Cyprian & Lactantius · a new plain-English translation from the original language
There is, then, a single road belonging to virtue and to the good, one that carries a man not toward the Elysian Fields the poets describe, but all the way to the world's own citadel, whereas the road on the left metes out punishment to the wicked and delivers them to godless Tartarus. That road belongs to the accuser, who, having established depraved rites, steers people off the celestial course and drives them onto the path leading to ruin. The look and shape of this road is arranged for the eye in such a way that it seems level and open and delightful with every kind of flower and fruit. On it God has placed everything that is counted good on earth — wealth, I mean, honor, ease, pleasure, every enticement — but together with these, equally, injustice, cruelty, arrogance, treachery, lust, greed, discord, ignorance, falsehood, folly, and the rest of the vices. The end of this road is this: when one comes to its final point, from which there is no longer any turning back, all its beauty is cut off so suddenly that no one can foresee the deception before he is hurled down and falls into the deep abyss. Anyone seized by the outward glitter of goods that belong only to the present, absorbed in chasing and savoring them, will fail to foresee what comes after death and so turns away from God; such a one will indeed be hurled down to the underworld and sentenced to punishment without end. But the heavenly road is set before us as steep and difficult, rough with bristling thorns or blocked by jutting rocks, so that everyone must walk it with the utmost toil and wear of foot and with great fear of falling. On this road God has placed justice, self-control, patience, faith, chastity, restraint, concord, knowledge, truth, wisdom, and the rest of the virtues, but together with these, at the same time, poverty, disgrace, labor, grief, and every bitterness. Whoever stretches his hope further and prefers the better things will go without these earthly goods, so that, unencumbered and light, he may overcome the difficulty of the road. For the man who has wrapped himself in royal display or loaded himself with riches cannot even enter that narrow passage, let alone hold to it. From this it can be understood why things come more easily to the wicked and unjust when they desire them — because their road slopes downward and runs easy — while for the good, what they wish for is hard to attain, because they walk a hard and steep path. The just man, then, because he has set out on a rough and difficult road, must inevitably be an object of contempt, mockery, and hatred. For all those whom greed or pleasure drags headlong envy the one who has been able to lay hold of virtue, and take it hard that someone possesses what they themselves do not. So he will be poor, lowly, obscure, exposed to wrong, and yet enduring everything bitter — but if he carries his unbroken patience through to that highest step and final goal, the crown of virtue will be given him, and by God he will be rewarded with immortality for the labors he bore in life for the sake of justice. These are the roads which God has assigned to human life: on each of them he has shown both good things and bad, but in reversed and inverted order. On the one road he has displayed temporary evils first, together with eternal goods — which is the better arrangement; on the other, temporary goods first, together with eternal evils — which is the worse arrangement — so that whoever chooses present evils along with justice obtains greater and more certain goods than those he scorned, while whoever puts present goods ahead of justice falls into evils greater and longer-lasting than those he fled. For since this bodily life is short, its evils and its goods too must necessarily be short; but that spiritual life, which is the opposite of this earthly one, being everlasting, has goods and evils that are likewise everlasting. So it happens that after brief goods come eternal evils, and after brief evils come eternal goods. Therefore, since good and evil are set before man together, each person ought to consider for himself how much better it is to weigh brief evils against everlasting goods than to endure everlasting evils for the sake of brief and passing goods. For just as in this world, when a contest with an enemy is at hand, one must labor first in order to have ease afterward — one must endure hunger and thirst, bear heat and cold, sleep on the ground, keep watch, face danger — so that, with one's dear ones safe, and one's home and property and all the goods of peace and victory intact, one may afterward enjoy them; but if instead one prefers present ease to labor, one necessarily brings upon oneself the greatest evil — for the enemy will strike first against one who offers no resistance, the fields will be laid waste, the house plundered, wife and children carried off as spoil, and the man himself killed or captured; and to prevent all this, present comfort must be put off, so that a greater and more lasting comfort may be won — so it is in this whole life: because God has kept an adversary in reserve for us, so that we might have the chance to lay hold of virtue, present pleasure must be set aside, lest the enemy overwhelm us; we must keep watch, stand our posts, go out on campaigns, and in the end shed our blood, bearing everything bitter and heavy with patience — all the more readily because our commander, God, has appointed eternal rewards for our labors. And since in this earthly campaign men exhaust so much toil to win for themselves things that can perish in the very way they were won, surely no effort should be declined by those of us who gain something that can never in any way be taken away. It was God's will, in bringing man into being for this warfare, that he stand ready unencumbered in the battle line and to watch, with mind sharply intent, against the single enemy's ambushes or open assaults — an enemy who, like a skilled and seasoned general, hunts us down by various arts, raging according to each person's nature and character. On some he unleashes insatiable greed, so as to shake them loose from the road of truth, bound as if by chains to their own riches; others he inflames with the goads of anger, so as to turn them away from contemplating God and toward doing harm instead; others he plunges into unrestrained lusts, so that, enslaved to pleasure and to the body, they cannot look toward virtue; on others still he breathes envy, so that, consumed by their own torments, they think of nothing but the good fortune of those they hate. Others he puffs up with ambitions — these are the ones who turn all the effort and care of their life toward holding public office, so as to have their names inscribed on the calendars and attached to the years. The greed of some reaches higher still — not content to rule provinces for a time by the sword, they want to be called masters, with unlimited and permanent power, of the whole human race. But those he sees to be devout he entangles in various false cults, so as to make them impious. And on those who seek wisdom he thrusts philosophy before their eyes, so that, blinded by its semblance of light, they may fail to grasp and hold the truth. Thus he has blocked every approach for mankind and hedged in the roads, delighting in the errors of the public at large. So that we might be able to see through these snares and overcome the very author of these evils, God has enlightened us and armed us with true and heavenly virtue. It is of this virtue that I must now speak.
But before I begin to set out the individual virtues, virtue itself must be defined — something the philosophers have not correctly defined, either what it is, or in what matters it consists, what it does, or what duty it involves. They have kept only the name, but have lost its force and reasoning and effect. Whatever the philosophers customarily say in defining virtue, Lucilius has gathered together and set forth in a short passage of verse, and I would rather set that down here than drag on longer than needed refuting each opinion in turn. "Albinus, virtue means being able to render the true worth of the things among which we live and move; virtue means that a man knows what each thing is truly worth; it means knowing what is right and beneficial and honorable, what counts as good and, likewise, what counts as bad, what is worthless, base, and disgraceful; virtue means grasping the proper limit and measure in what one pursues; it means being able to pay riches their true value; it means rendering to honor whatever is genuinely its due; it means standing as the enemy and adversary of wicked men and wicked conduct, and, conversely, as the champion of good men and good conduct; esteeming such people highly, wishing them well, living as their friend; and beyond that, weighing the good of one's homeland as the first concern, one's parents' good as the second, and one's own as the third and last." From these definitions, which the poet has briefly summed up, Marcus Tullius drew his account of the duties of life, following the Stoic Panaetius, and packed them into three books. How false these are we shall soon see, so that it may appear how much divine favor has bestowed upon us, in revealing the truth to us. He said that virtue is to know what is good and bad, what is shameful, what is honorable, what is useful, what is not. He could have put it more briefly by simply saying good and bad, since nothing can be useful or honorable that is not likewise good, and nothing useless or shameful that is not likewise bad. This is also the view of the philosophers, and Cicero himself shows it in the third book of the work mentioned above. Yet knowledge itself does not amount to virtue, since it does not originate within us but reaches us from outside ourselves. And whatever can pass from one person to another is not virtue, because virtue belongs properly to each individual. Knowledge, then, is the benefit of another, since it consists in hearing; virtue is wholly our own, since it consists in the will to do good. Just as, then, in making a journey it is of no use to know the road unless one also has the effort and strength to walk it, so knowledge is of no use if one's own virtue is lacking. For even most of those who sin, though not with full clarity, nevertheless sense what is good and bad, and whenever they do something shameful, they know they are sinning, and for that reason try to hide it. So although the nature of good and bad does not deceive them, they are overcome by evil desire into sinning, because they lack virtue — that is, the desire to do what is right and honorable. It follows, then, that knowing what is good and what is bad is one matter, and possessing virtue quite another, since knowledge can exist apart from virtue — as happened with most of the philosophers. And in this case, since it is rightly counted a fault not to have done what you knew you should, it is rightly the depraved will and the vicious mind — which ignorance cannot excuse — that will be punished. Therefore, just as virtue is not to know good and bad, so virtue is to do good and not to do bad. And yet knowledge is joined to virtue in such a way that knowledge comes first and virtue follows knowledge, since understanding is of no use unless action follows it as well. Horace, then, comes a little closer to the truth: "virtue is to flee vice, and this is the beginning of wisdom" — but he does it clumsily, because he has defined the one by its opposite, as if he had said, "the good is what is not bad." For if I do not know what virtue is, then I do not know what vice is either. Both, then, need defining, since the nature of the matter is such that both must necessarily be understood together, or neither understood at all. But let us do what he ought to have done. Virtue is to restrain anger, to check greed, to curb lust — for that is to flee vice. For nearly everything that is done unjustly and shamefully arises from these passions. If the onset of that agitation called anger is blunted, all the wicked conflicts among men will be put to rest — no one will plot against another, no one will rush forward to do harm. So too, if greed is kept under control, nobody will go pillaging across land or water, and nobody will march an army out to seize and ravage what is not theirs. Likewise, if the heat of lust is restrained, every age and sex will keep its purity, and no one will either suffer or commit anything shameful. So then, once these passions are calmed by virtue, every kind of crime and outrage will be removed from the life and conduct of men. And this calming of the passions and emotions comes down to this: that we do everything rightly. The entire duty that virtue carries out, then, comes down to this: not sinning. Yet no one can fulfill this duty who does not know God, since ignorance of the one from whom good things arise must necessarily thrust the ignorant man, unaware, into vices. And so, to state each one's essential task more briefly and clearly: knowing God belongs to knowledge, while worshiping him belongs to virtue — wisdom resides in the first, justice in the second.