| Translation |
What is there now, I ask you, which might give pleasure in this world? Everywhere we see grief, on all sides we hear groans. Cities are destroyed, armed camps overturned, districts emptied of people, the earth reduced to solitude. Not a peasant remains in the countryside, nor scarcely an inhabitant in the cities; and nevertheless, these small remains of humankind are still being slaughtered daily and without cease … What is there then in this life, my brothers, that might give pleasure? If we still love such a world, we now love wounds, not delights. We see how Rome has been left – trodden down in many ways by immense pains, by loss of citizens, by assaults of enemies, by spread of ruins …
What we have said about the destruction of the city of Rome, we see in all cities of the world. Some places are desolated through slaughter, others consumed by the sword, others tortured by famine, others swallowed up by the clefts in the earth. Let us despise with all our being this present – or rather extinct – world |
