[Previous: lines 549-592]
Simon, owner of the house in which the Last Supper will be held, addresses Peter and John.
Atque haec deinde refert: “Non hoc mihi nomen ad aures------------
nunc primùm venit, illius sed cognita famâ
iam pridem virtus; neque enim mihi cernere coram [595]
fas fuit, aut vocem divinam hausisse loquentis.
adveniat: placidus tectis assuescat amicis;
vos hic expectate: viros, qui exacta reportent
omnia, dimittam, meaque illum ad limina ducant.
atque utinam libeat longùm his in sedibus olli [600]
degere, et hospitii dignetur nomine tectum;
quod nostros iuvet interdùm memorare nepotes,
hospitibusque locum felicem ostendere seris.
Interea adventu vestro intermissa sequamur
carmina, et antiquos patrum repetamus honores, [605]
dum nigra roriferis nox terras obruat umbris.”
Sic ait; ac nervis socians concordibus ora
obloquitur numeris: quae concinit, ordine picta
cuncta putes, aut textilibus simulata figuris.
Nempe Paretoniis cantu deducit ab oris [610]
Isacidûm genus: arreptâ maris aequora virgâ
ut profugûm dux findat; aquasque impune per altas
ut sine navigiis ierint, pelagique profunda
sicco calcârint pede: namque induruit humor
aridus, et liquidas latè est via secta per undas. [615]
A tergo tota ex Aegypto curribus hostes
quadriugis vecti instabant fulgentibus armis.
Iamque pios canit, emenso pelago, alta tenere
littora, littoreisque metu se condere sylvis.
Nulla mora est; iterum telo tellure recussa [620]
divino, redeunt in se maria: ecce refusa,
quae media ingenti dirimebat semita tractu.
Inde hostes ruere, et salsis in fluctibus arma,
armaque, quadrupedesque, et corpora mersa virorum,
aspiceres magis atque magis subsidere in undis [625]
semper, et absumptos velut evanescere currus,
qui medii extabant, medios salis hauserat aestus.
Addit ut omnipotens rerum sator, aethere ab ipso,
paverit in vasta gentem regione locorum
errantem dape cœlesti, miseratus egenos. [630]
Cernere ibique putes epulas nivis instar ab aethra
defluere ad terram subitas, cœtusque paratis
accinctos dapibus latis epularier arvis.
Proinde etiam duras cautes pulsabat eadem
dux cœlum aspectans virga, cùm protinus amnis [635]
prosilit, et dulcem saxa erupere liquorem;
atque hausere novis populi de fontibus undam,
quos sitis ex longo collecta urebat hiantes.
Tum canit, ut primus Solymorum conditor arcis,
dona laboratae frugisque, recensque reperti [640]
pocula plena meri, obtulerit campestribus aris,
cespite quas viridi, sectaque extruxerat orno.
And then he said: “This is not the first time------------
I have heard his name; he has long been known
for his virtue; though I have never met him [595]
face to face, or heard his divine voice speak.
he’s welcome here: let him and his friends come.
Please, both, stay here; I will send out my men
to tell him what's been agreed and lead him here.
I hope he will want to stay a long time, [600]
and so dignify my hospitality!
I pray my children’s children will remember
and show this happy place to visitors.
In the meantime, I shall continue my songs
about the ancient honours of our fathers, [605]
singing until dewy black night cloaks the world.”
He finished speaking, and then tuned his voice
to the lyre’s rhythm. His song painted pictures
like figures rendered on a rich tapestry.
In song they left Paraetonian Egypt [610]
those sons of Isaac. With a wave of his staff
their leader cuts apart the water, opening
their path—and, boatless, they can cross deep ocean
on foot: he had hardened the sea’s humour
slicing a dry road amongst the flowing waves. [615]
Behind them, from across Egypt, the enemy's
four-horse chariots pursued them, spears gleaming.
Now he sang how the chosen people crossed to
the far shore and hid in the wooded shoreline.
No delay: once more the earth was struck by the [620]
divine staff, the seas re-closed: and the path
that had run down the middle was no more.
The enemy were rushing on as salt sea
claimed their four-horse chariots, armour, bodies,
—you could see them sinking, more and more of them [625]
swallowed forever, disappearing war-gear
caught in the middle, sinking in briny flood.
Next he sang how the Almighty Creator,
fed his people with manna out of heaven
pitying them as they wandered the waste land. [630]
You could almost see it coming down like snow
flowing onto the earth, as the people gathered
preparing to feast on what had been provided.
Then, eyes skyward, their leader struck the hard stone
with his rod and a stream immediately [635]
bursts out, scattering rocks, and flowing sweetly;
and the people drank from this new fountain
eagerly, having been thirsty for so long.
Then he sang how Jerusalem’s first builder
offered up his hard-won harvest, freshly grown [640]
and cups of strong wine on the rustic altars
he had built from green reeds and cut ashwood.
A couple of notes. Vida’s line 606 dum nigra roriferis nox terras obruat umbris (‘until black night has covered-over the earth with clouds and dew’) spins a line of Lucretius: hoc ubi roriferis terram nox obruit undis ‘until night has covered-over the earth with its dewy waves’ [De Rerum Natura 6:864]. Line 610's ‘Paraetonian Egypt’ is Vida’s Paraetonium: which is, as L&S say, ‘a seaport town in Northern Africa, between Egypt and the Syrtes, now Marsa Labeit’, but which was often used as a poetic transference to mean ‘Egypt’ more broadly.
I find Vida's account of the parting of the Red Sea intriguing. There are, I suppose, two ways of conceptualising this event: one, that Moses combed back the waters on two sides, leaving the seabed dry and allowing the fleeing Jews to walk through a kind of corridor, with water on either side. This is the image familiar from Hollywood’s Biblical epics, of course, and seems sanctioned by Exodus 14:21-22:
And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the LORD caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided. And the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea upon the dry ground: and the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand, and on their left.But that phrase ‘he made the sea dry land’ suggests a second way of imagining it: not that Moses cleared the waters entirely away, such that his people walked on the sea bed, but that he carved a kind of trench of magically hardened water across the surface of the sea. This has certain advantages: it means the Israelites are relieved of the need to climb down and up the cliff face on either side of the marine basin for instance. Vida seems, here, to split the difference.
arreptâ maris aequora virgâHere’s Gardner’s translation: ‘waving a wand the leader of the refugees divided the waters, so that, without boats, they could walk unharmed through the depths of the sea. For the sea had hardened and dried up, cutting a path through the clear waves.’ That's good and clear.
ut profugûm dux findat; aquasque impune per altas
ut sine navigiis ierint, pelagique profunda
sicco calcârint pede: namque induruit humor
aridus, et liquidas latè est via secta per undas. [611-15]
But actually I think the Latin is a little weirder than Gardner's version suggests. Line 614’s humor means fluid or liquid, but it also I think glances at the medieval theory of the body’s construction out of four key elements; and a humor aridus, or dry humor, is indicative of a change in the body (a choleric or melancholic change). Vida’s specific language here is Vergilian and Lucretian. The last bit, via secta per undas nods both at Georgics 1:235 via secta per ambas, ‘a way is cut between the two things’ (the two things here being excessive heat and excessive cold; Vergil is talking about the sun’s path through the heavens); and also at De Rerum Natura 5:272: qua via secta semel liquido pede detulit undas; ‘they cut a liquid path through the waves of the ocean’ (Lucretius is talking about rivers flowing into the sea). Vida’s induruit humor, ‘he hardened the liquid’, or ‘he hardened the humour’, is from Ovid Metamorphoses 5:233: Medusa turns Phineus to stone, beginning (the poet says) when the aqueous and vitreous humour inside his eye solidifies: saxoque oculorum induruit humor, ‘the moisture in his eyes hardened to stone’. Eek! Is that what Moses is doing to the Red Sea, do we think?
[Next: lines 643-670]
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