y, as it
were at the eleventh hour, the prudent householder introduced you into
his vineyard. Repent of idleness before it is too late: would that
with the cunning steward ye might be ashamed of begging so shamelessly;
for then no doubt ye would devote yourselves more assiduously to us
books and to study.

CHAPTER VII

THE COMPLAINT OF BOOKS AGAINST WARS

Almighty Author and Lover of peace, scatter the nations that delight in
war, which is above all plagues injurious to books. For wars being
without the control of reason make a wild assault on everything they
come across, and, lacking the check of reason they push on without
discretion or distinction to destroy the vessels of reason. Then the
wise Apollo becomes the Python's prey, and Phronesis, the pious mother,
becomes subject to the power of Phrenzy. Then winged Pegasus is shut
up in the stall of Corydon, and eloquent Mercury is strangled. Then
wise Pallas is struck down by the dagger of error, and the charming
Pierides are smitten by the truculent tyranny of madness. O cruel
spectacle! where you may see the Phoebus of philosophers, the all-wise
Aristotle, whom God Himself made master of the master of the world,
enchained by wicked hands and borne in shameful irons on the shoulders
of gladiators from his sacred home. There you may see him who was
worthy to be lawgiver to the lawgiver of the world and to hold empire
over its emperor, made the slave of vile buffoons by the most
unrighteous laws of war. O most wicked power of darkness, which does
not fear to undo the approved divinity of Plato, who alone was worthy
to submit to the view of the Creator, before he assuaged the strife of
warring chaos, and before form had put on its garb of matter, the ideal
types, in order to demonstrate the archetypal universe to its author,
so that the world of sense might be modelled after the supernal
pattern. O tearful sight! where the moral Socrates, whose acts were
virtue and whose discourse was science, who deduced political justice
from the principles of nature, is seen enslaved to some rascal robber.
We bemoan Pythagoras, the parent of harmony, as, brutally scourged by
the harrying furies of war, he utters not a song but the wailings of a
dove. We mourn, too, for Zeno, who lest he should betray his secret
bit off his tongue and fearlessly spat it out at the tyrant, and now,
alas! is brayed and crushed to death in a mortar by Diomedon.

In sooth we cannot mour