together, when
there was a confluence of peoples to it from all sides. Like boiling water
they bubbled up with the world's actions; like bits of flesh they were
boiled in their own heat. He says well, 'The seething of it is boiling hot,
and the bones thereof are thoroughly sodden in the midst thereof'. For
great, indeed, in it at first was the heat of secular glory; but presently
the glory itself and those who followed it burnt out. Bones mean the
powerful of the world; flesh its various peoples: as bones support flesh,
so the powerful of the world rule the weakness of the masses. But now,
behold, all the powerful of this world have been taken from it. The bones,
then, are thoroughly sodden. The peoples are gone; the flesh, then, is
boiled up. There follows then: 'Heap together the bones, which I will burn
with fire; the flesh shall be consumed, and the whole composition shall be
sodden; and the bones shall waste away'. For where is the senate? where any
longer a people? The bones are wasted, the flesh consumed; all pride of
secular dignities is perished out of it. The whole composition is sodden.
Yet every day the sword, every day innumerable sorrows press upon us, the
poor remaining remnant. So, then, this also applies: 'Set it empty upon
burning coals'. For since there is no senate, since the people has died
out, and yet sorrow and suffering are multiplied day by day on the few that
remain, Rome is empty, and yet it burns. We apply this to men, but we see
the very structures destroyed by the multiplication of ruins. So that he
adds, upon the empty city, 'Burn it and melt its brass'. For it is come to
the vessel itself being destroyed, in which before both flesh and bones
were consumed. For when the dwellers have fallen away even the walls fall.
But where are those who once rejoiced in its glory? Where is their pomp and
pride, and those ecstasies of frequent transport?

"In Rome are fulfilled the prophet's words against Niniveh: 'Where is the
dwelling of the lions, and the feeding-place of the young lions?'[181] Were
not its commanders and its princes lions who overran the whole world, and
ravened, and slaughtered the prey? Here the young lions found their
feeding-place, because the boyhood, the youth, the flower of manhood, from
generation to generation, flocked hither, when they sought to get on in the
world. Now Rome is desolate, worn down, full of sorrows. No one comes to it
to get on in the world; no man of power o