Eusebius of Caesarea · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
1| He will receive the life of the deathless God, and will look upon the heroes gathered together with him (meaning, plainly, the righteous), and he himself will appear to his homeland and to the blessed ones who long for him, steering the reins of the world with virtues his father gave. For you, child, the earth will first bring forth her gifts: barley and galingale, together with the bear's-foot acanthus.
2| He was a remarkable man, adorned with every kind of learning, and he knew precisely the cruelty of the times that then prevailed. "For you," he says, "the flourishing she-goats, their udders heavy, will of their own accord bring the sweet stream of milk, and the herds will have no need to fear the grim lions." He speaks the truth: for the faith of the imperial court will not fear the powerful. "Your very swaddling clothes will put forth fragrant herbage; the serpent's venomous kind will perish, will perish; the deadly . . . and the Assyrian balsam will spring up along the valleys."
3| Nothing truer than these words could be spoken, nor anything more fitting to the virtue of the Savior. For the very swaddling clothes of God, the power of the Holy Spirit, bestowed fragrant flowers on a new-born race. And the serpent perishes, and the venom of that serpent who first deceived the first-formed pair, drawing their minds away from their inborn self-restraint toward the enjoyment of pleasures, so that they might come to know the destruction that hung over them.
4| For before the Savior came down, it crushed the souls of men through ignorance of the immortality of the righteous, since they leaned on no good hope at all. But when he had suffered, and the body he had put on was for a time separated from its union with the Holy Spirit, the possibility of resurrection was revealed to men; and if any mire of human wrongdoing still remained, all of it was scoured away by holy washings. Then indeed he urges his followers to take courage, and he bade them hope for the like from his own solemn and glorious resurrection.
5| With good reason, then, the whole venomous kind came to an end; death too came to an end, and the resurrection was sealed. The race of the Assyrians perished as well, which had been the cause of faith in God; and when the poet says that the balsam springs up freely and everywhere, he is speaking of the blameless multitude of the worshipers. For it is like a host of branches springing from a single root, blooming with fragrant flowers and watered with a due measure of dew.
6| Of the learned, too; and, most wise poet Maro, everything that follows is consistent with this: "Soon you will learn the virtues of heroes and the deeds of your mighty father, all of them adorned with surpassing valor." By the praises of the heroes he signifies the deeds of righteous men; by the virtues of the father he means the ordering of the world and its fashioning for everlasting endurance, and perhaps also the laws which the church beloved of God uses as it pursues a life of righteousness and self-restraint.
7| Admirable too is the way the life midway between good and evil is shown advancing toward the higher, since the poet declines to make the sudden change all at once: "First the threshing floors were heaped with golden ears" (that is to say, the produce of the divine law was gathered for use); "and on the red brambles the grape hung down and swelled" (things that did not exist in the lawless life); "and from the hard flanks of the pine flowed a stream of honey."
8| Here he sketches the foolishness of the men of that time and their hardened character; and perhaps he also teaches that those who undertake labor for God will reap a sweet fruit of their endurance. "Yet a few traces of the former ruin will remain: to rush upon the sea, to shut cities in with walls, to break the furthest edge of the field with the furrows of shambling oxen. Then there will be another Tiphys, and a Thessalian Argo, glorying in her heroic crew; and Achilles will once more make trial of the war of Trojans and Danaans." Well done, most wise poet! For you have husbanded your poetic license just as far as was fitting. It was not your purpose to utter oracles, since you were no prophet; and I think you were also held back by some danger hanging over those who expose what their ancestors had held sacred.
9| Fenced about, then, and without danger, as far as was possible, he set the truth before those able to understand it. He blamed towers and war, things that truly are still found even now in human life, and he portrays the Savior as Achilles setting out for the Trojan war, and Troy as the whole inhabited world. For the Savior did indeed make war head-on against the hostile power of evil, sent by his own providence and by the command of the mighty Father.
10| What, then, does the poet say after this? "But when the season and the fruit of manhood have come" (that is, once he has grown to manhood and torn out by the roots the evils that beset the life of human beings, and has adorned the whole earth with peace), "it will no longer be right for sinful sailors to wander the seas, for all things will spring up together from the earth in rich measure; the earth itself will be unsown and unploughed; nor, I think, will the vine any longer long for the swift sickle. No mortal will need the fleece of wool, for of its own accord the ram will shine in Tyrian dyes, exchanging its soiled fleece for purple scarlet. Come then, receive from the right hand of your loud-thundering father the honoured sceptre of royal rule, as you look upon the firmly built foundations of the vast-spreading world, the joy of earth and of heaven and of sea, and the shaggy heart of boundless age rejoicing. Would that sweet strength might one day grant me, though grown old, to sing your excellence so far as my power allows! Then the divine singer of the Thracians would not overawe me, nor Linus, nor Pan himself, whom the land of Arcadia bore; no, not even Pan himself would hold his ground against me for the prize of victory." "Look upon the vast-spreading world," he says, "and the joy of all the elements."
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