honour of the Trinity as guest. Then the soul, by the Spirit's embraces piously wedded, long without offspring, he will make fruitful of an eternal seed; then, late in childbed, possessing her dower, with a worthy heir she will fill the Father's house.

The Battle for the Soul

Christ, who have ever pitied the heavy labours of men, who are renowned for your Father's power and your own, yet one (for we worship one God under either name, yet not him alone, since you are God from the Father, O Christ) — declare, our King, by what soldiery the armed mind can drive out faults from the cavern of our breast, as often as, within, the senses troubled, a sedition arises and the brawl of maladies wearies the soul, what defence then, for the guarding of liberty, or what battle-line withstands the furies mingled among the heart's recesses, with a better hand. For not, good leader, have you exposed the worshippers of Christ, poor in great virtues and lacking strength, to the ravaging vices; you yourself bid the salutary squadrons fight it out in the besieged body, you yourself arm the mind with excellent arts, by which, mighty to assail the mockeries of the heart, it may battle for you and conquer for you. The means of conquering is at hand, if it be allowed close at hand to mark the very faces of the Virtues and the monsters that struggle against them with hostile force. First Faith seeks the field, to fight under the doubtful lot of the duel, disordered in rustic garb, her shoulders bare, her hair unshorn, her arms exposed; for the sudden heat of glory, fervid for new battles, remembers neither to be girt with weapons nor with covering, but, trusting in a strong breast and refreshed limbs, she challenges the perils of the mad war, to be broken. Behold, the Worship of the old Gods first dares to strike Faith as she provokes, with united force. She, rising taller, shatters the hostile head and the temples decked with fillets, and presses to the ground its mouth, sated with the gore of beasts, and with her foot tramples the eyes crushed in death, and the broken commerce of the intercepted throat cramps the malignant soul, and long gasps weary the difficult death. The victorious legion exults, which, a thousand strong, Faith the queen had heartened with martyrs against the foe; now she crowns her brave comrades, for the glory won, with flowers and bids them be clothed in glowing purple. Then, ready to clash on the grassy field, the virgin Chastity gleams in beautiful arms, whom, having girt up the firebrands of her country, the Sodomite Lust attacks, and hurls a pitchy pine with burning sulphur into her face, and assails her modest eyes with flames, and tries to overwhelm them with foul smoke. But the dauntless virgin strikes with a stone the right hand of the blazing fury and the fiery darts of the dire she-wolf, and beats off the brands struck from her sacred face. Then she crosses the throat of the disarmed harlot with a driven sword; that one vomits hot vapours clotted with filthy blood; thence the sordid spirit, breathing out, pollutes the neighbouring airs. "This she has," cries the victorious queen, "this shall be your last end; ever shall you lie laid low, nor shall you dare any more to scatter death-bearing flames upon the menservants or maidservants of God, whose inmost vein of chaste mind glows from Christ's lamp alone. That you, O harasser of men, could, your strength resumed, grow warm again with the breath of your extinguished head, after the neck of Holofernes, cut off, washed the Assyrian bridal-chamber, soaked with lustful blood, and harsh Judith spurned the gem-decked couch of the adulterous leader and curbed his incestuous frenzies with the sword, a woman bearing a famous trophy from the foe with no trembling hand, my avenger, bold from heaven! But perhaps the matron, less than brave, fighting still under the shadow of the law, while she figures forth our times, in which true virtue flowed into earthly bodies, to cut off the great head through her weak ministers — is there any right, after the childbearing of the untouched virgin, yet left to you? After the childbearing of the virgin, since which the ancient origin deserted the nature of the human body, and a lofty power sowed new flesh, and the unwed woman conceived God, Christ, man from a mortal mother, but godhead with the Father. Thence all flesh is now divine which conceives him and takes the nature of God by a partner's covenant, for the Word made flesh did not cease to be what it had been, the Word, while it cements the use of flesh, its majesty indeed not degenerating through the use of flesh, but drawing the wretched to nobler things. He remains what he ever was, beginning to be what he was not: we are no longer what we were, increased by being born into the better: he conferred on me and remained for himself, nor did God lessen his own by ours, but, while he grants his own to ours, he bore us to the heavenly gifts. These are the gifts, that you lie conquered, muddy Lust, nor can you, after Mary, break through my rights. You are prince to the road of death, you the gate of doom, defiling bodies, you plunge souls into Tartarus. Hide your head, now a cold plague, in the grim abyss; fall, brothel; seek the shades, be shut in Avernus, and be thrust into the dark bottom of night, let the fiery shallows roll you under, the black shallows, and the sulphurous whirlpool whirl you through the sounding pools, nor try the worshippers of Christ any more, greatest of furies, that bodies, purged, may be kept for their king." She had said this, and Chastity, glad at the death of slain Lust, washed the stained sword in Jordan's waves, to which the gore had clung with ruddy dew and had stained the gleaming iron with the wound; she purifies, then, the victorious blade, taught by the river-laver, a victor, abolishing by baptism the stain of the enemy throat; nor, content now to lay the purified sword in the sheath, lest scabrous rust should seize the brightness washed clean of foul filth, in the catholic temple, at the altar of the divine font, she consecrates it, where it may shine, gleaming with eternal light. Behold, modest Patience stood with grave countenance through the midst of the ranks, unmoved, and the various tumults, and the wounds and the vitals pierced by stiff javelins she watched, her eyes fixed, and remained unhurried. Her, swelling Anger from afar, fervid with foaming jaws, twisting her bloody eyes suffused with gall, provokes, with weapon and voice, as one outside the war, and, impatient of delay, attacks with a pike, rails with her mouth, shaking the shaggy crests on her helmeted crown. "Behold for you, free spectator of our War," she says, "receive the death-bearing iron with untroubled breast, nor grieve, for it is base for you to have groaned at pain." So she speaks, and the hissing pine-spear follows the insults, quivering through the soft south winds, and, sure, beneath the very stomach is borne and dashed with a straight blow, but it springs back, struck off by the hard repulse of the corselet. For provident Virtue had put on a triple-woven breastplate, with adamant linked, upon her shoulders, and the scaly webs of iron she had fastened everywhere through the twisted mail. Thence Patience remains quiet, strong against all the storms of weapons and enduring, impenetrable. Nor is she moved by the javelin of the monster raging beyond custom, awaiting Anger about to perish by her own strength. That is, after the barbarous warrior had spent her unconquered arms in chafing, and with a cloud of javelins had wearied in vain her superfluous right hand, when the windy weapons had fallen in light flight, and the broken spear-shafts lay from empty casts, her wicked hand turns to the hilt, and with flashing sword the lofty right hand, leaning into the blow from beside the ear, is raised, and, balanced, strikes the middle of the brain, but the brazen helmet, formed of tempered metal, struck, gives back a ringing and blunts the edge, hard, rebounding; the rebel mail too breaks the dashed steel, while, not knowing how to yield, it receives the empty assaults of the striker and, safe, resists. Anger, when she saw the fragments of the truncated point and that the sword had crashed afar into tiny parts, her hand now holding the hilt without the weight of the iron, out of her mind, unhappy, casts away the ivory and the treacherous signs of her shameful glory, and far off spurns the grim memorials, and is fiercely kindled to her own death. A missile, one of the many that she had scattered in vain, she takes from the dust of the field for perverse uses: she fixes the smoothed wood in the ground and, the point turned, pierces herself and passes the lung with a warm wound. Over her standing, Patience says: "We have conquered the vice exulting, by our wonted virtue, without any risk of blood or life; our law holds this kind of war, to extinguish furies and all the soldiery of evils and their rabid forces by enduring. Madness is its own foe, and by raging destroys itself, and fiery Anger dies by her own weapons." Having said this, she cuts the midmost cohorts unharmed, accompanied by a noble man; for Job, close by, had clung amid the hard wars of the unconquered mistress, stern still of brow and panting with much slaughter, but now, smiling with grim face at his closed ulcers, and reckoning through the number of his scars the sweated thousands of fights, his rewards, the foe's disgrace, the goddess bids him rest at last from all the din of arms, and to multiply each lost possession with captured wealth, and to bring back what shall not perish. She herself breaks the masses of legions and the clashing columns, walking untouched through the wound-bearing showers, the one companion associated with all the virtues, and brave Patience mingles her aid. No Virtue enters the double-edged struggle without this Virtue, for she is widowed whom Patience does not strengthen. By chance, puffed up, through the scattered squadrons swollen Pride was flitting on an unbridled horse, which she had covered with a lion's skin and had laden its strong flanks with shaggy hair, that, propped on the beast's mane, she might bear herself the more boastfully, looking down on the ranks with swollen disdain. Her brave head she had heaped on high with a tower of hair, that an added pile might increase the built-up curls and her lofty brow bear a high peak. A linen cloak, gathered at the top, met in a fold from her shoulders, tying a rounded knot from her breast; a border, flowing from her neck in a thin veil, catches the hostile breezes in its swelling weaves. Nor less does the steed grow proud with unstable fierceness, impatient to be reined with the wet bit at the mouth. Hither and thither, gnashing, it turns its back, denied the liberty of flight, and swells under the pressed reins. Showing herself in this guise, the windy virago overtops both battle-lines and turns about her bedecked horse, and with face and voice threatens, gazing at the opposing wedge, which, with scanty soldiery and poor arms for the war, the Humble Mind had gathered — a queen indeed, but needing another's aid and not enough confident in her own array; she had joined Hope to herself as ally, whose wealth, raised and suspended from the ground, is a rich realm. Therefore, after ill-sound Pride beholds the Humble Mind, furnished with cheap weapons with no display, she pours herself into speech with bitter words: "Are you not ashamed, O wretches, with plebeian soldiery to attack illustrious leaders and to provoke with the sword a race noted for its titles, for whom warlike valour bore ancient riches and gave the glad, grass-clad hills to be trodden by its rule? Now a naked stranger strives, if it be lawful, to drive out the ancient kings! Behold those who wish our sceptres to fall as plunder into their right hands! Behold those who strive to furrow our fallows and to ravage the captured fields with a guest's plough, and to drive out the hardy farmers by war! Surely, O laughable rabble, in the hours of birth we embrace the whole man and the warm limbs from the mother, and scatter the force of our powers through the limbs of the fresh nursling, and we all rule in the raw bones. What place was given to you then in our seat, when the realms grew, born together with congenital sways, in equal strength? For born under one light, both the house and the lords, we grew up in equal years, since the new creature, coming forth from the enclosed boundary of paradise, fled into the wide world, and the venerable Adam took on skin garments, naked still, had he not followed our precepts. Who is this foe that now rises from unknown shores, inopportune, sluggish, unhappy, degenerate, mad, who claims for himself so late a right, an exile till now? Surely the trifles of empty fame will be believed, which bid the wretched at some time to desire the hope perhaps of a future good, that slow solaces may stroke their soft sloth with sluggish musing of things. Why should not idle hope stroke those whom, in this dust, Bellona does not rouse as recruits with grim trumpet, and lukewarm virtue dissolves their unwarlike minds? Or is the cold liver of Chastity useful for war? Or is the tender work of Piety sweated out in arms? How it shames me, O Mars and conscious valour, to stand against such a line and to provoke trifles with the sword, and to match my right hand with virgin choirs, where there is ever needy Justice and poor Honour, dry Sobriety, Fasting with white face, Modesty barely suffused with thin blood, open Simplicity, exposed to every wound without covering, and the Humble Mind, prostrate on the ground, not free to judge herself, whom her trembling betrays as degenerate! I will see to it that this weak band be trodden under foot like stubble; for I do not deign to break them through with hard swords, and to dye the iron with chill blood and to disgrace warriors with a frail triumph." Crying out such things, she urges the swift horse with spurs and rashly flies with loose reins, desiring to lay low the humble foe with the thrust of the horse's boss and to trample the cast-down ruin. But she falls headlong into a pit which cunning Fraud by chance had dug secretly in the cut-through plain, Fraud, one of the detestable plagues of vices, crafty deviser of deceit, who, foreknowing the war, had spoiled the plain with insidious trenches, lurking on the enemy's side, that the trench might catch the rushing wedges and devour the plunged columns; and lest the wary line could detect the deceitful pit, she had covered the edges with twigs, and had counterfeited the field with turf laid over. But the humble queen remained, though unaware, in a further place, nor had yet come to the cover of Fraud or trodden the snares of the malignant pit. This trick, while she is borne in swift course, that rider fell into, and suddenly laid open the blind gap. Prone, she is rolled with the falling horse's neck, and beneath the press of its breast is whirled, her legs broken. But the Virtue of calm governance, when she beholds the levity crushed beneath the death of the lying monster, bends her step moderately, and raises her face too sparingly, and tempers her joys with a kindly countenance. To the lingering one Hope, faithful comrade, runs up and offers the avenging sword and inspires love of glory; she, the foe grasped by her seized hair, drags her bloody forth and tilts back her face with her left hand recalling it, then cuts off the head from the bent neck of one praying and lifts up the throat by the dripping hair. Hope rebukes the extinguished vice with holy mouth: "Cease to speak great things; God breaks all that is proud, the great fall, the puffed-up crack, the swollen are pressed down. Learn to lay down your haughtiness, learn to beware the pit before your feet, whoever you are who threaten on high. The widespread saying of our Christ thrives, that the humble climb the heights and the fierce return to the depths. We have seen Goliath, dreadful in limbs and spirit, fall by a weak hand: a boyish right hand hurled a pebble at him with the sling's whistle and pierced his forehead, transfixed with a hollow wound. He, menacing, stiff, boastful, savage, bitter, while he swells unsubdued, while he seethes formidable, while he displays himself, while he terrifies the airs with his shield, having proved what the sport of a small boy can do, the turbid warrior succumbed to tender years. That boy then, following me by the manhood of virtue, stretched his flourishing spirit upward into my realms, for a sure home is kept for me beneath the feet of the almighty Lord, and the victors, the stain of faults slain, take hold of me as I call them to the heights." She spoke, and, grazing the air with golden wings, the virgin snatches herself to heaven; the Virtues marvel at her going and lift their spirits, willing to go together in their vows, did not earthly wars delay the leaders. They contend with the vices and keep themselves for their rewards. From the western bounds of the world the foe had come, Luxury, long lavish of her extinguished fame, her hair anointed, her eyes wandering, her voice languid, ruined by delights, for whom pleasure was the cause of life, to soften the nerveless mind, wantonly to drain pleasant allurements and to loose the enfeebled senses. And then, sodden, she was belching her all-night supper, because by chance, lying near dawn at the table, she had heard the hoarse clarions, and thence, leaving the warm cups, with a step slipping through wine and balsams, drunk, she went to war, the flowers trodden under foot. Yet not on foot, but borne in a comely chariot, she captured the wounded hearts of the marvelling men. O new manner of fighting! No winged arrow, struck, flies from the string, nor does the whistling lance dart from the twisted thong, nor does her right hand threaten the spear; but, wanton, she casts violets and with rose-petals fights, and pours baskets through the hostile ranks. Thence, the Virtues coaxed, the alluring breath breathes a tender poison through their weakened bones, and the ill-sweet scent tames their mouths and breasts and arms, and softens their iron sinews, their strength crushed. They cast down their spirits as if conquered and lay aside their darts, basely, alas, their right hands languishing, stupefied, while they marvel at the chariot gleaming with the varied light of gems, while at the reins crackling with thin gold-leaf and the axle of solid gold of precious weight they gape with fixed gaze, and at the row of spokes white with silver, which the topmost curve of the wheels holds in an orb of pale electrum. And now the whole faithless line was passing over of its own accord, the standards turned, into the love of surrender, willing to serve Luxury and to suffer the rule of the flowing mistress and be held by the loose law of the eating-houses. Sobriety, the bravest Virtue, groaned at so grim a crime, that her comrades withdrew from the right wing and that the once-unconquered band perished without slaughter. The lofty standard of the cross, which the good leader had borne in the front of the line, she sets, the point fixed, and restores the wavering wing with biting words, goading their spirits now with reproaches, now with prayer mingled: "What madness drives your mad minds in darkness? Whither do you rush? To whom do you give your necks? What chains, at last — for shame — is it your pleasure to bear on your armed arms, lilies gleaming amid yellow garlands and crowns blooming with rust-coloured flower? Does it please to give your palms, now used to war, to these bonds, your stiff arms to be knotted with these knots, that the gilded turban, confining the manly hair, may drink in the nard poured on with its saffron band, after the seals inscribed with oil on your brow, by which the royal unguent was given and the perennial chrism, that the soft gait may sweep its footprints with a train and the silken cloaks float on the unmanned limbs, after the immortal tunic which with skilled thumb kind Faith wove, giving an impenetrable covering to the washed breasts, to which she herself had granted to be reborn — thence to nocturnal banquets, where the huge goblet spits out the foaming waste of poured Falernian onto the table, the ladles dripping, where the couches, moist with much wine, and the carvings are wetted with old dew? Has the thirst of the desert, then, fallen from your minds, has that fount fallen, given to the fathers from the rock, which the mystic rod drew forth, leaping from the top of the cleft stone? Did the angelic food flow into your fathers' first tents, which now, happier in a late age, the evening people eats from the body of Christ? Steeped in these viands, now base surfeit of Luxury hales you, importunate, to the drunken brothel, and the men whom neither roaring Anger nor idols had compelled to yield in war, a drunken dancing-girl has bent! Stand, I pray, mindful of yourselves, mindful too of Christ. What is your tribe, what your glory, who your God and king, who your Lord, it is fitting to remember; you, noble seed of Judah, even to the mother of God, by whom God himself should be man, came down through a long line of nobles. Let the most renowned glory of David, trained in continuous cares of wars, rouse your excellent minds; let Samuel rouse you too, who forbids to touch the spoil from the rich foe, nor suffers the conquered king, uncircumcised, to live, lest the surviving prey should summon the placid victor to renewed battles; he thinks it a crime now to spare the captured tyrant, but for you, on the contrary, it is your wish to be conquered and to yield. Repent — if any reverence of the supreme godhead move you — of having wished to follow this so-sweet evil by unspeakable betrayal; if you repent, the error harms not. Jonathan repented of having profaned his sober fast with sweet honeycomb, with the savour of the sceptre and the honey alas ill-tasted, while the soothing pleasure of the kingdom delighted the youth and loosed the sworn rites. But because he repented, that lot is not lamentable, nor does the cruel sentence dye his father's axes; behold, I, Sobriety, if you are ready to conspire together, open the way for all the virtues, that ill-counselling Luxury, crowded with much henchman, may pay her penalties with her legion under Christ the judge." So having spoken, she offers the Lord's cross to the fervid team coming on, holding the venerable wood against the very reins, which when the fierce horses dreaded, flashing with spread-out horns and on their high brow, they turn their headlong flight in blind terror, scattered over the broken ground; the charioteer is borne back, the reins drawn in vain, and her hair, dripping with dust, is fouled. Then too the whirl of the wheels entangles the dislodged mistress; for prone beneath the axle she slips and delays the chariot with the torn brake. Sobriety adds a deadly wound to the prostrate one, hurling a millstone from the part of a crag, since chance offered this blow to the standard-bearer, who bore no darts in her hand but the ensign of war: chance drives the stone, that it might break the breath of the middle mouth, and mingle her lips with the hollowed palate, the teeth loosed inward, the tongue cut off, and fills the mangled gullet with morsels of blood. At the unwonted viands the throat grows raw, and, devouring the bones liquefied, she vomits up the morsels she had drunk. "Drink now your own gore, after the many cups," the virgin says, rebuking her, "let these be at last your dishes, grim, in exchange for the too-sweet ones of the past age. The taste of bitter death roughens the wanton allurements of life, and the last savour with its dreadful draught." By the slaughter of their leader, scattered, the trifling line fled in trembling fear. Jest and Petulance first cast away their cymbals; for with such weapons they played at war, plotting wounds with the resounding rattle. Love turns his back, a fugitive; his weapons smeared with poison and his bow slipped from his shoulders and his falling quiver, he himself, pale with fear, leaves behind his own footsteps. Pomp, the displayer of empty splendour, of her vain robe is stripped and made bare; the torn garlands of beauty are dragged, and the gold of her neck and crown is loosed, and discordant Discord disorders her gems. It does not irk Pleasure to go with chafed feet through the sharp thickets, since a greater force compels her to endure the bitter flight; the dread of peril hardens her tender soles to the torturing road. Wherever the fleeing band bears itself in trembling courses, losses lie strewn — the hair-pin, the head-bands, the fillets, the brooch, the bridal-veil, the breast-band, the diadem, the necklace. From these Sobriety and the whole soldiery of Sobriety keep themselves, and her spoils, and tread the condemned stumbling-blocks under chaste feet, nor, the brow severe, does she turn her eyes, winking, to the joys of plunder. Avarice is said, her capacious bosom girt up, to have snatched with hooked hand whatever precious thing devouring Luxury had left, gaping with vast mouth at the fair playthings, and gathering the fragments of fallen gold among the heaps of sand. Nor is it enough to have filled her ample folds; she delights to cram her purses with base gain and to distend her bags, heavy with thefts, which her left hand, concealing, covers, and veils with the covering of her left side; for her swift right hand scrapes off the plunder and plies its brazen nails on the spoils. Care, Famine, Fear, Anxiety, Perjuries, Pallor, Corruption, Guile, Falsehoods, Sleeplessness, Squalor, varied Eumenides, are driven as the monster's retinue; nor less meanwhile, after the manner of rabid wolves, the Crimes leap up, ravaging over the whole field, created from the black milk of their mother Avarice. If a brother-comrade has seen his brother's helmet gleam with tawny thunderstones, he does not fear to draw his sword and to strike his comrade's head with allied blade, to snatch the gems from the kindred head. If a son by chance has seen his father's corpse, slain by the lot of war, he rejoices to have snatched the belts shining with bosses and the bloody spoils: Civil Discord drives off kindred plunder, nor does insatiate Love of Having spare its own pledges, and impious Famine despoils her own sons. Such funerals did Avarice, conqueror of the world, deal among the peoples, laying low a hundred thousand men with various wounds: this one, his light taken away and his eyes dug out, as if in the gloom of night, she suffers to wander blind, and to go through many stumbling-blocks, nor to test the peril before him with a staff. Another she takes by his gaze and deceives the seeing one, displaying some notable thing, which while he seeks, he is caught off guard by a weapon, and, wounded beneath the very heart, sighs at the iron secretly driven in. Many she forces, hurled into open fires, nor suffers them to avoid the hearths where gold seethes, which the avaricious watcher, about to burn, equally seeks. Every kind of men she snatches; all mortal things she seizes with destruction, nor is any vice of the lands more violent, which wraps the age of the worldly people in such great disasters and condemns it to Gehenna. Nay, she dared, if it is worthy to believe it, to attack with her hand even the Lord's priests, who by chance were waging the battles as leaders before the front line, for the glory of the virtues, and were filling the clarions with great breath. And perhaps she would have dyed the iron with innocent blood, had not Reason, mighty in arms, ever the one faithful comrade of the Levite race, cast her shield before and covered her bright nurslings from the attack of the black foe. They stand safe by the help of Reason, they stand free from every storm and brave of spirit; scarcely on the skin's surface, grazing a few, the point of Avarice wounds them with a slight wound. The wicked plague stood amazed that her weapons were repelled far from the chaste throats of the heroes; she groans and, burning, begins with furious words: "We are conquered, alas, sluggish, nor does our power carry through its wonted force; the savage violence of harming languishes, which had been wont with unconquered strength to break all the hearts of men everywhere; for so iron a nature has hardened no man, whose rigour would spurn bronze, or be impenetrable to our gold. Every disposition we have given to death; tender, harsh, hard, learned and unlearned alike, brute and wise, and likewise chaste, unchaste, the breasts have lain open to my right hand; I alone, therefore, have snatched whatever Styx hides in its greedy gulfs; to us the richest Tartarus owes the peoples it holds, what the ages roll is ours, what the world stirs, the mad businesses, is ours. How comes it that prevailing glory deserts the very strong forces, and fortune mocks empty arms? The tawny image of the ruddy coin is foul to the worshippers of Christ, the emblems of silver are foul, and every treasure grows cheap to their eyes with darkening honour. What do these learned disdains intend? Did we not lead a triumph over Iscariot, who, great among the disciples and a guest of God, while he deceives at the covenant of the table one by no means ignorant, and joins his hand at the dish, fell upon our weapon with flaming greed, having bought an infamous field from the blood of his friend the godhead, to pay with a strangled neck for his acres? Jericho too had seen, amid its own funerals, how much our hand could do, when the victor Achan fell. Noted for slaughters and proud of the mural ruin, he succumbed to the gold captured from the conquered foes, while, gathering the notable anathema from the forbidden ashes, insatiable, he drinks in the mournful spoils of the ruins. Him neither his noble tribe nor his ancestral people's parent Judah helped, though noble, with Christ one day his kin, and a patriarch happy in such a descendant. To whom the example of his race is pleasing, let the form of his death please too: let the punishment be the same for those whose race is one. Why do I delay to deceive by some fraud either the fellow-countrymen of Judah or the fellow-countrymen of the high priest (for Aaron is called the highest), unequal in the encounters of war? It matters not whether the palm be won by arms or by guile." She had spoken, and put off her grim face and furious arms, and transforms herself into an honourable guise; she becomes a Virtue in appearance and face and grave dress, whom they call Thrift, whose heart it is to live sparingly and to keep her own; as if she snatched nothing avariciously, she has earned, as it were diligent, the praise of a shadowed art. In her guise lying Bellona fits herself, that she may be thought not greedy plague, but sparing virtue; moreover with the tender covering of piety she covers her snaky hair, that the white cloak may dissemble her hidden rage, and, spread over her dire fury — which is to snatch and steal and greedily to hide her gains — she may boast the care of her sons under a sweet name. Mocking with such images, she deceives the too-credulous hearts of men, and they follow the funereal monster while they believe it the work of virtue; the impious Fury takes the easy ones by their consent and cramps them with tenacious manacles. With the leaders dismayed and the bands disordered, the line of the virtues wavered in the error of the two-formed monster, not knowing what it should believe friendly in her or what mark as hostile: a shifting and double doom makes the uncertain sight slippery beneath the doubtful image, when suddenly into the midst of the field gnashing Action leaps forth to the aid of her allies, and takes up the fight, last in the rank of the soldiery, but the one to lay her hand on the duel, lest anything grim should still remain. She had cast every burden from her shoulders, she went stripped of all garments and had eased herself of much weight, once oppressed by riches and heavy talents, free now by pitying the poor, whom, generous, she had kindly cherished, pouring out, well prodigal, her ancestral wealth. Now enriched, she was looking at her empty coffers as a pledge, counting the eternal sum at returning interest. She shuddered at the thunderbolt of unconquered Virtue, and, helpless of mind, Avarice clung, her senses stupefied, sure to die: for what way of fraud remains, that she, the very treader of the world, conquered by worldly allurements, should faint and entangle herself again in the spurned gold? The bravest Virtue invades the trembling one with hard knots of arms, and, the throat crushed, breaks the bloodless and dry gullet; the pressed bonds of the arms are tied beneath her chin, and from the narrow throat they wring out her soul, which, snatched by no wound, palpitates, and, the entrance of breath cut off, suffers an enclosed death in the prison of her veins. She, pressing on the struggling one with knees and heels, pierces and bursts the ribs and the panting flanks, then strips the spoils from the extinguished body; the sordid bits of gold, the raw material not yet recooked in the furnace, the purses too, eaten away by frequent moths, and the coins overspread with green rust, the victor scatters, long kept, and to the needy distributes them, and gives the poor a captive's gift. Then, looking round at the crowd thronging with exultant face, eager, in the midst of the thousands she cries: "Loose your battle-array, you just, and depart from arms! The cause of so great an evil lies slain; the gluttony of gain perishing, the saints may rest. The highest rest is to wish nothing beyond what due use demands, as simple nourishment, and one garment may cover the weak and refresh the limbs moderately, nor draw the fulfilled measure of nature beyond itself. About to enter on your journey, take no wallet, nor, provident, go furnished with the bearing of a second tunic, nor let tomorrow's matter trouble you, lest food fail your belly: the daily viands return with the sun. Do you not see how no bird thinks of tomorrow, nor, unanxious, believes itself to be fed, God providing? The cheap birds trust their food will not fail, and to the sparrows, sold for a small coin, there belongs an undoubted faith that the mighty Lord cares lest they perish; you, the care of God, and the face of Christ too, do you doubt that your author would ever desert you? Tremble not, men; the giver of life is also the giver of food. Seek the light-bearing pasture by heavenly doctrine, which, multiplying hope, may feed an inviolable age, forgetful of the body: mindful is he who founded it to supply food and to cherish the needy limbs." At these words the cares were removed; Fear and Toil and Force and Crime and Fraud, the denier of plighted faith, driven off, turned the ground. Then kindly Peace, the foes put to flight, drives off war; all terror is ungirt and unbuckles its flanks, the belts torn off, the garment, descending to the very feet, flows down, and private modesty tempers the swift step. The curved bronzes of the horn-blowers are silent, the appeasable sword fills its sheath, and, the dust of the field laid, the clear face of the cloudless liquid day returns, you might see the purple light of heaven grow bright. The chaste bands felt the face of the Thunderer smile above them, the squadrons glad, the strife driven off, and Christ rejoice over his own victors from the citadel of heaven, and open the Father's deep to his servants. Happy Concord gives the signal to bring back to the camp the victorious eagles and to gather into the tents. Never was there so great a spectacle, nor honour equal to any soldiery, when, the columns disposed, she led the twofold ranks far in ordered files, the company of foot chanting, but from the other part the cavalry with resounding hymns, no otherwise than the victor Israel sang, looking back at the gaping rage of the sea menacing behind, when now, advancing, he was treading the further shores with dry foot, and, hissing along the edge of his heel, the mountain of the hanging water rushed down and caught the black Nile-dwellers in the lowest depth, the gulf falling back, and the wave, the bay flowing back, now gave to the fishes their swimming, and headlong covered the naked sands. The throng of God beat the melodious timbrels with sounding plectrum, celebrating the marvel, memorable for the ages, the work of the Almighty: that, amid the straits, the waves cut between liquid banks and the storm standing still, the suspended masses of water could grow and be held. So, the race of vices stormed, the mystic songs of the virtues resound in sweet-toned psalms. They had come to the jaws of the camp gate, where the bars give a narrow entrance of the threshold, with a two-leaved hinge. Here arises an unforeseen, lamentable storm of Evil by craft, the envious troubler of placid Peace, which would so vex with sudden disaster the triumph. Amid the crowded wedges Concord by chance, while, surrounded, she bears her step now within the safe walls, receives the hidden point of a lurking vice from a blow in her left side, although the squalid webs ringed her body with the chain-mail woof of iron, sewn with hooks, and spurned the point of the wound, nor did the threads, tenacious with rigid knots, suffer the dashed weapon to penetrate to the vitals. Yet a rare seam gave passage to the steel by a thin prick, where the outermost scale of the polished tunic binds itself to the fold and joins its edges to itself. This wound the crafty fighter of the conquered side dealt, and lay in wait for the unwary victors. For, the line of the Faults driven off, Discord had entered our wedges, having feigned an allied shape. Her torn cloak, far off, and the scourge built up of a manifold serpent, lay in the midst of the carnage of the fields. She herself, displaying her hair wreathed with leafy olive, answers gladly to the festive dances. But she hides a dagger beneath her dress, seeking you, greatest Virtue, you alone of so great a number, Concord, with grim fraud; but it was not allowed to break the vitals of the sacred body; only at the surface, grazed by the topmost touch, the wounded skin marked a thin stream with blood. The Virtue, suddenly troubled, cries out: "What is this? What hostile hand lurks here, what wounds our prosperous fortune and brandishes iron amid such joys? What does it profit to have quelled the unconquered Furies in war and to have received all that is holy, the vices perishing, if a Virtue falls under peace?" The trembling bands turned their sorrowing eyes: the gore, betraying the wound, dripped from the iron garment, and soon fear too betrays the foe standing close at hand; for the pallor on her face, conscious of the bold deed, gives the signs of guilt, and, detected, her languishing hand and her pale colour tremble. Speedily the whole legion of the Virtues stands round with drawn points, seeking in fervid tumult both her race and her name, her country and her sect, and the God she worships and by whose mission she came, whence she comes; she, bloodless with troubling fear: "I am called Discord, my surname Heresy; my God is many-coloured," she says, "now lesser, or greater, now double and now single, when it pleases, airy and seen from a phantasm, or innate is the soul, as often as I will to mock the godhead; Belial is my teacher, and my house and region is the world." The queen of the Virtues, Faith, bore no longer the blasphemy of the captured monster, but stops the words of the speaker and closes the breathing of her voice with a javelin, transfixing the polluted tongue with the rigid point. The deadly beast is torn by countless hands; each one snatches for himself a bit to scatter to the air, to give to dogs, to offer of his own accord to the greedy crows, to thrust into the foul sewers reeking with mire, to commit for the sea-monsters to have. The whole corpse, torn apart, is divided among the foul animals, and dreadful Heresy perishes, her limbs burst. The prosperity of things and morals being therefore composed into common goods, after it fell to the lot of the peaceful Senses to dwell within safety and to enjoy a station and to be guarded by a rampart, and to loose their cares into leisure, a tribunal is built in the midst of the camp in a higher place, which a mound raises with sharp peak into a watchtower, whence the free sight, with unhindered air, surveys all things set beneath it far around. This summit sincere Faith and Concord together, sisters sworn by a sacred covenant under the love of Christ, ascend; soon too the holy and dear pair overtops the lofty tribunal with equal right of power; on the topmost mound they stand conspicuous, and bid the thronging peoples stand by. From all the camps all run up eager, no idle part of the Mind lies hidden, which, intercepted in any fold of the body, through its receptacles covers itself in degenerate languor; all the tents lie open, the curtains drawn, the sails unfurled, lest any dweller waste away, snoring in dark concealment. With attentive ears the assembly awaits what Concord the prince may summon the victors to after the wars, what law she and Faith may wish to add to the virtues. Concord first bursts into speech with such address: "A heaped-up glory has now indeed fallen to you, O most faithful pledges of the Father, of the Lord Christ: the savage barbarism is extinguished by much struggle, which had hedged round the natives of the holy city and pressed the men with iron and flame. But public rest stands on private friendships in country and forum: domestic rupture troubles the affair of the people, and what disagrees within totters abroad. Therefore beware, men, lest the sentence be discordant in our Senses, lest a foreign sect be born in our roofs, inflamed by hatreds, since a divided will confounds the two-formed secrets with various fibres. Let love join what we know; let what we live conspire in one zeal: nothing dissociable is firm. And as Jesus comes as mediator between man and God, who joins the mortal to the Father, that the fleshly may not stand apart from the eternal Spirit, and that, as one God, he may be both, so, whatever we do by act of mind and body, let one spirit weave with single-fashioned joinings. Peace is the full work of virtue, peace the height of labours, peace is the prize of the finished war and the prize of peril. By peace the stars thrive, by peace the iron things stand fast. Nothing is pleasing to God without peace: he does not approve a gift brought to the altar, though you desire it, if your troubled mind should hate your brother in the cavern of an unpacified breast, nor, if for Christ's name you, a martyr, should leap into the flame-haired fires, keeping an unlovely vow under crooked spleen, will it profit to have spent your precious soul for Jesus, since the conclusion of merit is peace. Peace is not puffed up, swells not, nor envies a rival brother, endures all things patient and believes all things, never grieves when hurt, forgives all offences, longs to forestall the setting of the light with pardon, anxious lest the conscious sun leave a steadfast anger. Whoever wishes to sacrifice to God with slain holocausts, let him offer peace first of all: no victim is to Christ sweeter: by this gift alone, turning his face to the holy gifts, he is delighted with the pure fragrance. Yet even to the snowy doves God himself hands over the winged serpent in the tender garb of feathers, to be skilfully distinguished, mingled by a searching wit, from the harmless birds; the wolf too lurks with bloody mouth, feigning a milk-white sheep under the soft fleece, working raw deaths through its lamb-like jaws, by this art Photinus and Arius hide themselves, wolves monstrous in fierceness. Our perils, and the fresh gore, though from the surface of the body, betray what a stealthy hand can do." A groan was given by the whole people of the Virtues, shaken by the bitter chance, then noble Faith added this: "Nay rather, in prosperous affairs let the groan cease. Concord was wounded, but Faith was defended: nay, Concord too, safe, accompanying her sister Faith, laughs at her own wounds, this is my sole salvation, nothing is grim to me, this received. One work, after the wars, remains for excellent labour, O nobles, which at last the peace-bringing heir of the warlike king, the unarmed successor of the armed court, Solomon established, since his panting father's right hand had smoked with the warm blood of kings. For when the blood was wiped away, the temple is founded and the altar set, the lofty house of Christ with gilded roofs. Then Jerusalem, illustrious with its temple, received the quiet God, now divine, after the wandering ark sat founded on marble altars. Let a venerable temple rise too in our camp, whose holy of holies the Almighty may revisit. For what does it profit to have driven off with iron the earth-born phalanxes of the Faults, if the Son of man, gliding from the citadel of heaven into the city of the purified body, should enter it unadorned, needy of a splendid temple? Thus far it has been sweated out hand to hand with alternate arms: let the white toga of silent peace now perform its offices, and let the youth, ungirt, hasten a seat for the sacred things." When she had given these words, the queen leapt down from the lofty steps, and Concord, partner of so great a work, to measure out the new temple, the foundation laid. A golden reed runs over the plain in measured spaces, that the four fronts may be square on every side, lest, the joinings standing apart, an unequal angle should mutilate the exact rule by discordant sides. On the part of Dawn the bright region lies open, illumined with three gates; a threefold number of gates is opened to the south; a triple door offers three leaves to the west; as often is the lofty house spread open to the axle of the north. No built stone is there, but a gem, hollow through its solid mass and bored with much carving, embraces the threshold with a shining arch, and one stone holds the penetrable vestibule. On the topmost posts of the gates, inscribed in gold, the twice-six names of the apostolic senate gleam. By these titles the Spirit encircles the hidden secrets of the Mind and calls the chosen Senses into the heart; and wherever the nature of man thrives, which a fourfold force quickens through the whole body, by three entrances it approaches the altar of the heart and tends its shrines with chaste vows; whether the first sun drives boys, or excessive heat inflames youths, or the full light of the perfected age completes men, or the cold age of the North calls decrepit old age to the pious rites, the threefold name meets them at the fourfold crossroads, which the king well disposes by his twelve disciples. Nay, even as many notable gems, set in the woven walls, gleam, distinct, and the deep light vomits forth living souls of colours from its liquid depth. The huge chrysolite, overspread with native gold, had joined the sapphire to itself on this side, the beryl on that, and the middle gleam varied the distant honours; here the dull chalcedony is suffused from the neighbouring light of the jacinth; for by chance, beside the dark-blue pools, the stone, holding the watery purple, gleamed. The amethysts paint the sardonyx, the jasper paints the sard set close beside, and the fair topaz. Among these forms the emerald meadows grow green with spring grass, and the grassy light rolls its wandering waves. You too, conspicuous, the structure inserts, burning chrysoprase, and adds a star to the starry stones. The rope-machine creaked with its heavy bonds, snatching the immense gems to the lofty summits. But the inner house, propped on seven columns cut from the glassy rock of cold crystal, is built, whose lofty heads a white pebble covers, cut into a cone, and beneath, drawn out in a hollowing into the likeness of a shell — which, a huge pearl of a thousand talents, bought with wealth and revenues assigned to the auction, spirited Faith had prepared. On this throne sits mighty Wisdom, and all the counsel of the realm she disposes from the lofty hall, and revolves in her heart the laws of guarding man. In the lady's hands is a sceptre not polished by art but living of green wood, which, cut from the stock, though no moisture of earthly turf nourishes it, yet grows green with unfailing foliage; then, intertwined with roses dyed with blood, it mingles white lilies, not knowing to droop the flower on a withering stalk. The form of this sceptre was the flower-bearing rod of Aaron, which, thrusting buds from its dry bark, unfolded a tender beauty with budding hope, and the parched rod suddenly swelled into new fruits. We render eternal thanks, most indulgent teacher, to you, O Christ, and consecrate the deserved honours with pious mouth; for the heart is foul with the dung of vices. You willed us to recognize the lurking perils of the bodily covering and the fortunes of the struggling soul. We have known that the doubtful senses in the clouded breast sweat in alternate conflicts, and that, the issue of the battles varied, now they grow by the right disposition, now, the virtues inclining, are dragged to the yokes of a worse life and consign themselves to base sins and bear the loss of their own salvation. O how often have we felt the soul, the plague of vices repelled, grow warm with God! How often the heavenly genius, made lukewarm, after bright joys, yield to foul disgust! Dreadful wars seethe, they seethe enclosed in the bones, and the not-simple nature of man roars with discordant arms; for the vitals, moulded from clay, press the soul, while it, brought forth by serene breath, in the prison of the darkening heart seethes, and refuses the filth amid its narrow bonds. Light and darkness fight with varied spirits, and a double substance quickens the divergent forces, until God Christ be present with his help and compose all the gems of the virtues in a purified seat, and, where sin had reigned, building the golden halls of the temple, weave by the pattern of morals the ornaments of the soul, in which, delighted, on her fair throne forever rich Wisdom may reign.