[Previous: lines 940-958]
Christ, on the cross, dies.
Iamque ferè medium cursu traiecerat orbem,------------
cùm subitò, ecce, polo tenebris caput occulit ortis [960]
sol pallens; medioque die (trepidabile visu)
omnibus incubuit nox orta nigerrima terris,
et clausus latuit densis in nubibus aether
prospectum eripiens oculis mortalibus omnem.
Hic credam, nisi cœlo absint gemitusque dolorque, [965]
aeternum Genitorem alto ingemuisse dolore,
sidereosque oculos terra avertisse nesanda.
Signa quidem dedit, et luctum testatus ab alto est.
Emicuere ignes, diffulsit conscius aether;
concussuque tonat vasto domus ardua Olympi, [970]
et ceca immensum percurrunt murmura cœlum:
dissiluisse putes divulsi mœnia mundi.
Sub pedibus mugit tellus: sola vasta moventur:
tecta labant: nutant succussae vertice turres.
Obstupuere humiles subita formidine gentes, [975]
et positae extremis terrarum partibus urbes.
Causa latet; cunctis magnum ac mirabile visum;
et populi aeternas mundo timuere tenebras
attoniti, dum stare vident caligine cœlum.
Ipsam autem propior Solymorum perculit urbem, [980]
ac trepidas stravit mentes pavor: undique clamor
tollitur in cœlum: sceleris mens conscia cuique est.
Templa adeunt subitò castae longo ordine matres,
incedunt mixti pueri, intactaeque puellae,
perque aras pacem exquirunt, quas thure vaporant [985]
suppliciter, sacrisque adolent altaria donis.
Ecce, aliud cœlo signum praesentius alto
dat Pater altitonans, et templum saevit in ipsum:
velum latum, ingens, quod vulgi lumina sacris
arcet inaccessis, in partes finditur ambas; [990]
et templi rupte crepuere immane columnae.
Iamque Deus rumpens cum voce novissima verba
ingenti, horrendumque sonans: “En, cuncta peracta!
Hanc insontem animam tecum, Pater, accipe,” dixit:
supremamque auram ponens caput expiravit. [995]
And now the sun’s course had passed its mid-point,------------
when suddenly, behold! it hid in darkness [960]
its pale head—at noon (appalling sight).
The whole world sunk in the blackest of nights,
and the sky evanished behind dense clouds,
closing up the vision of all mortal kind.
I'd believe—though there's no sorrow in heaven— [965]
the eternal Creator on high groaned with pain,
averting his starry eyes from the sinful earth.
It was a sign—of grief testified in heaven.
Lightning flashed. The aether deep-darkened.
Thunder concussed across steep Olympus, [970]
blind rumbles transmitted throughout heaven:
you would have thought the walls of the world tumbled!
The Earth grumbled underfoot, a quake that
made buildings totter and tall towers collapse.
The ordinary folk were dumbstruck with fear [975]
as even the most distant cities were shaken.
They didn’t know its cause, but it amazed them:
people feared eternal darkness had come and
watched, astonished, as darkness took the sky.
Nearer by, Jerusalem was paralyzed [980]
fear seized its people’s trembling minds—loud
cries went up as everyone recalled their guilt.
A line of chaste matrons rushed to the temple ,
taking their sons and virgin daughters with them
to pray for peace through the smoke of incense [985]
in supplication, burnt offerings in the altar.
But now high heaven gave out another sign:
the high-thundering Father struck the temple—
the broad screen hiding the sacred shrine from
vulgar eyes cracked and broke into two parts; [990]
and a huge temple column snapped and crashed.
The Son of God broke out with his last words
a loud and terrible sound: “now, all is finished!
Father, accept this innocent life!” he said.
His head slumped down and he breathed his last. [995]
This is the last portion of Book 5 of the six-book Christiad.
Line 962’s ‘sunk’ (‘the whole world sunk in the blackest of nights’) translates incubuit, from incubo: ‘I lie in or on’, ‘I sit upon, brood, hatch’ (hence our ‘incubate’)—although the word also means ‘I weigh down, I sink’. You may prefer Gardner’s ‘darkest night brooded over all the earth’, which is certainly widescreen and doom-y. Gardner also thinks that the matrons desperately trying to appease God’s anger by burning incense in supplication and offering up sacrifices draw on Vergil: that, in other words, Vida’s perque aras pacem exquirunt, quas thure vaporant/suppliciter owes something to Aeneid 4:56: his dictis incensum animum inflammavit amores, which seems a stretch to me.
Otherwise: Vida recasts the very famous last words of Christ: consummatum est: four long syllables, which could easily enough be accommodated by Latin hexameter. But instead of that we have en cuncta peracta, where cunctus means ‘all, collectively, whole’ and peractus ‘executed, finished, accomplished’. The phrase as such appears on various monuments and churches (as for example: on a plaque in the church of Saint John di Laterano in Rome) to indicate that the work was finished by such-and-such a person or in such-and-such a year.
The darkness at noon, the earthquake and the damage to the temple in Jerusalem are there to externalise the ruin of mortality upon of the body of God. It seems to me unlikely that any of these three things actually happened, but what do I know? Early church fathers certainly believed in them quite literally:
Eusebius supports a 33 A.D. dating [for the crucifixion] stating that Jesus suffered ‘in the nineteenth year of the reign of Tiberius,’ which he further qualifies by citing a reference from Phlegon regarding an abnormal solar eclipse and earthquake which took place that year. [Eusebius, Chronicon, ii, p. 535, ed. Migne, Patrologiae Cursus Completus, Series Graeca]. The eclipse, of course, is intended as a possible explanation of the darkness which the Gospels record in connection with the crucifixion [Matthew 27:45; Mark 15:33; Luke 23:44]. According to Tertullian, the darkness was a ‘cosmic’ or ‘world event,’ [Apologeticus xxi, 20]. Phlegon, a Greek from Caria writing a chronology soon after 137 A.D., reported that in the fourth year of the 202nd Olympiad there was ‘the greatest eclipse of the sun,’ and that ‘it became night in the sixth hour of the day [i.e., noon] so that the stars even appeared in the heavens. There was a great earthquake in Bithynia, and many things were overturned in Nicaea.’ [Fragment from the 13th book of Phlegon, Olympiades he Chronika, ed. by Otto Keller, Rerum Naturalium Scriptores Graeci Minores (Leipzig: Teubner, 1877) I, 101]. An actual eclipse of the sun, of course, was impossible on Nisan 14, since the Passover occurred at the time of the full moon. Nevertheless, Phlegon's reference to the unnatural darkness and earthquake form an interesting parallel to the Gospel record, and the date he assigns these phenomena provides additional astronomical support for the chronology proposed above; ‘the fourth year of the 202nd Olympiad’ extended from July 1, 32 A.D. to June 30, 33. Since Christ was crucified in the spring, 33 A.D. would be the year. [Paul Maier ‘Sejanus, Pilate, and the Date of the Crucifixion’, Church History, 37:1 (1968), 13]What, then, of Book 5? I can only report that my process, working through this book line-by-line, has proved much more satisfying to me personally than either books 3 or 4, both of which I found sluggish and unconvincing. This book has both the splendid set-piece in which an army of angels spontaneously assembles in order to rescue the Son of God from the cross (dramatically lively and descriptively colourful, this, although it runs the risk of painting the angels as flighty, even as trigger-happy, which sorts oddly with their appearance elsewhere in the poem as numinous, wondrous and so on)—and the account of the via dolorosa and the crucifixion itself, which is full of the horrors of the process and the pathos of the hero's suffering. Book 6 lies before us: the resurrection.
[Next: Book 6 lines 1-30]
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