Grief

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From The City of God

  Chapter 23. --Of the Varying Condition of Both the Hebrew Kingdoms, Until the People of Both Were at Different Times Led into Captivity, Judah Being Afterwards Recalled into His Kingdom, Which Finally Passed into the Power of the Romans. So also in the kingdom of Judah pertaining to Jerusalem prophets were not lacking even in the times of succeeding kings, just as it pleased God to send them, either for the prediction of what was needful, or for correction of sin and instruction in righteousness; [1132] for there, too, although far less than in Israel, kings arose who grievously offended God by their impieties, and, along with their people, who were like them, were smitten with moderate scourges. The no small merits of the pious kings there are praised indeed. But we read that in Israel the kings were, some more, others less, yet all wicked. Each part, therefore, as the divine providence either ordered or permitted, was both lifted up by prosperity and weighed down by adversity of various kinds; and it was afflicted not only by foreign, but also by civil wars with each other, in order that by certain existing causes the mercy or anger of God might be manifested; until, by His growing indignation, that whole nation was by the conquering Chaldeans not only overthrown in its abode, but also for the most part transported to the lands of the Assyrians,--first, that part of the thirteen tribes called Israel, but afterwards Judah also, when Jerusalem and that most noble temple was cast down,--in which lands it rested seventy years in captivity. Being after that time sent forth thence, they rebuilt the overthrown temple. And although very many stayed in the lands of the strangers, yet the kingdom no longer had two separate parts, with different kings over each, but in Jerusalem there was one prince over them; and at certain times, from every direction wherever they were, and from whatever place they could, they all came to the temple of God which was there. Yet not even then were they without foreign enemies and conquerors; yea, Christ found them tributaries of the Romans. [1132] 2 Tim. iii. 16.

• From A Greek-English Lexicon (Liddell-Scott) (1957)

  ὀρφᾶκίνης [1]. ov, 6, a young ὀρφός, Dorion ap. Ath. 315 B. ὀρφάνευμα [a], τό, orphan state, orphanhood, Eur. H. F. 546. ophavertw, to take care of, rear orphans, παῖδας, τέκνα Eur. Alc. 165, 297 :—Pass. c. fut. med.,= ὀρφανός εἰμι, to be an orphan, Ib. 535, Hipp. 847, Supp. 1132; cf. παρθενεύομαι. ὀρφᾶνία, 7, orphanhood, Lys. 176. 22, Plat. Legg. 926 Ε, al.; in pl., Id. Crito 45 D. IL. bereavement, want of .. , στεφάνων Pind. 1. 8 (7).14. ὀρφᾶνίξω, fut. Att. ἐῶ, to make orphan, make destitute, πρὸς παίδων, ods ὀρφανιεῖς Eur. Alc. 276; ἀμὸν βίον ὠρφάνισεν Ib. 397 :—c. gen. to rob or bereave of a thing, τινὰ ὕπνου, (was Theocr. Ep. 5.6, Anth. P. 7. 483; opp. κακὰν γλῶσσαν ὀπός to rob Slander of her voice, Pind. P. 4. 504 :—Pass. to be bereaved, πατρός .. ὠρφανισμένος βίου Soph. Tr. 942; absol. to be left in orphanhood, Pind. P. 6. 22. II. to sweep away. “Ans . . ἐλπίδας ὠρφάνισεν Epigr. Gr. 233. 10. f ὀρφᾶνϊκός, 7, dv, (ὀρφανός) orphaned, fatherless, παῖς Il.6.432., 11-394; cf. Dem. 152.153; ἦμαρ ὀρφανικόν the day which makes one an orphan, i. e. orphanhood, Il. 22. 490. II. of or for orphans, τύχη Plat. Legg. 928 A; συμβόλαια Ib. 922 A; ὀρφανικά, τά, their property and interests, Arist. Pol. 2. 8, 7. ὀρφάνιος, ov, =foreg., desolate, γῆρας Anth. P. 7. 466. ὀρφᾶνιστής, οὔ, ὁ, a tender of orphans, a guardian, Soph. Aj. 512. ὀρφᾶνός, 7, dv, also és, όν Eur. Hec. 151 :—orphan, without parents, fa- therless, dppavat orphan-daughters, Od. 20. 68; ὀρφανὰ τέκνα Hes. Op. 332; παῖδά τ᾽ ὀρφ. λιπών Soph. Aj. 653; νύμφας dppavas Eur. Or. 1136: II. =dpvé 1, Byz. 1080 —as Subst., an orphan, ἐπικλήροι καὶ opp. Lys. 176. 21; ὀρφανοῖς καὶ ὀρφαναῖς Plat. Leg 88. 926 C; they were under the care of the Archon, Arist. Fr. 389 :—also in neut., eis ὀρφανὰ καὶ ἔρημα ὑβρίζειν Plat. Legg. 927 C:—of animals, ὄρνις Ar. Av. 1361; ὀρφ. οἶκος, δόμος Soph. Fr. 680, mae Alc. 657. ΤΙ. c. gen. bereaved or ber: ft of, Ἱ, ΟΕ children, opp. πατρός reft of father, Id. El. 914, τοῖο; opp. τοῦ πατρός Dem. 1320. 20; γονέων Plut., etc. 2. of parents, πότμον ὀρφανὸν γενεᾶς childless, Pind. O. 9. 92 : opp. παίδων, τέκνων Eur. Hec. 151, Fr. 336. 6, Plat. Legg. 730 Ὁ; νεοσσῶν ὀρφανὸν λέχος Soph. Ant. 425. 3. generally, opp. ἑταίρων Pind. I. 7. 16; ἐπιστήμης Plat. Alc. 2. 147 A; κρατός Sosith. in Herm. Opusc. 1.55; ὀρφανοὶ ὕβριος free from inso- lence, Pind. 1. 4.14; dp. ἀγκίστρου κάλαμος Anth. P. 12. 42 :—Comic metaph., opp. ταρίχιον salt-fish without sauce, Pherecr. Αὐτομ. 4; cf. χήρα I. fin. (A shorter form ὀρφός appears in ὀρφο-βότης (q. v.), ὀρφόω, Lat. orb-us, orb-are, etc., Ο. Η. G. arb-ja (erb-e).) Sphavorpodetov, τό, an orphan-hospital, Pandect. ὀρφᾶνοτροφέω, to bring up orphans, Schol. Eur. Alc. 163. ὀρφᾶνο-τρόφος, ov, bringing up orphans, Suid. 5.ν. ᾿Ακάκιος, Ο.1. 9207.

• From Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982)

  I told Mrs. Flouton I wanted to leave home when I was eighteen, or go away to school, but my mother didn’t want me to. The sounds of traffic outside the window on Lexington Avenue grew louder. It was 3:30. Mrs. Flouton looked at her watch. “We’ll have to stop now, dear. Why don’t you ask your mother to drop in to see me tomorrow? I’m sure we can fix this little problem.” I didn’t know which problem she meant, but her condescending smile was sweet, and it felt good for once to have a grownup on my side. Next day, my mother left the office early and came to Hunter. The night before I had told her Mrs. Flouton wanted to see her. She fixed me with a piercing look from out of the corner of her tired eyes. “Don’t tell me you making trouble again in this school, too?” “No, Mother, it’s just about going to college.” Somebody on my side. I sat outside the guidance room door while my mother was inside talking to Mrs. Flouton. The door opened. My mother sailed out of the office and headed for the school exit without so much as a look at me. Oh boy. Was I going to be allowed to go away to school if I could get a scholarship? I caught up with my mother at the door leading to the street. “What did Mrs. Flouton say, Mother? Can I go away to college?” Just before the street, my mother finally turned to me, and I saw with a shock that her eyes were red. She had been crying. There was no fury in her voice, only heavy, awful pain. All she said to me before she turned away was, “How could you say those things about your mother to that white woman?” Mrs. Flouton had repeated all of my words to my mother, with a ghoulish satisfaction of detail. Whether it was because she saw my mother as an uppity Black woman refusing her help, or both of us as a sociological experiment not involving human feeling, confidentiality, or common sense, I will never know. This was the same guidance counselor who gave me an aptitude test a year later and told me I should consider becoming a dental technician because I had scored very high on science and manual dexterity. At home, it all seemed very simple and very sad to me. If my parents loved me I wouldn’t annoy them so much. Since they didn’t love me they deserved to be annoyed as much as possible within the bounds of my own self-preservation. Sometimes when my mother was not screaming at me, I caught her observing me with frightened and painful eyes. But my heart ached and ached for something I could not name.

• From A Greek-English Lexicon (Liddell-Scott) (1957)

  πηλό-τροφος, ov, reared in mud or soft soil, Opp. C. 1. 288. πηλουργός, ov, (*épyw) a worker in clay, Luc. Prom. 2, Lxx (Sap. 15. 7):---πηλουργέω, fo work in clay, Eccl.:—amqdovpyia, Ion. πηλοεργίη, ἡ, Aretae. Caus. M. Diut. 1. 6, Epiphan. Πηλούσιον, τό, a town on the coast of Egypt bordering on Arabia, Hdt. :—Adj., τὸ Πηλούσιον στόμα the Eastern mouth of the Nile, Hdt. 2.17,1543 τὸ Πηλουσιακὸν στ. Strab. 801, etc. :—in Jo. Lyd. de Mens. 4. 40, ἡ Πηλούσιος ἑορτή (in Egypt) is expl. muddy. πηλοφορέω, to carry clay, Ar. Av. 1142, Eccl. 310. πηλο-φόροϑ, ov, carrying clay, Poll. 7. 130, Suid. πηλο-φύρᾶτοκ, ov, kneaded of clay, ἄνθρωποι Manass. Amat. 4. 18. πηλό-χὕτος, ov, moulded of clay, θάλαμοι π., of swallows’ nests, Anth. Ρ. το, τό. πῆλυξ, -- ῥαγάς, a rent, cleft, Hesych., Phot. πηλώδη, €s, (εἶδος) like clay, clayey, muddy, of places, Thuc. 6. 101, Arist. H. A. 5.17, 8, etc.; of persons, dirty, Plat. Phaedo 113 B. πηλώειϑ, εσσα, ev, poet. for πηλώδης, Opp. H. 4.520, Nonn. Ὁ. 2. 59. πήλωσις, 7, a wallowing in mire, Plut. 2. 166A, ubi v. Wyttenb. πῆμα, τό, remaining unchanged in Dor. :—poét. word, suffering, misery, calamity, woe, bane, Hom., Hes., Pind., and Trag., both in sing. and pl.; κακὸν m., Od. 5.179; π. κακοῖο 3.152; m. duns 14. 338; π. τῆς ἄτης Soph. Aj. 363; π. θεὸς Δαναοῖσι κυλίνδει 11. 17. 688 ; τοῖσι ες πῆμα κυλίνδεται Od. 2. 163, cf. Il. 11. 347; ἡμῖν πήματα πολλὰ θέσαν 15. 721; τοι πῆμα τόδ᾽ ἤγαγον οὐρανίωνες 24. 547; πημάτων ἔξω πόδα ἔχειν Aesch. Pr. 263; πήματα ἐπὶ πήμασι Soph. Ant. 593; πῆμ᾽ ἐπὶ πήματι κεῖται, i.e. iron upon iron, the sword forged upon the anvil, Orac. ap. Hdt. 1. 67, cf. 68. ITI. in Hom. often of persons, a bane, calamity, ὅς μιν ἔτικτε .. πῆμα γενέσθαι Τρωσί Il. 22. 421, cf. 3. 50, 160., 6. 282, Soph. O. T. 379. πημαίνω: fut. ἄνῶ Soph. Aj. 1314, O. C. 837, Ion. -avéw Il. 24. 781: aor. ἐπήμηνα 1]., Att.:—Med., fut. πημᾶνοῦμαι Ar. Ach. 842 (but as πημανούμενος occurs in pass. sense in Soph. Aj. 1155, Elmsl. and L. Dind. [1 yAvas — πηρομελής.

• From The City of God

  [263] Quanto iste innocentior esset, tanto frontosior appareret; being used for the shamelessness of innocence, as we use "face" for the shamelessness of impudence. Chapter 5. --Concerning the More Secret Doctrine of the Pagans, and Concerning the Physical Interpretations. But let us hear their own physical interpretations by which they attempt to color, as with the appearance of profounder doctrine, the baseness of most miserable error. Varro, in the first place, commends these interpretations so strongly as to say, that the ancients invented the images, badges, and adornments of the gods, in order that when those who went to the mysteries should see them with their bodily eyes, they might with the eyes of their mind see the soul of the world, and its parts, that is, the true gods; and also that the meaning which was intended by those who made their images with the human form, seemed to be this,--namely, that the mind of mortals, which is in a human body, is very like to the immortal mind, [264] just as vessels might be placed to represent the gods, as, for instance, a wine-vessel might be placed in the temple of Liber, to signify wine, that which is contained being signified by that which contains. Thus by an image which had the human form the rational soul was signified, because the human form is the vessel, as it were, in which that nature is wont to be contained which they attribute to God, or to the gods. These are the mysteries of doctrine to which that most learned man penetrated in order that he might bring them forth to the light. But, O thou most acute man, hast thou lost among those mysteries that prudence which led thee to form the sober opinion, that those who first established those images for the people took away fear from the citizens and added error, and that the ancient Romans honored the gods more chastely without images? For it was through consideration of them that thou wast emboldened to speak these things against the later Romans. For if those most ancient Romans also had worshipped images, perhaps thou wouldst have suppressed by the silence of fear all those sentiments (true sentiments, nevertheless) concerning the folly of setting up images, and wouldst have extolled more loftily, and more loquaciously, those mysterious doctrines consisting of these vain and pernicious fictions. Thy soul, so learned and so clever (and for this I grieve much for thee), could never through these mysteries have reached its God; that is, the God by whom, not with whom, it was made, of whom it is not a part, but a work,--that God who is not the soul of all things, but who made every soul, and in whose light alone every soul is blessed, if it be not ungrateful for His grace.

• From Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982)

  Driven as we all were driven, she found ways out that were still alien to some of the rest of us—harsher, less hidden. That Sunday afternoon while Muriel and I waited for Flee and our photography lesson, Addie was turning Flee onto smack for the first time in a borrowed apartment across Second Avenue. Zami: A New Spelling of My Name: A Biomythography 30 The spring of 1956 came with a plethora of ambiguous omens. I had stopped therapy because of our shortage of money. What had seemed just enough to get by on a year ago had shrunk through inflation or recession or whatever they chose to call it in the New York Times . Fingering over my private structures became a luxury I could not afford. Therapy was the last possible cut to be made. Neither of us said a word about Muriel’s inability to look for work. She did not deal with her self-loathing, and I did not deal with my resentment. My physiology professor at Hunter College tried to help my financial problems by offering me a job as a live-in maid in her Park Avenue house. The night before my last session in therapy, I dreamt that Muriel and I stood waiting for a train in a midnight-blue subway station. There are clusters of people about, but their backs are turned and I cannot see their faces. As the train pulls into the station, Muriel falls off the platform beneath its wheels. I stand on the platform as the train rolls over her, powerless to do anything, my heart breaking beneath the wheels. I awake to tears and a sense of mourning too deep for words, that would not go away. Muriel was having trouble sleeping. Night after night she sat up on the couch in the middle room, reading and smoking and writing in her journal, and sometimes I woke to hear her talking to herself. I found out only later the desperate quality of those hallucinations which she hid from me under irascibility or humor. Other nights she stayed out drinking until I had gone to sleep. I could wake and look through the doorway of our bedroom to find her, night after night, leaning against the pillows on the couch propped up against the wall. Her dear dark head outlined in a circle of lamplight, Crazy Lady and Scarey Lou curled up together against the warmth of her thighs. Sometimes I felt we were as lost to each other as if one of us were dead. In the morning when I got up to dress for work, I would find her asleep on the couch looking worn and vulnerable, her pale hand still holding the book fallen upon her breast, the two little kittens entwined, asleep, upon her tummy. She was getting thinner and thinner, eating less and less, insisting she was not hungry, even though it seemed very dangerous to me to be living on beer and cigarettes.

• From The City of God

  340 Books That Matter: The City of God order them. It might seem undignified to talk about the essence of adults lying in their adorations, resting in their adorations. Mature humans are supposed to be cooler than this, calmer, to keep their emotions in check. Certainly, the Stoics thought so; they say that the emotions are not basic. They say that they are derivative of the character of the person and that we should subject all our attachments which generate these emotions to remorseless scrutiny. When we do, the Stoics say, we see that all our emotional responses are the consequences of us overestimating the significance of whatever episode solicited that emoted response in the first place. This, they thought, is one of the most infantile things about us, and we should work, they said, to eliminate it. So the Stoics wanted to replace emotions, what they called pathe with constant states, eupathe or eupatheiai. This means replacing words like desire with words like will, or a word like joy with a word like gladness, and a word like fear with a word like caution. For Augustine, though, this Stoic proposal is wrong, in ways that even the Stoics, were they fair-minded, might be brought to see; and wrong for Christians since of the particular models that scripture offers of exemplary human behavior, which reliably involve emotion. But first of all, in the Stoics’ own terms, Augustine says that their dream of apatheia, of impassability, of an emotion-free state, it could be good if it were understood as calmness, purity, integrity, and stability. But in this life, such stability is practically impossible, and when anyone approaches such a state, it is not tranquility that they realize, but tranquilization, the moral defect of stupor. Augustine also accuses the Stoics of existential inadequacy. They deny the possibility, for example, of wise grief. But we should, at times, feel grief—not nostalgia for Adam and Eve, say, but sadness and grief for our own condition, still so far away from proper redemption and fulfillment. Sometimes emotions such as grief and fear are signs of a growing moral maturity. I just want to pitch him over the side entirely.

• From The City of God

  366 Books That Matter: The City of God How do we know, though, how to pick out those meaningful moments? Well, by a principle of selection. But whence comes that principal of selection? Not from a bare reading of history, but for Augustine, from the larger salvation story—from Adam to Christ to today. Hence what is crucial here, for Augustine, is the spinal story of the two cities, mapped out in these books as tracking the generations of men and the generations of the sons of God, Cain and Abel; even, in Roman history, by Romulus and Remus. All of these are manifestations of the struggle between siblings over goods they should share, and this story would be more tragic if it were less pathetic. But it is pathetic since, as he says, “A man’s possession of goodness is in no way diminished by the arrival, or the continuance, of a sharer in it,” despite each of these situations being one where the sibling annihilates the other. The point of this conflict between brothers, then, is that in the Ancient Near East, as in any city today, most violence is intimate violence within families, within a context where people are attached by bonds of blood and, we hope, of love. Any policeman will tell you, the most dangerous call you can get is a call to a so-called “domestic disturbance.” For Augustine, the history of humanity from Cain and Abel forward is a history of domestic disturbances. In general, Augustine thinks—as many theologians have—that scripture is best understood as employing what is called an accommodationist use of language; simplifying its syntax, fitting its formulations to the overly-physical and simple minds of us humans, to make its meanings vivid to as large an audience of us as possible. Augustine says, “If scripture did not use such terms, it would not communicate its meaning so clearly to all the race of men for whom it has care.” Through this, Augustine tries, then, to teach his audience to understand historical events by reshaping them to fit the overall story he wants them to find in history. Now, that’s what he does at some times. At other times, he does not want to diminish an episode’s significance, but to expand it.

• From The City of God

  Chapter 19. --Of the Calamity of the Second Punic War, Which Consumed the Strength of Both Parties. As to the second Punic war, it were tedious to recount the disasters it brought on both the nations engaged in so protracted and shifting a war, that (by the acknowledgment even of those writers who have made it their object not so much to narrate the wars as to eulogize the dominion of Rome) the people who remained victorious were less like conquerors than conquered. For, when Hannibal poured out of Spain over the Pyrenees, and overran Gaul, and burst through the Alps, and during his whole course gathered strength by plundering and subduing as he went, and inundated Italy like a torrent, how bloody were the wars, and how continuous the engagements, that were fought! How often were the Romans vanquished! How many towns went over to the enemy, and how many were taken and subdued! What fearful battles there were, and how often did the defeat of the Romans shed lustre on the arms of Hannibal! And what shall I say of the wonderfully crushing defeat at Cannae, where even Hannibal, cruel as he was, was yet sated with the blood of his bitterest enemies, and gave orders that they be spared? From this field of battle he sent to Carthage three bushels of gold rings, signifying that so much of the rank of Rome had that day fallen, that it was easier to give an idea of it by measure than by numbers and that the frightful slaughter of the common rank and file whose bodies lay undistinguished by the ring, and who were numerous in proportion to their meanness, was rather to be conjectured than accurately reported. In fact, such was the scarcity of soldiers after this, that the Romans impressed their criminals on the promise of impunity, and their slaves by the bribe of liberty, and out of these infamous classes did not so much recruit as create an army. But these slaves, or, to give them all their titles, these freed-men who were enlisted to do battle for the republic of Rome, lacked arms. And so they took arms from the temples, as if the Romans were saying to their gods:Lay down those arms you have held so long in vain, if by chance our slaves may be able to use to purpose what you, our gods, have been impotent to use. At that time, too, the public treasury was too low to pay the soldiers, and private resources were used for public purposes; and so generously did individuals contribute of their property, that, saving the gold ring and bulla which each wore, the pitiful mark of his rank, no senator, and much less any of the other orders and tribes, reserved any gold for his own use. But if in our day they were reduced to this poverty, who would be able to endure their reproaches, barely endurable as they are now, when more money is spent on actors for the sake of a superfluous gratification, than was then disbursed to the legions?

• From The City of God

  311 Lecture 15—Augustine and Original Sin (Book 13) human race’s destiny, until the end of time. Even Jesus’s body was mortal. ›We are called on not simply to accept this fact, but look forward to its transformation. For we know that the dead Jesus was resurrected, and resurrected in the flesh; so the body can be transformed. ›The appropriate Christian response to physical death is to use it to the end of our proper conditioning—to see life as death, and reinterpret good life as “dying to the world” in order to achieve true life abundant. We do this by cultivating our faith. „Effectively we should turn death into an act of martyrdom, a death with a purpose and a meaning as a witness to something larger than death itself, a witness to what has caused you to live in this way. This is a pretty remarkable thing to do, to appropriate the title of “martyr” for ordinary Christians living their everyday lives. „The emotional work of this kind of martyrdom starts well before physical death. Its sufferings are twofold, and together they comprise a fundamental component of the Christian soul for Augustine. We are meant to experience them simultaneously, though he thinks we must cultivate each one separately in ourselves. ›First, we must own up to the reality of our genuine suffering here and now. We ought not flinch from our sufferings nor deny their reality. We must own up to all the pains that we feel and not try to deny in some sort of Stoic manner that they are not real. ›Second, we must also be constantly growing in anticipation of joy to come. And while this anticipation is no physical pain or suffering, it definitely dislodges us from slothful ease in our world today.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  If a very young child has enjoyed having one parent at home part-or full-time, you should consider finding ways to maintain this arrangement for at least a year after the breakup. Little children who lose both parents because daddy moves out and mommy goes to work full-time suffer terribly. These children pathetically search for their lost parents everywhere. The youngsters in our study, who had so little capacity to understand the changes in their lives or to provide for their own care, remained vulnerable throughout their growing up years and had more trouble in adulthood than children who were older at the breakup. Just as postponing the sale of the home can be built into the divorce agreement, I recommend that parents delay the mother’s reentry into full-time work until the youngest child has had time to adjust. This investment in our youngest children of divorce is something we would celebrate in future years. These little ones are the most vulnerable. Their feelings of pain, anger, and abandonment endure into adulthood. They need special protection. I also want to amplify another finding of this study having to do with support for higher education. Children who would have received financial help for their college educations should not, at age eighteen, feel they’re paying for their parents’ divorce with the forfeiture of their future careers. This is an intolerable injustice. The children will never forgive their parents for this betrayal, nor should they. If parents cannot afford to pay for college, children understand that just fine. But if a parent has the means to help pay tuition but says he or she is not “obligated,” then the child has every right to be furious—at the parent and even more at a society that has sanctioned the child’s heavy loss with its divorce laws. When a stingy parent gives priority to a new family—new spouse, new children, new life—the child of divorce is doubly wounded. Professors in several law schools have suggested that money for college along with other funds for the children be set aside at the time of the breakup—before the community property is divided.2 For families with the means to do so, trust funds would assure that children are able to get the educations they deserve. Although a few states have enacted legislation that enables the court to order support for college under certain circumstances, most states have no laws that extend child support beyond age eighteen. Surely all children deserve the same legal protection and the financial and emotional support and encouragement that is critical to their future. The children who would benefit from such legislation, as usual, have no voice, no constituency, no power to influence their futures. But the rest of us can and should speak up for them.

• From The City of God

  [151] Hist. i. [152] Lectisternia, from lectus, and sterno, I spread. [153] Proletarius, from proles, offspring. [154] The oracle ran:"Dico te, Pyrrhe, vincere posse Romanos. " Chapter 18. --The Disasters Suffered by the Romans in the Punic Wars, Which Were Not Mitigated by the Protection of the Gods. In the Punic wars, again, when victory hung so long in the balance between the two kingdoms, when two powerful nations were straining every nerve and using all their resources against one another, how many smaller kingdoms were crushed, how many large and flourishing cities were demolished, how many states were overwhelmed and ruined, how many districts and lands far and near were desolated! How often were the victors on either side vanquished! What multitudes of men, both of those actually in arms and of others, were destroyed! What huge navies, too, were crippled in engagements, or were sunk by every kind of marine disaster! Were we to attempt to recount or mention these calamities, we should become writers of history. At that period Rome was mightily perturbed, and resorted to vain and ludicrous expedients. On the authority of the Sibylline books, the secular games were re-appointed, which had been inaugurated a century before, but had faded into oblivion in happier times. The games consecrated to the infernal gods were also renewed by the pontiffs; for they, too, had sunk into disuse in the better times. And no wonder; for when they were renewed, the great abundance of dying men made all hell rejoice at its riches, and give itself up to sport:for certainly the ferocious wars, and disastrous quarrels, and bloody victories--now on one side, and now on the other--though most calamitous to men, afforded great sport and a rich banquet to the devils. But in the first Punic war there was no more disastrous event than the Roman defeat in which Regulus was taken. We made mention of him in the two former books as an incontestably great man, who had before conquered and subdued the Carthaginians, and who would have put an end to the first Punic war, had not an inordinate appetite for praise and glory prompted him to impose on the worn-out Carthagians harder conditions than they could bear. If the unlooked-for captivity and unseemly bondage of this man, his fidelity to his oath, and his surpassingly cruel death, do not bring a blush to the face of the gods, it is true that they are brazen and bloodless.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Titus (according to Josephus) intended at first to save that magnificent work of architecture, as a trophy of victory, and perhaps from some superstitious fear; and when the flames threatened to reach the Holy of Holies he forced his way through flame and smoke, over the dead and dying, to arrest the fire.545 But the destruction was determined by a higher decree. His own soldiers, roused to madness by the stubborn resistance, and greedy of the golden treasures, could not be restrained from the work of destruction. At first the halls around the temple were set on fire. Then a firebrand was hurled through the golden gate. When the flames arose the Jews raised a hideous yell and tried to put out the fire; while others, clinging with a last convulsive grasp to their Messianic hopes, rested in the declaration of a false prophet, that God in the midst of the conflagration of the Temple would give a signal for the deliverance of his people. The legions vied with each other in feeding the flames, and made the unhappy people feel the full force of their unchained rage. Soon the whole prodigious structure was in a blaze and illuminated the skies. It was burned on the tenth of August, A.D. 70, the same day of the year on which, according to tradition, the first temple was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar. "No one," says Josephus, "can conceive a louder, more terrible shriek than arose from all sides during the burning of the temple. The shout of victory and the jubilee of the legions sounded through the wailings of the people, now surrounded with fire and sword, upon the mountain, and throughout the city. The echo from all the mountains around, even to Peraea (?), increased the deafening roar. Yet the misery itself was more terrible than this disorder. The hill on which the temple stood was seething hot, and seemed enveloped to its base in one sheet of flame. The blood was larger in quantity than the fire, and those that were slain more in number than those that slew them. The ground was nowhere visible. All was covered with corpses; over these heaps the soldiers pursued the fugitives."546 The Romans planted their eagles on the shapeless ruins, over against the eastern gate, offered their sacrifices to them, and proclaimed Titus Imperator with the greatest acclamations of joy. Thus was fulfilled the prophecy concerning the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place."547 Jerusalem was razed to the ground; only three towers of the palace of Herod—Hippicus (still standing), Phasael, and Mariamne—together with a portion of the western wall, were left as monuments of the strength of the conquered city, once the centre of the Jewish theocracy and the cradle of the Christian Church.

• From The City of God

  nor Venus herself, could assist the children of the loved AEneas to find wives by some right and equitable means? For the lack of this entailed upon the Romans the lamentable necessity of stealing their wives, and then waging war with their fathers-in-law; so that the wretched women, before they had recovered from the wrong done them by their husbands, were dowried with the blood of their fathers. "But the Romans conquered their neighbors. "Yes; but with what wounds on both sides, and with what sad slaughter of relatives and neighbors! The war of Caesar and Pompey was the contest of only one father-in-law with one son-in-law; and before it began, the daughter of Caesar, Pompey's wife, was already dead. But with how keen and just an accent of grief does Lucan [141] exclaim:"I sing that worse than civil war waged in the plains of Emathia, and in which the crime was justified by the victory! "

• From Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982)

  At that time, suffering was clearly what we did best. We became The Branded because we learned how to make a virtue out of it. How meager the sustenance was I gained from the four years I spent in high school; yet, how important that sustenance was to my survival. Remembering that time is like watching old pictures of myself in a prison camp picking edible scraps out of the garbage heap, and knowing that without that garbage I might have starved to death. The overwhelming racism of so many of the faculty, including the ones upon whom I had my worst schoolgirl crushes. How little I settled for in the way of human contact, compared to what I was conscious of wanting . It was in high school that I came to believe that I was different from my white classmates, not because I was Black, but because I was me . For four years, Hunter High School was a lifeline. No matter what it was in reality, I got something there I needed. For the first time I met young women my own age, Black and white, who spoke a language I could usually understand and reply within. I met girls with whom I could share feelings and dreams and ideas without fear. I found adults who tolerated my feelings and ideas without punishment for insolence, and even a few who respected and admired them. Writing poetry became an ordinary effort, not a secret and rebellious vice. The other girls at Hunter who wrote poetry did not invite me to their homes, either, but they did elect me literary editor of the school arts magazine. By my sophomore year in high school, I was in open battle on every other front in my life except school. Relationships with my family had come to resemble nothing so much as a West Indian version of the Second World War. Every conversation with my parents, particularly with my mother, was like a playback of the Battle of the Bulge in Black panorama with stereophonic sound. Blitzkrieg became my favorite symbol for home. I fantasized all my dealings with them against a backdrop of Joan of Arc at Rheims or the Revolutionary War. I cleaned my flintlocks nightly, and poured my lead-mold bullets after midnight when everybody else in my family was asleep. I had discovered a new world called voluntary aloneness. After midnight was the only time it was possible in my family’s house. At any other time, a closed door was still considered an insult. My mother viewed any act of separation from her as an indictment of her authority.

• From House of Holes: A Book of Raunch (2011)

  “And he said, ‘You know how important national security is.’ And then he called out to one of the other security guys, and the two of them took hold of my elbows and steered me into a room that said ‘Official Business Only.’ I knew I was in trouble then.” “Did they search you all over?” “Let me tell you, ‘gangbang’ would be another word for it. I thought it was over, and then one guard, the less nice one, said to the other, ‘We’re going to have to call in the Pearloiner.’ And the nice one said, ‘No, let’s not.’ But then the Pearloiner came in. She was about forty-five, superpatriotic, big hair, big high heels, big patriotic tits, fake. And she goes, ‘I’m sorry, but we’ve determined that your clitoris is not a carry-on item.’ She’s like, ‘It’s swollen and oversized, and it’s over the weight limit, and it’s a security threat, and I’m going to have to remove it now.’ Then she clapped her hand to my crotch, and I felt this sharp painful tugging, and I saw my clit go into a tiny clear baggie, with a numbered label on it, and then a gloved man took the top off of a large jar.” “That’s just so sad and so wrong,” said Shandee. “Yeah, and since then I’ve only had three good comes,” said Zilka, “and they were all in my sleep. I used to come so big. I used to shout and kick, sometimes even fart if I was by myself and really bearing down. Now I can’t come at all. Nothing to rub against. I still think about sex a lot, though, and I still get incredibly turned on. It’s about as frustrating a situation as you can get.” “So what are you going to do?” said Shandee. “Well, a few months ago I was dancing at Carbon Fiber in Chicago, and this girl Cheyenne who’d also had her clit stolen at the same airport said she’d heard the Pearloiner had gotten in big trouble with the FBI, finally, for abuses of her authority, and that she’d gone AWOL and somehow managed to sneak over into the House of Holes, where she’d been making a nuisance of herself—stealing more clits, of course. So Cheyenne and I decided to track her, and that’s when I came here and met Lila, who said she’d help if she could. I worked the Penis Wash for a month—that was a kick. Now I’m a greeter.” Shandee was moved. “We must help you get your clit back,” she said, socking her fist. “You can’t just have that pleasure stolen from you. You have rights!” “Thanks,” said Zilka. “If you spot a woman with big hair and spike heels and a jar full of stolen clits, let me know. Precious baggage.” They were still for a moment, listening to the clink of plates from other tables. The warm wind sang in the gorse. “Thanks for telling me,” said Shandee.

• From The City of God

  But the wicked brother is, in the person of his son (i. e. , his work), the boy, or slave, of his good brothers, when good men make a skillful use of bad men, either for the exercise of their patience or for their advancement in wisdom. For the apostle testifies that there are some who preach Christ from no pure motives; "but," says he, "whether in pretence or in truth, Christ is preached; and I therein do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice. " [865]For it is Christ Himself who planted the vine of which the prophet says, "The vine of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel;" [866] and He drinks of its wine, whether we thus understand that cup of which He says, "Can ye drink of the cup that I shall drink of? " [867] and, "Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me," [868] by which He obviously means His passion. Or, as wine is the fruit of the vine, we may prefer to understand that from this vine, that is to say, from the race of Israel, He has assumed flesh and blood that He might suffer; "and he was drunken," that is, He suffered; "and was naked," that is, His weakness appeared in His suffering, as the apostle says, "though He was crucified through weakness. " [869]Wherefore the same apostle says, "The weakness of God is stronger than men; and the foolishness of God is wiser than men. " [870]And when to the expression "he was naked" Scripture adds "in his house," it elegantly intimates that Jesus was to suffer the cross and death at the hands of His own household, His own kith and kin, the Jews. This passion of Christ is only externally and verbally professed by the reprobate, for what they profess, they do not understand. But the elect hold in the inner man this so great mystery, and honor inwardly in the heart this weakness and foolishness of God. And of this there is a figure in Ham going out to proclaim his father's nakedness; while Shem and Japheth, to cover or honor it, went in, that is to say, did it inwardly.

• From A Greek-English Lexicon (Liddell-Scott) (1957)

  1031 wards, Thuc. 1. 87, cf. 1. 30, 108., 2. 31, etc.:—dm οἴκου from home, Id. I. 99; ἀπ᾽ οἴκων Soph. Aj. 762, etc. :—cf. οἰκία. b. often omitted after eis or ἐν, v. εἰς I. A.C, ἐν I. 2. 2. part of a house, room, chamber, Od. 1. 356, cf. 362., 19. 514, 598: the dining-hall, énra- wAwos οἶκος Phryn. Com. Incert. 5; (so, οἶκος rpiAwos, Poll. 1. 79) ; ἐγκριτήριοι οἴκοι training-rooms for the athletes, C. I. 1104. etc, :—the pl. οἴκοι often stands for a single house, Lat. aedes, like οἰκήματα, Lat. aedes, lecta, Od. 24. 417, and often in Att., Aesch. Pers, 230, 524, al.; κλαυθμῶν τῶν ἐξ οἴκων domestic griefs, Id. Ag.1554; ἐς or πρὸς οἴκους Soph. Ph. 311, 383; κατ᾽ οἴκους at home, Mnesim. Ἵππ. 1. 52; cf. δόμος, δῶμα. 3. the house of a god, a temple, first in Hdt. 8, 143, Eur. Phoen, 1373. 4. later of animals wild or tame, a séall, nest, lair, burrow, etc., Geop. 15. 2, 22. 5. in astrology, the house of a star (cf. οἰκοδεσπότης), Eust. 162. 2, cf. Ael. N. A. 12. 7. II. one’s house, one’s household goods, substance (cf. οἴκοθεν 2), οἶκος ἐμὸς διό- λωλε Od. τ. 64; ἐσθίεταί μοι οἶκος 4. 318, al.; καὶ οἶκος καὶ κλῆρος ἀκήρατος Il. 15. 498; οἶκον δέ 7 ἔγὼ καὶ κτήματα δοίην Od. 7. 314; so also Hdt. 3. 53., 7. 224, Antipho 120. 28, etc.:—in Att. law, the whole property, the whole inheritance; οἶκον κατασχεῖν Andoc. 31. 2, cf, Isae. 52. 11, often in Dem. c. Aphob. ; v. sub οἰκία. ish a house, household, family, ἄνδρα τε καὶ οἷκον Od. 6. 181; more often in Att., ᾿Αγαμεμνονίων οἴκων ὄλεθρον Aesch. Cho. 862, etc.: cf. οἰκέ- TNS. IV. a house, family, Hdt. 5. 31, cf. 6. 9, Pind. O. 13. 2, Soph. Ant. 594, Thuc. 1. 137, etc. (The orig. form was Fotos, and Εοικία occurs in an ancient Inscr, in C. I. 4, and a Boeot. Inscr., ib. 1505, cf. 1562-4; cf. Skt. vegas, vis (domus), vic-patis (οἰκο-δεσπότηΞ); Lat. vicus, vicinus; Goth. veihs (κώμη. aypos); cf. wick, wich, as in Painswick, Norwich.) οἰκός, Ion. for ἐοικός, part. neut. of ἔοικα. οἴκοσε, Adv. for οἴκαδε, Ap. Dysc. in A. B. 607. oikootria, 7, living at one’s own expense, Poll. 6. 26. οἰκό-σττος, ον, taking one’s meals at home, living at one’s own expense, unpaid, first in the writers of Middle Com.; oi«. ἐκκλησιαστής Antiph. Σκυθ. 2; otk. vids Anaxandr. Kuy7y. 1, cf. Luc. Somn. 1; οὐκ οἰκοσίτους τοὺς ἀκροατὰς λαμβάνεις Menand. Kid. 5; otK. νυμφίος a bridegroom who takes his bride without (or not on account of) a portion, Menand. Δακτ. 2, cf. Ath. 247 E; οἰκοσίτους τοὺς γάμους πεποιηκέναι Menand. Συναρ. 1; oti. πεζοί, of militiamen, Plut. Crass. 19. ΤΙ. living in @ house, of a mouse, opp. to ἀρουραῖος, Babr. 108. 4; cf. οἰκότριψ. oiko-okeun, ἡ, household utensils, Arcad. 103. 13, Basilic.

• From The City of God

  Hermes goes on to say, "But do we know how many good things Isis, the wife of Osiris, bestows when she is propitious, and what great opposition she can offer when enraged? "Then, in order to show that there were gods made by men through this art, he goes on to say, "For it is easy for earthly and mundane gods to be angry, being made and composed by men out of either nature;" thus giving us to understand that he believed that demons were formerly the souls of dead men, which, as he says, by means of a certain art invented by men very far in error, incredulous, and irreligious, were caused to take possession of images, because they who made such gods were not able to make souls. When, therefore, he says "either nature," he means soul and body,--the demon being the soul, and the image the body. What, then, becomes of that mournful complaint, that the land of Egypt, the most holy place of shrines and temples, was to be full of sepulchres and dead men? Verily, the fallacious spirit, by whose inspiration Hermes spoke these things, was compelled to confess through him that even already that land was full of sepulchres and of dead men, whom they were worshipping as gods. But it was the grief of the demons which was expressing itself through his mouth, who were sorrowing on account of the punishments which were about to fall upon them at the tombs of the martyrs. For in many such places they are tortured and compelled to confess, and are cast out of the bodies of men, of which they had taken possession.

• From The City of God

  Chapter 24. --How Hermes Openly Confessed the Error of His Forefathers, the Coming Destruction of Which He Nevertheless Bewailed. After a long interval, Hermes again comes back to the subject of the gods which men have made, saying as follows:"But enough on this subject. Let us return to man and to reason, that divine gift on account of which man has been called a rational animal. For the things which have been said concerning man, wonderful though they are, are less wonderful than those which have been said concerning reason. For man to discover the divine nature, and to make it, surpasses the wonder of all other wonderful things. Because, therefore, our forefathers erred very far with respect to the knowledge of the gods, through incredulity and through want of attention to their worship and service, they invented this art of making gods; and this art once invented, they associated with it a suitable virtue borrowed from universal nature, and being incapable of making souls, they evoked those of demons or of angels, and united them with these holy images and divine mysteries, in order that through these souls the images might have power to do good or harm to men. "I know not whether the demons themselves could have been made, even by adjuration, to confess as he has confessed in these words:"Because our forefathers erred very far with respect to the knowledge of the gods, through incredulity and through want of attention to their worship and service, they invented the art of making gods. "Does he say that it was a moderate degree of error which resulted in their discovery of the art of making gods, or was he content to say "they erred? "No; he must needs add "very far," and say, "They erred very far. "It was this great error and incredulity, then, of their forefathers who did not attend to the worship and service of the gods, which was the origin of the art of making gods. And yet this wise man grieves over the ruin of this art at some future time, as if it were a divine religion. Is he not verily compelled by divine influence, on the one hand, to reveal the past error of his forefathers, and by a diabolical influence, on the other hand, to bewail the future punishment of demons? For if their forefathers, by erring very far with respect to the knowledge of the gods, through incredulity and aversion of mind from their worship and service, invented the art of making gods, what wonder is it that all that is done by this detestable art, which is opposed to the divine religion, should be taken away by that religion, when truth corrects error, faith refutes incredulity, and conversion rectifies aversion?