h thy reasons an inextricable labyrinth,
because thou dost now go in where thou meanest to go out again, and
after go out, where thou camest in, or dost thou frame a wonderful
circle of the simplicity of God? For a little before taking thy
beginning from blessedness, thou affirmedst that to be the chiefest good
which thou saidst was placed in God, and likewise thou provedst, that
God Himself is the chiefest good and full happiness, out of which thou
madest me a present of that inference, that no man shall be happy unless
he be also a God. Again thou toldest me that the form of goodness is the
substance of God and of blessedness, and that unity is the same with
goodness, because it is desired by the nature of all things; thou didst
also dispute that God governeth the whole world with the helm of
goodness, and that all things obey willingly, and that there is no
nature of evil, and thou didst explicate all these things with no
foreign or far-fetched proofs, but with those which were proper and
drawn from inward principles, the one confirming the other."

"We neither play nor mock," quoth she, "and we have finished the
greatest matter that can be by the assistance of God, whose aid we
implored in the beginning. For such is the form of the Divine substance
that it is neither divided into outward things, nor receiveth any such
into itself, but as Parmenides saith of it:

In body like a sphere well-rounded on all sides,[142]

it doth roll about the moving orb of things, while it keepeth itself
unmovable. And if we have used no far-fetched reasons, but such as were
placed within the compass of the matter we handled, thou hast no cause
to marvel, since thou hast learned in Plato's school that our speeches
must be like and as it were akin to the things we speak of.

[141] _Vide supra, Tr._ iv. (pp. 56 ff.).

[142] Cf. _Frag._ 8. 43 (Diels, _Vorsokratiker_, i. p. 158).

XII.

Felix qui potuit boni
Fontem uisere lucidum,
Felix qui potuit grauis
Terrae soluere uincula.
Quondam funera coniugis 5
Vates Threicius gemens
Postquam flebilibus modis
Siluas currere mobiles,
Amnes stare coegerat,
Iunxitque intrepidum latus 10
Saeuis cerua leonibus,
Nec uisum timuit lepus
Iam cantu placidum canem,
Cum flagrantior intima
Feruor pectoris ureret,