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.

------------

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.

------------

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]

Book1, lines 591-643

[Previous: lines 582-590]

Jesus and his disciples, in the temple at Jerusalem, examine a series of stone-carved artistic representations. First: the creation.

Hic superûm sator informem speculatus acervum,
aeternam noctemque, indigestumque profundum;
prima videbatur moliri exordia rerum
ipse micans radiis, ac multa luce coruscus.
Iamque videbatur fulva de nube creare                    [595]
stelligeri convexa poli terrasque, fretumque
et lucem simul undivagam; mox unde micantes
et solis radios, et cœli accenderet ignes.
Ipsi iam denso crepitare examine circum
auctoremque ducemque suum plausuque sonare     [600]
aligeri fratres supera arce volatile vulgus,
lucis opus primae: necdum tamen aethera ab imis
flammiferum terris, terras discreverat undis,
sed tantùm confusa iacebant semina rerum.
Nec mora: vix cœli extuderat septemplicis orbem,     [605]
ordine cui vario rutilos affigeret ignes,
et jam cuncta novam incipiebant sumere formam
paulatim, cœlumque sua compage teneri.

Cernere erat, sicca in medio iam mole relicta,
littoribus curvis circum maria humida fundi,          [610]
illisosque vadis spumare ad sidera fluctus.
Nondum pontivagae curvabant ampla carinae
carbasa, nec liquido lentari in marmore remi;
lata sed innocui verrebant aequora Cauri.
Ecce autem, jam fagiferi capita ardua montes          [615]
attollunt, infraque jacent humiles convalles,
continuò tellus summittens daedala germen
flore renidescit, et frondis explicat arbos.
Iam videas viridi vestiri gramine campos;
iam colles densis frondere cacumina silvis,               [620]
ilicibusque, oleisque, et coniferis cyparissis.
Nec mora; cœruleo flammis duo lumina cœlo
incipiunt teneris primùm lucescere rebus;
et sibi, ceu mundi vigiles, statione vicissim
succedunt, certoque suum dant fœdere lumen.          [625]
Nam lucis fons dimensum sol ambit Olympum
ipse die, terrasque novo splendore colorant;
nocte suas vultu pallenti servat in umbris
luna vices, fundens auratis cornibus ignem,
lucidaque exornant nocturnis aethera gemmis         [630]
sidera, perpetuo circumlabentia motu.
Tum bifidis passim verrebant marmora caudis
squamigerûm mutae pecudes, pelagoque natabant,
at pictae volucres librare per aera pennis
corpora, et inter se curvis decernere rostris.            [635]
Nec procul hinc errant latos armenta per agros,
lanigerique greges persultant pabula laeta.
Iam latebras videas meditari dira ferarum
semina, iam longos per humum reptare chelydros.
Desuper hortari clara de nube putares                    [640]
cœlicolûm regem, laetasque expromere voces:
“Crescite, propagate genus, mea semina, vestrum,
seclaque perpetuis generatim jungite seclis.”

------------

Here the Maker looked down on the unformed mass
of eternal night and gulfs of confusion;
and considered how to bring about a beginning—
himself a shining light vibrating with radiance.
Now, from a wine-dark cloud, he created                     [595]
the starry vault, earth on its axis, ocean
with light glittering on its waves; and he made
the beaming sun, and fires in the night sky.
And here, fluttering in a dense crowd around
the Creator and Lord, singing His praise, were         [600]
myriad winged brethren circling high heaven
celebrating first light: though the ether had not
separated its fire from earth, or earth from seas,
the seeds of things were still variously scattered.
In no time the vault of the sevenfold heaven             [605]
was forged and the bright fires fitted to their spheres;
now everything new was beginning to take
its first form, and the skies were fixed into place.

Now dry land could be seen, appearing among
the watery spread, curved shorelines rising,               [610]
great waves jarred back and spume hurled at the stars.
As yet no great ships raised wind-bulging sails
of cloth, nor yet did oars stir the marbled seas;
only the northwest wind passed this way, harmless.
Look! beech-dense heads of granite mountains raised       [615]
themselves, and steep valleys appeared inbetween,
immediately clothed in soil to grow seedlings
bright flowers bloomed, and leaves unfurled on trees.
Now you could see plains clothed in bright green grass
and the hills were swaddled in dense forests of           [620]
oak and olive and coniferous cyprus.
In no time two cerulean flames burned in the sky
casting their light for the first time upon things;
each, at vigil over the world, taking their turn
after the other, pouring out their allotted light.           [625]
First the bright sun circles above high Olympus
each day, colouring the world with new splendour;
next, at night, its face passing above shadows
the moon takes her course, golden horns shining,
as lucid stars adorn the dark like gemstones                [630]
turning in perpetual circumlocution.
Now, stirring the marbled waters with forked tails
scaly schools of silent fish swim through the seas,
and painted birds swing on wings through the air
bickering among themselves with curved beaks.          [635]
Nearby, herds of cattle wander the wide fields,
and joyful flocks of sheep frolic in the pasture.
Now could be seen the lairs where ferocious beasts
nurse their young, and watersnakes creeping along.
High above, exhorting all from a shining cloud,            [640]
the King of Heaven joyfully declared:
“Grow, my offspring, increase yourselves, to you
belong the ages, for your endless generations.”

------------

The image at the head of the post is Gustave Doré's late nineteenth-century illustration of Genesis. Here's a more period-appropriate engraving: Raphael Sadeler's ‘Dieu le Père sépare la lumière et les ténèbres’ (1585). Click to embiggen. You know you want to.

This, then, is the first phase of Vida’s lengthy ekphrasis, describing sculptures, or perhaps bas reliefs, in the temple at Jerusalem (the whole passage is based on Vergil’s descriptions of the murals in Dido’s palace, Aeneid 1:453-93). We start with the creation of the universe, and the population of that new earth with birds, beasts and fishes. It’s a rather nice piece of writing, actually, this; Vida elevating, or (I hate to sound vague, but you know what I mean) poeticising his style, aiming for a heightened and more vivid immediacy. The details are familiar enough from Genesis of course, although Vida’s description of God as being, himself, light—before, that is, the great first fiat lux of creation as such—is interesting: line 594’s lux coruscus actually means coruscating with light, which is to say, vibrating, waving, trembling, shaking with brightness. There’s something quite striking in the sheer restlessness of this. The Homeric ‘wine-dark’, in line 595 is a slight stretch: Gardner translates nubes fulva as ‘dark cloud’ which is certainly fair enough, although fulvus actually means ‘deep yellow, reddish yellow, gold-colored, tawny’ (‘mostly poetic’, say L&S), so I don’t think my rendering is entirely off.

There’s always seemed to me something puzzling (I am, of course, very far from the first person to note this) about the way the opening of Genesis narrativizes—that is, situates in a temporal structure—an event that is, by definition, prior to time as such. The phrase ‘nec mora’, repeated in lines 605 and 622, means ‘without delay’, or ‘straightway’; by translating this as ‘in no time’ I suppose I am channelling this sense. Vida can sidestep this, to a degree, since he is not describing the actual creation of the universe, but is rather describing an artistic representation of that event, although even so he tends to fall back on infinitives like creare (line 595) instead of, say, using creāvit.

The Hebrew that the KJV so famously render as ‘in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, and the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep’ is, scholars assure us, better translated as ‘when God began to create heaven and earth’ or ‘when God was beginning to create’ or somesuch formulation. Robert Alter's highly praised The Five Books of Moses, A Translation with Commentary (2004) gives us ‘when God began to create heaven and earth, and the earth then was welter and waste and darkness over the deep and God’s breath hovering over the waters, God said: “Let there be light.” And there was light.’ Of the nicely alliterative phrase welter and waste, Alter comments:

The Hebrew tohu wabohu occurs only here and in two later biblical texts that are clearly alluding to this one. The second word of the pair looks like a nonce term coined to rhyme with the first and to reinforce it, an effect I have tried to approximate in English by alliteration. Tohu by itself means ‘emptiness’ or ‘futility’, and in some contexts is associated with the trackless vacancy of the desert.

Vida does quite well with this, although his main orientation is not the flat wideness of desert spaces so much as the vertiginous heirarchy of up and down. His tohu-bohu is deep rather than wide: line 592's nox aeterna ‘eternal night’ and indigestumque profundum, which means depths without order, unarranged, confused. Vida's God looks down upon, and indeed into, these depths; and his elevated position, emphasised by these flocks of winged angels circling the heights singing God's praises only reinforces this up-down axis. Vida's account of creation filling with fecundity is more panoptic in its framing that the Biblical original, and he caps it by, as it were, panning up one final time, to God high in the sky, on a convenient cloud, looking down again on what he has done. Vida's ordering of events even works, as it were, top down: first the cosmic spheres and the fitted into place, then the earth and its inhabitants and finally fish in the depths and wild animals lurking in the hollow spaces of the world. Vida, we  might say, has a much more arboreal than he has a rhizomatic imagination.

[Next: lines 644-673]

Book 1, lines 582-590

[Previous: lines 551-581]

Jesus and his disciples are in the temple at Jerusalem. Christ has just predicted the downfall of the city; now he and his followers will examine a series of representations of the history of the world.

Sic fatus, monstrat miras in marmore formas,
argumentum ingens, senûm monimenta dierum,
magna quibus magni compacta est machina mundi;
et veterum eventus, et prisca ex ordine avorum     [585]
facta, haud humanis opus enarrabile verbis.
Non illic hominum effigies, simulacrave divûm,
arcanis sed cuncta notis signisque notavit
obscuris manus artificis, non hactenus ulli
cognita; non potuere ipsi deprendere vates.          [590]

------------

Saying this, he pointed to the fine temple art
sculpted marble, showing those great six days,
in which the great world machine was created,
and ancient events, and the great patriarchs’          [585]
deeds, things that human words can scarcely express.
Not mere effigies or men, or simulacra of gods,
they had been set down with arcane notation
obscurely, by the artist’s own hands, and to
this day undeciphered by man or priests.               [590]

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Another linking passage, this: a prelude to a lengthy ekphrasis (lines 591-724) describing, via these supposed sculptures, or perhaps bas reliefs (‘bases relief’?), everything from the beginning of time to the epoch of Moses: God looking down on the shapeless mass and creating light, matter and everything (hard to picture this rendered in sculpture, but there you go); Adam in the garden, the virtuous dead waiting in Limbo, Noah’s flood and Moses the lawgiver. Achilles and Aeneas had shields; Christ has a temple. Fitting, really.

[Next: lines 591-643]

Book 1, lines 551-581

[Previous: lines 511-550]

Dum verò affatur genitorem divus ad aram,
mirantes socii templum per singula lustrant,
suspectu molem vasto, artificumque laborem:
cautibus excisas centum, centum aere columnas,
omnes è solido, omnes altis montibus aequas,           [555]
tignaque, et aeterna ex cedro laquearia, ahenoque
aeratas porrò stridentes cardine portas,
sectilibusque minutatim sola laevia saxis.
Tum puro ex auro postes, mensasque metallo
e simili, et fixos alta ad donaria currus,                   [56o]
distinctos ebeno, et candenti elephanto.

Quae dum cuncta legunt, perfectis ordine votis,
improvisus adest, tacitusque supervenit heros,
atque ait: “Haec moles, adeô haec immania templa,
protinus ut vento radicitus eruta pinus,                     [565]
versa repentè dabunt labem, ingentemque ruinam,
et tibi digna tuis, Solyma, instant praemia factis;
quae vates ad te missos divinitus ausa es
tot ferro petere, aut duris detrudere saxis.
Ipse tuos quoties, praesans ut vera monerem         [570]
tentavi cives incassùm cogere in unum,
ceu cristata suos dispersa examina foetus
singultu volucris vocat, et plaudentibus alis!
Ferro excisa cades: iam iam labentia regna
protinus arma ruent tua, vindexque hauriet ignis,   [575]
et passim haec largo sudabit sanguine tellus.
Nonne vides, iam ut nunc res procubet inclinata
et tibi iam votis non prosit nectere vota?
Longè alias pater omnipotens sacra transtulit oras;
longè alia vult ipse coli et placarier urbe:                [58o]
Atque adeô hic altè depactus terminus esto.”

------------

As the son of God prayed to his father
his followers circled through the temple, amazed,
gazing at its vastness and fine workmanship:
a hundred stone columns, a hundred columns
of bronze, all solid, all tall as mountains,              [555]
a fretted ceiling of incorruptible cedar, bronze
doors skrieking on brazen hinges, wide floors
polished and inlaid with precious gems. They
saw lintels of gold and tables of the same
metal, and chariots placed before the altar,              [56o]
distinct in ebony and shining ivory.

When they were done, him having ended his prayers,
the hero suddenly and quietly appeared,
and said: “This heap, this whole massive temple,
will, like a pine tree uprooted by the wind,               [565]
be overturned in an instant, felled and ruined
and your ‘dignity’, Jerusalem, will be served—
for your treatment of all the prophets sent
by the father that you slaughtered and stoned.
How often have you been warned of this truth!         [570]
I have tried to bring the citizens together,
a crested bird protecting its straggling chicks
sounding its sobbing song and beating its wings!
The sword will cut you down! Soon, soon your realm
and armies will collapse, your walls will burn,          [575]
and blood will flow across this whole wide land.
Can’t you see the dangers now facing you all?
Don’t you understand that prayer won’t help you?
Far away has the Omnipotent moved his sacraments;
far away, to quite another city is his worship gone.    [580]
This high end is fixed and immutable now.”

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Christ’s prediction of the imminent destruction of the temple is based on Mark 13:1-2. ‘And as he went out of the temple, one of his disciples saith unto him, Master, see what manner of stones and what buildings are here! And Jesus answering said unto him, Seest thou these great buildings? there shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.’ Historically this looks forward (and was presumably written after) the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, in the course of their suppression of the Jewish revolt of AD 66-73, when the Temple was indeed destroyed, leaving only a bit of wall (today’s ‘wailing wall’). Typologically, though, the reference is to Jesus’s own body, ruined on the cross and ‘rebuilt’ in three days (‘Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days? But he spake of the temple of his body’ John 2:19-21).

Vida chooses to focus not on Jesus's corporeality, but on the larger urban context. The destruction of Jerusalem, he says, is the passing away of the old covenant, in order that a new one—centred on Rome, the ‘far off city’ mentioned in lines 579-80—can begin. This, I suppose, is not an unusual view for a Roman Catholic to hold, but it is also profoundly Vergilian. The whole drift of the Aeneid is that the hero escapes a dying city, Troy as it is burnt and razed, to travel to a coming city, the future: Rome. That epic is strung out between the retrospect of Trojan past and the prolepsis of an anticipated (indeed: firmly prophesied) Roman imperial future.

There are two brief similes in this passage, and both include oblique little Latin puns. In the second (lines 572-73) Christ compares himself to a ‘cristata’, a ‘crested one’ (that is, a crested bird), which is a nice play on his own name. The first is buried deeper, but it is there, I think. So: the fall of the temple is compared to a pine being uprooted by a great wind: protinus ut vento radicitus eruta pinus [line 565]. This line is modelled upon Aeneid 5:449: [concidit] in Ida magna radicibus eruta pinus: ‘as falls on Mount Ida a great pine tree torn-up by the roots.’

Now: this Vergilian line is part of the account of the boxing match between Dares and Entellus, at the games Aeneas organises in Sicily. Dares is a regular fellow, but Entellus is a huge man: ‘throwing back the fold of his raiment from his shoulders, baring his massive joints and limbs, his huge bones and muscles, he stands up vast in the middle of the ground.’ Dares doesn't have the strength to knock him down, but closes with him anyway: ‘like one who assails with seige-works some high city’. Entellus swings a punch, Dares ducks and that's when the big man falls. Here's J W Mackail's rather fruity 1885 translation of the relevant bit:

Entellus rose and struck clean out with his right downwards; his quick opponent saw the descending blow before it came, and slid his body rapidly out of its way. Entellus hurled his strength into the air, and all his heavy mass, overreaching, fell heavily to the earth; as sometime on Erymanthus or mighty Ida a hollow pine falls torn out by the roots. Teucrians and men of Sicily rise eagerly; a cry goes up, and Acestes himself runs forward, and pityingly lifts his friend and birthmate from the ground. But the hero, not dulled nor dismayed by his mishap, rises and returns the keener to battle, growing violent in wrath, while shame and resolved valour kindle his strength. All afire, he hunts Dares headlong over the lists, and redoubles his blows now with right hand, now with left; no breath nor pause; heavy as hailstones rattle on the roof from a storm-cloud, so thickly shower the blows from both his hands as he buffets Dares to and fro. [Aeneid 5:443-60]

In the words of the song, he gets knocked down, but he gets up again, you're never going to keep him down. It tropes the fall and resurrection of the city (Troy, Rome; Jerusalem, Rome), as of the whole world (in Christ):—for the name ‘entellus’ means the world, the earth. It's a nicely chosen piece of intertextuality, this by Vida: a similar focus on the punishment the individual body receives, and a similar parallel (‘like one who assails with seige-works some high city’) between the fabric of the city and the body of the sufferer. Subtle, but a definite allusion I think.

Image at the top: unknown artist, ‘Siege and destruction of Jerusalem’, La Passion de Nostre Seigneur (c.1504)

[Next: lines 582-590]

Book 1, lines 511-550

[Previous: lines 436-510]

Having cured Jethro at the Bethesda Pool, Jesus visits the Temple and is not pleased by what he sees.

Parte alia ante fores templi mediaque ministri
ingenti strepitu testudine dona sedentes
vendebant, quae plebs aeratae imponeret arae,
lanigeras pecudes, taurosque, paresque columbas,
voti ut quisque reus, rerumque ut copia cuique.          [515]
Quos simul atque heros ingressus vidit, et omnem
discursu et clamore locum resonare profano,
haud tulit, et verbis graviter commotus acerbis
reppulit, intortum vibrans per terga flagellum,
verberaque insonuit, sacroque a limine abegit.             [520]
Qualis ubi arctoïs Boreas erupit ab antris,
aereos rapido perverrens turbine campos,
it cœlo ferus, et piceas toto aethere nubes
insequitur: dant victa locum, et cava nubila cedunt.
“Sacra deo domus haec,” inquit, “haec numinis aedes:   [525]
vos autem versam indignos scelerastis in usus.
Sanguine respersum est aras animaque litatum
hactenus antiquis concesso more sacrorum:
Indultum satis atque ovium iam caedis abunde est.
Nunc pater omnipotens pecudum volucrumque cruori    [530]
parcere vos posthac iubet, ac fumantibus extis.
Vos diversa manent mutatis orgia sacris.
Discite iustitiam tantùm, puraque litate
mente, deumque piis precibus placate volentem.
Hi vestri ritus, ea deinde piacula sunto.”                      [535]
Sic ait, et supplex demisso poplite ad aram
cernuus arcana prece patris numen adorat.

Iamque sacerdotum primis exarserat ingens
tristi in corde dolor, flammaeque iraeque coquebant.
Nec novus hic primùm furor, haec odia aspera surgunt.    [540]
Antiquae irarum causae, antiquique dolores
haudquaquam exciderant animis, fixique manebant.
Non tamen hic ausi sunt illum surgere contra;
sed veriti ultricem plebem, turbamque sequentum,
excessere adytis, nequicquam indigna minati.                 [545]
Quales nocte lupi stabulis cùm forte reclusis
appetiere gregem; verùm custodia pernox
obstitit, et canibus vocalibus inde revulsit:
olli (dira fames stimulis agit intus) abacti
cedunt, et montes nequicquam ululatibus implent.          [550]

------------

Elsewhere in the city the temple ministers
were sitting in the portico before its doors
selling things, offerings for the bronze altar,
from woolly cattle and bulls to pairs of doves,
for each man’s votive need, fitting his sin and means.       [515]
When the hero went in and saw all this hustle
haggling and clamour profaning that holy place,
he was displeased, threw out sharp words, shaking
in revulsion, struck at their backs with a flail,
driving them to the door with his whiplash snap—             [520]
just as Boreas bursts from his arctic caves, and
goes whirling swift through the countries of the air
rushing at the sky and pitching fog away
making the cloudscapes hollow-out and vanish.
“This house is sacred to God,” he said, “the Lord’s home: [525]
but you defile it, perverting it to base use.
Blood has been spilled on these altars, you have
worshipped as your ancestors permitted—until now!
Enough! Sufficient sheep’s blood has been shed here.
Now the Father commands you leave the blood of          [530]
birds and sheep, spare their smoking entrails.
Your sacred rites will hereafter suffer change.
Now study righteousness, worship with a pure
mind, placate merciful God with devout prayer.
Let these be your rites and atoning sacrifice.”                    [535]
He spoke, and then bent his knee before the altar
and prayed in silence to his divine father.

At this, a great anger consumed the priesthood
in their aggrieved hearts, burning with fury.
Nor was this the first time they had felt such rage.            [540]
Theirs was an old anger, an old grievance
that the passage of time had not diminished.
They could not rise up against him at that moment,
fearing the reprisals of his followers
so they slunk from the temple, muttering revenge.            [545]
They were like wolves at night seeing the stable
door left open, hungry, eyeing the livestock within
yet kept at bay by the barking of the dogs
and so (though famine pinches at them) they abate
retreat, and wreathe the hills in their howling.                   [550]

------------

The gospel narrative of this famous scene occurs near the end of the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew 21:12–17, Mark 11:15–19, and Luke 19:45–48) and near the beginnng in the Gospel of John (at John 2:13–16): ‘and making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. And he told those who sold the pigeons, “Take these things away; do not make my Father's house a house of trade”’ is John's account; or as Matthew puts it, with slightly more bite: ‘and Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the money changers, and the seats of them that sold doves, And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.’

Vida, however, doesn't mention money-changers. Instead the emphasis here is on animal sacrifice as such, and Christ's anger is less that the temple has become a market and more that God no longer wants animals to be sacrificed at all. To focalise the idea that Christ was enraged specifically by money-changers—and by extension, money-lenders—is to suggest that the Christian church ought to distance itself from money as such (there are plenty of sections of gospel that would support such a reading of course), to concentrate on spiritual rather than material wealth, even perhaps to eschew all money altogether. But it's hard to run an actual Church, as an actual organisation in material society, without money; and Vida may be presumed not to have thought money altogether evil (there are other sections of the gospel that support this reading, of course). It's not an impossible hypothesis that he downplays the money angle here so as not to undermine the conspicuous, and often conspicuously displayed, wealth of the church of which he was himself an officer. By the same token, this may be merely me betraying my culturally-Protestant biases. I do wonder, if someone were to write a cultural history of the trope of ‘Jesus cleansing the temple’ in western art, whether there would be a divide between Protestant artists stressing the money-lender side, and Catholics being more interested in cows and chickens. I don't know of any such history, but would be interested to read it.

Talking of which: the image at the head of this post is ‘Christ driving the money changers from the temple’ (1550s) by Jan Sanders van Hemessen. Click to embiggen.

[Next: lines 551-581]

Book 1, lines 436-510

[Previous: lines 375-435]

Jesus has returned to Jerusalem. Now read on!

Vix ingressus erat, cum densam respicit ecce
in bivio turbam, clamoremque auribus haurit
ingentem, et secum admirans vestigia pressit.
Vallis erat circum frondosis undique septa
collibus: in medio rivis atque imbribus humor         [440]
collectus semper stabat, laticesque perennes,
quo solitae innuptae praedivitis urbis aquari,
et potum pariter pecudes compellere prisci
pastores, lymphaque gregem curare salubri:
unde lacum fama est Ovium dixisse minores.          [445]
Huc concursus erat certis de more diebus,
turbaque adibat inops variis exercita morbis.
Namque videbatur, magno quandoque moveri
cum sonitu, medio unda lacu et perculsa repente
sublato ad coelum spumabant coerula fluctu.          [450]
Sed vulgo subiti quae motus causa latebat.
Impubes pueri tantum, innuptaeque puellae
signa prius manifesta dabant, seseque canebant
cernere pennatum puerum fulgere per auras
undanti chlamyde, atque auro radiantibus alis         [455]
delapsumque polo tranquilla impellere utraque
stagna manu, lateque viam signare cadentem.
Qualis stella, Pater superum quam misit Olympo
aut nautis signum, aut populis in castra coactis,
praecipitat, flammis longe lateque coruscis              [460]
scintillans: corda ignaris mortalibus horrent.

Ergo expectabant denso miseri agmine circum
e coelo signum intenti, laticesque quietos
servabant oculis, atque omnes auribus auras;
auditum ad signum subito ut se primus in undas         [465]
quisque daret, stagnoque sonanti immergeret artus.
Quippe erat inde salus semper, non pluribus, uni
qui subito impulsum prior exiliisset in aequor.
Sicut ubi vacui tendunt medio aequore campi,
viribus, et rapido iuvenes, decernere cursu,                 [470]
arrexere animos cuncti, signumque parati
expectant; pulsat pavor intus pectora anhelus
omnibus atque locum spondet sibi quisque priorem.

Hos inter, longo detentus brachia morbo,
brachiaque, et plantas, omnes et inutilis artus,          [475]
Iethrus erat; cui quondam, et opes, et avita fuere
praedia opima: sed ut juvenili e corpore morbum
pelleret, heu! nimiùm mendaci credidit arti;
dumque vias omnes, medicaeque explorat opis vim,
pauperiem morbo adiecit miserandus iniquam,          [480]
ossibus ad vivum qui iam persederat imis.
Iamque fere denum in luctu quater egerat annum
innumeris circumventus morbisque, fameque,
quem postquam adspexit propius stellantis Olympi
rege satus, sic est ultrò placido ore locutus:                [485]
“Infelix, quae te segnis mora detinet unum
servantem has frustra ripas, et tristibus undam
praesentem morbis; alii cum scilicet omnes
protinus hinc abeant laeti, oblitique laborum
accipiant solitas reparato in corpore vires?”               [490]

Ille sub haec; largoque genas simul imbre rigabat.
“Non hoc crimen aquae, non vis mihi fontis iniqua est:
verùm ego dum motum opperior salientis aquaï,
praecipites dant saltu alii se in stagna priores
ad sonitum: invalidis nequeo ipse insistere plantis;        [495]
nec me tunc opis externae dignatur egentem
in stagno quisquam ante alios mersare salubri.”
Talia narrantem placido deus ore tuetur,
atque ait: “Ipse tuis pedibus subsiste valensque
carpe viam: nec cuncta undis debere necesse est.”           [500]
Vix ea, cùm subito cernentibus omnibus ecce
erigitur, stratumque humeris, mirabile visu,
ipse suis referens pedes omnes passibus aequat;
atque suo solidae respondent robore vires.
Sicut ubi in sylvis dum ramos colligit, anguem                [505]
frigore sopitum pastor, brumaque rigentem
frondibus implicuit, admovitque inscius igni:
nulla mora est, propiùs flammas vix pertulit, et iam
attollitque caput, jamque ignea lumina torquet,
Perque domum serpens micat arduus ore trilingui.

------------

As soon as he entered the city he met with
a great and noisy crowd at the crossroads
thronging, and he stopped, amazed at the sight.
Here was a valley enclosed by shady trees
on all sides: down the middle a stream flowed down         [440]
to a perennial pool, fed by rain and dews:
here it was the city’s maidens came to fetch water,
and this was the traditional spot shepherds
drove their herds, to refresh them with a lively drink,
which is why it was known as the Sheep Lake.                 [445]
Here folk gathered on certain days by custom,
a wretched huddle, all afflicted with illness.
And sometimes they saw a great wave move, stir
itself noisily in the midst of the pool
and abruptly rear up blue towards the sky.                    [450]
None of them knew what caused this strange motion,
though prepubescent boys and unmarried girls
insisted a clear portent was visible then—
claimed they saw a winged youth flash down through air
clothes billowing, shining aloft with gold                       [455]
as he descended from heaven, stirring up
the pond with his hand, leaving a trail in the sky
like a star sent by God from Olympus
as a sign to sailors or soldiers in camps:
he came down, bright with drawn-out radiant flames         [460]
scintillant: and baffled mortal hearts trembled.

So: those poor people crowded together
waiting heaven’s sign, watching the limpid waters
and listening to the sounds made by the breezes;
to be the first to jump into those waters                         [465]
—only the first who dived in that sounding pool.
could be guaranteed health; not the rest, only
the one who abruptly disturbed those waters.
Just as sporty youngsters hurry to the field,
to test their strength, and see which of them is fastest,  [470]
so these sick ones readied their souls, waiting
expectantly; their hearts pounding, agitated
each one vowing that he would be the first.

Amongst these, one of the chronically ill,
crippled in arms and feet (indeed all over)                    [475]
was Jethro; who had once been wealthy, with large
ancestral estates: but when disease seized his young
body, alas! he’d put his trust in quacks and frauds;
and so, exploring every medical chance,
poverty had been added to his illnesses,                      [480]
and sickness had sunk into his very marrow.
And now for almost forty years he'd endured
innumerable sicknesses and hunger,
until the son of starry Olympus came:
the king looked closely, and spoke these soft words:          [485]
“Unhappy man, why loiter here uselessly
maintaining this sad poolside vigil alone
in your sickness; when all of the others
depart this place in joy, leaving behind their
disease and reclaiming their bodies’ rude health?”           [490]

To this he replied, tears running down his cheeks:
“It’s not the water’s fault, its powers don't shun me:
in truth I've waited too long for the water's gush,
while others have been diving-in before me,
splashy! I’m an invalid. My feet don’t work;                    [495]
I need help, and no-one here is willing to
stop and carry me to the health-giving pond.”
The god look placidly upon this man
and told him: “stand up on your own two feet
and go your way: you do not need these waters.”           [500]
As soon as he spoke, the folk there saw this man
get up, shouldering his mat, amazing sight,
to walk away on his own without difficulty;
regaining at once all of his former strength.
Just as when, gathering branches for firewood               [505]
a shepherd picks up a snake, frozen solid
in foliage, unwitting brings it to his fireside:
suddenly its fiery eyes open, and its head
lifts up, coiling fast before the flames, and it
slides through the house, flicking its three-forked tongue.

------------

This account of healing Jethro at the Bethesda pool in Jerusalem derives from John 5. Vida is quite right that there was a tradition that this place was called ‘the Sheep Pool’, oddly given the fact that people drank from and bathed in it (you wouldn't drink sheep dip, after all).

This stays close to the gospel account, except that it omits the hostile response of the locals, angry that Jesus had done this work on the sabbath, a day on which working was forbidden by the Law (‘and therefore did the Jews persecute Jesus, and sought to slay him, because he had done these things on the sabbath day’ John 5:16). I'm not sure why Vida doesn't include this detail. Not to spare the Jews, certainly. .

For me the most striking thing here is the final epic simile: that the healed Jethro was, by implication of similtude, like a frozen snake revivified by heat and left to slide dangerously about our collective domicile. Does it imply that there's something wicked in the heart of Jethro? If so, why did Jesus heal him? Or is the idea that Jesus heals indiscrimately the good and the bad, just as divine grace is poured out for all regardless of merit? Or are we to take from this the idea that Jethro is basically a good man (if a little foolish, as manifested by the way he put trust in quacks and wasted his entire fortune), who has suffered patiently for four decades and now has been redeemed? In which case the epic simile takes its force from the very starkness of its inappositeness.

Epic similes do sometimes trade in contrast: a war scene will be compared, via epic simile, with peaceful farming, or a mighty warrior like Patroklos with a whining baby; but there does seem to me something oddly wrongfooting about the serpentine comparison here. It has something to do with the way the simile brings this frozen snake back to the innocent peasant's hut, warms him back to life and then just leaves him there, a hidden threat to life and limb going forward. And, in the larger scheme of the Christiad, doesn't such a simile both look back—to Satan in the garden of Eden—and 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.) Something strange is going on here.

The image at the head of this post is ‘The Pool of Bethesda’ (1877) by British artist Robert Bateman.

[Next: lines 511-550]

Book 1, lines 375-435

[Previous: lines 368-374]

Tandem hinc digrediens Solymorum tendit ad arces.          [375]
Hanc fundasse Semes soboles tua dicitur urbem,
vitisator pater, exactis simul imbribus ingens
cessavit vastis stagnare paludibus orbis,
plurimaque immensi compressa licentia ponti.
Tum venere , suo bellis qui gente subacta                 [380]
urbem appellarunt de nomine Iebusaei:
Protinus hinc reges, a prisco sanguis Iuda
Finitimis late dominam coluere subactis.
Hic templum Salomon per terras omnibus aris
eversis ope barbarica rex condidit olim                     [385]
templum opulentum, ingens, eductam ad sidera molem.
Huc mensas, arasque sacras, et ahenea labra
transtulit, et veteres vestes ac munera templi,
ostro perfusas vestes, auroque rigentes;
tum lychnos, lancesque, cavasque invexit acerras         [390]
cymbiaque et tripodas fulvoque ex aere lebetas,
inclusasque sacro leges ac foedera ligno,
quae gemina in silice omnipotens Pater ipse notarat.
Hic gentis rex atque omni cum gente sacerdos
sacra ferens pecudum fundebat rite cruorem:                [395]
victima non alias maculabat sanguine sedes.
Undique mos erat huc populos ter adire quotannis,
et proprios genus Isacidum instaurabat honores.
Ipse etiam crebro huc Heros se ferre solebat.

Iamque viis plenis, multis cum millibus ibat:                 [400]
unde urbis poterant turres, atque alta videri
culmina. Laeti omnes ramos viridantis olivae,
quasque manu gestent, palmas a stirpe refringunt.
Praecedit peditum late manus omnis; it ingens
pone equitum globus, in medio pulcherrimus heros       [405]
haud acri provectus equo, phalerisque superbo
eminet. At sibi pauperiem ut placuisse beatam
admoneat socios, rex quadrupedantis aselli
terga premit, vates quondam ut cecinere futurum.
Nudus erat vertex; humeris demissa fluebat,                 [410]
ad talos vestis, quam festinaverat olim
ipsa parens pueroque dedit gestare, nec illa est
ullo attrita usu, nulla consumpta senecta.
Taurea nudatis circumdant tegmina plantis,
Talis iter tendit, recipitque ad moenia gressum.          [415]

Ante urbem pueri occurrunt, mixaeque puellae
floribus, ac variis ornatae tempora sertis.
Omnibus in manibus palmae, omnes carmina laeti
laeta canunt, tonsis et inumbrant ora coronis,
certatimque dei gaudent placida ora tueri.                  [420]
Tum demum portis urbem ingrediuntur apertis
et propius regem salvatoremque salutant
praetenduntque manu thyrsos oleasque coruscant
frondentis. Superas ingens it clamor ad auras.
Spargitur hic rumor subito, ac tota urbe vagatur.          [425]
Consurgunt gentis primi, procul ecce per auras
pulveream cernunt tolli super aethera nubem:
ignari penitus rerum, causasque requirunt
tam subiti motus, quemnam tam multa sequantur
millia ductorem, quis tantus clamor ovantum.                [430]
Ast illi, quibus haud Divi est incognita fama,
occurrunt alacres regi, plausumque sequentes
ingeminant, quaque ingreditur, passim ecce rubenti
insternunt ostro sola, barbaricisque tapetis
intenduntque vias sertis, et floribus augent.                 [435]

------------

And now at last he came to Jerusalem.                           [375]
They say the city was founded by Shem your son,
O Father of the Vine! just as the great earth
ceased stagnating as one vast swamp, when the rains
stopped and the immense ocean was re-contained.
Soon after, his people were bested in war by                 [380]
the Jebusites, who named the city after themselves:
Then kings arose, ancient bloodline of Judah
conquering the surrounding lands and making a capital.
Here Solomon’s temple replaced the old altars
a structure of dominating, barbaric richness:                 [385]
an opulent temple, huge, tall as the sky.
Furnishings, sacred altars and bowls of brass
were brought to the temple, traditional vestments,
garments dyed purple and stiffened with gold;
and lamps, and platters and hollow censers                 [390]
goblets and tripods, great pots of shining bronze,
and finally a sacred ark of wood, to hold the laws,
the Great Father engraved on twinned stone tablets.
Here the king and his people brought the holy objects
sanctifying them by ritually sacrificing a cow:                  [395]
no other altar was stained with victims’ blood.
Tradition said that the people must come thrice a year,
to follow the rite established by the sons of Isaac.
The hero himself used often to attend.

The ways were thronged with thousands of followers          [400]
as he entered the city, and its roofs and towers
came into view. The joyful citizens tore branches,
from budding olive trees, and seized palm fronds.
These they carried in their hands; some walking
others on horseback, our hero splendid in the middle          [405]
though he was not riding upon a proud horse
splendidly decorated. To teach holy poverty
to the people, the king rode a four-legged ass
unsaddled, as the prophets of old had foretold.
Bare-headed, a robe hung down from his shoulders,          [410]
to his heels, one that had been made for him
by his mother when he was only a boy, but held back
from use, and not at all frayed or worn by time.
On his feet were simple leather sandals.
Such was his appearance as he approached the city.          [415]

Young boys rushed through the city, and girls too
carrying garlands of multicoloured flowers.
Everyone carried a palm, all joyfully singing
songs of gladness, garlands on their brows,
vying amongst themselves to see the god’s face.                  [420]
They all poured into the city through the main gate
crowding round and praising their saviour
holding up thyrsus-staffs, waving olive
branches. A mighty cheer rose to the skies.
Rumour scattered through the city he had come.              [425]
Now the city elders rose to action: seeing from afar
clouds of dust rising and spreading through the air:
Not knowing what was going on they searched the cause
of this sudden hubbub, and enquired after this man
with so many thousands of noisy followers.                    [430]
But others, recognising his divinity,
hurried off to greet their king, following with
redoubled clamour wherever he went, everywhere red
with laid-out cloth and foreign-woven carpets
the streets embowered with richly displayed blooms.    [435]

------------

So now we’re back at the place the Christiad began: Jesus, followed by an adoring multitude, enters Jerusalem.

The figure Vida calls ‘Father of the Vine’ in line 377 is Noah. The Vulgate Bible says (Genesis 14:18-20) that Jerusalem was founded by Melchisedech. That’s him at the head of this post (‘Meeting of Abraham and Melchizedek’, by Dieric Bouts the Elder, 1464–1467). The rabbinic tradition identified the name ‘Melchizedek’ (the Hebrew means ‘King of Righteousness’) as a title or nickname of Shem, the son of Noah; a tradition Vida knew through Christian commentary on the Bible.

Line 395 says that the high priest sanctified the temple by sacrificing a ‘pecus’, (‘ritually spilling its blood’). The actual Jewish ritual involved sacrificing a ram, and indeed Gardner translates this lines 394-95 as “Here the kingly priest and all his people carried the holy objects and ritually spilt the blood of sheep.” But pecus doesn’t really mean sheep. It means ‘cattle’ (‘a group of large domestic animals: a herd of cattle, horses, or donkeys; such animals in a collective sense’ and in Late Latin ‘any individual animal, conceived as a member of a herd’. Sheep isn’t absolutely ruled out by this, I suppose, but L&S do add that ‘pecora may be used for any domestic animal, but was especially used of larger herd animals.’ So maybe Vida simply got this wrong, or maybe he was making a more specific classicising reference, invoking Roman tradition of the taurobolium, in which a bull was sacrificed for the well-being of the people and the state. At any rate, I’ve translated cow.

[Next: lines 436-510]