Book 1, lines 644-673

[Previous: lines 591-643]

Jesus and his disciples are examining a series of stone-carved representations in the temple at Jeruslaem.

Tandem nudus homo emicuit tellure creatus,
quem superûm sator affarique, et dicere leges          [645]
ore videbatur coràm, ac praeponere regnis,
qui terras immortalis ditione teneret.
Mansisset dictis, servâsset fœdera pacta!
At campum arboribus iuxtà ac viridantibus herbis
lucentem aspicias, stellantia floribus arva,                 [650]
poma ubi cœruleo multùm vigilata draconis.
In medio fons perspicuis argenteus undis,
quattuor adversis volvens regionibus amnes,
qui terrae gremio infusi latè arva rigarent.
Atque hic cernere erat malesuadi fraude draconis  [655]
deceptum iuvenem vetitos ex arbore fœtus
gustare, edicti immemorem, legisque severae,
et iam (vix pomum infelix admoverat ori)
pœnituisse putes se frondibus involventem,
nec iam coelituum regis gravia ora ferentem.          [660]
Namque videbatur, fulvae inter vellera nubis,
horribili super impendens mortalibus ore
dura redarguere, et saevas indicere pœnas
pro meritis, quas ille olim, quas omnis ab illo
progenies lueret lucis ventura sub auras.                 [665]
Interea coniux, quae capta libidine dira
iura prior, legesque datas, ac fœdera, solvit,
infelix fruticum frustra per densa latebat.
At victor, factusque potens jam fraudis, ahena
effulget squama, teretique volumine serpens          [670]
ter superans stirpem, spirisque ingentibus ambit
tortilis, et motis insultat desuper alis,
virgineo irridens deceptos improbus ore.

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Finally man was made, nude, from fresh earth,
and the High Maker spoke to him, laid down laws   [645]
met him face to face, and declared him king
holding dominion, immortal, over the earth.
(Would that he had obeyed these commandments!)
Nearby were fields and groves with the greenest grass
shining fair, constellated with bright flowers,           [650]
and apples guarded by a sky-bright dragon.
In the midst a fountain gushed clear silver waves
four streams that flowed out over distant lands,
watering earth and filling the laps of the fields.
But, deceived by the dragon’s evil counsel,               [655]
the youth chose to take the forbidden fruit
and taste, forgetting divine edict, severe law,
and—the wicked apple barely at his mouth—
shame causes him to wrap himself in leaves;
he could not bear to look on God’s grave face          [660]
who watched, seated on a fleecy sunset cloud,
and sternly judged this action, a pronouncement
impossible to deny, penalties imposed
justly, to be paid by man and all descendents,
until they should again come to daylight.                    [665]
Meantime his spouse, earlier seduced by dire lust
to betray the rights and laws given by God,
tried in vain to hide, unhappy, in the garden.
Victorious, successful in his fraud, the serpent
flashed copper scales and rolled smoothly                     [670]
three times, coiled tightly about the tree as
he climbed, and, flapping his wings, looked down,
mocking the virgin his own mouth had deceived.

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Panel 2 in the series of Jerusalem temple bas reliefs (or perhaps groups of statuary) represents the creation of man, and his seduction by the serpent. So here we are.

Adam, Eve and fall, the triumph of the tempter: it's all here, in brief compass. The dragon guarding the apples in line 651 is ‘caeruleus’—Gardner translates this as ‘dusky’, but the word actually means  ‘having the color of the sky; blue or greenish-blue; cerulean, azure’, and I have rendered accordingly.

But the same word, draco, that describes the creature guarding the apples in 651 is used to describe the beast that seduces Adam into sin in line 655 (although by line 670 he’s become ‘serpens’). Presumably this can’t be the same dragon—can it? Or maybe it can! What if God set the dragon to guard the apples, and the dragon then betrayed its trust? Conceivably this has something to do with the responsibilities of a watchman, or at any rate watchbeast: draco (and hence the English dragon) is derived from δρακεῖν (drakeîn, “to see”) with the literal meaning of “one who stares”. But perhaps I'm being fanciful.

My main takeaway from this short section is to recall that it was, in part, by reading Vida's Latin epic that Milton decided to write Paradise Lost. In one sense, this short passage is the germ for the whole of the later epic, and there's a lot one could say about that. But for now I'm struck by the serpent-dragon. Milton makes this creature Satan  in disguise of course. Here he is, creeping into paradise:

For now, and since first break of dawne the Fiend,
Meer Serpent in appearance, forth was come,
And on his Quest, where likeliest he might finde
The onely two of Mankinde, but in them
The whole included Race, his purposd prey.
In Bowre and Field he sought, where any tuft
Of Grove or Garden-Plot more pleasant lay,
Thir tendance or Plantation for delight,
By Fountain or by shadie Rivulet [Paradise Lost 9:413-20 ]

So far, so poisoned-pastoral. What of Milton's serpent? To tempt Eve he adopts a more pleasing shape, and walks rather than slinks over to her:

In Serpent, Inmate bad, and toward Eve
Address'd his way, not with indented wave,
Prone on the ground, as since, but on his reare,
Circular base of rising foulds, that tour'd
Fould above fould a surging Maze, his Head
Crested aloft, and Carbuncle his Eyes;
With burnisht Neck of verdant Gold, erect
Amidst his circling Spires, that on the grass
Floted redundant: pleasing was his shape,
And lovely, never since of Serpent kind [9:495-504]

Floating. In other words the serpent becomes (doesn't he?) a kind of crested bird? As per, I mean, Milton's line 500. But wait: we've already seen, in the Christiad (and not long before this episode) Christ compared to ‘a crested bird protecting its straggling chicks’ [1:572]—cristata in the original Latin, a neat little pun on Christ's name, one Milton is surely glancing at here. Certainly when Vida talks of God he makes free with the gold and jewel imagery, as Milton does here. And a little earlier, Vida caps his account of Jesus curing Jethro of lameness at the Bethesda Pool by comparing the healed man to a snake, frozen so solid and dead a peasant mistakes it for a stick and brings it home in his firewood bundle, only for it to revive in the firelight and slither away. Commenting on that image I suggested it looked ‘forward, to Christ's own revivification? Why specify that trinitarian three-pronged fork in the snake's tongue otherwise? (As a matter of simple natural history, snakes tongues are forked into two, not three).’ And now, looking again at Milton's crested bird-snake, I'm wondering if Paradise Lost doesn't quite specificaly import something interestingly problematic, a serpentine Christ, a cristata Satan, into the fabric of its poem.

[Next: lines 674-692]