Book 1, lines 90-99

[Previous, lines 32-89]

Haec fatus, montes aditum fert tristis in altos.             [90]
Incedunt una socii cum rege parati
cuncta pati, et iuvenis sortem indignantur iniquam.
Et iam palmosae subit Hierichuntis ad urbem.
Zacchaei excipitur tecto mensisque paratis,
cui quondam componere opes per fasque nefasque         [95]
immensas amor acer erat, sed luce recepta
hospitis adventu coepit male parta luendo
reddere, cuique suum, partiri caetera egenis.
Tot facti infectique auri congesta talenta.

Saying so, he went up the mountain, stepping sadly.      [90]
His comrades went too, ready to suffer with their king
though indignant at the young man’s unjust fate.
Then he went to the palm-thronged city of Jericho.
He dined at the house of Zacchaeus, who'd once
loved only wealth, both legal and illegal gains:                [95]
sharply avaricious—but then he had seen the light
and begun to rid himself of his ill-gotten money,
paying back where he could, giving the rest to the poor.
So many piled-up talents of gold coins and bars!

The poem's narrative progression, here, seems to falter: we were at Jerusalem, anticipating imminent crucifixion, but now we return to Jesus’s encounter with the tax-collector Zacchaeus, a short vingette that transitions straight away into an account of the raising of Lazarus from the dead. The segue to Zacchaeus seems to me a little wrongfooting. It doesn’t seem to go anywhere, although there may be something significant going on here with money, and gold. Vida, when he introduces the dying Lazarus in the next few lines, stresses that geezer's immense wealth.

The image at the head of the post is from a medieval illuminated Book of Hours: Jesus dining with Zacchaeus.

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