18. But I have gone beyond the office of a consoler, and while forbidding you to weep for one dead man I have myself mourned the dead of the whole world. Xerxes the mighty king who rased mountains and filled up seas, looking from high ground upon the untold host, the countless army before him, is said [1897] to have wept at the thought that in a hundred years not one of those whom he then saw would be alive. Oh! if we could but get up into a watch-tower so high that from it we might behold the whole earth spread out under our feet, then I would shew you the wreck of a world, nation warring against nation and kingdom in collision with kingdom; some men tortured, others put to the sword, others swallowed up by the waves, some dragged away into slavery; here a wedding, there a funeral; men born here, men dying there; some living in affluence, others begging their bread; and not the army of Xerxes, great as that was, but all the inhabitants of the world alive now but destined soon to pass away. Language is inadequate to a theme so vast and all that I can say must fall short of the reality.
19. Let us return then to ourselves and coming down from the skies let us look for a few moments upon what more nearly concerns us. Are you conscious, I would ask, of the stages of your growth? Can you fix the time when you became a babe, a boy, a youth, an adult, an old man? Every day we are changing, every day we are dying, and yet we fancy ourselves eternal. The very moments that I spend in dictation, in writing, in reading over what I write, and in correcting it, are so much taken from my life. Every dot that my secretary makes is so much gone from my allotted time. We write letters and reply to those of others, our missives cross the sea, and, as the vessel ploughs its furrow through wave after wave, the moments which we have to live vanish one by one. Our only gain is that we are thus knit together in the love of Christ. "Charity suffereth long and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth." [1898] It lives always in the heart, and thus our Nepotian though absent is still present, and widely sundered though we are has a hand to offer to each. Yes, in him we have a hostage for mutual charity. Let us then be joined together in spirit, let us bind ourselves each to each in affection and let us who have lost a son shew the same fortitude with which the blessed pope Chromatius [1899] bore the loss of a brother. Let every page that we write echo his name, let all our letters ring with it. If we can no longer clasp him to our hearts, let us hold him fast in memory; and if we can no longer speak with him, let us never cease to speak of him.
[1805] 1 Thess. iv. 13.
[1806] Mark v. 39.
[1807] Joh. xi. 11.
[1808] Wisd. iv. 11, 14.
[1809] Hos. xiii. 15, LXX.
[1810] Hos. xiii. 14.
[1811] Rom. v. 14.
[1812] Ps. xiv. 1.
[1813] Rom. iii. 12.
[1814] Matt. xxvii. 52, 53.
[1815] Eph. v. 14.
[1816] Matt. iii. 2.
[1817] Matt. xi. 12.
[1818] Gen. iii. 24.
[1819] Cf. Letter XXXIX. § 4.
[1820] 2 Cor. x. 3.
[1821] Phi. iii. 20.
[1822] Luke xvii. 21.
[1823] Ps. lxxvi. 1.
[1824] Virg. A. viii. 723.
[1825] Luke xxiii. 38.
[1826] A Thracian tribe.
[1827] The words are quoted by Cicero (T. Q. iii. 13) apparently from the Telamon of Ennius. They are ascribed to Anaxagoras by Diog. Laert.
[1828] In his De consolatione of which only a few fragments remain.
[1829] Val. Max. v. 10.
[1830] In the first year of the Republic. Acc. to Livy (ii. 8) his son was not really dead.
[1831] The conqueror of Macedonia. He celebrated his triumph 167 b.c.
[1832] Ps. xxx. 5.
[1833] Rom. xiii. 12.
[1834] Deut. xxxiv. 8.
[1835] Josh. xxiv. 30.
[1836] Letter XXXIX.
[1837] Ps. xlviii. 8.
[1838] Joh. xi. 35.
[1839] Phi. i. 23.
[1840] Phi. i. 21.
[1841] i.e. Epaphroditus.
[1842] Phi. ii. 27.
[1843] meden agan, ne quid nimis. A saying of one of the Seven Wise Men of Greece, 6th cent. b.c. See Grote iv. 127.
[1844] Heb. xi. 32.
[1845] Judg. xi. 1.
[1846] Ezek. xviii. 4
[1847] Gen. xlix. 27.
[1848] Dedit escam. This is the reading of the LXX. The Vulgate, like the A.V., has "shall divide the spoil." Compare Letter LXIX. 6.
[1849] Acts ix. 17. (Cf. Letter LXIX. § 6.)
[1850] Letter XIV. § 2.
[1851] For other allusions to a Roman officer's uniform see Letters LXXIX. § 2 and CXVIII. § 1.
[1852] Acts x.
[1853] Matt. xix. 21.
[1854] Matt. vi. 24.
[1855] Like Bonosus (Letter III. 4).
[1856] Wisd. iv. 9.
[1857] Nu. xi. 16. Presbyterum. This name (afterwards contracted into Priest) is taken from that of the Elders of Israel.
[1858] Rom. xii. 15.
[1859] 1 Tim. v. 2.
[1860] Luke xi. 5, 8.
[1861] Luke xviii. 1, 5.
[1862] Letter LII.
[1863] Matt. xii. 36.
[1864] Jerome here confounds two distinct persons: C. Fabius Pictor was the painter; his grandson Q. Fabius the historian.
[1865] Ex. xxxi. 2, 3.
[1866] 1 Kings vii. 14. A mistake of Jerome. It was Hiram's father who was a Tyrian.
[1867] Hippias of Elis. See Cic. Or. iii. 32.
[1868] Conciliabula.
[1869] 1 Pet. i. 24.
[1870] A similar phrase occurs in Letter CXVIII. § 4.
[1871] Plato, Phædo xii. Cic. T. Q. 1. 31.
[1872] 1 Cor. xv. 31, Vulgate.
[1873] Gen. v. 27.
[1874] Virg. G. iii. 66-68.
[1875] Died 361 a.d.
[1876] Julian.
[1877] Died 363 a.d.
[1878] Died 364 a.d.
[1879] Died 375 a.d.
[1880] Burned to death in a hut after the battle of Adrianople, 378 a.d.
[1881] Died 383 a.d. by the hand of Andragathius.
[1882] Strangled by Arbogastes at Vienne, 392 a.d.
[1883] Aspirants to the purple who were put to death, the first by Valens, the second and third by Theodosius.
[1884] Hor. C. II. x. 11, 12.
[1885] Banished by Eutropius who had owed his advancement to him.
[1886] The prime minister of Theodosius I. Shortly after the accession of Arcadius Gainas the Goth procured his assassination.
[1887] One of the generals of Theodosius I., banished to the Oasis at the instigation of Eutropius.
[1888] Virg. A. ii. 369.
[1889] i.e. the Huns have taken the place of the Chaldæans described in Hab. i. 8, LXX.
[1890] Virg. A. vi. 625-7.
[1891] Jer. xxvii. 6.
[1892] 2 Kings xix. 35.
[1893] 2 Chr. xx. 5-25.
[1894] Ex. xvii. 11.
[1895] Jornandes corroborates the account of the Huns here given by Jerome.
[1896] Isa. xxx. 17.
[1897] Herod. vii. cc. 45, 46.
[1898] 1 Cor. xiii. 4, 7, 8.
[1899] Bishop of Aquileia. His brother Eusebius was also a bishop.