Chapter 6

Although Julius Caesar was the first emperor of the Romans, he ruled for only a short time and not peacefully but as though by violence, for which reason he was killed by the counsel and will of the senators. Therefore the fourth monarchy of the world, namely that of the Romans, is more commonly said to have begun with Octavian, his immediate successor.

Just as all emperors are named Caesars from Julius Caesar, so all are called Augusti from Octavian Augustus, because they ought to augment the commonwealth—that is, the empire—just as Octavian Augustus greatly enlarged it after defeating Antony, as will be related.

Under him Christ was born, king of kings and lord of lords, who subjected to himself—that is, to his faith—the whole monarchy. This is contained in the vision of Daniel 3, in the statue crushed by a stone, namely Christ, cut without hands from the mountain. First, however, the wars of Octavian himself and the manner in which he reached the monarchy will be treated, and afterward his character.

It should therefore be known, as can be gathered from Eutropius in book 7 and Orosius in book 6, that Octavian Augustus waged five civil wars. He waged the first, while still a youth of seventeen years, against Mark Antony after Julius Caesar had been killed. As was said, very many Roman senators and knights had conspired in Caesar’s death.

Eutropius says that this Octavian was born to his father, the senator Octavius, and obtained his maternal ancestry from Aeneas through the Julian family, for Julia descended from Julus, son of Aeneas. Octavian was also Caesar’s nephew. Caesar left him his heir in his testament and ordered him to bear his name. He indeed took that name, for he was called both Caesar and Augustus, while nevertheless retaining his own name, Octavian.

Augustine’s statement in book 3, chapter 30 of The City of God that Octavian was the aforesaid Caesar’s adoptive son does not contradict this, for he was both his nephew by nature and his son by adoption, having been adopted as his son through the testament.

The aforesaid Mark Antony was then consul and belonged to Julius Caesar’s party. He was attempting through civil wars to crush those who had killed Julius Caesar, while the Senate favored them. After Antony disturbed the commonwealth and committed many crimes, the Senate judged him an enemy and sent Octavian Augustus to pursue him. The two consuls Pausa and Ircius were nevertheless the principal commanders, and a third commander was joined to them. These three commanders therefore set out and defeated Antony at Mutina.

It happened that both consuls were killed and died, and that the three armies obeyed Octavian alone. Antony, put to flight and having lost his army, took refuge with Lepidus, who had been Caesar’s master of the horse. Through Lepidus’s efforts Octavian made peace with Antony and gave him his sister Octavia as wife.

As though intending to avenge the death of his adoptive father, Octavian set out for Rome with an army and extorted the consulship for himself in the twentieth year of his age. Afterward he proscribed the Senate—that is, according to Orosius, 112 members of the Senate. Cicero was among them, Antony his enemy and Lucius Antonius proscribing him.

Octavian then began to administer the commonwealth with Antony and Lepidus. Through this arrangement Cicero the orator and many other nobles were killed.

Valerius says of Cicero in book 5 that Popilius, whom Cicero had earlier defended in court against a serious charge and freed from death and capital punishment, afterward pursued Cicero to his death, although Cicero had injured him neither in deed nor in word. Of his own accord he asked Mark Antony to send him to pursue and slaughter Cicero once he had been proscribed—that is, at the time the Senate was proscribed.

Having obtained his request, Popilius ran exultantly to Gayeta, where Cicero was. He commanded the man of most illustrious dignity and outstanding service to offer him his venerable throat. Immediately he cut off the head of Roman eloquence and the most illustrious right hand of peace, carrying them with him to Rome.

Here it should be known that Cicero initially resisted Julius Caesar when, after winning his victory over Gaul, Caesar sought a second consulship; Cicero belonged to the party of Pompey and Cato. But after Julius Caesar obtained supreme rule, Cicero was reconciled to him.

After Caesar himself was killed, Mark Antony intended to usurp for himself the sole power of the empire. Among the Caesarians he pretended that, having received power, he would avenge Caesar’s death. Cicero resisted him and composed invectives against him, because Antony was vicious in many respects.

Cicero then attached himself to Octavian, hoping that Octavian would defend the liberty of the fatherland. Octavian, intending to draw the whole commonwealth to himself and perceiving that Cicero would resist him, handed Cicero over to Antony, his enemy, as though for the good of securing the peace when they made peace with one another. Because Antony desired Cicero’s death for the reasons given above, he ordered him to be killed in the manner already described.

Octavian waged his second war against Brutus and Cassius, who had been the leaders in Caesar’s assassination. They had stirred up a great war, and Octavian and Antony advanced against them in Greece. They fought them near Philippi, a city of Macedonia. Octavian and Antony were defeated in the first battle, although Cassius, commander of the nobility, perished. In the second battle they killed Brutus and the immense body of nobles who had waged war with them.

The commonwealth was then divided between Octavian and Antony: Octavian held Spain, Gaul, and Italy, while Antony held Asia, Pontus, and the East.

Octavian waged his third war against the consul Lucius Antonius, who had been proscribed and had stirred up civil war in Italy. According to Orosius this Lucius was the uncle, but according to Eutropius the brother, of Mark Antony, who had undertaken the government of the East. Lucius Antonius was defeated and captured at Perusia, a city of Tuscany.

Octavian’s fourth war was against Sextus Pompey, son of Gnaeus Pompey the Great. Sextus had stirred up a great war in Sicily after those who survived from the party of Brutus and Cassius fled to him. Octavian and Antony made war against him, but peace was at last agreed between them. Sextus Pompey afterward broke the peace and, defeated in a naval war, fled into Asia and was killed.

Octavian’s fifth civil war was against the aforesaid Mark Antony. Antony had married Octavia, Octavian’s sister, but afterward repudiated her and married Cleopatra, queen of Egypt, who was most wicked and most lustful. After this Antony, under Cleopatra’s compulsion, stirred up a great civil war against Octavian; then in his ambition he hoped to rule even in Rome.

§ I. Augustus’s Character

According to Suetonius in book 2, Augustus had an exceptional appearance and was most handsome at every stage of life, although he neglected all adornment and was so careless about arranging the hair on his head that he would hastily employ several barbers at once, now having his hair cut and now his beard shaved, while at the same time he either read or wrote something.

Whether speaking or silent, his face was calm and serene. He had clear and shining eyes in which he wished people to believe there was a certain divine force. He rejoiced if a person gazing at him intently lowered his face as though before the brightness of the sun.

He was short, but the proportion and symmetry of his limbs concealed this, so that it could not be perceived except by comparison with a taller person standing beside him.

He brought ill-settled nations back to obedience and made war upon no people without just and necessary causes. He governed military discipline with the utmost severity and only reluctantly permitted even one of his legates to visit his wife, and then only during the winter months.

If any cohorts yielded their position, he decimated them and fed them barley. He punished centurions who deserted their posts with capital penalties just as he punished ordinary soldiers. For other kinds of offenses he marked men with various disgraces: he sometimes ordered them to stand all day before the praetorium wearing tunics and without their military belts, and sometimes carrying ten-foot poles or even pieces of turf.

He considered nothing less appropriate to a perfect commander than haste and rashness. He often repeated that whatever is done well is done quickly enough. He maintained that war should never be undertaken unless greater hope of gain than fear of loss was apparent. He used to say that those who sought the smallest advantages at no small risk resembled men fishing with a golden hook, whose loss, if it broke off, no catch could compensate.

He embellished and adorned the city in keeping with the majesty of the empire, so that he rightly boasted that he had found it made of brick and left it made of marble.

He forbade young people of either sex to attend any nocturnal spectacle except in the company of an older close relative. After obtaining ten assistants from the Senate, he compelled every knight to render an account of his life. He censured some because they borrowed money at lower rates of interest and invested it at higher rates.

He frequently displayed great generosity to every order as occasions arose, so that one recognized him as a beneficial rather than a self-promoting prince. When the people complained of the scarcity and high price of wine, he restrained them with a most severe reply, saying that his son-in-law Agrippa had provided sufficiently by conducting many waters into the city, and people thirsted.

Except for a few, the kingdoms he obtained by right of war he either returned to the same people from whom he had taken them or assigned to foreigners. He also joined allied kings to one another by mutual ties of kinship. Being the readiest maker and arranger of every affinity and friendship, he brought up and educated the children of many kings together with his own.

There are many great proofs of his clemency and civility. When it was alleged against Aemilius Aelianus, among definite charges and above all else, that he was accustomed to think ill of Caesar, Augustus turned to the accuser with a look as though moved and said, “I wish you to prove these things to me.”

When Tiberius complained to him rather violently and persistently by letter about the same matter, Augustus wrote back: “My Tiberius, do not indulge your age in this matter, and do not be too indignant that there is anyone who speaks ill of me. It is enough if we have ensured that no one can do us harm.”

Although he knew that temples were customarily decreed even for proconsuls, he most obstinately abstained from this honor in the city. He even melted down all the silver statues that had once been erected to him. He always abhorred the title “Lord” as a curse and reproach.

While he was watching the games, the words “a just and good lord” were pronounced. When everyone exultantly approved them as though they had been spoken about him, he immediately checked the shameful flatterers with his hand and expression. On the following day he rebuked them in a very severe edict. He did not afterward permit himself to be called “lord,” even by his children or grandchildren, either seriously or in jest, and he prohibited flatteries of this kind even among them.

He did not rashly leave or enter any city or town except in the evening or at night, lest he disturb anyone for the sake of ceremonial duty. In courts of law he allowed himself to be questioned as a witness and refuted with a most even temper.

He did nothing more worthy of Augustus than these things: he did not dare to extort the nearest houses from their owners, and whenever he commended his sons to the people he added, “If they shall deserve it.” When they were still boys wearing the bordered toga, he complained most bitterly that everyone in the theater rose for them and applauded them while standing.

He wished his friends to be great and powerful in the city, yet equally subject to care as the others and bound by judicial laws. When he returned from a province, people accompanied him not only with favorable omens but also with measured songs. It was also observed that no punishment was exacted from anyone whenever he entered the city.

With sudden and complete unanimity everyone conferred upon him the title “Father of the Fatherland.” Some heads of households provided in their wills that their heirs should lead victims to the Capitol with a placard displayed and pay a vow on their behalf because they had left Augustus alive after them. Friendly and allied kings each founded cities called Caesarea in his own kingdom.

He educated his daughter and granddaughters so that he even accustomed them to wool-working, and he forbade them to say or do anything except openly and in such a way that it might be entered in the daily records. He so thoroughly kept them from associating with strangers that he once wrote to Licinius, a young man of illustrious and honorable birth, that he had acted somewhat immodestly by coming to Baiae to greet his daughter.

He neither admitted friendships easily nor failed to retain them with the greatest constancy.

Nevertheless, Augustus nevertheless did not worthily pursue each person’s virtues and merits, but also his faults and offenses. As patron and master he was no less severe than approachable and merciful.

When a fierce boar suddenly charged Augustus while Diomedes, his steward, was walking beside him, Diomedes in fear thrust Augustus in the animal’s path. Augustus preferred to accuse him of timidity rather than wrongdoing. Although the matter had involved no small danger, because there had been no deceit he turned it into a joke.

They say that he never slept on any couch except one low and modestly furnished. He rarely wore any clothing except garments made at home by his sister, wife, and daughter. His togas were neither tight nor loose, and their stripe was neither broad nor narrow.

He served a dinner of three courses, or at the most abundant, six. He ate very little and was also by nature most sparing of wine, customarily drinking no more than three times during dinner and hardly drinking during the day. Instead of drink he would take bread soaked in cold water, a piece of cucumber, or fresh or dried fruit whose juice resembled wine.

From his earliest age he cultivated eloquence and liberal studies both eagerly and with the greatest labor. During the war at Mutina, amid so great a mass of affairs, he is said to have read, written, and declaimed every day.

By the stenches of recondite words of truth, he took especial care to express the meaning of his mind as openly as possible. He did not spare Tiberius when the latter sometimes hunted after obsolete and recondite words. He rebuked Mark Antony as a man who wrote things that people would admire rather than understand.

He fostered the talents of his age in every way and listened kindly and patiently to those who recited their works. He was nevertheless offended if anything was composed about him unless it was both serious and written by the most excellent authors.

He was somewhat weakly terrified by thunder and lightning, so that he always and everywhere carried a sealskin about with him as a remedy. At the suspicion of a greater storm he would withdraw into a hidden and vaulted place.

§ II. Wars Under Augustus

In the thirty-seventh year of Augustus’s rule, Tiberius, who afterward succeeded him in the empire, celebrated a triumph after destroying the Vindelici, Armenians, and Pannonians. Thus Orosius.

Claudius Drusus, Caesar’s stepson, received Gaul and Greece by lot and subdued them. This same Drusus, brother of Tiberius, subdued in Germany first the Susipetes and then the Tethecos and Cacios. He destroyed Marconiam almost to annihilation.

Afterward, in a single war, though one sprinkled also with the blood of his own men, he overcame the most powerful nations of the Cherusci, Suebi, and Sicambri, peoples to whom nature gave strength and custom experience of strength.

Their courage and ferocity can be judged from this: whenever their women were shut within their barriers by the advance of the Romans, after missiles and every object that their fury could use as a weapon had failed them, they dashed their little children upon the ground and hurled them into the faces of the enemy. In every killing of a son they were twice parricides.

At that time in Africa, Cossius, Caesar’s commander, confined within narrow boundaries the Insulanos and the Gaetuli, who had wandered too widely. Tiberius also assailed the Germans in war and led away forty thousand of them as captives in victory. This very great and formidable war was waged for three years, and scarcely any war since the Punic War was greater.

Piso in turn was sent against the Vindelici and emerged victorious, and Agrippa overcame the Bosforanos. Thus Orosius.

The Martinian Chronicle says of the emperor Octavian: so great a man was not without vices. He was a slave to lust, for he was accustomed to recline among twelve cathaniones and as many girls.

Thus this man was most fortunate in the world, so that it was said proverbially of him, “None was more fortunate than Octavian, and none better than Trajan.” Even if he had possessed no other vices, he is believed to have been condemned for idolatry alone. Suetonius too, who praises him so highly, writes that he was devoted to debauchery, adulteries, and other wanton acts.

§ III. Learned Men in the Time of Octavian

In the time of this Octavian the following most learned men flourished: the historians Marcus Varro and Valerius Maximus; Marcus Tullius Cicero and Sallust, outstanding orators or rhetoricians; and the poets Vigilius, Ovid, and Oratius. Some of the more notable sayings from their books will be set down.

Marcus Varro died in the fifteenth year of Octavian’s rule. These are his moral sayings:

“There is a double evil when we bear vexatiously what is necessary.”

“Speak as all people do; think as few do. In many matters, to be wise against everyone is to be foolish.”

“Return feigned thanks to one who gives unwillingly.”

“Do not consider a thing scarcely given a benefit, but plunder.”

“He gives once who gives when asked; he gives twice who gives without being asked.”

“To ask more than once is to extort.”

“It is most shameful to hope for repayment of gifts; it is most beautiful for gifts to be returned with interest.”

“A gift is judged great according to the giver’s intention.”

“Do you wish to test a friend? Become unfortunate.”

“A good man carries his fatherland with him wherever he goes and guards all his possessions. Let no one think that what lies outside himself is his own.”

“Riches should be dismissed with the same expression with which they should be received.”

“It is not as praiseworthy to remember as to discover, for the former belongs to another, but the latter is the work of one’s own gift.”

“Trust stands midway between opinion and knowledge, touching neither.”

“The clearest kind of teaching is the presentation of examples.”

“Ease in understanding the truth gives birth to negligence.”

“A lover of truth does not pay as much attention to how a thing is said as to what is said.”

“Choose as a teacher the man whom you admire more in his own things than in those of others.”

“There are certain things that should be erased from the knowing mind because they occupy the place where truth is to be inserted.”

“Books are only poor little aids to the sciences. They contain the beginnings of inquiries, so that from them the mind may take the beginnings of its work.”

“Studies should nevertheless be interrupted lest they be abandoned, for the mind delights in variety.”

“He will teach nothing magnificent, because he says nothing himself.”

“Many people taste books as they taste dinner delicacies, but things quickly run through slip away still more quickly.”

“Philosophy rejects a squeamish stomach and invites a cheerful guest to a simple dinner.”

“The ear that does not commit what it hears to memory is a cracked vessel.”

“He who follows every path he sees will arrive nowhere.”

“It is a mark of ignorance to demand that a most difficult thing be done quickly.”

“To one who knows, no loss is more grievous than that of time.”

“Travelers do not go merely so that they may go; likewise life is not lived for its own sake, but so that something excellent may be done through it.”

“There is no happiness that receives misery into itself.”

“It is a sign of flattery when praise precedes a request.”

“Many people admit praise because they themselves proclaim it about themselves.”

“A wise man praises himself in this one way: by praising in others the good things that appear in himself.”

“It is useful but inglorious to succeed without labor to the labors of others.”

These are the sayings of Marcus Varro to an Athenian hearer.

This Marcus Terentius Varro died at the age of ninety. In his praise Augustine says in book 6 of The City of God: “Who inquired into the inventions of the gods more curiously than Marcus Varro?”

“Who discovered anything more learnedly? Who considered it more attentively? Who distinguished it more acutely? Who wrote more diligently and fully? Although he is less pleasing in eloquence, he is nevertheless so replete with doctrine and the sciences that in every branch of learning—which we call secular but they call liberal—he instructs a student of things as much as Cicero delights a student of words.”

Finally, Cicero himself offers Varro such testimony that in the Academic Books he says that he conducted the disputation treated there with Marcus Varro, who was his contemporary. He calls him “easily the sharpest of all men,” and where he contends that everything should be doubted, he adds without any doubt that Varro was most learned.

Cicero was certainly so sure about this matter that he set aside the doubt he customarily applied to everything, as though, when about to dispute this one matter on behalf of the Academics’ doubt, he forgot that he himself was an Academic.

Terentianus also says briefly of Varro in a most elegant phrase: “Varro was a most learned man in every field. He read so much that we wonder he had any leisure to write; he wrote so much that we can scarcely believe anyone could have read it all.”

Varro nevertheless worshiped the gods and judged that they should be worshiped in such a way that in this very work of his writings he says that he feared they would perish, not through a hostile attack but through the citizens’ negligence. He says that he delivered them from that ruin and deposited and preserved them in the memory of good people through free persons of this kind.

He wrote forty-one books of Antiquities, which he divided into human and divine subjects. He allotted twenty-five to human matters and sixteen to divine. He said that he wrote about human matters before divine because cities existed first and afterward these rites were instituted by them.

He also says that the ancient Romans worshiped God for more than 170 years without an image. “If this had continued until now,” he says, “the gods would be observed more chastely.” He adduces the Jewish nation as a witness to the same opinion.

This same Varro also says that he believes God to be the soul of the world, which the Greeks call the cosmos, and that this world itself is God. But just as a wise man, although consisting of body and soul, is called wise from his soul alone, so the world is called God from its soul alone.

“The world,” he says, “is divided into two parts, heaven and earth. Heaven is in turn divided into ether and air, and earth into water and soil.” He says that all these four parts are full of souls: immortal souls in the ether and air, and mortal souls in the water and soil.

According to Augustine in book 7 of The City of God, Varro also established three kinds of theology—that is, discourse or reasoning concerning divine things.

One is fabulous theology, which poets use when they sing in theaters and represent through mimes the shameful deeds of the gods before the people.

The second is civil theology, which priests used in temples, themselves also performing many incongruous and indecent things in the sacrifices and worship of those gods.

The third kind is called philosophical theology. Philosophers and learned men used it when they attempted to color the erroneous obscenities of civil or fabulous theology with physical interpretations, as though giving them the appearance of a higher doctrine.

Varro himself censured the first kind of theology in his writings because of the obscenities performed in it, which are detestable to every wise person. Nevertheless, he did not attack it in speech because he feared the people.

Although Varro did not condemn the second kind, namely civil theology, Seneca, though a pagan, inveighed greatly against it for the same reason: shameful and indecent acts were also performed by the priests in the temple. Augustine explains this at length in book 6 of The City of God.

Augustine most effectively empties the third kind of its vain and false subjects throughout many chapters of book 6 of The City of God.

In his books Marcus Varro made a certain distinction among the gods. He called some plebeian and named others selected—that is, chosen separately from the others. He states that there were twenty selected gods, whom he called selected because they had a better administration in the world than the other gods. Of those twenty, twelve were male and eight female: Janus, Jove, Saturn, Geminum, Mercury, Apollo, Mars, Vulcan, Neptune, the Sun, Ortum, Liber, Tellus, Ceres, Juno, Luna, Diana, Minerva, Venus, and Vestem.

Varro assigns to each of them the particular functions in which they operate. But in many chapters of the aforesaid book 7, Augustine most effectively refutes the natural interpretations Varro gives to the things said about such gods. He shows that Varro says many false and vain things and contradicts himself. In chapter 29 of that book Augustine declares that the true and one God whom we worship is accustomed to produce by himself or through various creatures all the effects assigned to the gods.

The plebeian gods were almost innumerable. Not only were certain human beings venerated as gods, such as Romulus, Aeneas, Hercules, and others of this kind, but even the vilest created things had gods or goddesses: the sewer had the goddess Cloacina, fever the goddess Febris, pallor the goddess Pallor, and so forth.

Indeed, one and the same kind of created thing had several gods or goddesses in its different stages: grain had the goddess Semetia when it was sown, Ortea when it was born, Herbea when it became grass, Nondea when it had not yet formed a joint, Spicea when it reached the ear, and Segetia when it ripened.

From all these things it is evident that all people in whom there is no knowledge of God are vain, and that the wisdom of this world with which this most renowned Varro was imbued is foolishness before God, as the Apostle says.

Therefore hell enlarged its soul and opened its mouth without limit, as Isaiah 5 says, receiving and holding forever all who worshiped something other than the one true God and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever.

§ IV. Valerius Maximus

Valerius Maximus published a distinguished work divided into nine books, containing many headings on the virtues, vices, and marvelous deeds of the ancient Romans and Greeks. The following few extracts are taken from it.

In the first book: “Divine anger indeed advances with a slow step toward vengeance for itself, and compensates for its delay by its gravity.”

In the second book: “The passage from virtue to luxury is somewhat easier than that from luxury to virtue. The sweetness of life compels people both to do and to suffer many shameful things.”

In the third book: “Virtue consecrated by public reverence does not need private praise.”

Likewise, in the fourth book: “Nothing is so magnificent or so illustrious that it does not desire to be tempered by moderation. That power is safe which sets a limit to its own strength.”

“A person is made rich not by possessing many things, but by desiring few.”

“Modesty is the parent of every honorable counsel, the guardian of solemn duties, the teacher of innocence, dear to neighbors, acceptable to strangers, displaying much that is favorable in every place and time.”

In the fifth book: “The sweetness of humanity penetrates even savage dispositions, softens the bereaved and fierce eyes of enemies, and finds a peaceful path among drawn swords. Under no bitterness of fortune and no squalor does the value of dear filial devotion grow cheap; indeed, its proof is the surer the more wretched it is.”

He gives the example of a certain matron who was imprisoned and was failing there from hunger. Her daughter visited her, and when she had been searched lest she bring any food to her mother, she replied: she nourished her for a long time only with milk expressed from her own breasts. When the judge considered and marveled at this, he freed the mother herself.

Valerius gives an almost similar example of another woman who nourished her imprisoned father, and adds: “The eyes of human beings fasten upon the sight and are astonished when they see the painted representation of this deed. The other virtues indeed earn much admiration, but filial devotion also merits the greatest love.”

And below: “For how rich in sweetness is this recollection: before I was born I dwelt in the same home, passed the time of infancy in the same cradle, and called the same persons parents. A wife is dear, children are sweet, friends delightful, and relatives pleasing. But no affection for those known afterward should arise that drains away the earlier affection.”

In the sixth book: “When Rutilius resisted an unjust request made by one of his friends and the man indignantly said, ‘What use to me, then, is your friendship if you do not do what I ask?’ Rutilius replied, ‘Indeed, what use to me is yours if I am going to do something dishonorable because of you?’”

In the seventh book: “That king of refined judgment who, they say, when a diadem was handed to him, held it for a long time and considered it before placing it upon his head, said: ‘O cloth more noble than happy! If anyone knew thoroughly how many anxieties, dangers, and miseries it is filled with, he would not wish to pick it up even if it lay upon the ground. For this sweetness lies close beside ruin.’”

In the eighth book: “Leisure indeed seems especially contrary to zealous industry, but it ought particularly to be joined to it—not so that virtue may disappear, but so that it may be refreshed. The nature of things does not permit a human being to endure continuous labor.”

“The ornaments of eloquence consist in suitable delivery and fitting movement of the body. When eloquence has equipped itself with them, it approaches people in three ways: by penetrating their ears, soothing their eyes, and invading their minds.”

In the ninth book: “Luxury is a seductive evil, which is sometimes easier to accuse than to avoid. Let it be inserted in our work, not so that it may receive any honor, but so that, recognizing itself, it may be driven to repentance.”

“Why should I speak further about women, whom both weakness of mind and the denial of aspiration to weightier tasks encourage to devote all their effort to the more elaborate cultivation of themselves, when I see men excellent both in name and spirit tumble into a byway unknown to ancient continence?”

“What is more foul than vices, or indeed more harmful? By them virtue is worn down, victories languish, sleeping glory is turned into infamy, and the powers of mind and body alike are conquered.”

“The passions of anger and hatred excite great waves in human breasts. The former is swifter in its onset, the latter more persistent in its desire to do harm. Each is full of consternation and never violent without tormenting itself, because when it wishes to inflict pain it suffers bitter anxiety lest vengeance fail to occur.”

“Now let treachery, a hidden and insidious evil, be drawn out from its hiding places. Its most effective powers are lying and deception, while its fruit consists in the commission of some crime, when the same evil, resolute in spirit, has enclosed cruelty within its wicked bonds. It brings as much harm to the human race as good faith supplies safety.”

§ V. Marcus Tullius Cicero

In the time of Octavian there also flourished Marcus Tullius Cicero, the most eloquent of the Latins. He was killed at Gayeta at the beginning of Octavian’s rule, as was shown above.

As Augustine says in book 12 of The City of God, Cicero, wishing to define God as briefly as he could, said: “He is a certain mind, unfettered and free, separated from every mortal concretion, perceiving and moving all things, and itself endowed with everlasting motion.”

Jerome says of him in Against Jovinian: when Cicero was asked by Ircius to marry his sister after divorcing Terentia, he did not consent, saying that he could not devote himself at the same time to a wife and to philosophy.

Cicero wrote very many books, from which a very few extracts are set down here.

In the book On Duties he says: “We ought to know that all things produced on earth are created for the use of human beings, but that human beings were generated for the sake of human beings, so that they might be able to benefit one another. In this matter we ought to follow nature as our guide and bring common benefits into the midst.”

“The foundation of justice is that no one be harmed, and next that the common benefit be served.”

“Who does not see that one need not abide by promises which one has made when compelled by fear or deceived by fraud?”

“Injuries often arise from an overly subtle but malicious interpretation of the law. From this the saying ‘the greatest right is the greatest wrong’ has already become a well-worn proverb.”

“Of all associations, none is more excellent or more secure than when good men who resemble one another in character are joined in familiarity. For nothing is more lovable and nothing more closely binding than a similarity of good qualities. Among those who have the same pursuits and the same desires, it comes about that one delights in another as in himself, and thus one is made from many.”

“A common life and manner of living, counsels, conversations, exhortations, and sometimes even rebukes flourish especially in friendships. The most delightful friendship is that which similarity has joined together.”

“Just as knowledge divorced from justice should be called cunning rather than wisdom, so too a spirit ready for danger, if it is driven by its own desire and not by the common benefit, has the name of rashness rather than courage.”

“Those who will serve the republic should keep two precepts of Plato. One is that they should watch over the welfare of the citizens in such a way that they refer whatever they do to it, forgetting their own advantages. The other is that they should care for the whole body of the republic, lest while protecting one part they desert the others.”

In his book On the Republic, Tullius introduces Scipio disputing about the republic and concluding, not—as some thought—that a republic cannot be governed without injustice, which is false, but that this is most true: a republic cannot be governed without the highest justice.

Lelius also confirmed this, saying: “Nothing is so hostile to a state as justice [read: injustice], and a republic can be conducted or remain standing only through great justice.”

Scipio proves this through definitions of the two terms, namely “republic” and “people.” He says that a republic is called the property of the people. A people is defined as an assembly not of every multitude, but of a multitude united by agreement concerning law and by a community of benefit.

From these things it is gathered that a republic and the property of a people exist when it is governed justly and well, whether under one king, under a few aristocrats, or by the whole people. He said that the rule of an unjust king is tyranny, that the rule of unjust aristocrats is faction, and he also calls the government of an unjust people tyranny.

This is evident because in those cases there is no assembly of a multitude united by agreement concerning law, since there is no law among them because there is no justice. Hence ius, “law,” is so called as though from iustum, “just.” Nor is the true common benefit sought, but private benefit, namely that of the body and of temporal things, not of the soul.

He adduces a saying of the poet Emnius: “The Roman state stands by ancient customs and by men.” He therefore concludes that in his own time the Roman republic was not the worst and most disgraceful republic, as Sallust described it, but that it had already perished and was nothing.

But as Augustine says in book 2 of The City of God, a republic never existed there before the faith was received, because true justice was never there. Although it was administered in some fashion by the more ancient Romans better than by the later ones, true justice nevertheless exists only in that republic whose founder and ruler is Christ, namely the Church of God.

Thus Augustine, who also says in Decretum, Cause 24, Question 1: “Where sound faith does not exist, justice cannot exist,” because, as Abacuc says, “the just man lives by faith.”

The same Cicero says: “Nothing is more praiseworthy or more worthy of an illustrious man than placability and clemency. These are nevertheless to be approved in such a way that severity is applied for the sake of the republic, without which a state cannot be administered.”

“It is the duty of a foreigner and resident alien to do nothing beyond his own business, to inquire into nothing concerning another, and least of all to be meddlesome in a foreign republic.”

“Let the speaker’s voice be sweet and not contentious, neither languid nor sing-song. Above all, let him consider the subjects about which he speaks: if serious matters, let him employ severity; if jests, charm.”

“I do not know how it happens that we perceive any fault more readily in others than in ourselves.”

“Because that very thing which we call seemly and honorable pleases us in itself and by its own nature moves the minds of everyone, we are therefore compelled by nature itself to love those in whom we perceive it to exist. This indeed is the weightiest cause of love.”

“So great is the power of justice that not even those who feed upon wrongdoing and crime can live without some portion of it. For unless even the chief of brigands distributes the booty equally, he will either be killed by his companions or abandoned.”

Catho wrote that Publius Scipio was accustomed to say that he was never less idle than when idle, nor less alone than when he was alone. It is a magnificent saying and worthy of a great and wise man, declaring that he was accustomed to think about business when at leisure and to converse when in solitude.

“Certainly, even if we could conceal our deeds from all human beings and gods, we must nevertheless do nothing avariciously, justly [read: unjustly], or lustfully.”

“Duties are especially thrown into confusion in friendships. Honors, riches, pleasures, and things of this kind that seem useful must never be placed before friendship. Nor will a good man do anything for a friend’s sake against the republic, an oath, or good faith, even if he is the judge of that very friend. For when he assumes the person of a judge, he lays aside the person of a friend.”

“If all things that friends desire are to be done, such bonds should be considered conspiracies, not friendships.”

“Every lie is to be removed from transactions. If buyer or seller comes to speak, let neither speak more than once.”

The same author says in the book On Friendship: “Friendship is nothing other than agreement in all things divine and human, together with goodwill and charity.”

“How can life be useful if it does not rest in the mutual goodwill of a friend? What is sweeter than to have someone with whom you dare to speak as with yourself?”

“Scipio used to say that nothing was more difficult than for a friend to remain until the final day of life.”

“There is no plague greater to friendships than greed for money among most people, and among all the best men rivalry for honor and glory, from which we see that the greatest hostilities have often arisen among the closest friends.”

“There is no excuse for sin if you have sinned for a friend’s sake.”

“Let this law of friendship therefore be established: that we ask honorable things from friends and do honorable things for the sake of friends. Let us rejoice to give true counsel freely, for in friendship the authority of friends who offer good persuasion is of the greatest force.”

“Let this also be established in friendship: that we neither ask for shameful things nor do them when asked. For this is a shameful excuse and must by no means be accepted if anyone admits that he acted against the republic for a friend’s sake.”

“Good men must therefore be instructed that, if through ignorance they should by some accident fall into friendships with the wicked, they should not think themselves so bound that they cannot withdraw from friends who sin against the republic. Nor should a lesser penalty be ordained for those who have followed another, the leaders of impiety.”

“I have no less concern for what the republic will be like after my death than for what it is like today.”

“Those who are superior ought to lower themselves in friendship and in this manner raise up those who are inferior.”

“The foundation of the stability and constancy we seek in friendship is good faith.”

“If God took us away from the company of human beings and placed us somewhere in solitude, supplying there an abundance of all the things nature desires but taking away the power to look upon a human being, who would be so iron-hearted that he could endure such a life, and from whom solitude would not take away the enjoyment of every pleasure? For nature loves nothing solitary.”

“The safety of anyone whose ears are so closed to truth that he cannot hear the truth from a friend must be despaired of.”

“Therefore, to admonish and to be admonished belong to true friendship: the one should be done freely but not harshly, and the other received patiently.”

“One must also know that there is no greater plague among friends than flattery, which is the vice of frivolous and deceitful people.”

The same author says in the book On Old Age: “The old age of a life lived quietly, purely, and honorably is calm and light, for the recollection of a well-lived life and of many good deeds is itself most delightful.”

“Rashness belongs to flourishing age, but prudence to advancing age. Hence anyone who wishes to read or hear about ancient events will find that the greatest republics were weakened by young men but supported or restored by old men.”

“Great affairs are conducted not by bodily strength or speed, but by counsel, authority, and judgment.”

“The speech of an old man is becoming when it is quiet and tremulous, and it often procures an audience for itself. The discourse of an eloquent old man is polished and gentle.”

“As for what people say—that old men, namely some of them, are foolish, credulous, forgetful, and dissolute—these are not the vices of old age, but of an indolent, slothful, and drowsy old age. For just as petulance or lust belongs more to young men than to old, yet not to all young men but to those who are wicked, so that senile foolishness which is called dotage belongs to old men, but not to all of them—only to the frivolous.”

“O splendid gift of age, if indeed it takes away from us that which is most vicious in youth, namely bodily lust! Pleasure, the enemy of reason, hinders counsel and dazzles the eyes of the mind; it has no fellowship with virtue.”

“The summit of old age is authority. Hence in the senate the opinion of each man who is more advanced in age holds the first place. Yet gray hairs and wrinkles cannot suddenly seize authority; rather, an earlier age honorably lived gathers the final fruits of authority.”

“A young man hopes in vain for the furthest reaches of life or promises himself that he will live a long time. For what is more foolish than to regard uncertain things as certain? Indeed, that age has many more occasions of death than old age, for young people fall into diseases more easily, are sick more severely, and are treated more painfully.”

“In this respect the old man is of a better condition: he himself has attained what the young man hopes for. Just as fruits, if unripe, are torn forcibly from trees, but if mature and fully ripened fall of themselves, so force takes life away from young people, as though violently, but ripeness takes it from old people.”

“Death which is followed by immortality should not be mourned. From youth onward we ought to have meditated upon disregarding death. Without such meditation no one can possess a tranquil mind, since it is most certain that we must die and uncertain at what time.”

The same author says in the book On Oratory: “Natural talent, because of its swift movements and its abundance for thinking and speaking, contributes the greatest power to action. But whatever offends in speaking also overshadows the things that deserve praise.”

The same author says in the Paradoxes: “There is nothing so incredible that it cannot be made probable by speaking, and nothing so rough and uncultivated that it cannot shine through oratory.”

“Just as no one who is wicked, foolish, and indolent can be well, so a good, wise, and courageous man cannot be miserable. Every wise man is free and every fool a slave. What is liberty? The power to live as you wish.”

In his book of Philippics: “The more the power of the mind exceeds that of the body, the graver are the evils conceived in the mind than those borne in the body. Therefore, the person who takes crime upon himself is more wretched than one compelled to endure another’s crime.”

The same author says: “It belongs to any human being to err, but to no one except a fool to persist in error. For later thoughts, as people say, are customarily wiser. A change of counsel is the best harbor for one who is perishing.”

The same author: “Law is nothing other than right reason drawn from the divine power, commanding honorable things and forbidding their contraries.”

The same author: “Things badly gotten are badly scattered.”

The same author says in the book of Rhetoric: “Wisdom without eloquence profits little; eloquence without wisdom never profits and very often does excessive harm.”

“Although human beings are humbler and weaker than beasts in many respects, they appear to excel beasts most particularly in this: that they can speak. Therefore, he appears to me to have attained something splendid who excels human beings in that very respect in which human beings excel beasts.”

The same author says in the first book of Rhetoric: “There are six parts of a rhetorical speech: exordium, narration, partition, confirmation, refutation, and conclusion.”

“The exordium is a discourse suitably preparing the hearer’s mind for the remaining speech. This will happen if it makes him well disposed, attentive, and receptive. Goodwill is procured from four sources: from nature, from the person of our adversaries, from that of the judges, and from the cause itself about which the dispute is conducted.”

“We make our hearers attentive if we show that the things we are about to say are novel, important, and useful, and promise that we will set forth our cause briefly. We make them receptive if we explain the substance of the case clearly and briefly. When you wish to make a hearer receptive, you should make him attentive at the same time, for the person most capable of learning is the one prepared to listen most attentively.”

“Narration is an exposition of things done or as though done. It ought to have three qualities: it should be brief, credible, and clear. Yet the imitation of brevity deceives many, so that while they think themselves brief they are exceedingly long, because they strive to say many things briefly rather than few.”

“Partition makes the whole speech lucid and transparent. It has two parts. One shows what point is agreed upon with the adversaries and what remains in controversy; from it some definite matter is indicated upon which the hearer should keep his mind occupied. In the other part a distributed, brief exposition is given of the matters about which we are to speak. By it the hearer is enabled to retain definite matters in his mind and, when they have been stated, to understand that the speech will be finished. This partition ought to have three qualities: completeness, brevity, and paucity.”

“Confirmation is that through which argument adds credibility, authority, and support to our cause. Refutation is that through which the adversaries’ confirmation is dissolved, weakened, or diminished by argument. Conclusion is the end and termination of the entire speech.”

The same author says: “There are three kinds of things to be sought. One kind pleasantly attracts us to itself, capturing us by no advantage but drawing us by its own worth, such as virtue, knowledge, and truth. Another must be sought not for its own force and nature but for its fruit and usefulness, such as money. A third is joined from parts of the other two: it attracts us through pleasantness and worth and bears some usefulness before it, so that it is desired all the more, such as friendship.”

“In the first kind are honorable things, in the second useful things, and in the third are things that contain a part of honorableness and a part of usefulness. But they should be referred to the better part of the word and called honorable. From these things it follows that the divisions of things to be sought are honorableness and usefulness, while those of things to be avoided are shamefulness and uselessness.”

The same author: “The honorable has two parts, of which one is simple and the other mixed. That is, one is sought entirely for its own sake, while the other is sought in one part for its own sake and in the other for the fruit of usefulness. In the first kind, all things are embraced by one force and one name, virtue. For virtue is a habit of mind consonant with reason according to the manner of nature. It has four parts: prudence, justice, courage, and temperance.”

He next gives definitions of each one and of the virtues and their other parts, together with their definitions. All of these are treated more fully below in the treatise on the virtues.

“For their own sake, however, we must avoid not only those things contrary to the virtues—for example, cowardice contrary to courage and injustice contrary to justice—but also those which seem bordering and close to them. For a vice bordering upon every virtue is found: rashness upon confidence, obstinacy upon perseverance, superstition upon religion, and others of this kind.”

The same author says in the Tusculan Disputations: “No one would ever offer himself to death for his fatherland without a great hope of immortality. And somehow there inheres in minds a certain augury, as it were, of future ages. It exists and appears most greatly and readily in the greatest talents and loftiest spirits. If it were taken away, who would be so mad as always to live amid labors and dangers?”

“There is a Greek proverb: let each person practice the art that he knows.”

“Since we are accustomed to be inflamed to every desire by the torches of the body, we shall surely be blessed when, having left our bodies, we are free of desires and rivalries and devote ourselves entirely to contemplating and beholding things. For by nature there is also in our minds a certain insatiable desire to see the truth, which will especially enjoy that vision.”

“For there are seeds of the virtues innate in our talents. If they were permitted to grow, nature itself would lead us to the blessed life. But now, as soon as we are brought forth into the light and taken up, we continually dwell amid every kind of depravity and perversity of opinions, so that we seem almost to have sucked error with a nurse’s milk.”

The same author: “It is characteristic of foolishness to perceive the vices of others and forget one’s own.”

“Will is that which is desired with reason. For so the Stoics define it, and they think it exists only in the wise man. But that which is aroused more violently in opposition to reason is lust or unbridled desire, which is found in all fools.”

The same author: “It is characteristic of the wise man to do nothing of which he might repent and nothing unwillingly, but to do everything splendidly, constantly, gravely, and honorably; to expect nothing as though it were certain to occur; to marvel at nothing when it occurs; and to stand by his own judgments.”

“I plainly see that it was the opinion of the wisest men that law was not devised by human ingenuity, nor was it some decree of peoples, but something eternal that ruled the whole world through the wisdom of commanding and forbidding.”

The same author says in the book On the Nature of the Gods: “Nothing is more lovable than virtue. Whoever has attained it will be loved by us wherever in the world he may be.”

“If we refer friendship to our own benefit and not to the advantage of the person whom we love, it is not friendship but a kind of commerce in one’s own advantages. Meadows, fields, and livestock are loved in this way.”

The same author: “When we contemplate the heavenly things, what is so manifest as that there exists some divine power of the most excellent mind by which these things are ruled?”

“I call those men versatile whose mind turns swiftly.”

The same author: “Ignorance of its cause creates wonder at a new thing, but a person does not marvel at what he sees frequently, even if he does not know why it happens.”

The same author says in the book On Fate: “No external cause must be sought for voluntary movements of minds. For voluntary movement contains within itself the nature that makes it lie in our power and obey us.”

The same author says in the book On the Creation of the World: “It is difficult to discover the parent of this universe, and when one has discovered him, it is unlawful to reveal him to the multitude.”

The same author says in the dialogue Hortensius: “The common five lights, as it were, of speech are these: clarity, brevity, credibility, brilliance, and pleasantness.”

The same author says in the Achademicis: “One ineptly teaches Minerva.”

The same author: “He appears to have conquered victory itself who remitted to the vanquished the things he obtained by victory.”

The same author: “Of the many virtues, none is more admirable or weightier than mercy, for human beings approach most nearly to the gods in no other way than by giving to human beings.”

“Who was ever so cruel toward anyone that he would forbid him either to earn favor with himself or to make supplication to others?”

“The sustained practice of a man devoted to a subject often overcomes both talent and art.”

Although this Cicero was most eloquent, he was nevertheless an unbeliever and erred in many things concerning the divine, especially by denying divine foreknowledge, as Augustine shows in book 5, chapter 9 of The City of God.

For it appeared to Cicero that human free choice could not remain intact if the infallible foreknowledge of God were presupposed. Therefore, to establish freedom of choice toward good or evil, he denied God’s foreknowledge concerning human acts.

But Augustine, refuting him, shows clearly that God’s infallible foreknowledge does not remove the freedom of the human will. Instead, both the foreknowledge of God and freedom of choice remain together and do not contradict one another.

This is also found in Decretum, Cause 23, Question 4, chapter Nabuchodonosor, together with the following chapter, and more fully in the First Part of Saint Thomas.

§ VI. Sallustius

Sallustius, a noble Roman citizen, was a contemporary of Tullius. He too was very eloquent, but he was an enemy of Cicero. Hence they wrote insulting invectives against one another, which is contrary to the teaching of Christians.

From this it is evident that all their labor was upon their own lips, for speaking ornately, and not for doing the things they taught. But, as Solomon says, “Their soul will not be enriched,” namely with virtues; rather, they wandered poor and empty of the true virtues themselves.

Among other things, this was a common error of pagans who shone with worldly wisdom: they believed that by their own free choice, without the aid of God’s grace, they could be truly virtuous. Yet Augustine says: “Where knowledge of eternal and immutable truth is absent, virtue is false even in the best virtues.”

Sallustius wrote two books, namely Iugurtinum and Catellinarium, and a book of Histories, which is nevertheless not found. Some things are excerpted here from the foregoing works.

In Catellinarium he says: “Before you begin, deliberate—that is, take counsel. When you have deliberated, there is need of prompt action.”

“Every excellent person prefers to act rather than to speak.”

“All things obey virtue.”

“Prosperous circumstances weary even the minds of the wise.”

“Avarice subverts good faith, probity, and all the other good arts, and in their place it has taught pride and cruelty, to neglect God, and to possess all things.”

“Avarice has zeal for money, which no wise person has loved or desired. Imbued, as it were, with evil poisons, it emasculates a manly body and mind. It is always boundless and insatiable; neither abundance nor poverty diminishes it.”

“All mortals know the deeds of those who, endowed with great command, pass their lives in a lofty station. Thus in the highest fortune there is the least license.”

“Many things made our ancestors great which are nothing among us: diligence at home, justice abroad, and a spirit free in deliberation, subject neither to wrongdoing nor to lust. In place of these things, however, we have luxury and avarice, public poverty and private opulence.”

“There is no distinction between good and evil people. Ambition possesses all the rewards of virtue. At home they serve pleasure; abroad they serve either money or favor.”

The same author says in The Jugurthine War: “To strive in vain and seek nothing by wearying oneself except hatred is the height of madness.”

“Through concord small things grow; through discord the greatest things fall apart.”

“There are many things which, although grievous, are nevertheless regarded as nothing through habit.”

“Remember that envy follows glory. Therefore, the more distinguished you are or will be, the more anxious or solicitous you ought to be.”

“It is better to be conquered in a good manner than to overcome an injury in an evil manner.”

Sallust says in praise of the Romans who lived under the consuls after the kings had been expelled that right and good prevailed among them more by nature than by laws. Augustine proves in book 2, chapter 19 of The City of God that this was not true, because both in the time of the kings and in that of the consuls, even at the beginning, many unjust and evil things were done by them.

Although during that brief period when the expelled Tarquin sought to recover his lost kingdom with Porsenna’s aid they were united and at peace with one another, this arose from fear of Tarquin, not from love of virtue. Hence immediately after his death, as though they no longer feared, great discords and jealousies arose between the plebeians and nobles, and even seditions.

Among other things, Sallust also says that the plebeians were oppressed by interest. Thereafter evils continually increased, together with innumerable slaughters.

§ VII. Virgil

Virgil the poet flourished in the time of Octavian. He died at Brundisium in the fifty-third year of his age, but his body was buried at Naples. He was born at Mantua.

He is commended by everyone for his books. Hence Augustine says in book 1 of The City of God: “Little children read Virgil for this reason: that the great poet, the most illustrious and best of all, may be drunk in during tender years and may not easily be erased by forgetfulness.”

Macrobius says of him that he was ignorant of no branch of knowledge. Juvenal compares him to Homer, saying: “The founder of the Iliad will be celebrated, together with the poems of high-sounding Maro, which make the palm of victory doubtful.”

When envious men objected to Virgil that he inserted the verses of others into his own work, he replied: “It belongs to men of great strength to wrest the club from Hercules’ hand.”

Virgil used to say that he fashioned verses in the manner and custom of a bear. For just as that beast brings forth shapeless and unformed offspring and afterward perfects and shapes it by licking, so the recent productions of his talent were crude, unfinished, rough, and imperfect. But afterward, by treating and cultivating them, he gave them, as it were, the lineaments of a face and countenance.

Many deeds are also reported of him as having been accomplished at Naples and Rome through the art of necromancy.

Juvenal shows that Virgil was intemperate through a most wicked vice when he says: “For if Virgil should lack a boy and tolerable lodging, all the hydras would fall from their locks.”

He published three books, as is evident in his epitaph: “I sang pastures, fields, and leaders”—that is, the Bucolics, Georgics, and Aeneid.

It should also be noted that Virgil was not as eloquent in prose as in composing verse. Hence Seneca says in book 3 of the Declamations: “Even great talents do not excel in more than one work. That felicity of talent abandoned Virgil in prose; his own eloquence deserted Cicero in poetry.”

As for the books attributed to Virgil and entitled Virgil on the Gnat and Virgil on Etna, Vincent says in book 7 of the Historical Mirror that this attribution is apocryphal.

Augustine says in book 10 of The City of God that certain things concerning Christ were prophesied by Virgil, such as:

Now the final age of the Cumaean song has come; a great order of ages is born anew.

Virgil says in the Bucolics, with the following verse:

Now a new progeny is sent down from high heaven. Now the Virgin returns, the reign of Saturn returns.

And this:

With you as leader, if any traces of our crime remain, made void, they shall free the lands from perpetual fear.

Jerome did not approve the claim that this was a prophecy about Christ. Rather, these things were spoken with another intention and about another person, but the sayings of a Virgilian cento were artfully adapted to Christ. Isidore confirms this.

Although what Jerome says is true, it can nevertheless stand together with what Augustine says: that Virgil spoke this prophetically, taking prophecy in a broad sense, as it is taken in John 11. There, when Caiaphas says in the council of the Jews, “It is expedient that one man die for the people,” and so forth, the Evangelist adds: “He did not say this of himself”—supply: but from the Holy Spirit—“because, since he was the high priest of that year, he prophesied that Christ was going to die for the nation,” and so forth, that is, for the salvation of the nations.

It is clear that Caiaphas did not say this with that intention, and yet he is said to have prophesied because the things he said were prophetic, although he himself did not understand them. It could therefore be said that the Holy Spirit made even pagans utter those things in order to foretell and signify the mystery of the Incarnation, although Virgil himself intended not this but something else.

The same Virgil says in the Bucolics: “Each person is drawn by his own pleasure.”

“From Jove comes the beginning.”

The same author:

You who gather flowers and strawberries growing upon the ground, flee, boys! A cold snake lies hidden in the grass.

“In the furrows to which we have often entrusted great barley, unlucky darnel and barren oats spring up.”

“We cannot all do all things.”

The same author: “The god rejoices in an odd number.”

“Love conquers all things; let us too yield to Love.” Add: and if this is so of worldly love, much more is it so of Christ’s love.

The same author says in the Georgics: “Persistent labor conquers all things, together with want pressing hard in difficult circumstances.”

“O exceedingly fortunate people, if they should know their own blessings!”

“Every best day of life is the first to flee from wretched mortals; diseases and sorrowful old age follow.”

“The older man, cold toward Venus, vainly drags along the thankless labor imposed upon him.”

“Enter upon the path of training while the minds of the young are pliant and their age is still changeable.”

The same author says in book 1 of the Aeneid: “Release your hearts from fear and shut harsh cares from your minds.”

In the second book: “Fury and anger cast the mind headlong.”

In the third: “To what do you not drive mortal hearts, accursed hunger for gold?”

In the fourth: “Fear betrays degenerate spirits.”

In the fifth: “Woman is always fickle and changeable”—that is, in what she says and thinks.

In the sixth:

Not even if I had a hundred tongues, a hundred mouths, and an iron voice could I comprehend every form of crime or run through all the names of punishments.

In praise of the Romans, he also describes what those who preside in government ought to do, saying:

You, Roman, remember to govern the peoples with command. These will be your arts: to impose the custom of peace, to spare the subjected, and to subdue the proud.

He also sets down various punishments in another life for those who have sinned here. But Virgil erred in believing and saying that all punishments, whether inflicted by human or divine laws, whether in this life or after death, are applied for correction. The Platonists held this view, asserting also that no sins are unpunished.

Hence Augustine says in book 21, chapter 13 of The City of God: “From this comes that opinion of Maro.” After Virgil had said of earthly bodies and dying members that souls here fear, desire, grieve, and rejoice and, “shut within darkness and a blind prison, do not look up toward the breezes,” Maro himself—that is, Virgil—continued:

Indeed, even when life has left them with its final light—

that is, when on the final day this life leaves them,

nevertheless, not all the evil, nor all the corporeal plagues, depart wholly from the wretched; and it is necessary that many things, long hardened deep within, grow strangely through manifold ways. Therefore they are exercised by punishments and pay penalties for their ancient evils. Some are spread out empty, suspended to the winds; for others beneath a vast gulf the stain of crime is washed away or burned out by fire.

Thus Virgil.

Augustine adds there: “Those who hold these views think that after death there are no punishments except purgatorial ones.” But according to the truth of the faith, souls condemned after this life for mortal sins never escape those punishments and are not purified through them, but are tormented forever, according to Job: “In hell there is no redemption, but everlasting horror dwells there.”

And in the Gospel of Matthew, Christ says: “Whoever has blasphemed against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the future.” From these words Augustine and Gregory argue that some sins, such as venial sins, are purged by fire in the future, but that others, such as mortal sins, are expiated in no way, as is found in Distinction 25, section Alias, and in the chapter Qualis.

Augustine touches upon another error of Virgil in book 10, chapter 30 of The City of God, saying that Virgil appears to have spoken in the Platonic manner of purified souls being sent into the Elysian Fields—by which name, as though in a fable, the joys of the blessed appear to be signified—and being called to the river Lethe, that is, to forgetfulness of the past, so that, forgetful of the world above, they may revisit the vault of heaven and begin again to wish to return into bodies.

This rightly displeased the Platonist Porphyry, although he was a pagan. In truth, it is foolish to believe that from that life, which could not be most blessed unless it were most certain of its own eternity, souls would desire the corruption of corruptible bodies and return from there to these things, as though supreme purification brought it about that defilement should be sought.

For if that which is perfectly cleansed brings it about that souls forget all evils, but forgetfulness of evils produces a desire for bodies so that they may again be entangled in evils, then supreme felicity will surely be the cause of unhappiness, perfection of wisdom the cause of foolishness, and supreme cleansing the cause of uncleanness. Nor will a soul truly be blessed there as long as it is where it must be deceived in order to be blessed, for it will not be blessed unless it is secure.

§ VIII. Ovid

About the same time lived the poet Ovid, called Naso, who wrote many books in verse. A few moral verses from them are set down here.

In the book of Epistles: “The outcome proves the deeds.”

“It becomes an art when a crime is learned from tender years.”

“It is a virtue to have abstained from pleasing goods.”

“Belief is customarily slow in great matters.”

The same author says in the book without a title: “A burden becomes light when it is borne well.”

“Night, love, and wine counsel nothing moderate. Night lacks shame; Liber and Love lack fear.”

“Beautiful women play; she is chaste whom no one has solicited.”

“Fool, what is sleep but the image of cold death?”

“What is permitted is unwelcome; what is not permitted burns more fiercely.”

“I flee what follows me; I myself follow what flees.”

“We always strive for the forbidden and desire things denied. Thus a sick man leans toward forbidden waters.”

The same author says in the book The Art of Love: “The crop is always more fertile in another’s fields, and a neighbor’s livestock has a larger udder.”

“An angry god is softened by a pleading voice.”

“It is easy for a god to be able to do all things.”

“There is no law more just than that the artificers of death should perish by their own art.”

“There are as many characters in human breasts as there are forms in the world. The person who is wise will be suited to innumerable characters.”

“There is no less virtue in preserving things acquired than in seeking them.”

“Yield to the person who resists; by yielding you will go away the victor.”

“It is a small virtue to keep silence about things; on the contrary, it is a grave fault to speak of things that must be kept silent.”

“Accustom yourself to bearing badly what you bear; you will bear it well while the new branch grows together with the green bark.”

“Believe me: gifts placate human beings and gods. Jove himself is placated by gifts.”

“Believe one who has experienced it: do not believe quickly, for believing quickly may harm you. Procris will be no slight example for us.”

The same author says in the book Remedies: “Resist beginnings; medicine is prepared too late when evils have strengthened through long delays.”

“But hasten, and do not put yourself off to the coming hours. The person who is not ready today will be less ready tomorrow.”

“The impatient spirit, not yet tractable by art, rejects the words of the one who admonishes and has hatred for them. I shall make a better approach when it will allow its wounds to be touched and will be fit for truthful words.”

“Who except a person bereft of reason forbids a mother to weep at the funeral of her son? This is not the time to admonish her. When she has shed her tears and filled her sick heart, that grief must be moderated with words.”

“Medicine has force at the proper times; wine given at the proper time helps, and wine given at an unsuitable time harms.”

“If you remove leisure, Cupid’s bow has perished, and his despised torches lie without light.”

“As the plane tree rejoices more in a stream than the poplar in water, and as the marsh reed rejoices in muddy soil, so Venus loves leisure.”

“Evils are neighbors to good things; under the very appearance of error, virtue has often borne accusations as a vice.”

“Let people live by the sun; let shade be pleasing in heat and water in thirst. Many things together help where individual things do not.”

The same author says in the book of the Metamorphoses:

Although all other animals look downward upon the earth, God gave the human being an uplifted face and ordered him to see heaven and raise an erect countenance toward the stars.

“Riches, the incitements of evils, are dug out. Now harmful iron, and gold more harmful than iron, comes forth. War comes forth, which fights with both.”

“People live by plunder: no guest is safe from a host, nor a father-in-law from a son-in-law; harmony among brothers too is rare. A husband threatens the destruction of his wife, and she that of her husband. A son before his father seeks after his father’s years—or honors. Filial devotion lies conquered wherever the earth extends; fierce Erinys reigns.”

“You would think they had sworn themselves to wickedness, so greatly does guilt now reign everywhere.”

“It is tedious to enumerate. Hold between both extremes; you will go most safely in the middle.”

“Scarcely any power is long-lasting.”

“Alas, how difficult it is for a face not to betray a crime!”

“Pallor sits upon the face, and leanness is in the whole body. Nowhere is the gaze direct; the teeth are livid with rust. The breasts are green with bile; the tongue is suffused with venom. Laughter is absent except that which pains have produced. It does not enjoy sleep and wastes away while living.”

“Majesty and love do not agree well or remain in one seat.”

“A human being’s final day must always be awaited, and no one must be called blessed before death.”

“Love grew with time. The more it is concealed, the more the hidden fire seethes.”

“What does love not perceive? It is lawful to be taught even by an enemy.”

“A tearful beginning was followed by better fortune.”

“Souls lack death; all things flow. There is nothing in the whole world that persists. The times themselves also roll onward in ceaseless motion. No person’s hope remains his own, and nature, the renewer of things, restores one form from another.”

The same author says in the book of the Fasti: “Wealth gives honors; wealth gives friendships. The poor person lies neglected everywhere.”

“Haughtiness inheres in the beautiful, and pride follows beauty.”

“According as each person’s conscious mind is, so within the breast it conceives hope and fear according to its own deed.”

“A mind conscious of rectitude laughs at fame’s lies. But we are a crowd credulous toward vice.”

The same author says in the book of the Tristia: “As long as you are fortunate you will number many friends; if the times become cloudy, you will be alone.”

“If I had not sinned, what could you pardon? My fortune has given you material for forgiveness.”

“If Jupiter sent his thunderbolts whenever people sinned, he would be unarmed in a short time.”

“Perverse minds can corrupt all things. Nevertheless, all things are safe in their proper places.”

“No one can teach what he knows least.”

“I, the poet Naso, perished through my own talent.”

“There is a certain pleasure in weeping. Grief is filled by tears and goes out through them.”

“Glory goes by a steep path over a precipice.”

“As many grains as the sleep-bearing poppy has, as many beasts as the forest nourishes, and as many fish as swim in the water, I am pressed by so many adversities. The wise person patiently bears all bitter events.”

“Grief shut in strangles and seethes within, and is compelled to multiply its own powers.”

“A guest is cast out more shamefully than he is refused admission.”

“Long endurance of evils has conferred talent.”

“Glory gives no small strength to the spirit.”

“It is easy to be good where that which forbids one to be good has been removed.”

“Rare indeed is the virtue that fortune does not govern.”

“Fresh wounds recoil from hands brought near.”

“It is not always within the physicians’ power that the sick person be relieved.”

“I do not know by what sweetness one’s native soil draws everyone and does not permit them to be forgetful of it.”

“You see how leisure consumes a sluggish body, and how waters acquire corruption unless they move.”

Isidore says in the book On the Highest Good: “Christians are therefore forbidden to read the fictions of the poets because they excessively stir the mind toward the incitements of lust,” as is found in Distinction 37, chapter Ideo.

Ovid does this most particularly in his books. Therefore, his teaching ought most particularly to be avoided, except in a few moral sayings.

§ IX. Oratius

At that time there also flourished the poet Oratius, who died at Rome in the thirty-fifth year of the rule of Augustus Octavian, in the fifty-seventh year of his age. According to Vincent in the Historical Mirror, he is said to hold the first place among the Latin satiric and lyric poets.

He is called a poet of great gravity by Jerome, not because of the gratuitousness of his acts or morals, for he was most incontinent, but because of the gravity of his opinions.

He wrote books of Sermons, Epistles, and lyric Odes, and the Art of Poetry. A few of his sayings have been excerpted and follow here.

In the Art of Poetry:

The boy who now knows how to return words and marks the ground with a sure foot delights to play with his peers, gathers anger and lays it aside rashly, and changes from hour to hour. The beardless youth, once his guardian has at last been removed, rejoices in horses and dogs and the grass of the sunny field. Pliable toward vice, harsh toward those who admonish him, slow to foresee useful things and prodigal with money, lofty and desirous, he is swift to abandon the things he loved.

“Many inconveniences surround an old man: either because he seeks things and, wretched, abstains from what he has found and fears to use it, or because he administers all matters timidly and coldly. He is a procrastinator, long in hope, sluggish, greedy for the future, difficult, querulous, a praiser of the time past when he was a boy, and a chastiser and censor of his juniors.”

“The bow will not always strike whatever it threatens.”

“Sometimes even good Homer nods.”

“What pleased once will please when repeated ten times.”

In his book of Epistles: “No one is so savage that he cannot grow gentle.”

“He who has begun well has half the deed.”

“The energetic merchant runs to the furthest Indies, fleeing poverty through the sea, through rocks, and through fires.”

“He despises what he sought and seeks again what he lately abandoned. He seethes and is inconsistent throughout the whole order of his life. He demolishes, builds, and changes square things into round.”

“The miser is always in need.”

“The envious man wastes away at another’s flourishing circumstances and beholds the other’s prosperity with tears. The Sicilian tyrants did not invent a greater torment than envy.”

“Anger is a brief madness. Rule your spirit: unless it obeys, it commands. Restrain it with reins; restrain it with chains.”

“A jar will long preserve the scent with which it was once imbued when new.”

“Citizens, citizens, money must be sought first; virtue comes after money. Queen Money gives a wife with a dowry, credit and friends, lineage and beauty.”

“Small things suit a small person.”

“Those who run across the sea change the sky, not their spirit.”

“The wicked hate to sin from fear of punishment; the good hate to sin from love of virtue.”

“Death is the final boundary line of things.”

“To have pleased leading men is not the least praise.”

“Virtue is a mean between vices, reduced from both sides.”

“Riches permit foolishness.”

“Often beware what you say about any man and to whom you say it. Flee the inquisitive questioner, for he is also a babbler. Once a word has been sent forth, it flies irrevocably.”

“Examine the sort of person you recommend and also consider carefully, lest another person’s faults soon strike you with shame.”

“For your own affair is at stake when the neighboring wall burns.”

“The sad hate the cheerful and the playful hate the sad; the swift hate the calm, and the active and energetic hate the relaxed. Drinkers, having drunk Falernian wine from the middle of the night, hate the man who refuses proffered cups, although.”

“Physicians promise what belongs to physicians; craftsmen handle the work of craftsmen. Learned and unlearned alike write poems everywhere.”

“One man often quarrels about goat’s wool.”

“There are those who consider nothing right except what has pleased themselves.”

“There is a mean in things, and finally there are fixed limits beyond and short of which the right cannot stand.”

“While fools avoid vices, they run into their contraries.”

“It is just to return pardon to one who seeks it for his sins. Again, let a rule be present that imposes equal penalties for sins.”

“Tender age is customarily treated more gently.”

“Virtue, fame, honor, divine and human things obey beautiful riches. The person who has heaped them up will be illustrious, courageous, just, and wise, and even a king and whatever he wishes.”

“Thirsty Tantalus catches at streams fleeing a little distance from his lips.”

“Alas, no one is born without vices; the best man is the one pressed by the fewest.”

All the aforesaid orators, poets, and historians, together with their emperor in whose time they shone in the world, were exterminated and descended to hell. For although through natural reason they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or give thanks. Instead, they became vain in their thoughts, saying, “Our lips belong to us; who is our lord?” They served the creature rather than the Creator, committing idolatry with the people.

Yet because truth, by whomsoever it is spoken, is from the Holy Spirit, as Ambrose says, the Spirit illuminated their intellect to recognize those things which they spoke truly and moved their tongue and hand to write them—not by dwelling within them through grace. Therefore, what is true and useful in them should not be despised, but their falsehoods and depraved morals should be detested together with them.

§ X. The Birth of Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary

In the time of this Octavian our Lord Jesus Christ was born, namely in the forty-second year of his rule. Octavian also ruled afterward for twelve years, namely after Christ’s birth.

Christ was born at a time when there was peace throughout the whole world. This had never happened from the death of Numa Pompilius, the second king of the Romans, until then. Rather, the Romans were always at war except during a single year, as is evident above.

The Romans, considering this and attributing it to Octavian’s industry, wished to venerate him as a god. But the prudent emperor, understanding himself to be mortal, did not consent.

When the people were importunate with him about this, as Innocent III says, he summoned the Sibyl, a prophetess, wishing to learn through her oracles whether someone greater than he was to be born. Therefore, when on the day of the Nativity he had convened a council about this matter and the Sibyl was attending to her oracles in the emperor’s chamber, at midday a golden circle appeared around the sun, and in its midst a most beautiful virgin carrying a child in her lap.

The Sibyl showed this to Caesar and said to him, “This child is greater than you; therefore adore him.” A voice was also heard saying, “This is the altar of heaven.” Hence that church at the place where Octavian’s palace then stood, namely on the Capitol, which is now a church and convent of the Order of Friars Minor, is today called Saint Mary of the Altar of Heaven.

Orosius says of this: “In the time of Octavian, at approximately the third hour, a circle resembling a heavenly bow suddenly surrounded the orb of the sun in clear and pure, serene air, as though he were about to come who alone had made the sun itself and the whole world and would rule them.” Eutropius says the same.

Innocent III also says that, when the Romans had possessed a great peace for twelve years under Octavian, they built a most beautiful temple in the city and called it the Temple of Peace. When they consulted Apollo about how long that temple would endure, the answer was: “Until a virgin gives birth.”

Hearing this and believing it impossible, since it is certainly not possible according to nature, they had this carved upon its doors: “The Eternal Temple of Peace.” But on the night when Christ was born it collapsed from its foundations. It was thereby shown that a virgin remaining in virginity had given birth, namely Mary.

That such great peace then existed in the world was not due to the industry of Octavian or of other human beings, but to divine dispensation, in order to indicate that he was being born who is our peace, who makes both one, and who had come in our flesh to make our peace with God.

The whole of this, namely that peace would also be possessed temporally, he had foretold through the Psalmist and the prophet Isaiah when they spoke of his coming.

First, however, something must be said briefly according to the history about the nativity of his mother. Something has been said by way of preaching about her virtues, dignity, and praises in the Third Part, under the title on the state of those comprehended, with respect to the different states; but it will be noted more abundantly, if life accompanies us, in the treatise on the gifts, under the title on the gift of piety.

The nativity, therefore, of the glorious Virgin arose from Abraham’s seed, from the tribe of Judah, and from the illustrious stock of David; her glorious life illuminates all churches.

The Virgin’s father was named Joachim, of the tribe of Judah, and her mother was named Anna. When they had remained barren for many years, they finally vowed that, if the Lord granted it, they would offer their offspring to God. Anna conceived the Virgin Mary, not indeed from the Holy Spirit, as some fools assert, but from Joachim in the human manner.

When she was conceived in the womb, she was not sanctified at that moment, since a soul—the subject of sanctification—did not yet exist there. But after the soul had been infused into the fully organized body, she was cleansed from original sin as quickly as possible after that infusion, not after several months as John the Baptist was. She was also cleansed more fully, so that she would be immune even from venial sins during life, a privilege believed to have been granted to no one else, according to Bernard and Augustine.

Because some hold that she was free even from original sin, although the ancients expressly say the contrary, and because the Church has determined neither position, one can hold either opinion without prejudice to salvation. But this subject is treated fully in the First Part, under the title on original sin.

Anna therefore first bore Mary, the Lord’s mother, by Joachim. After he died, Anna married Cleophas, by whom she bore another daughter whom she also called Mary. She gave this second Mary in marriage to Alphaeus. By Alphaeus this Mary had four sons: James the Less; Joseph the Just, who was also called Barsabas; Simon; and Judas, or Thaddeus.

After Cleophas died, Anna married a third husband, Salome, by whom she bore a third daughter whom she likewise called Mary. This Mary married Zebedee and had two sons by him, namely John the Evangelist and James the Greater.

Hence these verses are given:

Anna is customarily said to have conceived three Marys, whom the men Joachim, Cleophas, and Salome begot. Joseph, Alphaeus, and Zebedee took them as wives. The first bears Christ; the second, James the Less, Joseph the Just, with Simon and Judas; the third, James the Greater and winged John.

It should also be known that Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, was the Virgin Mary’s cousin. For Elizabeth’s mother, named Hismeria, was the full sister of Anna, the Virgin Mary’s mother. Elizabeth is called the Virgin’s kinswoman in the Gospel because she was related by blood in the way described.

Nor is this surprising, although Joachim and Anna are said to have been from the tribe of Judah and Elizabeth was of the tribe of Levi, as is evident in Luke 1, whereas according to the law everyone was obliged to take a wife from his own tribe and family. For the tribe of Judah and the priestly tribe of Levi were accustomed to intermarry with one another, and it was not considered contrary to the law.

Hence Aaron, the first high priest, also had a wife from the royal stock of David. It could therefore have happened, as Bede says, that a union of this kind arose in a more recent time, with women of the tribe of Judah being given in marriage into the tribe of Levi and conversely, so that the blessed Mary, who descended from the royal tribe of Judah, would manifestly be shown to have had blood kinship with those who were of the tribe of Levi.

Thus the blessed Mary was of both tribes. The Lord willed that these two tribes, namely the royal and the priestly, should be joined matrimonially to one another because of the mystery: to indicate that from them was to be born our Lord Jesus, true King and High Priest, who offered himself for us as a sacrifice to God upon the altar of the cross as an odor of sweetness, and who would rule his faithful as they valiantly exercised their warfare in this life and magnificently crown them in the next.

Hence he is also called Christ, which is Greek and is interpreted “anointed” in Latin.

Only kings and priests were anointed. The faithful take their name from him, so that they are called Christians from Christ, as anointed persons from the Anointed One. God anointed him, namely Christ, with the oil of gladness—that is, with the Holy Spirit—above his companions, as is said in the Psalm.

Therefore, as is said in Peter’s canonical epistle, Christians are “a chosen race, a royal priesthood.” Giving thanks to God in the heavenly kingdom, they say: “You have redeemed us, O Lord our God, in your blood and have made us a kingdom for our God,” and so forth.

Matthew in chapter 1 and Luke in chapter 3 of their Gospels describe the genealogy of the glorious Virgin and, consequently, of the Lord Jesus Christ her Son. He alone was conceived and born from her, not from the male seed of Joseph or another, but by the power of the Holy Spirit.

According to Jerome and Chrysostom, the genealogies described by the Evangelists end not in Mary but in Joseph her spouse because it was not the custom among the Jews to compose catalogues of generations, or genealogies, through women but through men. Hence, if an Evangelist had expressly composed Mary’s genealogy, this novelty and unusual style would have roused the Jews to scandal.

Nevertheless, by composing Joseph’s genealogy, he also implicitly and consequently traced Mary’s genealogy. For since Joseph, in whom that genealogy ends, was Mary’s spouse, as is evident in Matthew 1, it is thereby shown that the Virgin his spouse was also from the same genealogy and descended from the tribe of Judah and the family of David. According to the command of the law, everyone was required to take a wife from his own tribe and not from another, a rule which was then fully observed.

Joseph is called a son of David in Matthew 1 because he descended from him; therefore his spouse Mary was also of the house of David.

Chrysostom says that none of the holy women is placed in Christ’s genealogy, but rather sinful women, to indicate that he came for the sake of sinners, as a physician to save and not as a Lord and judge to pass judgment.

Jerome says upon Matthew: “Our Lord Jesus Christ willed to be born not only from foreigners but even from adulterous unions, granting us great confidence that, in whatever manner we were born, so long as we imitate his footsteps, we shall not be separated from his body, whose members we have been made through faith.” This is also found in Distinction 56, chapter Dominus.

Matthew and Luke differ in the manner of describing the Lord’s genealogy. Matthew narrates by descending, from Abraham to Joseph, successively expressing three sets of fourteen generations through Solomon’s line. Luke, however, describes seventy-seven generations by ascending from Joseph to Adam through Nathan’s line.

The reason is that Matthew wrote his Gospel for the Jews. Nothing could delight converted Jews more than to hear that Christ descended from Abraham, to whom a promise had been made concerning him, and also from David, to whom Christ was also promised when it was said to him, “From the fruit of your womb I shall place one upon your throne.”

Therefore, to make them more well disposed and attentive, Matthew made the Lord’s genealogy, beginning from Abraham and David, the opening of his Gospel. He narrated it by descending because he intended to show Christ’s humanity, through which God descended to us from heaven.

He placed three sets of fourteen to indicate that through this we are both incorporated into Christ and are his brothers through adoption if, with faith in the Trinity, we observe the ten commandments together with the four Gospels.

For the number fourteen is composed of ten and four. Fourteen multiplied three times reaches forty-two generations, through which one comes from Abraham to Christ. These signify forty-two degrees of virtues through which one reaches Christ, so that Christ may be generated in us through grace.

These acts of the virtues can be taken from the interpretation of the Hebrew names described in the genealogy itself. The first of them is Abraham, the father of faith, whose name is interpreted “father of many nations.” For faith is the foundation and father of all foundations.

The last is Joseph, whose name is interpreted “increase,” because the perfect person always seeks to increase in the virtues.

These degrees are also figured by the forty-two stations through which the children of Israel, after crossing the Red Sea, journeyed through the desert toward the Promised Land, which signifies the heavenly fatherland, just as the desert signifies this world.

Luke the Evangelist, however, produced the genealogy by ascending as far as God, because he reveals the form of the sacrament. Beginning there from Christ’s baptism, he ascends as far as God, showing by this that the baptized ascend so as to be sons of God.

He sets down seventy-seven generations. That number, seventy-seven, signifies forgiveness, according to Matthew 18: “I do not tell you to forgive seven times, but seventy times seven.” For in baptism all things are forgiven, even if there were all the sins of the seventy-seven generations from which Christ had descended.

Luke, moreover, was speaking not only to converted Jews but commonly to everyone, including the Gentiles. He therefore extends the genealogy as far as Adam, because all descend from Adam.

Matthew uses the term “begot” because he counts only sons by nature. Luke, however, says “who was,” because he also includes sons made according to law or by adoption. Through this the disagreement which appears between Luke and Matthew concerning Joseph’s father is resolved, for Matthew says that Joseph was the son of Jacob, while Luke calls him the son of Heli.

Augustine says in the book Questions on the Gospels that three explanations occur, one of which the Evangelist followed. Either one Evangelist named the father of Joseph by whom he was begotten, while the other set down either his maternal grandfather or someone among his elder kinsmen; or one was Joseph’s natural father and the other his adoptive father; or, according to the Jewish custom, when one of two brothers had died without sons, the nearer relative took his wife and assigned to the dead kinsman the first son whom he begot from her, so that the child would be called his son. This was a certain kind of legal adoption.

Thomas says in the Third Part, question 31, that this third explanation is truer than the others. The gloss of Jerome upon Matthew also gives it, and Eusebius of Caesarea says in the Ecclesiastical History that it was handed down by Africanus the historian.

They say that Matthan and Melchi at different times each begot one son from one and the same wife, named Hescha. Matthan, who descended through Solomon, took her as his wife first and died after leaving one son, Jacob. After Matthan’s death, because the law does not forbid a widow to marry another man, Helchi, who traced his lineage through Nathan to David and was from the same tribe but not the same family, took Matthan’s widow as his wife and himself received from her a son named Heli.

Thus Jacob and Heli, arising from different lines of fathers, became uterine brothers, namely brothers from the same mother. One of them, Jacob, in obedience to the command of the law took the wife of his brother Heli, who had died without children, and begot Joseph. By natural descent Joseph was his own son, but according to the command of the law he was made Heli’s son. Therefore Matthew says, “Jacob begot Joseph.” But because Luke describes the legal generation, he names no one as having begotten him.

Although Damascene says that the blessed Virgin, Christ’s mother, was related to Joseph according to the lineage in which Heli is called his father, because he says that she descended from Melchi, it must nevertheless be believed that she also drew her origin from Solomon in some manner through those fathers whom Matthew enumerates. Matthew appears to have narrated Christ’s generation according to the flesh, especially since Ambrose says that Christ descended from the seed of Jeconiah. Thus Thomas in that place.

The most blessed Mary was therefore that perfectly straight branch which came forth from the root of Jesse, David’s father, as was foretold by Isaiah. She was also the star of the sea—for so her name is interpreted—of whom Balaam said: “A star shall arise out of Jacob,” and so forth.

Her father Joachim was a native of the city of Nazareth, and her mother Anna was from Bethlehem. Their life, as is read in a certain little book translated from Hebrew into Latin by blessed Jerome and entitled On the Nativity of Blessed Mary—which, although apocryphal, contains things consonant with reason—was simple, upright, and pious.

They divided all their substance into three parts. They offered one part to the temple and its servants, distributed the second to the poor and to pilgrims, and reserved the third part of their income for the support of themselves and their household.

Thus, just before God and pious toward human beings, for about twenty years they conducted a chaste marriage at home without the procreation of children. They vowed that, if the Lord gave them offspring, they would consign it to his service.

On one occasion, at the Feast of the Dedication, Joachim ascended to the temple in Jerusalem and stood with his offerings among his fellow citizens and fellow tribesmen who had children. Issachar the high priest scorned him together with his gifts, saying that the gifts of one whom he judged unworthy of offspring could not appear acceptable to God, and that the man who left no seed upon the earth was accursed.

Confounded by this reproach cast upon him, Joachim withdrew to his shepherds in the pastures. He did not dare to return home lest his fellow citizens mark him with the same reproach of sterility.

One day an angel of the Lord appeared to him with a great light and comforted him in his terror, saying: “Do not fear, for I am an angel sent by the Lord to announce to you that your prayers have been heard by God and your alms are pleasing to him. The reproach of sterility has not rightly been cast upon you; rather, sterility, or the abasement caused by delayed offspring, is recompensed and sometimes exalted by the nobility of the child who follows, as is evident in Sarah and Rachel.”

“Behold, your wife Anna will bear you a daughter, and you will call her Mary. From infancy, as you vowed, she will be consecrated to the Lord and will be filled with the Holy Spirit from her mother’s womb, namely through sanctification. Her continual dwelling will be in the Lord’s temple. Just as she herself will be born wonderfully from barren Anna, so, incomparably, the Virgin will generate the Son of the Most High.”

An angel of the Lord also appeared to Anna while she was anxious about her husband’s return and comforted her with a similar revelation. Each, moved from his own place at the angel’s command, met the other at the Golden Gate of Jerusalem. They disclosed their visions to one another and rejoiced together, giving thanks to God.

After they returned home and devoted themselves to marital union, the most blessed Mary was conceived from them and born.

When she had been weaned, her parents, striving to fulfill their vow, brought her at the age of three to the Lord’s temple in order to dedicate her to God. There were fifteen steps by which one ascended to the temple—that is, to the altar of holocausts in the temple’s outer court, where sacrifices were offered.

Her parents placed the girl upon the lowest step while they clothed themselves in more ceremonial garments. The most blessed Mary, though three years old, ascended all those steps by herself without anyone’s aid, so that nothing seemed lacking to her perfect age. This signified that in mind she had already ascended the fifteen degrees of perfection signified in the fifteen Gradual Psalms, which were recited by the priests as they ascended to the temple. Nicholas of Lyra briefly gives their application in his commentary upon the Psalter.

When the sacrifice had been celebrated, her parents left their daughter in the temple to be guarded with the other virgins and returned home.

In ancient times it was unknown when, or on what day, the Virgin’s nativity had occurred, and therefore it was not solemnized by the Church. But as Vincent relates in book 7 of the Historical Mirror, a certain holy man living a solitary life repeatedly perceived a great harmony in heaven on that day each year. When he desired to know the reason, an angel revealed that this occurred because the Lord’s mother had been born on that day.

When this became known, the Church instituted the celebration of the feast of her Nativity. Later, Innocent IV instituted its octave. Hence Bernard says: “Blessed Mary was holy before she was born, for she would not be celebrated with festive praises if she had not been born holy.”

§ XI. Mary’s Life and Conduct in the Temple

Concerning her life and conduct while she remained in the temple, a certain little book, though apocryphal, says that she established this rule for herself: from morning until terce she devoted herself to prayer; from terce until none she occupied herself with work at the loom; from none onward she did not withdraw from prayer until an angel of the Lord appeared to her and brought her food from heaven for her sustenance.

Whatever the ministers gave her, she returned to be distributed to the poor. All her speech was full of grace, so that God was recognized upon her tongue, and she persevered in searching the law of God.

She was solicitous for her companions, lest any one of them should sin even in a small thing or become domineering or proud toward another companion. She blessed God without interruption. Lest perhaps she be withdrawn from the Lord’s praises by returning a greeting, if anyone greeted her, she answered “Thanks be to God” in place of a return greeting.

Although she was more beautiful in body than all other women, such purity and such honor shone in her face that even the most unchaste men who looked upon her were not only not incited to desire her, but were urged and pierced in heart toward chastity and modesty.

That blessed Mary was immune from every actual sin is evident from the words of Augustine in the book On Nature and Grace: “With the exception of the holy Virgin Mary, concerning whom, for the honor of the Lord, I wish to raise absolutely no question when sins are discussed.”

“For we know that more grace was bestowed upon her to conquer sin on every side, since she merited to conceive and bear him who, it is agreed, had no sin. With this Virgin alone excepted, if all the holy men and women had been asked while they lived here whether they were without sin, they would all have answered with one voice what John says: ‘If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves.’” Thus Augustine.

He is speaking of venial sins. This should not be understood to mean that a holy person cannot find himself free even from venial sin for some brief period. Rather, he cannot remain so for a long time without falling into some sin, because although we can avoid individual sins, we cannot avoid them all, according to Thomas in the Summa.

Accordingly, when Mary’s father and mother had left her in the temple, the Lord took her up, and she advanced daily in grace. When she had reached the age of fourteen years, the high priest admonished her and the other virgins that they should return to their own homes, or those of their parents, and devote themselves to marriage.

Although the other virgins gladly agreed, the Virgin Mary alone resisted as though the command were contrary to her, saying that she could not obey it because she had vowed virginity to God.

The high priest was anxious and perplexed about this matter, both because the law commanded that a vow be fulfilled and because, on the other hand, the custom at that time was contrary to anyone’s preserving virginity rather than devoting herself to carnal propagation. He judged it fitting to consult a divine oracle concerning these matters.

Without delay, as all listened at God’s propitiatory, it was heard that the prophecy of Isaiah should be consulted to determine to whom the Virgin should be betrothed, namely: “A branch shall come forth from the root of Jesse, and a flower shall ascend from his root, and the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him.”

The high priest therefore ordered all men of David’s family who were fit for marriage to bring their rods before him at the altar. When this was done and Joseph brought forth his rod among the others, the rod itself immediately budded and flowered, and a dove was seen to settle upon its summit.

By this sign it was shown that the Virgin was to be betrothed to Joseph. After she had been betrothed to him, she was therefore led to the home of her parents or of Joseph. For it was then customary for betrothed women sometimes to enter and remain in the homes of their spouses, preserving all honor and virginity until the wedding day.

§ XII. Mary’s Betrothal and Vow

Although the Virgin could have been betrothed to Joseph through the sign and manner described above, this account is not authentic. It is, however, most certain that she was betrothed to Joseph, as the Gospel attests.

Matthew 1 says, “When Mary, the mother of Jesus, had been betrothed to Joseph,” and Luke 1 says, “The angel Gabriel was sent to the Virgin Mary, betrothed to Joseph.” From these words it is also evident that she was betrothed before Christ’s conception.

The doctors assert that she also made a vow of virginity. But as to whether it was before or after her betrothal, Augustine appears to say that she vowed inwardly before her betrothal but afterward expressed it with her mouth.

For he says, as is found in Cause 27, Question 2, section 1: “Blessed Mary had resolved in her heart that she would preserve a vow of virginity, but she did not express the vow of virginity itself with her mouth. She subjected herself to divine disposition when she resolved that she would persevere as a virgin unless God revealed otherwise to her.”

“Committing her virginity, therefore, to divine disposition, she consented to carnal union, not by desiring it, but by obeying divine inspiration in both respects. Afterward, however, she bore a son and, together with her husband, expressed with her lips what she had conceived in her heart; and each remained in virginity.” Thus Augustine.

She therefore consented to the conjugal state with Joseph when God revealed it, because she had vowed in this manner. It was also revealed to her that she would not be known by that man.